It will be for the interest of the
United States to shape its general policy so that this relation of
imports and exports shall be altered in Cuba when peace is restored
and its political condition is satisfactorily established.
With none of the other Spanish American States in North and South
America are our commercial relations what they should be. Our total
imports in the year ending June 30, 1869, from these countries were less
than $25,000,000 (or not one-half the amount from Cuba alone), and our
exports for the same time to them were only $17,850,313; and yet these
countries have an aggregate population nearly or quite as great as that
of the United States; they have republican forms of government, and they
profess to be, and probably really are, in political sympathy with us.
This Department is not able to give with entire accuracy the imports
and exports of Great Britain with the same countries during the
corresponding period. It is believed, however, the following figures
will be found to be not far from correct: Imports to Great Britain,
$42,820,942; exports from Great Britain, $40,682,102.
It thus appears that notwithstanding the greater distance which
the commerce has to travel in coming to and from Great Britain,
notwithstanding the political sympathy which ought naturally to exist
between republics, notwithstanding the American idea which has been
so prominently and so constantly put forward by the Government of the
United States, notwithstanding the acknowledged skill of American
manufacturers, notwithstanding the ready markets which the great cities
of the United States afford for the consumption of tropical productions,
the inhabitants of the Spanish American continent consume of the
products of Great Britain more than twice the quantity they take of
the products of the United States, and that they sell to us only
three-fifths of the amount they sell to Great Britain.
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