the property which
it cannot appropriate to its own use." He looks forward to a renewal
of similar misfortune in the following year, an anticipation more than
fulfilled. The officials of other states, according to their political
complexion, either lamented the sufferings of the war and its supposed
injustice, or comforted themselves and their hearers by reflecting
upon the internal fruitfulness of the country, and its increasing
self-sufficingness. The people were being equipped for independence of
the foreigner by the progress of manufactures, and by habits of
economy and self-denial, enforced by deprivation arising from the
suppression of the coasting trade and the rigors of the commercial
blockade.

The effect of the latter, which by the spring of 1814 had been in
force nearly a twelvemonth over the entire coast south of Narragansett
Bay, can be more directly estimated and concisely stated, in terms of
money, than can the interruption of the coasting trade; for the
statistics of export and import, contrasted with those of years of
peace, convey it directly. It has already been stated that the exports
for the year ending September 30, 1814, during which the operation of
the blockade was most universal and continuous, fell to $7,000,000, as
compared with $25,000,000 in 1813, and $45,000,000 in 1811, a year of
peace though of restricted intercourse. Such figures speak distinctly
as well as forcibly; it being necessary, however, to full appreciation
of the difference between 1813 and 1814, to remember that during the
first half of the former official period--from October 1, 1812, to
April 1, 1813,--there had been no commercial blockade beyond the
Chesapeake and Delaware; and that, even after it had been instituted,
the British license system operated to the end of September to qualify
its effects.

Here and there interesting particulars may be gleaned, which serve to
illustrate these effects, and to give to the picture that precision of
outline which heightens impression. "I believe," wrote a painstaking
Baltimore editor in December, 1814, "that there has not been an
arrival in Baltimore from a foreign port for a twelvemonth";[206] yet
the city in 1811 had had a registered tonnage of 88,398, and now
boasted that of the scanty national commerce still maintained, through
less secluded ports, at least one half was carried on by its
celebrated schooners,[207] the speed and handiness of which, combined
with a size that in