#268]
manufactures our trade was not near so great before the revolt, for we
then supplied America with every article.

This, however, will depend partly on our circumstances; for, if wages
and the prices of our manufactures rise, as they lately have done, our
merchants will buy upon the continent of Europe, what they otherwise
would purchase in England, to supply the American market.

America is the only country in the world where, with respect to the
wages of labour, and the produce of industry, money is of less value
than in England. The Americans will then be able to afford to
purchase English goods, when other nations will not; but then, they
will only purchase such articles as cannot be had elsewhere; for
though they may and will continue able to purchase, they will not do it
if they can get goods that suit them elsewhere. {206}

No country, that we read of in history, ever enjoyed equal advantages
with the American states; they have good laws, a free government,
and are possessed of all the inventions and knowledge of the old
world. Arts are now conveyed across the Atlantic with more ease than
they formerly were from one village to another. It is possible, that a
new market of so great an extent being opened may do away those
jealousies of commerce, which have, for these two or three last
centuries, occasioned many quarrels, and which are peculiarly
dangerous to a nation that has risen high above its level.

All those things, with care and attention, will prove advantageous to
Britain in a superior degree. They afford us much reason for hope and
comfort, and do away one of the causes for fearing a decline that has
been stated, namely, the being supplanted by poorer nations, or by not
having a market for our increasing manufactures.

There remains yet another consideration in favour of Britain, as a
manufacturing and a commercial country; for, as such, we must view
it, reckoning more on industry than on the ideal wealth of our colonies
in the West, and our conquests in the East. It is this, we are the

---
{206} England begins already to lose the market for linen-cloth,
window-glass, fire-arms, and a number of other articles. It would have
entirely lost that of books, if any nation on the continent of Europe
could print English correctly. As, it is, they are printing in America, in
place of our keeping the trade, which we might have done with great
profit and advantage.
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