Gazette Of The United States

COMMERCE.

Further extracts from the "AMERICAN ESSAYS."

"Per varios casus, per tot discrimina rerum
Tendimus."

VIRG.

MULTIFARIOUS have been the speeches and publications upon the now visionary schemes of a rigid national economy, and republican virtue. Amusing pictures! But where are the originals! Painful retrospect! Blended—alas—with the diluvian wreck! And only serve to throw a melancholy gloom over all future prospects and habits of mankind are perpetually changing and therefore preclude all rational hopes of success in the endeavors to apply the most approved practices and manners of ancient times to the present day.

It is true we are in our infant state, politically considered; but morally considered, we are by no means infants; we are of flexible docility; we may be said to be at least initiated, if we are not adepts, in all the arts, refinements and habits, wants, luxuries of the oldest extravagancies and most corrupt monarchies: Rome boasted her CINCINNATI, and America can boast her CINCINNATI, a society, chiefly composed of military patriots, who may, with propriety, be said to be followers, tho' perhaps not all scrupulous imitators of their ILLUSTRIOUS PREDECESSOR.

Agriculture, arts, manufactures, and industry, are promising presages of future greatness; but if these are not attainable, without a rigid adherence to that simplicity of manners, which is said to have characterized those great and virtuous patriots of Greece and Rome, who have been so often held up as our great exemplars, I fear we may never expect to see them flourish in America.

When the great and important question of national revenue is agitating in the grand councils of the nation, it will be found necessary to recur to every probable source, and to contrive to give all possible encouragement and efficiency to each; this will naturally lead to the consideration of the importance of a free, well regulated, and extensive commerce, which upon the most accurate and profound investigation, of its various productive influence, and effects, will discover, what at this day, chiefly gives vigor, life, and energy to the husbandman, mechanic, manufacturer, and labourer; and from whence modern states principally derive the necessary resources for the support of government: In the solemn, national deliberations, upon this deep, this wide, this immeasurable subject, it will probably be found necessary, with our political, to unite the best commercial knowledge, and experience, that can be collected in America.

"En laudatissimi, qui per se cuncta probabit;"

"Sed laudandus et is, qui parcet recta monenti."

The present exhausted state of our public and private finances, and the consequent want of means to supply the exigencies, and support the credit and dignity of government, are universally bruited, acknowledged, felt and deplored: The general decay of trade may doubtless be considered one of the principal causes, as also of the ruinous migration of our citizens from the sea ports into the remote interior country, and even into the British, and other foreign dominions.

The French merchants have made several attempts to carry on the whale fishery from Dunkirk, and although the King of France had furnished them with large sums of money upon the very advantageous terms of giving all the profits of that trade to the merchants, with the use of the money without interest, and sustaining all the loss of unsuccessful voyages, yet their fishery never succeeded, until Americans, principally from the State of Massachusetts, were induced by the very great encouragement offered by the merchants in Dunkirk, and the want of employ at home, to enter into their service, since which, the French government has prohibited the free importation of whale oil from foreign dominions. The English owe also their success in the whale fishery chiefly to Americans; for notwithstanding the immense bounties paid by the British government for its encouragement, they could never succeed until—they employed Americans, who are also very well paid and greatly encouraged in their service.

The destructive influence of a declining commerce acts like a gangrene, which unless timely checked will soon spread over the whole body, and become incurable: Every lover of his country will therefore be solicitous to find out some speedy remedy for this alarming evil: There are no possible adequate substitutes for the loss of commerce: Our first grand object therefore is its restoration. I presume not to dictate or direct, it is a subject that will require the deepest deliberations and researches of the wisest and most experienced men in America fully to comprehend: It probably belongs to no one man existing, to possess all the qualifications requisite to trace the course of American commerce through all her numerous, intricate and yet untrodden paths; and to point out those, and only those, that shall lead the United States to future glory and prosperity. I am sanguine in the belief of the possibility, that we may one day become a great, commercial, and flourishing nation; but if in pursuit of the means, we should unfortunately tumble again on unfunded paper money, or any similar species of fraud, we shall assuredly give a fatal stab to our national credit in its infancy, and blast the success of the best concerted plans: Palliatives at best are poor pitiful expedients, and never to be applied, but in the most desperate, or incurable cases. Paper money will invariably operate in the body politic, as spirituous liquors on the human body, which often produce a momentary relief, or giddy joy, the effects of a delirium; but while they intoxicate the brain, and lull the senses, they prey upon the vitals, and ultimately destroy the constitution: "But while a nation can preserve its credit at home, and abroad, there are

"no difficulties to be deemed insurmountable."

"Loaded with an enormous debt beyond the possibility of payment, and which would annihilate the credit of any other nation on the globe, and burthened with taxes which her commerce alone enables her to support; Great Britain, from her uniform sacred regard to all her pecuniary obligations, and transactions, foreign and domestic; and her constant punctual discharge of the interest of all loans; though just emerged from a long, expensive, unsuccessful war, now stands, commercially considered, the unrivalled mistress of the world: Her revenues are immense; her credit at home and abroad unbounded; her funds the great reservoir of the treasures of the globe; the bank of England full and running over; ships openly, or disguisedly, but really owned by British subjects, swarming and evidently taking the lead in commerce of every other nation in all the parts of Europe, Asia, Africa, and even in America; openly monopolizing the trade in the few sea ports of Austrian Flanders, secretly possessing a large share in every lucrative branch of the French trade, particularly their African trade; draining Portugal and her Colonies in the east and west; leaving Spain but little to boast of all those precious Mexican and Peruvian harvests drawn from the bowels, or the bosom of her prolific earth; profiting greatly in her commercial intercourse with almost every other nation; and wisely jealous and tenacious of the exclusive possession of all the benefits arising from the trade with her own colonies.

Thus, the little island of Britain, maintains the right and glory of being considered, and acknowledged the great Emporium of the world. Yet such is the present state of corruption, dissipation, extravagance, and immense expense of that nation in every department, there are only wanted the united, well directed exertions of the American States; with industry, and their wonted activity and enterprise, soon to lop off many of the most valuable branches of their trade; it is well known that "the difference of three or four per cent. will carry the trade of the world."

E.C.