with little scruple or remorse, supply their wants by depredations
on our property as often as it fell in their way. The rights of
neutrality will only be respected when they are defended by an
adequate power. A nation, despicable by its weakness, forfeits even
the privilege of being neutral.
Under a vigorous national government, the natural strength and
resources of the country, directed to a common interest, would
baffle all the combinations of European jealousy to restrain our
growth. This situation would even take away the motive to such
combinations, by inducing an impracticability of success. An active
commerce, an extensive navigation, and a flourishing marine would
then be the offspring of moral and physical necessity. We might
defy the little arts of the little politicians to control or vary
the irresistible and unchangeable course of nature.
But in a state of disunion, these combinations might exist and
might operate with success. It would be in the power of the
maritime nations, availing themselves of our universal impotence, to
prescribe the conditions of our political existence; and as they
have a common interest in being our carriers, and still more in
preventing our becoming theirs, they would in all probability
combine to embarrass our navigation in such a manner as would in
effect destroy it, and confine us to a PASSIVE COMMERCE. We should
then be compelled to content ourselves with the first price of our
commodities, and to see the profits of our trade snatched from us to
enrich our enemies and persecutors. That unequaled spirit of
enterprise, which signalizes the genius of the American merchants
and navigators, and which is in itself an inexhaustible mine of
national wealth, would be stifled and lost, and poverty and disgrace
would overspread a country which, with wisdom, might make herself
the admiration and envy of the world.