58 On the Importance of 
in the case of Great Bram. We are 
threatened with the total loss of our foreign 
commerce: and, if our power depends on it, 
the accomplishment of the threatening will 
involve the destruction, not only of all that 
from political habits we reckon dear, as an 
independent nation, but of the more substan- 
tial blessings of domestic peace and security. 
It is therefore highly interesting for us to 
know in what degree our power can be sup- 
ported by our own native resources. 
The power of a nation depends chiefly on 
the defensible state of its territory, the extent 
of its population, the facility with which that 
population can be called into the public ser- 
vice, and its degree of knowledge and dex- 
terity in the art of war. Some of these 
circumstances have evidently no dependence 
‘on foreign trade: in others, its influence is, 
in the present state of our knowledge, some- 
what problematical. The argument has very 
properly been made principally to rest on the 
influence which it possesses in enabling us, 
through the medium of an extended taxation, 
to call out our population into the public 
service. Some have asserted that foreign 
commerce is a separate source of revenue ; 
others that it is merely a more circuitous 
method of taxing the produce of land and 
