The reason of this tendency could in part be seen in the Treasury reports on American shipping, which reached in 1810 a registered tonnage of 1,424,000,--a point not again passed until 1826. The registered foreign tonnage sprang to 984,000,--a point not again reached in nearly forty years. New vessels were built to the amount of one hundred and twenty-seven thousand tons in the year 1810.[246] The value of all the merchandise exported in the year ending Sept. 30, 1810, amounted to nearly sixty-seven million dollars, and of this sum about forty-two millions represented articles of domestic production.[247] Except in the year before the embargo this export of domestic produce had never been much exceeded.[248] The imports, as measured by the revenue, were on the same scale. The net customs-revenue which reached $16,500,000 in 1807, after falling in 1808 and 1809 to about $7,000,000, rose again to $12,750,000 in 1810.[249] The profits of the export and import business fell chiefly to Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, where the shipping belonged; and these cities could not fail to attract labor as well as capital beyond the degree that a conservative republican of the Revolutionary time would have thought safe. More than half of these commercial exchanges were with England or her dependencies. Great Britain and her American colonies, Portugal and Spain in her military protection, and British India consumed at least one half of the exports; while of the net revenue collected on imports, Gallatin estimated six and a half millions as derived from articles imported from Great Britain and the British dependencies, all other sources supplying hardly six millions.[250] The nature of these imports could be only roughly given. In general, sugar, molasses, coffee, wines, silk, and tea were not British; but manufactures of cotton, linen, leather, paper, glass, earthen-ware, iron, and other metals came chiefly from Great Britain. To the United States this British trade brought most of the articles necessary to daily comfort in every part of the domestic economy. The relief of recovering a full and cheap supply exceeded the satisfaction of handsome profits on the renewed trade. Experience of the hourly annoyance, expense, and physical exposure caused by deprivation of what society considered necessities rendered any return to the restrictive system in the highest degree unwise, especially after the eastern people acquired conviction that the system had proved a failure.