The principal articles of export are linen, butter, wheat, meal, oats,
bacon, pork, &c. &c.
On the 30th September, 1822, there belonged to the United Kingdom 24,642
vessels, making a total of 2,519,044 tons, and navigated by 166,333 men; of
the vessels employed in the foreign trade, including their repeated
voyages, in the year ending the 5th of January 1823, there were about
12,000, of which upwards of 9,000 were British and Irish, and the rest
foreign vessels. The coasting trade of England is calculated to employ 3000
vessels. We have already stated the proportion which the trade of Ireland
to Britain bore to her trade with the rest of the world; this point may be
still further elucidated by the following fact: that the number of vessels,
(including their repeated voyages,) which entered the ports of Ireland,
from all parts of the world, in the year ending the 5th of January, 1823,
was 11,561, and that all these, except 943, came from Great Britain.
From this rapid view of the commerce of the European states, it appears
that, with the exception of Great Britain, by far the largest portion and
greatest value of the exports of each country consist in the produce of the
soil, either in its raw and natural state, or after having undergone a
change that requires little industry, manual labour, or mechanical agency.
Britain, on the contrary, derives her exports almost entirely from the
produce of her wonderful mechanical skill, which effects, in many cases,
what could alone be accomplished by an immense population, and in a few
cases, what no manual labour could perform.
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