284 THE OCEAN RIVER 



the greater part of our workmen, an end of their employment." 

 Here we have an excellent testimony that the common people 

 and the practical people of England, as they did during our 

 Civil War, understood better than the traditional statesmen 

 the common bond in the business of mutual self-preservation 

 that existed on both sides of the Atlantic. 



In mid-century the Barbadoes alone consumed goods 

 annually valued at £100,000 sterling. Huske, an English writer 

 on The Present State of North America, put it this way: ''It 

 is from the American colonies our royal navy is supplied in 

 a great measure with masts of all sizes and our naval stores, 

 as well as our merchant ships; it is from them we have our 

 vast fleet of merchant ships and consequently an increase of 

 seamen; it is from them our men of war in the American world 

 are on any occasion manned, and our troops there augmented 

 and recruited; it is from them we have our silver and gold by 

 way of Spain, Portugal and Italy, in payment for their immense 

 quantities of fish, rice, etc.; it is from them we have all our 

 tobacco, rice, rum and sugars, dyeing and other valuable 

 woods, cotton-wool, ginger, indigo, whale and cod-liver oil, 

 beaver, furs and innumerable other articles.'' Well, there it 

 is. The child had grown at a tremendous pace, history was 

 at the gallop, and the American world just west of the Ocean 

 River was now a member of the Atlantic community to be 

 reckoned with. 



As far as the commercial growth and general recognition of 

 American independence went, the War of 1812 might well 

 be considered as part of the Revolution. England was loath to 

 recognize the birth of a new western nation in world trade. 

 Fortunately for the United States, with the advent of the 

 Napoleonic Wars involving England on the continent after 

 1790, the Atlantic carrying trade took more and more to 

 American bottoms. England at that time was using half of 

 all American exports and the West Indies was taking a third. 



