We never had an interior trade of any importance. Our exterior commerce has fufFered very much from the beginning of the prefent conteft. During this time v^e have manufaftered within our families the moft neceflary articles of clothing. Thofe of cotton will bear fome comparifon with the fame kinds of manufafture in Europe;
but thofe of wool, flax and hemp are very coarfe, unfightly, and unpleafant:
and fuch is our attachment to agriculture, and fuch our preference for foreign manu- faftures, that be it wife or unwife, our people will certainly return as foon as they can, to the raifmg raw materials, and ex- changing them for finer manufactures than they are able to execute themfelves.
The pohtical ceconomifts of Europe have eftabliihed it as a principle that every ftate fhould endeavour to manufacture for itfelf: and this principle, like many others, we transfer to America, without calculating the difference of circumftance which fhould often produce a difference of refult.
In Europe the lands are either cultivated, or locked up againft the cultivator. Manu- fafliure mull: therefore be reforted to of neceflity not of choice, to fupport the fur- plus of their people. But we have an immenfity of land courting the induftry of the hufbandman. Is it beft then that all our citizens fhould be emyloyed in its im- provement, or that one half fhould be called off from that to exercife manufac- tures and handicraft arts for the other?
Thofe who labour in the earth are the chofen people of God, if ever he had a chofen people, whofe breafts he has made his peculiar depofit for fubflantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive that facred fire, which otherwife might efcape from the face of the earth. Corruption of morals in the mafs of cultivators is a phaenomenon of which no age nor nation has furnifhed an example. It is the mark fet on