American states can be brought to act as a nation, neither are they to
be feared as such by us."

What is this more or less than to tell us, that while we have no
national system of commerce, the British will govern our trade by their
own laws and proclamations as they please. The quotation discloses
a truth too serious to be overlooked, and too mischievous not to be
remedied.

Among other circumstances which led them to this discovery none could
operate so effectually as the injudicious, uncandid and indecent
opposition made by sundry persons in a certain state, to the
recommendations of Congress last winter, for an import duty of five per
cent. It could not but explain to the British a weakness in the national
power of America, and encourage them to attempt restrictions on her
trade, which otherwise they would not have dared to hazard. Neither is
there any state in the union, whose policy was more misdirected to its
interest than the state I allude to, because her principal support is
the carrying trade, which Britain, induced by the want of a well-centred
power in the United States to protect and secure, is now attempting to
take away. It fortunately happened (and to no state in the union more
than the state in question) that the terms of peace were agreed on
before the opposition appeared, otherwise, there cannot be a doubt, that
if the same idea of the diminished authority of America had occurred
to them at that time as has occurred to them since, but they would have
made the same grasp at the fisheries, as they have done at the carrying
trade.

It is surprising that an authority which can be supported with so much
ease, and so little expense, and capable of such extensive advantages
to the country, should be cavilled at by those whose duty it is to watch
over it, and whose existence as a people depends upon it. But this,
perhaps, will ever be the case, till some misfortune awakens us into
reason, and the instance now before us is but a gentle beginning of what
America must expect, unless she guards her union with nicer care and
stricter honor. United, she is formidable, and that with the least
possible charge a nation can be so; separated, she is a medley of
individual nothings, subject to the sport of foreign nations.

It is very probable that the ingenuity of commerce may have found out
a method to evade and supersede the intentions of the British, in
interdicting the trade with the West India islands. The l