Слике страница
PDF
ePub

and sing, I suppose, like the nightingale. Poetical fiction is ridiculous in legislative concerns.

I now come to remark more seriously on the errors and on the invidious comparisons contained in the Governor's speech. I shall remark on another part of his speech after I have done with this.

I take the statements as Governor Lewis has stated them, that is, that the exports of Philadelphia were greater than the exports of New York, in the year 1800; and that, at this time, the exports of New York are greater than those of Philadelphia. But the cause which the Governor assigns for this shews a great want of knowledge and consequently of judgment.

He ascribes it, so far as respects New York, to improvements in roads and navigable streams-to making the forests bow beneath the labours of the husbandmen--to converting the [unconverted] wilderness into fruitful fields, and making the desert places rejoice; and he speaks of those improvements as if Pennsylvania had stood still in the mean time, and made none; whereas the fact is not as the Governor states it. Pennsylvania has made more public roads and built more permanent bridges than any other State has done. And as to the improvement of farms, there are no farmer in the United States that excel the. German farmers of Pennsylvania. We must then seek some other cause than that which the Governor has assigned.

If Governor Lewis had made himself acquainted, in some degree, with mercantile affairs, which he ought to have done, before he undertook to speak of exports or imports, he would have found that the greater part of the exports of New York are not the produce of the State of New York, and, therefore, have a distinct origin from any thing that can arise from internal improvements of any kind. For example, the city of New York exports great quantities of tobacco, rice, cotton, indigo, pitch, tar, turpentine, and rosin, and yet none of those articles are the produce of the State of New York. The case is, that the Southern States, where those articles are produced, do not go much into the carrying trade, and as the port of New York is commodious to the sea, those articles arrive coastways to New York, to be exported from thence to Europe.

New York also exports a great deal of the produce of Connecticut, which comes in shallops through the sound. She also exports considerable quantities of the State of Ver

mont and also of East Jersey; and in proportion that she exports the produce of other States she also imports for them. Not a third of what she imports is consumed in her own State. It is the commodious situation of the port of New York, soon in, and soon out to sea, and not to any thing in the Governor's catalogue of pastoral compliments, that gives New York a superiority in commerce over Philadelphia.

It ought also to be remarked, that the course of commerce has undergone considerable changes within a few years. In the first place, it was the policy of the English Government to keep the several colonies, as they were then called, separate and unconnected with each other; and as New York was possessed by the British during the war, the conveniences of New York as a port of rendezvous was not known.

After the war, the case was, that the Eastern States were the carriers for the Southern States; and the case now is, that the sea-vessels of the Eastern States make New York their port of rendezvous, where they load with the produce of the Southern States, brought to New York by coasting vessels, and export it to Europe-such as the articles already mentioned, tobacco, rice, cotton, indigo, pitch, tar, turpentine, and rosin. Not less than between forty and fifty seavessels that appear as if they belonged to the port of New York, are New England built, and owned by persons in New England, of which several are of New Bedford, and come to New York for freight or charter. Governor Lewis shouid have informed himself of all these matters before he undertook to commit himself in a speech to the Legislature about exports or imports.

I now come to remark on another passage in the Governor's speech immediately following the passage already quoted.

"Similar causes," says the Governor, "have produced similar effects in Great Britain, a country unequalled in agricul ture, arts, manufactures, and commerce. It is but little more than fifty years since her attention was earnestly turned to the facilities of internal intercourse. From that period her exports have been progressing and have nearly attained to an increase of four hundred per cent, while that of her population has not exceeded ten [per cent.] A wise Government [the Governor means by this his own administration} will not fail to improve such advantages."

If the encomiums the Governor here makes upon England were well-founded, which they are not, they would, nevertheless, be ill-timed.

In the condition Europe is now in, it is best not to make any speechifying allusion to one part that may offend some other part; but the encomiums he makes are fallacious. As to the agriculture of England, the fact is, that beside not victualling its own navy, which is victualled by Ireland, it does not produce grain enough for the support of its own inhabitants, and were it not for the cargoes of wheat and other grain which England procures from the United States and from the Baltic, the people would be in a starving condition. In point of quality the French wheat is superior to the English.

