if there be a variety of articles, it can scarcely happen that they
should all be at one time in the latter predicament, and on this
account the operations of the merchant would be less liable to any
considerable obstruction or stagnation. The speculative trader will
at once perceive the force of these observations, and will
acknowledge that the aggregate balance of the commerce of the United
States would bid fair to be much more favorable than that of the
thirteen States without union or with partial unions.
It may perhaps be replied to this, that whether the States are
united or disunited, there would still be an intimate intercourse
between them which would answer the same ends; this intercourse
would be fettered, interrupted, and narrowed by a multiplicity of
causes, which in the course of these papers have been amply detailed.
A unity of commercial, as well as political, interests, can only
result from a unity of government.
There are other points of view in which this subject might be
placed, of a striking and animating kind. But they would lead us
too far into the regions of futurity, and would involve topics not
proper for a newspaper discussion. I shall briefly observe, that
our situation invites and our interests prompt us to aim at an
ascendant in the system of American affairs. The world may
politically, as well as geographically, be divided into four parts,
each having a distinct set of interests. Unhappily for the other
three, Europe, by her arms and by her negotiations, by force and by
fraud, has, in different degrees, extended her dominion over them
all. Africa, Asia, and America, have successively felt her
domination. The superiority she has long maintained has tempted her
to plume herself as the Mistress of the World, and to consider the
rest of mankind as created for her benefit. Men admired as profound
philosophers have, in direct terms, attributed to her inhabitants a