Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/397

 for the avowal and practice of a much wiser and more enlightened policy than that by which nations were guided before, and for some years after, the close of the eighteenth century.

Perhaps no nation of modern times has produced more enlightened statesmen than those who regulated the affairs of the United States for full half a century after the declaration of its independence. They had, as we have seen, numerous difficulties to contend with, both at home and abroad, but these were overcome with a tact and genius which commands our admiration. Though materially assisted in their efforts to extend and develop their shipping by the seafaring habits of the people, by the natural maritime resources of their own country, and by the advantages they derived as neutrals during the war which so long raged in Europe, they were ever ready to encourage increased intercourse with distant nations, in spite of the opposition of the maritime States to those liberal measures which they had so frequently propounded, and in which they had been too often thwarted.

But though the American shipowners, as a body, and as would seem to be the case with the majority of shipowners of all countries, clung to protection, they were individually quite as daring, and even more energetic, than those of Great Britain. So early in their independence as 1785 a vessel from Baltimore in Maryland displayed, for the first time, the American flag in the Canton river, where she discharged a cargo of American produce, and loaded in return a cargo of teas, China ware, silk, and