rations of
just and liberal commerce. If the world had but one clime and but one
soil; if all men had the same wants and the same means, on the spot of
their existence, to gratify those wants,--then, indeed, what one
obtained from the other by exchange would injure one party in the same
degree that it benefited the other; then, indeed, there would be some
foundation for the balance of trade. But Providence has disposed our lot
much more kindly. We inhabit a various earth. We have reciprocal wants,
and reciprocal means for gratifying one another's wants. This is the
true origin of commerce, which is nothing more than an exchange of
equivalents, and, from the rude barter of its primitive state, to the
refined and complex condition in which we see it, its principle is
uniformly the same, its only object being, in every stage, to produce
that exchange of commodities between individuals and between nations
which shall conduce to the advantage and to the happiness of both.
Commerce between nations has the same essential character as commerce
between individuals, or between parts of the same nation. Cannot two
individuals make an interchange of commodities which shall prove
beneficial to both, or in which the balance of trade shall be in favor
of both? If not, the tailor and the shoemaker, the farmer and the smith,
have hitherto very much misunderstood their own interests. And with
regard to the internal trade of a country, in which the same rule would
apply as between nations, do we ever speak of such an intercourse as
prejudicial to one side because it is useful to the other? Do we ever
hear that, because the intercourse between New York and Albany is
advantageous to one of those places, it must therefore be ruinous to the
other?

May I be allowed, Sir, to read a passage on this subject from the
observations of a gentleman, in my opinion one of the most clear and
sensible writers and speakers of the age upon subjects of this sort?[4]
"There is no political question on which the prevalence of false
principles is so general, as in what relates to the nature of commerce
and to the pretended balance of trade; and there are few which have led
to a greater number of practical mistakes, attended with consequences
extensively prejudicial to the happiness of mankind. In this country,
our Parliamentary proceedings, our public documents, and the works of
several able and popular writers, have combined to propagate the
impression, that