advocate for commerce, because I am a friend to
its effects. It is a pacific system, operating to cordialise mankind, by
rendering nations, as well as individuals, useful to each other. As to
the mere theoretical reformation, I have never preached it up. The most
effectual process is that of improving the condition of man by means of
his interest; and it is on this ground that I take my stand. If commerce
were permitted to act to the universal extent it is capable, it would
extirpate the system of war, and produce a revolution in the uncivilised
state of governments. The invention of commerce has arisen since those
governments began, and is the greatest approach towards universal
civilisation that has yet been made by any means not immediately flowing
from moral principles. Whatever has a tendency to promote the civil
intercourse of nations by an exchange of benefits, is a subject as
worthy of philosophy as of politics. Commerce is no other than the
traffic of two individuals, multiplied on a scale of numbers; and by the
same rule that nature intended for the intercourse of two, she intended
that of all. For this purpose she has distributed the materials of
manufactures and commerce, in various and distant parts of a nation and
of the world; and as they cannot be procured by war so cheaply or so
commodiously as by commerce, she has rendered the latter the means
of extirpating the former. As the two are nearly the opposite of each
other, consequently, the uncivilised state of the European governments
is injurious to commerce. Every kind of destruction or embarrassment
serves to lessen the quantity, and it matters but little in what part
of the commercial world the reduction begins. Like blood, it cannot be
taken from any of the parts, without being taken from the whole mass in
circulation, and all partake of the loss. When the ability in any
nation to buy is destroyed, it equally involves the seller. Could the
government of England destroy the commerce of all other nations, she
would most effectually ruin her own. It is possible that a nation may be
the carrier for the world, but she cannot be the merchant. She cannot
be the seller and buyer of her own merchandise. The ability to buy must
reside out of herself; and, therefore, the prosperity of any commercial
nation is regulated by the prosperity of the rest. If they are poor she
cannot be rich, and her condition, be what it may, is an index of the
height of the commercial