om and force of the continent, and
until it is effected our commerce may be insulted by every overgrown
merchant in Europe. Think not the evil will rest on your merchants alone;
it may distress them, but it will destroy those who cultivate the earth.
Their produce will bear a low price, and require bad pay; the laborer will
not find employment; the value of lands will fall, and the landholder
become poor.

While our shipping rots at home by being prohibited from ports abroad,
foreigners will bring you such articles and at such price as they please.
Even the necessary article of salt has the present year, been chiefly
imported in foreign bottoms, and you already feel the consequence, your
flax-seed in barter has not returned you more than two-thirds of the usual
quantity. From this beginning learn what is to come.

Blame not our merchants, the fault is not in them but in the public. A
Federal government of energy is the only means which will deliver us, and
now or never is your opportunity to establish it, on such a basis as will
preserve your liberty and riches. Think not that time without your own
exertions will remedy the disorder. Other nations will be pleased with
your poverty; they know the advantage of commanding trade, and carrying in
their own bottoms. By these means they can govern prices and breed up a
hardy race of seamen, to man their ships of war when they wish again to
conquer you by arms. It is strange the holders and tillers of the land
have had patience so long. They are men of resolution as well as patience,
and will I presume be no longer deluded by British emissaries, and those
men who think their own offices will be hazarded by any change in the
constitution. Having opportunity, they will coolly demand a government
which can protect what they have bravely defended in war.

A LANDHOLDER.

A Landholder, II.

The Connecticut Courant, (Number 1190)

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1787.

TO THE HOLDER AND TILLERS OF LAND.

_Gentlemen_,

You were told in the late war that peace and Independence would reward
your toil, and that riches would accompany the establishment of your
liberties, by opening a wider market, and consequently raising the price
of such commodities as America produces for exportation.

Such a conclusion appeared just and natural. We had been restrained by the
British to trade only with themselves, who often re-exported to other
nations, at a high advance, the raw materials they