26

CAPT. GRAY'S VOYAGE-SLATER'S MILL-COTTON.

[1790

of sugar for a few weeks' labor, during the months of February, March and April, and had been greatly extended by the forced economy of the Revolution, were regarded, particularly by the friends of African emancipation, as pointing to a domestic source for ample supplies of sugar for the whole Union. Estimates based upon information given by Mr. Cooper and others, as to the average yield of each tree, the number per acre, and the extent of Sugar Maple lands in New York and Pennsylvania, went to show that 263,000 acres of such lands would supply, by the ordinary family labor, the whole demand of the Union for sugar and molasses, computed at about 42,000,000 lbs. annually. Each of the counties of Albany, Montgomery, Otsego, Tioga and Ontario, in New York, or of Northampton, Luzerne and Northumberland, in Pennsylvania, were supposed to contain more than that number of acres of sugar maple trees, to say nothing of the large number of sugar trees in other parts of these and in sister States. The subject was recommended by Mr. Henry Drinker, who made the previous year sixty barrels on his own estate, on the Delaware; by Dr. Rush, in a letter to the Secretary of State, published in the American Philosophical Transactions, and by Mr. Tench Coxe, who jointly published a pamphlet, detailing the utensils, materials and process, employed in the manufacture. Large quantities of maple sugar were also made in Vermont, New Hampshire, and other parts of New England.

The ship Columbia, of Boston, Captain Gray, having sailed, September 30th, 1787, with the sloop Washington, of ninety tons, for the northwest coast of America, and thence with furs to China, returned home by Cape of Good Hope, completing the first American voyage around the world.

Samuel Slater, having completed, under many difficulties, and chiefly with his own hands since the 18th of January, the entire series of Arkwright machines, at Pawtucket, R. I., started at that place, the first complete and successful water-spinning mill for cotton in the United States. The machinery, operated by the water-wheel of an old fulling-mill, embraced three carding, one drawing and roving-machine, and seventytwo spindles. The skill and energy which thus introduced THE ERA OF THE COTTON MANUFACTURE, deserve to be commemorated in some lasting memorial by the American people. By the time list, he appears to have commenced with four carders and spinners, whose names were Torpen and Charles Arnold, Smith Wilkinson, and Jabez Jenks, to whom were soon after added Eunice and Ann Arnold, John and Varnus Jenks, and Otis Borrows.

Carolina planters about this time began generally to clothe their slaves in homespun, from the produce of their cotton fields. The material was

1790]

MANUFACTURING EVENTS.

27

usually prepared for the spindle by the field hands, who picked the seed from the wool, at the rate of four pounds per week; and having been spun in the family, it was sent to the nearest weaver. A manufacturing establishment of Irish settlers, near Murray's Ferry, in Williamsburg district, supplied the adjacent country.

A small cotton mill with eighty-four spindles, driven by water, was in operation near Statesburgh, and a woolen mill on Fishing Creek, near the Catawba River.

An unsuccessful attempt was this year made to introduce power-looms into Manchester, England.

The publication in Philadelphia, by Thomas Dobson, of the first half volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica, to be completed in fifteen volumes, quarto, with much original matter, at fifteen guineas, or seventy dollars, the subscription price of the English edition, was the commencement of an increased amount of enterprise in the printing business in the United States. An edition of the Catholic Bible was also printed this year by M. Carey.

Benjamin Franklin and James Bowdoin, late Governor of Massachusetts, both distinguished friends and proprietors of American Manufactures died, the former in the eighty-fifth, and the latter in the sixty-fourth year of his age.

