all enlightened statesmen to be the most useful as well as the most
productive source of national wealth, and has accordingly become a
primary object of their political cares. By multiplying the means of
gratification, by promoting the introduction and circulation of the
precious metals, those darling objects of human avarice and
enterprise, it serves to vivify and invigorate the channels of
industry, and to make them flow with greater activity and
copiousness. The assiduous merchant, the laborious husbandman, the
active mechanic, and the industrious manufacturer,--all orders of
men, look forward with eager expectation and growing alacrity to
this pleasing reward of their toils. The often-agitated question
between agriculture and commerce has, from indubitable experience,
received a decision which has silenced the rivalship that once
subsisted between them, and has proved, to the satisfaction of their
friends, that their interests are intimately blended and interwoven.
It has been found in various countries that, in proportion as
commerce has flourished, land has risen in value. And how could it
have happened otherwise? Could that which procures a freer vent for
the products of the earth, which furnishes new incitements to the
cultivation of land, which is the most powerful instrument in
increasing the quantity of money in a state--could that, in fine,
which is the faithful handmaid of labor and industry, in every
shape, fail to augment that article, which is the prolific parent of
far the greatest part of the objects upon which they are exerted?
It is astonishing that so simple a truth should ever have had an
adversary; and it is one, among a multitude of proofs, how apt a
spirit of ill-informed jealousy, or of too great abstraction and
refinement, is to lead men astray from the plainest truths of reason
and conviction.
The ability of a country to pay taxes must always be