Foreign seamen served chiefly in the foreign trade; and since the registered tonnage in foreign trade increased from 750,000 tons in 1805 to 984,000 tons in 1810, the number of seamen increased proportionately from 45,000 to 60,000 or thereabout. In 1807 Gallatin estimated the increase at five thousand a year, more than half being British sailors.[387] Probably fifteen thousand seamen, or one fourth of the whole number employed in 1810,[388] were of foreign origin, and might or might not carry American papers. If they did not, the reason could only be that they knew the worthlessness of such papers. Genuine American protections could be bought in any large port for two dollars apiece, while forged protections were to be had by the gross.[389] A large proportion of the British seamen in American service carried no evidence of American citizenship. According to Lord Castlereagh’s statement in Parliament, the number of seamen claiming to be Americans in the British service amounted to three thousand five hundred in January, 1811, and to something more than three thousand in February, 1813, at the time he was speaking.[390] Of these, he said, only about one in four, or some eight hundred, could offer proof of any sort, good or bad, of their citizenship; the others had no evidence either of birth or of naturalization in America. If this was true, and the closest American calculation seemed rather to favor Castlereagh’s assertion, the new Act of Congress sacrificed much to obtain little; for it authorized the President to expel from American service five or ten thousand seamen, and to forbid future employment or naturalization to all British seamen, if England in return would cease to employ five or six hundred impressed Americans.