172 ' 
Political Arithmetic, 
head cleared : a proportion not too large, for I know by repeated 
calculation, that it takes at least three acres to supply the food 
and drink of a labouring man here, as labourers usually live. Then 
will there be 25 millions of acres in cultivation, producing an aver- 
age annual value of 5 dollars per acre, or 28 millions sterling. The 
produce of timber, lumber, fuel, cabinet-wood, game, &c. — of the 
fisheries of our rivers- and streams — of home manufacture of eve- 
ry description, may be reasonably computed at one fourth more ; 
making a total of 35 millions sterling, for the home produce of the 
American states. 
The last report of the gross amount of foreign trade (our ex- 
ports) was 61 millions of dollars, of which 33 millions was the value 
©f produce of foreign nations. Our own foreign trade then, a- 
mounted to 28 millions of dollars, or about six and one -fourth mil- 
lions sterling ; while the gross amount of internal produce is nearly 
six times that sum. 
Such was the state of things about 1798, 1799. 
Hence it appears, that whether we look at England, France^ 
or America, the gross amount of the home trade is prodigiously 
beyond that of the foreign trade ; which has no pretensions to b© 
regarded as the great source of national wealth. 
5thly, The lands of America stand particularly in need of capi- 
tal . When I state this, I am not an advocate for colonizing the 
wilderness two thousand miles from our sea-board. Our frontier 
is already extended beyond all reasonable bounds. But the space 
of territory we might prudently populate, is not half peopled* or 
near it. Of the populated part, the lands are not half cleared; of 
the cleared lands under cultivation, not one acre in a hundred is 
half cultivated. I am afraid I over calculate, when I rate an aver- 
age wheat produce at 10 bushels, most certainly not half the aver- 
age of England. 1 Young’s French Tour, 343, 431, gives the de- 
tails that shew the superior produce of England over France, to be 
owing to the greater agricultural capital of the former nation. Un- 
der these circumstances, it is not prudent to foster, and encourage 
the investment of capital in foreign trade. 
6thly, The capital of the foreign trade , is more precarious than 
that of the home trade . Precarious from the hazard of storms, 
the hazard of war, the hazard of failure of a foreign debtor, living 
at a great distance and under foreign jurisdiction. The very idea 
New England, on 72,000 square miles, contained 1 1-4 millions of peo- 
ple in 1800 s mi 18 to a mile. 
