e so much nearer to our seaports.

With the Spanish islands of Cuba and Porto Rico we maintain, in spite of
their adverse legislation, a large commerce by reason of our necessities
and of their proximity. In the year ending June 30, 1869, we imported
from them merchandise valued at $65,609,274. During the same time we
sent them goods to the value only of $15,313,919.

The prohibitory duties forced upon them by the policy of Spain
shut out much that we might supply. Their tropical productions, for
instance, are too valuable to allow their lands to be given up to the
growth of breadstuffs; yet, instead of taking these articles from the
superabundant fields of their nearest neighbors, they are forced to
go to the distant plains of Spain. It will be for the interest of the
United States to shape its general policy so that this relation of
imports and exports shall be altered in Cuba when peace is restored
and its political condition is satisfactorily established.

With none of the other Spanish American States in North and South
America are our commercial relations what they should be. Our total
imports in the year ending June 30, 1869, from these countries were less
than $25,000,000 (or not one-half the amount from Cuba alone), and our
exports for the same time to them were only $17,850,313; and yet these
countries have an aggregate population nearly or quite as great as that
of the United States; they have republican forms of government, and they
profess to be, and probably really are, in political sympathy with us.

This Department is not able to give with entire accuracy the imports
and exports of Great Britain with the same countries during the
corresponding period. It is believed, however, the following figures
will be found to be not far from correct: Imports to Great Britain,
$42,820,942; exports from Great Britain, $40,682,102.

It thus appears that notwithstanding the greater distance which
the commerce has to travel in coming to and from Great Britain,
notwithstanding the political sympathy which ought naturally to exist
between republics, notwithstanding the American idea which has been
so prominently and so constantly put forward by the Government of the
United States, notwithstanding the acknowledged skill of American
manufacturers, notwithstanding the ready markets which the great cities
of the United States afford for the consumption of tropical productions,
the inhabitants of the Spanish American contin