The United States claim our first notice in giving a rapid sketch of the commerce of America:  we have already pointed out the causes of their extraordinary progress in population and wealth.  American ships, like English ones, are found in every part of the world:  in the South Sea Islands, among people just emerging into civilization and industry; among the savages of New Zealand; on the north-west coast of America; and on the dreadful shores of New South Shetland.  Not content with exporting the various productions of their own country, they carry on the trade of various parts of the globe, which, but for their instrumentality, could not have obtained, or ever have become acquainted with each other’s produce.

The exports from America, the produce of their own soil, are corn, flour, timber, potash, provisions, and salt fish from the northern States; corn, timber, and tobacco from the middle States; and indigo, rice, cotton, tar, pitch, turpentine, timber, and provisions, to the West Indies, from the southern States.  The imports are woollen, cotton goods, silks, hardware, earthen-ware, wines, brandy, tea, drugs, fruit, dye-stuffs, and India and colonial produce.  By far the greatest portion of the trade of the United States is with Great Britain.  The principal ports are Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New Orleans.

The British settlements in America export, chiefly from Quebec and Halifax, corn, potash, wheel timber, masts, lumber, beaver and other furs, tar, turpentine, and salted fish from Newfoundland.  The imports are woollen and cotton goods, hardware, tea, wine, India goods, groceries, &c.

The exports of the West India Islands are sugar, coffee, rum, ginger, indigo, drugs, and dye stuffs.  The imports are lumber, woollen and cotton goods, fish, hardware, wine, groceries, hats, and other articles of dress, provisions, &c.

Brazil, and the late Spanish settlements in America, countries of great extent, and extremely fertile, promise to supply very valuable articles for commerce; even at present their exports are various, and chiefly of great importance.  Some of the most useful drugs, and finest dye stuffs, are the produce of South America.  Mahogany and other woods, sugar, coffee, chocolate, cochineal, Peruvian bark, cotton of the finest quality, gold, silver, copper, diamonds, hides, tallow, rice, indigo, &c.  Carthagena, Porto Cabello, Pernambucco, Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, and Buenos Ayres, are the principal ports on the east coast of South America; and Valparaiso, Calloa (the port of Lima), Guayaquil, Panama, and Acapulco, on the west coast.