Fowle's New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

PHILADELPHIA, August 19.

Sufficient pains (says a correspondent) are not taken to distinguish between the distresses of the commerce, and the distress of the merchants of the United States. While the produce and manufactures of our country command ready money, and a high price, our commerce cannot be said to be distressed, although it be carried on by foreign merchants and in foreign bottoms. But the merchant and trader may find relief in agriculture.--This is the only basis of national wealth and independence. In this employment let our sons be educated. The air of a new ploughed field is infinitely more wholesome and agreeable than the air of a counting house warmed with sea-coal fires. Rome became free, powerful and happy by the art of agriculture. We read of many of her heroes and great men being called from the plough to protect or govern the state, but of no one being called for those purposes from handling scales and weights, or from posting his books. France was more powerful in an army, and more prosperous in citizens, before she possessed her present extensive commerce. Man is not naturally an amphibious animal. He thrives best upon land. Let the Europeans continue if they will be the carriers of our produce, and let them enjoy, as the fruits of it, all the hardships and vices of a naval life. Let it be the business of the Americans to feed the world by staying at home.---Powerful from their numbers. fortified by the ditch of the deep Atlantick, which separates them from all their enemies, virtuous from the labour of cultivating the earth, free from their forms of government. and wealthy from exchanging their produce for gold and silver of foreign nations, they may (we will not say in the insolent language we learned from our British ancestors, " bid defiance to the world," but we will say they may) be the happiest people upon the face of the earth, and at the same time live in peace with the whole world.