t wearisome solicitude about pecuniary affairs from
which even the affluent find no refuge in England; and, for my children,
a career of enterprise and wholesome family connections in a society
whose institutions are favorable to virtue; and at last the consolation
of leaving them efficient members of a flourishing, public-spirited,
energetic community; where the insolence of wealth and the servility of
pauperism, between which in England there is scarcely an interval
remaining, are alike unknown. * * * It has struck me as we have passed
along from one poor hut to another, among the rude inhabitants of this
infant State, that travelers in general who judge by comparison, are not
qualified to form a fair estimate of these lonely settlers. Let a
stranger make his tour through England in a course remote from the great
roads, and going to no inns, take such, entertainment only as he might
find in the cottage of laborers, he would have as much cause to complain
of the rudeness of the people, and more of their drunkenness and
profligacy than in these backwoods: although in England the poor are a
part of society whose institutions are matured by the experience of two
thousand years. But in their manners and morals, but especially in their
knowledge and proud independence of mind, they exhibit a contrast so
striking that he must be a _petit maitre_ traveler, or ill-informed of
the character and circumstances of his poor countrymen, or deficient in
good and manly sentiment, who would not rejoice to transplant into these
boundless regions of freedom the millions he has left behind him
groveling in ignorance and want."[1]

[1] Notes on a journey in America from the coast of Virginia to the
territory of Illinois, by M. Birkbeck.

While a great agricultural domain was being occupied in the West,
commerce and manufactures were not neglected. American merchantmen
visited every sea, no longer in dread of hostile Briton or Barbary
pirate, and internal commerce received a mighty impulse from the
steamboat. Meanwhile the foundations were laid of those vast
manufacturing interests which were yet to overshadow commerce in the
East. As early as 1810, the domestic manufactures of all descriptions
were worth $127,694,602 annually, and it was estimated by competent
authorities that of $36,793,249--the value of the manufactures of wool,
cotton and flax, with their mixtures--fully two-thirds were produced in
the houses of the farmers