Now our rivers are beautified with large
and valuable vessels, our stores filled with merchandise, and the
produce of the country has a ready market, and an advantageous
price. Gold and silver, that for a while seemed to have retreated
again within the bowels of the earth, have once more risen into
circulation, and every day adds new strength to trade, commerce and
agriculture. In a pamphlet, written by Sir John Dalrymple, and
dispersed in America in the year 1775, he asserted that two twenty-gun
ships, nay, says he, tenders of those ships, stationed between
Albermarle sound and Chesapeake bay, would shut up the trade of
America for 600 miles. How little did Sir John Dalrymple know of the
abilities of America!
While under the government of Britain, the trade of this country was
loaded with restrictions. It was only a few foreign ports which we
were allowed to sail to. Now it is otherwise; and allowing that the
quantity of trade is but half what it was before the war, the case
must show the vast advantage of an open trade, because the present
quantity under her restrictions could not support itself; from which I
infer, that if half the quantity without the restrictions can bear
itself up nearly, if not quite, as well as the whole when subject to
them, how prosperous must the condition of America be when the whole
shall return open with all the world. By the trade I do not mean the
employment of a merchant only, but the whole interest and business
of the country taken collectively.
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