As to Great Britain being unequalled in "ARTS," as the Governor has not said what arts he means, the expression is too vague and general to admit of remarks. There are all sorts of arts, even down to the black art. The English Government has the art of taxing the people till thousands of them cannot buy a Sunday dinner; and the church has the art of picking their pockets by tythes for the good of their souls. In what are called the fine arts the English are inferior to the Southern nations of Europe; and in the invention of new arts the French are superior to the English. The art of sailing in the air by balloons, by means of which the face of a large extent of country and the position of an enemy can be reconnoitred, and the art of communicating information to the distance of two or three hundred miles in two or three hours, by telegraphs, are French inventions. And certainly the Governor does not mean the military art. If he does, I leave him to settle that matter with Buonaparte.

As to "manufactures," which makes another item of the Governor's encomiums, the case is, that every nation excels in some, and no nation excels in all. The French excel the English in every article of silk manufacture, and in the manufacture of superfine broad cloth. The broad cloth in France, called cloth of Lovain, is as much beyond an English superfine as an English superfine is beyond a second cloth. The French also excel in every article of glass manufacture, plate-glass, window-glass, and hollow glass ware, and those articles are also cheaper in France than in England. The English excel the French in the cotton manufacture, but as the machinery for it, which was the invention of Richard Arkwright, an English barber, is now made in

France, and in other parts of Europe, the monopoly of that manufacture to England will cease.

As to commerce, with which the Governor completes his climax of encomiums, it is difficult to say any thing about it. A state of war is not favourable to commerce or to manufactures that depend on exportation. England being an island, can have no foreign commerce but by sea, and she is now shut out from all the ports of the European continent. Whereas, France being situated on the continent, has the range of the continent by land. She can trade by land to Portugal, Spain, Italy, all Germany, Austria, Poland, Denmark, and, if she pleases, to Constantinople without going to sea. The expence of this war has shewn that navies are useless with respect to commerce. The English navy, great and expensive as it is, can do nothing to benefit the commerce of England. That navy is now a dead weight upon the nation.

If Governor Lewis wanted to fill up a paragraph in his speech about the condition of England, he might have done it much better than he has done.

Instead of far-fetched allusions and ill-founded encomiums, unwisely forced into notice, he might in speaking of England have exhibited the melancholy spectacle of a nation ruining itself by wars, navies, and national debts, till every seventh person in that unfortunate country is a pauper.*

He might have expatiated on the dreadful effects of CORRUPTION, and produced the conduct of the British Government as a warning of the danger. He might have held up the insolvency of the Bank of England as a memento against the fatal consequences of multiplying banks or increasing the quantity of bank paper. There is something rotten in the condition of England, that ought to operate as a warning and not as an example.

AN OLD CITIZEN OF THE UNION. Feb. 23, 1807.

The population of England consists of eight millions of souls. The number of paupers, according to an account given to Parliament two years ago, was one million two hundred thousand!

OF GUN-BOATS.

A GUN-BOAT, carrying heavy metal, is a moveable fortification; and there is no mode or system of defence the United States can go into for coasts and harbours or ports, that will be so effectual as by gun-boats.

Ships of the line are no ways fitted for the defence of a coast. They are too bulky to act in narrow waters, and cannot act at all in shoal waters. Like a whale, they must be in deep water, and at a distance from land.

Frigates require less room to act in than ships of the line; but a frigate is a feeble machine compared with a gun-boat. Were a frigate to carry and discharge the same weight of metal and ball that a gun-boat can do, it would shake her to pieces. The timbered strength of every ship of war is in proportion to the weight of metal she is to carry, and the weight of metal she is to be exposed to. The sides of a frigate are not proof against the weight of a ball that a gunboat can discharge. The difference between two ships of war is not so much in their number of guns as in their weight of metal.

I remember the late Commodore Johnson saying in the British House of Commons, at the commencement of the American war, that "a single gun, in a retired situation, would drive a ship of the line from her moorings. I mention this, (said he) that too much may not be expected from the navy.

A gun-boat can carry a gun of the same weight of metal and ball that a ship of an hundred guns can carry; and she carries it to the greatest possible advantage. The shot from a gun-boat is a horizontal shot. The gun is fixed in a frame that slides in a groove, and when the man at the helm brings the head of the boat to point at the ship, the gun is pointed with it. When a ship fights with her starboard or larboard guns, she presents the whole broadside of the ship to the object she fires at. A gun-boat fights only with her head, that is, with the gun at her head, and when she fires at an object she presents only the breadth of the boat to that object. Suppose, then, a boat to be ten feet broad and two feet out of the water (I speak here of boats intended for the defence

« ПретходнаНастави »