minion over them all. Africa, Asia, and America, have successively
felt her domination. The superiority she has long maintained has tempted
her to plume herself as the Mistress of the World, and to consider the
rest of mankind as created for her benefit. Men admired as profound
philosophers have, in direct terms, attributed to her inhabitants a
physical superiority, and have gravely asserted that all animals, and
with them the human species, degenerate in America--that even dogs cease
to bark after having breathed awhile in our atmosphere.(1) Facts have
too long supported these arrogant pretensions of the Europeans. It
belongs to us to vindicate the honor of the human race, and to teach
that assuming brother, moderation. Union will enable us to do it.
Disunion will will add another victim to his triumphs. Let Americans
disdain to be the instruments of European greatness! Let the thirteen
States, bound together in a strict and indissoluble Union, concur in
erecting one great American system, superior to the control of all
transatlantic force or influence, and able to dictate the terms of the
connection between the old and the new world!

PUBLIUS "Recherches philosophiques sur les Americains."

FEDERALIST No. 12

The Utility of the Union In Respect to Revenue

From the New York Packet. Tuesday, November 27, 1787.

HAMILTON

To the People of the State of New York:

THE effects of Union upon the commercial prosperity of the States have
been sufficiently delineated. Its tendency to promote the interests of
revenue will be the subject of our present inquiry.

The prosperity of commerce is now perceived and acknowledged by
all enlightened statesmen to be the most useful as well as the most
productive source of national wealth, and has accordingly become a
primary object of their political cares. By multiplying the means of
gratification, by promoting the introduction and circulation of the
precious metals, those darling objects of human avarice and enterprise,
it serves to vivify and invigorate the channels of industry, and to make
them flow with greater activity and copiousness. The assiduous merchant,
the laborious husbandman, the active mechanic, and the industrious
manufacturer,--all orders of men, look forward with eager expectation
and growing alacrity to this pleasing reward of their toils. The
often-agitated question between agriculture and commerce has, from
indubitable experience, received a decision w