ment; and other States, beyond local manufactures of paper, glass, and iron, were almost entirely agricultural, or were engaged in industries directly dependent on agriculture. Commerce was dependent on agriculture for exports; and manufactured imports were enough to drown out every other form of industry.
Changes since 1790.137. There were but four cities in the United States having a population of more than 10,000,—Philadelphia (42,000), New York (33,000), Boston (18,000), and Baltimore (13,000). The population of the city of New York and its dependencies is now more than half as large as that of the whole United States in 1789; the State of New York or of Pennsylvania has now more inhabitants than the United States in 1790; and the new States of Ohio and Illinois, which had hardly any white inhabitants in 1789, do not fall far behind. Imports have swollen from 823,000,000 to $650,000,000, exports from $20,000,000 to $700,000,000, since 1790. The revenues of the new Government in 1790 were $4,000,000; they have now grown to $300,000,000 or more. The expenditures of the Government, excluding interest on the public debt, were but $1,000,000 in 1790, where now they are $200,000,000 or upwards per annum. It is not easy for the modern American to realize the poverty and weakness of his country at the inauguration of the new system of government, however he may realize the simplicity of the daily life of its people. Even the few large cities were but larger collections of the wooden houses, with few comforts, which composed the villages; the only advantage of their inhabitants over those of the villages was in the closer proximity to their neighbours; and but a little over 3 per cent. of the population had this advantage, against about 25 per cent. in 1880.
Communication.138. Outside the cities communication was slow. One stage a week was enough for the connexion between the great cities; and communication elsewhere depended on private conveyance. The great rivers by which the continent is penetrated in every direction were with difficulty ascended by sailing vessels or boats; and the real measure of communication was thus the daily speed of a man or a The west. horse on roads bad beyond present conception. The western settlements were just beginning to make the question more serious. Enterprising land companies were the moving force which had impelled the passage of the Ordinance of 1787; and the first column of their settlers was pouring into Ohio and forming connexion with their predecessors in Kentucky and Tennessee. Marietta and Cincinnati (at first a Government fort, and named after the society of the Cincinnati) had been founded. But the intending settlers were obliged to make the journey down the Ohio river from Pittsburgh in bullet-proof flat-boats, for protection against the Indians, and the return trip depended on the use of oars. For more than twenty years these flat-boats were the chief means of river commerce in the west; and, in the longer trips, as to New Orleans, the boats were generally broken up at the end and sold for lumber, the crew making the trip home on foot or on horseback. John Fitch and others were already experimenting on what was soon to be the steamboat (§ 167); but the statesman of 1789, looking at the task of keeping under one Government a country of such distances, with such difficulties of communication, may be pardoned for having felt anxiety as to the future. To almost all thinking men of the time the constitution was an experiment, and the unity of the new nation a subject for very serious doubt.
Literature.139. The comparative isolation of the people everywhere, the lack of books, the poverty of the schools and newspapers, were all influences which worked strongly against any pronounced literary development. Poems, essays, and paintings were feeble imitations of European models; history was annalistic, if anything; and the drama hardly existed. In two points the Americans were strong, and had done good work. Such men as Jonathan Edwards had excelled in various departments of theology, and American preaching had reached a high degree of quality and influence; and, in the line of politics, the American state-papers rank among the very best of their kind. Having a very clear perception of their political purposes, and having been restricted in study and reading to the great masters of pure and vigorous English, and particularly to the English translators of the Bible, the American leaders came to their work with an English style which could hardly have been improved. The writings of Franklin, Washington, the Adamses, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, Jay, and others show the secret of their strength in every page. Much the same reasons, with the influences of democracy, brought oratory, as represented by Patrick Henry, Fisher Ames, John Randolph, and others, to a point not very far below the mark afterwards reached by Daniel Webster. The effect of these facts on the subsequent development of the country is not often estimated at its full value. All through an immigration of every language and dialect under heaven the English language has been protected in its supremacy by the necessity of going back to the “fathers of the republic” for the first, and often the complete, statement of principles in every great political struggle, social problem, or lawsuit.
Limits of settlement.140. The cession of the “north-west territory” by Virginia and New York had been followed up by similar cessions by Massachusetts (1785), Connecticut (1786), and South Carolina (1787). North Carolina did not cede Tennessee until late in 1789, nor Georgia her western claims until 1802. Settlement in all these regions was hardly advanced beyond what it had been at the outbreak of the revolution. The centres of western settlement, in Tennessee and Kentucky, had merely become more firmly established, and a new one, in Ohio, had just been begun. The whole western limits of settlement of the old thirteen States had moved much nearer their present boundaries; and the acquisition of the western title, with the liberal policy of organization and government which had been begun, was to have its first clear effects during the first decade of the new Government. Almost the only obstacle to its earlier success had been the doubts as to the attitude which the Spanish authorities, at New Orleans and Madrid, The Mississippi river. would take towards the new settlements. They had already asserted a claim that the Mississippi was an exclusively Spanish stream from its mouth up to the Yazoo, and that no American boat should be allowed to sail on it. To the western settler the Alleghanies and bad roads were enough to cut him off from any other way to a market than down the Mississippi; and it was not easy to restrain him from a forcible defiance of the Spanish claim. The Northern States were willing to allow the Spanish claim in return for a commercial treaty; the Southern States and the western settlers protested angrily; and once more the spectre of dissolution appeared, not to be laid again until the new Government had made a treaty with Spain in 1795, securing common navigation of the Mississippi.
Social conditions.141. All contemporary authorities agree that a marked change had come over the people since 1775, and few of them seem to think the change one for the better. Many attribute it to the looseness of manners and morals introduced by the French and British soldiers; others to the general effects of war; a few, Tories all, to the demoralizing effects of rebellion. The successful establishment of nationality would be enough to explain most of it; and if we remember that the new nation had secured its title to a vast western territory, of unknown but rich capacities, which it was now moving to reduce to possession by
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