Hamilton) DISUNION ENTAILS PASSIVE COMMERCE. 67

tempting advantages which nature has kindly placed within our reach. In a state so insignificant our commerce would be a prey to the wanton intermeddlings of all nations at war with each other; who, having nothing to fear from us, would 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.

There are rights of great moment to the trade of America which are rights of the Union-I allude to the fisheries, to the navigation of the Western lakes, and

This truth was quickly proved by the course of England and France from 1794 until the War of 1812, for during that period our commerce was a prey whenever either chose.-EDITOR.

to that of the Mississippi. The dissolution of the Confederacy would give room for delicate questions concerning the future existence of these rights; which the interest of more powerful partners would hardly fail to solve to our disadvantage. The disposition of Spain

See

No. 4.

with regard to the Mississippi needs no comment. France. and Britain are concerned with us in the fisheries, and view them as of the utmost moment to their navigation. They of course would hardly remain long indifferent to that decided mastery of which experience has shown us to be possessed in this valuable branch of traffic, and by which we are able to undersell those nations in their own markets. What more natural than that they should be disposed to exclude from the lists such dangerous competitors?

This branch of trade ought not to be considered as a partial benefit. All the navigating States may, in different degrees, advantageously participate in it, and under circumstances of a greater extension of mercantile capital would not be unlikely to do it. As a nursery of seamen it now is, or, when time shall have more nearly assimilated the principles of navigation in the several States, will become, a universal resource. To the establishment of a navy it must be indispensable.

To this great national object, a NAVY, union will contribute in various ways. Every institution will grow and flourish in proportion to the quantity and extent of the means concentered toward its formation and support. A navy of the United States, as it would embrace the resources of all, is an object far less remote than a navy of any single State or partial confederacy, which would only embrace the resources of a single part. It happens, indeed, that different portions of confederated America. possess each some peculiar advantage for this essential establishment. The more southern States furnish in greater abundance certain kinds of naval stores-tar, pitch, and turpentine. Their wood for the construction of ships is also of a more solid and lasting texture. The di ference in the duration of the ships of which the navy

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might be composed, if chiefly constructed of Southern wood, would be of signal importance, either in the view of naval strength or of national economy. Some of the Southern and of the Middle States yield a greater plenty of iron, and of better quality. Seamen must chiefly be drawn from the Northern hive. The necessity of navai protection to external or maritime commerce does not require a particular elucidation, no more than the conduciveness of that species of commerce to the prosperity of a navy.

An unrestrained intercourse between the States themselves will advance the trade of each by an interchange of their respective productions, not only for the supply of reciprocal wants at home, but for exportation to foreign markets. The veins of commerce in every part will be replenished, and will acquire additional motion and vigor from a free circulation of the commodities of every part. Commercial enterprise will have much greater scope, from the diversity in the productions of different States. When the staple of one fails from a bad harvest or unproductive crop, it can call to its aid the staple of another. The variety, not less than the value, of products for exportation contributes to the activity of foreign commerce. It can be conducted upon much better terms with a large number of materials of a given value than with a smaller number of materials of the same value, arising from the competitions of trade and from the fluctuations of markets. Particular articles may be in great demand at certain periods, and unsalable at others; but 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

1 Probably no single element has so much contributed to the prosperity of the United States as the fact that it is practically the largest territory in the world in which unrestricted trade is permitted.-EDITOR.

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; but 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 disI shall briefly observe that our situation See No. 11, invites and our interests prompt us to aim at an ascendant in the system of American affairs. The world may politically, as well as geographic

cussion.

ante.

1

1 In this idea is to be found an early expression of what has since come to be loosely termed the Monroe Doctrine. But unquestionably this very elastic principle, which to this day has never been precisely defined, is in truth merely one expression of a fixed conviction in the larger part of the people of the United States that European powers shall eventually be wholly excluded from the two continents of America. In 1783 Franklin urged upon the British peace-envoys the ceding of Canada and Nova Scotia to the United States, on the grounds that all true rapprochement between the two countries would be impossible so long as those territories were retained by England, and time has proved his view, for though kindred in blood with us, and with interests almost identical, Great Britain is to-day in popular estimation our greatest enemy. Scarcely less strong is the feeling against Spain, which from the first has been of all European powers the one to which we owe the most favors, yet toward which we have acted in a manner implying perpetual national enmity. Warm as the national feeling has been toward France, we aided St. Domingo to obtain its freedom by every possible, if surreptitious device; the moment news was received of Napoleon's acquisition of Louisiana, Jefferson announced that “it is impossible that France and the United States can continue long friends," and the illfeeling her occupation of Mexico produced is still memorable. Indeed, Jefferson probably voiced, and continues to voice the instinctive feeling of his countrymen when he declared that our confederacy must be viewed as the nest from which all America, North and South, is to be peopled," and that the object of both must be to exclude all European influence from this hemisphere." He carried his concept so far, indeed, as even to

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EUROPEAN SUPREMACY.

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ally, 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 physical superiority, and have gravely asserted that all animals, and with them the human species, degenerate in America-that even dogs cease to bark after having breathed a while in our atmosphere.* Facts have too long supported these arrogant pretensions of the Europeans. It belongs to us to vindicate the honor of the human race, and to teach that assuming "broach the idea that we consider the whole Gulf Stream as of our waters, in which hostilities and cruising are to be frowned upon."

How far this policy is reasonable is not easily decided. On the one hand, it is obvious that the American territories still held by European powers are far better and more peacefully governed than those which have achieved independence. To the contrary, it is certain that Europe is far more liable to wars of material importance; that the extension of those wars to the western half of the world is almost inevitable so long as they hold territories therein; and that, moreover, these colonies are the most potent cause of friction between the countries holding them and the United States (instanced in the Fisheries and Behring Sea disputes with Great Britain, and the Cuban difficulties with Spain). It is obvious that, in more than one view, European possession of American territory constitutes a menace to the peaceful policy of the United States.

It is to be regretted, in view of this policy, that President Cleveland based his interference in the Venezuelan controversy on the ground of danger to republican institutions, for the assumption appealed neither to reason nor to humanity. Had he, in place of this pretext, taken the position that the United States would hereafter insist that all disputes between Europe and America must be arbitrated, and that in no case would the United States allow European warfare to extend to this half of the world, he would have taken a far more tenable position, have advanced the interests of the United States, and have done a great service to humanity. That this position is inevitable, and is in fact as much to the interest of Europe as America, seems already settled in theory, and the President who finally establishes it as a practice will rank his name high in American history.-EDditor.

44

*[De Pauw's] "Recherches philosophiques sur les Américains."PUBLIUS. For a reply by Jefferson, see Notes on Virginia " (Brooklyn. 1894) p. 99.-EDITOR.