The Committee of the Lords of Trade, to whom was referred in September, 1789, the Acts of Congress, imposing discriminating tonnage and other duties, with instructions to consider and report what 1791 proposals of a commercial nature were proper to be made to the Government of the United States, presented a report drawn up by Lord Liverpool. They recommended negotiation on the subject of duties; and while they admit the full right of the United States to impose duties "either for the purpose of revenue or of encouraging the produce or manufactures of their territories," by way of preventing such an increase of those duties as would exclude British manufactures, they suggest two provisions in the proposed treaty. First, "that the duties on British manufactures imported into the United States, shall not be raised above what they are at present." "It may be of use," they say, "to bind the United States not to raise those duties above what they are at present,

(1) The publisher then had but 246 subscribers, and could procure only two or three engravers. One thousand copies of the first volume were printed; two thousand of the second; and when he had completed the eighth, the subscription extended so far as to render it necessary to reprint the first.

He then found no difficulty in procuring printers for the work. In 1786, four booksellers thought an edition of the New Testament for schools a work of risk, requiring much consultation, previously to the determination of the measure.-Hopkins's Ora« tion before the Academy of Fine Arts.

28

NAVIGATION ACTS-THE UNITED STATES BANK.

[1791

by obtaining an express stipulation for this purpose; but, if this concession cannot be obtained, it may be sufficient perhaps to stipulate that the duties on British manufactures should not at any time be raised above the duties now payable on the like manufactures imported from Great Britain into France and Holland, according to the commercial treaties with those powers.'

The second proposition was, "that the duties on all other merchandise, whether British or foreign, imported from Great Britain into the United States, shall not be raised higher at any time than on the like merchandise, imported from any other European nation." As the basis of a commercial treaty, they offered the single proposition, that British ships should be treated in United States ports in like manner as American ships shall be treated in the ports of Great Britain. It could not, however, be admitted, even as a subject of negotiation, that this principle of equality should be extended to the Colonies and Islands of Great Britain; or, that United States ships should there be treated as British. The profitable circuitous trade by which ships from Great Britain, carrying British manufactures to the United States, there load with lumber and provisions for the West Indies, and thence return with the produce of the Island to Great Britain, they say, was wholly a new acquisition, created by his Majesty's order in Council (of 1783), which had operated to the increase of British navigation, compared with that of the United States, in a double ratio, "but it has taken from the United States more than it has added to that of Great Britain." The retention of the American market, and the carrying trade, was thus an object of especial desire,1 but the urging of it was postponed by the revolution in France, which operated to the increase of American manufactures and navigation.

In conformity with a plan suggested by the Secretary of the Treasury, for providing a circulating medium for the requirements of government and trade, Congress established at Philadelphia (February 25), the United States Bank, with a charter for twenty years, and a capital of $10,000,000, divided into 25,000 shares, one-fifth of which were held by the government. In conjunction with the funding system, the active

(1) Pitkins's Statistics.-Mr. Pitt's bill for a temporary regulation of communication between the two countries, proposed in March, 1783, failed through the violent opposition of the navigation interests, headed by Lord Sheffield, and the death of the Chancellor. The orders of the King in Council, in whom the authority was subsequently lodged, wholly excluded American vessels from ports in the British West In

dies; and several staple American productions, as fish, beef, pork, butter, lard, etc., when carried in British ships. The mercantile interests, also, procured the rejection of a plan for a commercial treaty on principles of reciprocity, proposed by Mr. Adams, the American Minister in London, who thereupon strongly recommended the States to pass Navigation Acts, which was done by several of them.

1791] DUTIES ON LEAD AND COTTONS-EXCISE ON SPIRITS.

29

capital thereby created was deemed favorable to the restoration of public credit, and the progress of commerce and the arts. It was the fourth institution of the kind in the country, banks already existing at Phila-. delphia, Boston and New York; and others went into operation this year at Baltimore and Providence.

On March 2, a slight amendment was made in the last Tariff Act, by which the duty of one cent per pound on bar and other lead was extended to all manufactures, wholly or chiefly of lead; and that of seven and a half per cent. on chintzes and calicoes was made to include all printed, stained and colored manufactures of cotton or linen.

