service
languished; the national treasury was almost penniless; the national
credit was shaken, and loans were effected at a ruinous discount; the
New England seaboard was left exposed to the enemy; and the officers
under the general government, both civil and military, were filled by
men contemned by a vast majority of the people in the north eastern
States. Before the war, the foreign trade of the United States was
flourishing. The exports amounted to L22,000,000, and the imports to
L28,000,000, carried on in 1,300,000 tons of shipping. After the war,
the exports had sunk to L1,000,000, and the imports to less than
L3,000,000, to say nothing of the losses by capture. This too was the
case in America, while the sinews of war were increasing instead of
drying up in Great Britain. Yet England was not wholly unaffected by
the war. There were great distresses in England, consequent upon the
American Embargo Act, in 1811, and it was not until commerce had
discovered some new channels in the markets of Russia, Germany, and
Italy, that these great distresses were fully abated, while the war had
the further and lasting effect of producing manufactures in the United
States, to permanently compete with those of Birmingham and Manchester.
The treaty of peace which was signed at Ghent, on the 24th of December,
1814, was ratified by the President and Senate of the United States, on
the 17th of February, 1815. It was silent upon the subject for which
the war had "professedly" been declared. It provided only for the
suspension of hostilities; for the exchange of prisoners; for the
restoration of territories and possessions obtained by the contending
powers, during the war; for the adjustment of unsettled boundaries and
for _a combined effort to effect the entire abolition of the traffic in
slaves_.

All parties in the United States, welcomed the return of peace. It was
somewhat otherwise in Canada. The army bills had enriched the latter
country; and the expenditure of the military departments had benefitted
both town and country, without cost. When peace came, this extra
expenditure rapidly declined. But the war had further and permanently
proved of advantage to Canada, inasmuch as it drew public attention in
Europe, to the country, and showed to the residents of the United
Kingdom that there was still in America a considerable spot of earth,
possessed of at least semi-monarchical institutions, with a good soil
and great growing cap