difference: the foreign
commerce of Great Britain was almost all carried on from her own ports,
and the returns, therefore, showed its full volume. On the other hand,
the American ships were largely the carriers between the ports of the
belligerents and of other powers in Europe, and there were no entries at
the American custom-houses of their employment, or that they were
employed at all. As early as 1804-5, the aggregate value of this foreign
trade in the hands of Americans was probably much larger than that
controlled by English merchants; and the former increased to the time
of the promulgation of the Berlin decree of 1806, and the British orders
in council of the next year. Nor was it only that wealth flowed into the
country as the immediate return from this trade abroad. It stimulated
enterprise and industry at home by the increase of capital; and there
was not only more money to work with, but more to spend. Consequently
the increase in exports and in imports grew steadily. In 1805, 1806, and
1807, about one half the average total exports, something over the value
of twenty million dollars, went to Great Britain alone; and the value of
the imports from that country for the same period was about sixty
million dollars a year. Nor did this disproportion, though increasing
with the growing prosperity, represent a general balance of trade
against the United States, as one school of political economists would
insist it must have done. For the imports were small from other European
countries in exchange for American products; and the difference,
together with the profits of the carrying trade abroad, was remitted in
English manufactures. In other words, the imports from England
represented the returns for all exports to Europe, and the returns
also--available in the first instance through bills of exchange--of the
trade which had been gained by Americans, and lost by those nations
whose ships the war had driven from the ocean.

The British manufacturer had no reason for discontent with this state of
things. The best market for his goods was constantly improving, and he
did not much care who took them to America. But the English government,
and the English merchants who owned ships, looked on with neither
pleasure nor patience. It was impossible not to see that the United
States was fast becoming a great commercial rival. This in itself was
bad enough; but it was the harder to bear when it was remembered--and it
could n