rs of government; the one
the civil government, or the government of laws, which operates at home,
the other the court or cabinet government, which operates abroad, on the
rude plan of uncivilised life; the one attended with little charge, the
other with boundless extravagance; and so distinct are the two, that if
the latter were to sink, as it were, by a sudden opening of the earth,
and totally disappear, the former would not be deranged. It would still
proceed, because it is the common interest of the nation that it should,
and all the means are in practice. Revolutions, then, have for their
object a change in the moral condition of governments, and with this
change the burthen of public taxes will lessen, and civilisation will be
left to the enjoyment of that abundance, of which it is now deprived.
In contemplating the whole of this subject, I extend my views into the
department of commerce. In all my publications, where the matter would
admit, I have been an 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 uncivilis