n. Our
exports, for example, although certainly less than in some years, were
not, last year, so much below an average formed upon the exports of a
series of years, and putting those exports at a fixed value, as might be
supposed. The value of the exports of agricultural products, of animals,
of the products of the forest and of the sea, together with gunpowder,
spirits, and sundry unenumerated articles, amounted in the several years
to the following sums, viz.:--

In 1790, $27,716,152
1804, 33,842,316
1807, 38,465,854

Coming up now to our own times, and taking the exports of the years
1821, 1822, and 1823, of the same articles and products, at the same
prices, they stand thus:--

In 1821, $45,643,175
1822, 48,782,295
1823, 55,863,491

Mr. Speaker has taken the very extraordinary year of 1803, and, adding
to the exportation of that year what he thinks ought to have been a just
augmentation, in proportion to the increase of our population, he swells
the result to a magnitude, which, when compared with our actual exports,
would exhibit a great deficiency. But is there any justice in this mode
of calculation? In the first place, as before observed, the year 1803
was a year of extraordinary exportation. By reference to the accounts,
that of the article of flour, for example, there was an export that year
of thirteen hundred thousand barrels; but the very next year it fell to
eight hundred thousand, and the next year to seven hundred thousand. In
the next place, there never was any reason to expect that the increase
of our exports of agricultural products would keep pace with the
increase of our population. That would be against all experience. It is,
indeed, most desirable, that there should be an augmented demand for the
products of agriculture; but, nevertheless, the official returns of our
exports do not show that absolute want of all foreign market which has
been so strongly stated.

But there are other means by which to judge of the general condition of
the people. The quantity of the means of subsistence consumed, or, to
make use of a phraseology better suited to the condition of our own
people, the quantity of the comforts of life enjoyed, is one of those
means. It so happens, indeed, that it is not so easy in this country as
elsewhere to ascertain facts of this sort with accuracy. Where most of
the articles of subsistence and most of the comforts of life are taxed,
there i