A variety of circumstances, which ought to have been noted in page 52, combined to rescue the United States from the ruinous consequences that would otherwise have naturally flowed from the impolicy of the tariffs of 1789, 1792, and 1804; of which, as I have already stated, the obvious tendency was to afford the manufacturing nations of Europe, nearly all the advantages they could have derived from this country in its colonial state.

The provision in 1790, for funding the debt of the United States, threw into circulation an immense capital, which gave life and activity to business. The establishment, about the same time, of the Bank of the United States, afforded additional facilities to trade and commerce. And the wars of the French revolution opened a market for the productions of our agriculture, in many instances at most exorbitant prices; for instance, occasionally from fifteen to twenty dollars per barrel for flour in the West Indies, Spain, and Portugal, and other articles in proportion. We were thus enabled to pay for the extravagant quantities of manufactures which we consumed, and with which we could and ought to have supplied ourselves.

The dreadful scenes in St. Domingo brought immense wealth into this country with the emigrants who purchased safety by flight from their paternal estates and their native land.