At the call of Secretary Hamilton, an act was also passed (March 3), laying, on spirits imported after 30th June, a considerably higher duty, varying from twenty to forty cents a gallon, according to strength, and an excise duty of eleven to thirty cents, upon domestic spirits, distilled from molasses, sugar, or other foreign materials; and of nine to twenty-five cents per gallon on that made from materials the growth or produce of the United States. For the collection of these duties, each State was made a collection district, with as many supervisors as were necessary, whose duty it was in the case of home-distilled spirits, to appoint officers each to have charge of one or more distilleries, to gauge, prove and brand every cask, according to its contents; and having collected the excise in cash, or by bond, to give a certificate, without which it could not be removed, on pain of forfeiture. On private stills, in country places, using domestic materials, a yearly duty of sixty cents per gallon on the contents of the still was imposed. Every distiller was required to place upon his buildings, and the doors of his vaults, the words "Distiller of Spirits," and before commencing the business, was to enter in writing, at the nearest inspection office, a particular description of his buildings and apartments; when they were subject to the inspection of the officers, who were also to furnish, and from time to time inspect books, in which the distiller was required to make a daily entry of the quantity and quality of spirits distilled, sold, or delivered, according to the marks; and to verify the same by his oath, or affirmation. An allowance equal to the duty in each case, less half a cent per gallon was allowed, by way of drawback upon spirits exported; and upon spirits distilled from molasses in the United States, an additional allowance of three cents per gallon, equivalent to the duty laid upon molasses. The net product of the duties was pledged for the payment of interest on loans, and the surplus, if any, to the reduction of the public debt; and the act was to cease when these objects had been attained.

The discrimination co-operated with the duty of three cents upon molasses to favor the grain distillers of the United States. Notwith

30

THE WHISKY REBELLION.

[1791

standing considerable opposition, strengthened by a resolution of the Pennsylvania Assembly, then in session, against it, the act passed by a vote of thirty-five to twenty-one. The large number of private distilleries affected by this important act (amounting it is said to at least five thousand in the State of Pennsylvania alone), caused strong remonstrances to be also made in that State, and in North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland, where stills were likewise numerous. The legislative dissent thus expressed, doubtless encouraged the active resistance made during the next three years to the enforcement of the act, particularly in the four western counties of Pennsylvania. Commencing in North Carolina, the whisky rebellion assumed its most formidable proportions in Westmoreland, Washington, Fayette and Alleghany counties, where a large body of Scotch and Irish distillers and farmers questioned the power of the new government to impose so heavy a tax upon the only staple which would bear the cost of transportation, by the means then in use, to the eastern or other distant markets.

Opposition to the excise commenced in a public meeting, held July 27, at Redstone Old Fort, (Brownsville, to which the Legislature has recently restored the old name), on the Monongahela. It was more fully organized by a Convention held at Pittsburg, later in the year, embracing some of the most wealthy and influential citizens of those counties, and was countenanced by the western members, Smiley and Findley, who had opposed the law in Congress, and denounced it among their constituents. Mr. Gallatin, afterward the able Secretary of the Treasury, also opposed the law, without sanctioning unconstitutional modes of resistance. Many outrages were committed upon the officers of the excise, or their supporters. The collection was only enforced after some modifications of the law had been made, and a vigorous exercise of authority by the Federal Executive had suppressed an insurrection of alarming extent.

The distillation of molasses was chiefly carried on in the seaport towns, particularly in New England. In this business, Massachusetts exceeded all the other States together, and had, in 1783, no less than sixty distilleries. The extent of the business is indicated by the quantity of molasses imported into the United States, which amounted for the fiscal year to the unusual number of 7,194,606 gallons. The total exports of American spirits in the same time were 513,234 gallons.

President Washington, having made a tour to the Southern States after the adjournment of Congress, thus recorded his impressions of the favorable influence of the measures of Government upon the credit and industry of the country. "In my tour, I confirmed by observation the accounts which we had all along received of the happy effects of the General