number of industrious
inhabitants in any climate is not only the strength, but the wealth of a
state, and very justly measures their ability of defraying public
expences, without encroaching on the necessary support of life.

If a great proportion of your lands are barren, you ought likewise to
remember another rule of nature; that the population and fertility in many
tracts of country will be proportioned to each other. Accidental causes
for a short time may interrupt the rule, but they cannot be of dangerous
continuance. Force may controul a despotic government, and commerce may
interrupt it in an advantageous situation for trade; but from the first of
these causes you have no reason to fear, and the last, should it happen,
will increase wealth with numbers.

The fishery is a source of wealth and an object of immense consequence to
all the eastern coasts. The jealousy of European nations ought to teach us
its value. So far as you become a navigating people, the fishery should be
an object of your first attention. It cannot flourish until patronized and
protected by the general government. All the interests of navigation and
commerce must be protected by the union or come to ruin, and in our
present system where is the power to do it?

When Americans are debarred the fishery, as will soon be the case unless a
remedy is provided, all the eastern shores will become miserably poor.

Your forests embosom an immense quantity of timber for ship-building and
the lumber trade, but of how little value at present you cannot be
ignorant, and the value cannot increase until American navigation and
commerce are placed on a respectable footing, which no single state can do
for itself. The embarrassments of trade lower the price of your produce,
which with the distance of transportation almost absorbs the value; and
when by a long journey we have arrived at the place of market, even the
finest of your grain will not command cash, at that season of the year
most convenient for you to transport. Hence arises that scarcity of specie
of which you complain. Your interest is intimately connected with that of
the most commercial states, and you cannot separate it. When trade is
embarrassed the merchant is the first to complain, but the farmer in event
bears more than his share of the loss.

Let the citizens of New Hampshire candidly consider these facts, and they
must be convinced that no other state is so much interested in adopting
t