and other inhabitants. England had foreseen
that America might prove a powerful rival in the manufacturing field, and
Parliament enacted laws to prevent the emigration of skilled artisans. It
may seem almost incredible that less than one hundred years ago such a
prohibition existed, but I read in an account of a voyage from London to
Boston in 1817 that "the passengers were summoned to appear at the
Gravesend custom house, personally to deliver in their names and a
statement of their professions. Had any been known to be artisans or
manufacturers, they would have been stopped and forbidden to leave the
kingdom. An act of Parliament imposes a heavy fine on those who induce
them to attempt it." Samuel Slater, who brought the Arkwright patents in
his brain, evaded the prohibition a few years after the Revolution, and
his descendants are to-day among the wealthiest and most reputable of New
England's citizens.

The war of 1812-15, gave a tremendous impulse to American manufactures
through the exclusion of British and other foreign products. At the close
of the war, however, when American ports were thrown open to the trade of
Great Britain, the manufacturers of that country, with the deliberate
purpose of crushing American industries out of existence, threw vast
quantities of goods into the American markets, completely swamping native
productions, and making it impossible for native manufacturers to compete
with the importations. It was this ruinous relapse from comparative
prosperity that prompted the agitation for a protective tariff. As
further evidence of British purpose to do all the damage possible to
American interests, even in time of peace, it may be mentioned that when
Lord Exmouth, with a powerful fleet, visited Algiers in 1816, and
negotiated a treaty between the Dey--Omar, the successor of Hadgi
Ali--and the kings of Sardinia and Naples, the Algerians began to show
themselves again hostile to the United States within a few days after the
treaty. The public sentiment of Europe, however, made it impossible for
England to make longer use of those pirates to injure commercial rivals,
and the British Government, in deference to that sentiment, sought a
quarrel with the Dey, bombarded Algiers, and compelled the Barbary States
to agree to put an end to piracy--an agreement which remained for some
time a dead letter.

* * *

The Louisiana Purchase was crowned in 1818 by the