Manufactures have come to figure respectably in our exports. They exceed in that list, by three or four to one, the entire exports of all kinds in 1790; and they equal the average aggregate of the years from 1815 to 1824. But the multiplication of the wants of a people rapidly growing in numbers and refinement will, with the comparatively high price of labor, scarcity of capital and distance of most of our ports from the markets supplied by European manufactures, for a long time to come make the home-supply the chief care of our artisans. They have, for such and other reasons, in some points lost ground of late. The revolution in the propulsion and construction of ships, for instance, has not found them prepared to take the advantage they have usually done of improvements. Not only do the British screw-steamers take undisputed possession of our trade with their own country, but they expel our once unrivaled craft from the harbors of other quarters of the globe, and threaten to monopolize the most profitable part of our carrying-trade with all countries. This result is more easily explained than the inroads made on our more ordinary foreign traffic, in sailing vessels, by the mercantile marine of second- and third-rate powers. This is eloquently told by the annual government returns and the daily shipping-list. While our coastwise tonnage increases, that employed in foreign trade remains stationary or declines. The bearing of this upon our naval future becomes an imperative question for our merchants and legislators. The United States is benevolently and gratuitously building up a marine for each of half a dozen European states which possess little or no commerce of their own, and multiplying the ships and sailors of our chief maritime rival. We have long since ceased to import locomotives, and have, within the past two years, almost ceased to import railroad iron. Our iron-workers obtain coal at nearly or quite as low prices as do those of Birkenhead or the Clyde. They have recently sent to sea some large screw-steamers that perform well. No insurmountable difficulty appears to prevent the launching of more until we have enough to serve at least our direct trade with Europe and China. That determined, it may be possible to ascertain whether we cannot assist Norway, Belgium and Sicily in carrying our cotton, wheat and tobacco to the purchasers of it. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF A POSTAL CAR.]