r
produce, would prove adequate to furnishing the provisions and lumber
previously derived from the old continental colonies. The prosperity
once enjoyed by the latter would be transferred, and there would be
reconstituted the system of commercial intercourse, interior to the
empire, which previously had commanded general admiration. The new
states, acting commercially as separated communities, could oppose no
successful rivalry to this combination, and would revert to isolated
commercial dependence; tributary to the financial supremacy of Great
Britain, as they recently had been to her political power. In debt to
her for money, and drawing from her manufactures, returns for both
would compel their exports to her ports chiefly, whence distribution
would be, as of old, in the hands of British middlemen and navigators.
Just escaped from the fetters of the carrying trade and _entrepot_
regulations, the twin monopolies in which consisted the value of a
colonial empire, it was proposed to reduce them again under bondage by
means for which the West India Islands furnished the leverage; for
"the trade carried on by Great Britain with the countries now become
the United States was, and still is, so connected with the trade
carried on to the remaining British colonies in America, and the
British islands in the West Indies, that it is impossible to form a
true judgment of the past and present of the first, without taking a
comprehensive view of all, as they are connected with, and influence,
each other."[58]

Before the peace of 1783, the writings of Adam Smith had gravely
shaken belief in the mercantile system of extraordinary trade
regulation and protection as conducive to national prosperity. Though
undermined, however, it had not been overthrown; and even to doubters
there remained the exception, which Smith himself admitted, of the
necessity to protect navigation as a nursery for the navy, and
consequently as a fundamental means of national defence. Existence
takes precedence of prosperity; the life is more than the meat.
Commercial regulation, though unfitted to increase wealth, could be
justified as a means to promote ship-building; to retain ship-builders
in the country; to husband the raw materials of their work; to force
the transport of merchandise in British-built ships and by British
seamen; and thus to induce capital to invest, and men to embark their
lives, in maritime trade, to the multiplication of ships and sea