adapted to the encouragement neither of the
navigation, nor the manufactures of the United States, but of a
foreign nation. Their effect would obviously be to force trade to
change its natural course, by discriminations against a nation which
had in no instance discriminated against the United States, but had
favoured them in many points of real importance. By what commercial
considerations could such a system be recommended?

That it would be attended with great immediate inconveniences must be
admitted; but for these, ample compensation, it had been said, was to
be found in its remote advantages. These were, a diminution of
American commerce with one nation, by its proportional augmentation
with another; and a repeal of the navigation act, and of the colonial
system of Great Britain.

On the subject of forcing trade from one nation to another, which is,
of necessity, so complicated in principle, so various and invisible in
consequence, the legislature should never act but with the utmost
caution. They should constantly keep in view, that trade will seek its
own markets, find its own level, and regulate itself much better than
it could be regulated by law. Although the government might embarrass
it, and injure their own citizens, and even foreign nations, for a
while, it would eventually rise above all the regulations they could
make. Merchants, if left to themselves, would always find the best
markets. They would buy as cheap and sell as dear as possible. Why
drive them from those markets into others which were less
advantageous? If trade with Britain was less free, or less profitable,
than with France, the employment of coercive means to force it into
French channels would be unnecessary. It would voluntarily run in
them. That violence must be used in order to change its course,
demonstrated that it was in its natural course.

It was extraordinary to hear gentlemen complaining of British
restrictions on American commerce, and at the same time stating her
proportion of that commerce as a national grievance, and that the
trade was so free as to become an injury. The very circumstance that
she retained so large a share of it, was evidence that it did not
experience in her ports unusual burdens. Whenever greater advantages
were offered by other countries, there would be no need of legislative
interference to induce the merchants to embrace them. That portion of
trade would go to each country, for which the circumstanc