In India, Lord Hastings retired from the governorship at Calcutta and was succeeded by Lord Amherst. At the time of his accession to office, Dutch influence had already become paramount in Borneo, whereas the British were firmly settled in Singapore.
In North America it was a year of industrial progress. On October 8, the first boat passed through the new Erie Canal from Rochester to New York. In Brooklyn the first three-story brick houses were built and the paving of streets was begun. The new system of numbering houses came in vogue. The earliest steam printing press was set up in New York and issued its first book. The manufacture of pins was begun, and wine in marketable quantities was first made in Cincinnati. American letters saw the appearance of Cooper's novels, "The Pioneers" and the "Pilot." Halleck published his famous poem, "Marco Bozarris." During this year an American squadron under Commodore Porter put an end to piracy and freebooting in the West Indies. On the first day of December the Eighteenth Congress met and Henry Clay was once more elected Speaker of the House.
In January, a protective tariff bill was introduced in the American Congress. It was opposed by the South and by New England. On May 22, Congress, by a majority of five in the House and four in the Senate, passed Clay's measure. The average rate of tariff was thirty-seven per cent. Before the passage of the bill England had been importing goods more cheaply than Americans could manufacture them. American manufacturers could now sell their goods at a profit. Even then there were believers in free trade, who held that the country would naturally produce that which was prohibited, and that the productions which were brought into existence by taxation put a portion of the people into unprofitable employment, advantageous only to the manufacturers. But the Middle and Western States, with the aid of the representatives from the manufacturing districts of New England, were strong enough to give the tariff a small majority. From 1824 the imposition of protective duties has been the bone of contention of the two great political parties in America. The economical struggle between protection and free trade has since gone on with varying features. Political leadership in the United States was passing from the South to the North. New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio were fast pushing to the front. Buffalo had 20,000 population; and other interior towns were growing rapidly. Millions of acres of valuable lands were put under cultivation in the central and western counties of New York and Pennsylvania and in Ohio; manufacturing industries multiplied. From a sparsely inhabited country in 1800, Ohio had grown, in 1824, to be the fifth State in population.