arranged as to act
speedily and in concert, which is an article of greatest importance to the
frontier states. With the present generation of men, national interest is
the measure by which war or peace are determined; and when we see the
British nation, by a late treaty, paying an enormous annual subsidy to the
little principality of Hesse-Cassel for the purpose of retaining her in
military alliance, it should teach us the necessity of those parts in the
Constitution which enable the efficient force of the whole to be opposed
to an invasion of any part.

A national revenue and the manner of collecting it is another very
interesting matter, and here the citizens of New Hampshire have better
terms offered them, than their local situation can ever enable them to
demand or enforce. Impost and duties on trade, which must be collected in
the great importing towns, are the means by which an American revenue will
be principally, and perhaps wholly raised. But a point of your state comes
near the sea, and that point so situated that it never can collect
commerce, and become an emporium for the whole state. Nineteen parts in
twenty of New Hampshire are greatly inland, so that local situation
necessitates you to be an agricultural people; and this is not a hard
necessity, if you now form such a political connection with other states,
as will entitle you to a just share in that revenue they raise on
commerce. New York, the trading towns on Connecticut River, and Boston,
are the sources from which a great part of your foreign supplies will be
obtained, and where your produce will be exposed for market.

In all these places an impost is collected, of which, as consumers, you
pay a share without deriving any public benefit. You cannot expect any
alteration in the private systems of these states, unless effected by the
proposed governments, neither to remedy the evil can you command trade
from the natural channels, but must sit down contented under the burden,
if the present hour of deliverance be not accepted. This argument alone,
if there were no other, ought to decide you in favour of adoption.

It has been said that you object to the number of inhabitants being a
ratio to determine your proportion of the national expence--that your lands
are poor, but the climate favourable to population, which will draw a
share of expence beyond your ability to pay. I do not think this objection
well founded. Long experience hath taught that the