ADDRESS. 11 



accordingly, though it covered itself with glory at that trying 

 period, it proved inadequate to the protection of our ships on the 

 high seas, and we emerged from the contest with a commercial 

 marine crippled and diminished to an alarming extent. 



But no sooner had peace been proclaimed, than our commerce 

 again flourished, and chartered every gale. The South Atlantic 

 and Pacific oceans, where our enterprise had been checked, be- 

 came our highways, and every estuary and river was again the 

 resort of our hardy navigators. It is only with this new Satur- 

 nian reign that my dawn of recollection commences, and then 

 only after some years of this prosperous epoch had elapsed. Not 

 only had new channels of trade been opened by the persevering 

 industry of our merchants, until the extreme east had been laid 

 under contribution, but our fisheries had again extended from our 

 coasts to the shores of Brazil, thence running the longitude to 

 Africa, and around each cape throughout the great Pacific and 

 Indian oceans, to the Maldives and the Isles of Japan. New 

 staple productions of agriculture had likewise sprung up in the 

 interval ; and cotton, which had been introduced into this country 

 several years subsequent to the Revolutionary War, as a mere 

 botanical experiment, now became the most important article of 

 commerce, throwing into a secondary rank bread-stuffs, tobacco, 

 rice, and other articles formerly first in the commercial scale. 

 The milder climes of the south had used cotton stuffs almost 

 exclusively as wearing apparel ; but 'not so the northern, till the 

 improvements in machinery had so facilitated their fabrication that 

 millions are now clothed in manufactures of this article. The 

 sugar of the south, with the hemp and flax of the west, had by 

 this time come into general use, and the upper region supplied 

 bagging for the lower country. The manufacturers, after no smal) 

 opposition from rival interests, began to influence national econo- 

 my; and having succeeded in establishing themselves, were of 

 no, doubtful success. The march of internal improvements had 



