o ten per cent of the diminished total. When it
is remembered that throughout 1813 the Eastern ports alone were open
to neutral ships, no commercial blockade of them having yet been
instituted, these results are the more noticeable.

The general explanation is that the industries of the United States at
that time divided into two principal classes,--agricultural and
maritime; the former of which supplied the material for commerce,
while the latter furnished transportation for whatever surplus of
production remained for export. Manufactures sufficed only for home
demands, being yet in a state of infancy; forced, in fact, upon an
unwilling New England by the policy of commercial restriction which
drove her ships off the sea. Domestic products for export therefore
meant almost wholly the yield of the fields, the forests, and the
fisheries. The latter belonged to New England, but they fell with the
war. Her soil did not supply grain enough to feed her people; and her
domestic exports, therefore, were reduced to shipments of wheat and
flour conveyed to her by inland transportation from the more fertile,
but blockaded, regions to the southward. Despite the great demand for
provisions in Halifax and the St. Lawrence region, and the facility
for egress by sea, through the absence of blockade, the slowness and
cost of land carriage brought forward an insufficient supply, and laid
a heavy charge upon the transaction; while the license system of the
British, modifying this condition of things to their own advantage, by
facilitating exports from the Chesapeake, certainly did operate, as
the President's message said, to regulate American commerce in
conformity with British interests.

The re-exportation of foreign produce had once played a very large
part in the foreign trade of New England. This item consisted chiefly
in West India commodities; and although, owing to several causes, it
fell off very much in the years between 1805 and 1811, it had remained
still considerable. It was, however, particularly obnoxious to British
interests, as then understood by British statesmen and people; and
since it depended entirely upon American ships,--for it was not to the
interest of a neutral to bring sugar and coffee to an American port
merely to carry it away again,--it disappeared entirely when the
outbreak of war rendered all American merchant vessels liable to
capture. In fact, as far as the United States was concerned, although
this r