Remarks on an Essay on Commerce. 203 



vincing proof of the reverse of Mr. Graham's statement, and 

 shows how Nature contributes to a change of constitution 

 with a chanaie of residence, so as to render the produce of 

 each country the most proper for its inhabitants. Indeed, 

 I am surprised that the contrary should have been stated by 

 him to form a part of the immutable laws of the Creator; 

 when every testimony concurs to show that it was and is his 

 intention to gift each nation with such and such properties 

 of soil and chmate as are necessary to produce those articles 

 the best adapted to its uses : the more especially, when we 

 come to consider, that those commodities which are intro- 

 duced into countries where they cannot be naturally pro- 

 duced, are, always, in such countries, articles of luxurious 

 superfluity, and, mostly, causes of intemperance and dis- 

 ease. I am not prepared to defend the opinion ; but, from 

 attentively considering the different dispositions, the oppo- 

 site climates, and the various languages that belunc to the 

 several nations of the earth, it should seem, that Providence 

 had rather intended that they should be independent of one 

 another, than that, according to Mr. Graham's representa- 

 tion, they should, of necessity, have recourse to mutual 

 assistance : it cannot fail to strike, that, in proportion with 

 the local distances between them, they differ in these parti- 

 culars m a greater or less degree, which shows that the con- 

 nections of society die gradually away, and that to break the 

 natural order of its communication, by corresponding with 

 distant parts of it, unassisted by the medium of those that 

 intervene, is an invention of mankind, and not a law of the 

 Creator. But this leads me to a consideration of the first 

 principles of commerce. 



When, at the beginning of these remarks, I admitted 

 that commerce was nearly coeval with man, it is to be ob- 

 served, that, not making use of the term in its fullest sense 

 I meant that there existed, at the first institution of society 

 a practice of bartering, or exchanging one commodity for 

 another. Actuated by a principle of self-interest, men found 

 that, by devoting their time and talents to one particular 

 occupation, thev could obtain the necessaries of life with 

 greater ease, in greater plenty and in greater perfection, than 



if 



