Even if, in judging of this question, we were to regard only those
proofs to which we have been referred, we shall probably come to a
conclusion somewhat different from that which has been drawn. 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.
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