e States,
have begotten an unbounded spirit of maritime adventure. The ample
material, and other facilities for building vessels, have also
contributed to this end. As capable as any people on earth of running
vessels and conducting mercantile enterprise, we have found foreign
commerce a profitable field for the investment of labor, intelligence,
and capital.

There is scarcely any field of trade in the world which we are not
naturally better calculated to occupy than any other country. Most of
the great commercial nations employ their ships as common carriers for
other nations, and limit their exports to manufactures alone. Great
Britain is an example of this. She exports no products of the soil,
for very obvious reasons. The exports of France partake of the same
general character, domestic manufactures, with a small portion of the
products of the soil. So, also, with the German States and Holland.
The United States, to the contrary, have an immense export trade in
the products of the soil. These exports have the advantage of
embracing every production of the temperate zone, and some few of the
more profitable of those of the torrid. These constitute a large
source of wealth, and are daily increasing in quantity, value, and
importance. Combined with the manufactured productions of the country,
and the yield of the mines, they require a large amount of shipping,
which, extending to nearly all nations, opens a diversified and rich
field of trade. The exchanges of production between our own and other
countries, are, consequently, very large and general, and must
continue to increase to an indefinite extent, as the States and
Territories of the Union fill up, and as the various new and opening
branches of domestic industry develop and mature.

The extent which this trade will reach in a few generations, its
aggregate value, and the influence which it will wield over the world
if judiciously and energetically promoted, and if wisely protected
against encroachment from abroad, and embarrassment at home, no human
foresight can predict or adequately imagine. With a larger field of
operations, at home and abroad, than any nation ever possessed before,
with the pacific commercial policy of the age, and with the aids of
science, the telegraph, and steam to urge it on, American Commerce has
opened before it a glorious career and an imposing responsibility.

But the conquests of this commerce are not to be the bloodless
victori