any single nation or any individual, it is true, may not 

 immediately depend on the three, but such wealth always 

 presupposes their existence. Without commerce industry 

 would have no stimulus, without manufactures it would 

 be without the means of production, and without agricul- 

 ture neither of the others can subsist. When separated 

 entirely and permanently they perish." 



It was seen as well that commerce and m-anufactures 

 cannot flourish by the side of agriculture without com- 

 mercial and industrial independence. A people politically 

 free may be industrially and commercially enslaved, as the 

 existing conditions of many nations to-day make plain. 

 These lessons were in accord with the enterprising and 

 commercial bent of the inhabitants of Essex, and they en- 

 tered with enthusiasm into the spirit of the laws for the 

 protection and encouragement of manufactures, enacted 

 soon after the Revolution. This disposition led them to 

 take the true view of such statutes as were passed in. this 

 new country and of the common law as it was introduced, 

 both as to their scope and nationality, and also their 

 authority and sanction. They saw that the laws for a 

 nation of agriculturists, merchants and manufacturers must 

 be uniform and coextensive with the bounds of the nation, 

 and that there must be as well an authoritative interpre- 

 tation of those laws respected and obeyed by all. In no 

 other way could the multiplex transactions of a mercantile 

 community be carried on. A purely agricultural people 

 could perhaps prosperously exist side by side with other 

 independent like communities, with differing laws or 

 different interpretations of the same laws, but not so with 

 a trading and manufactuiing people ; they are concerned 

 not alone with ])ro(luction and consumption, but they pro- 

 duce to sell and excliange, they seek a market. The 

 inviolability of contracts, the safety of personal property in 

 transportation, the collection of debts must all be secure in 

 law, and above all social order and personal freedom. 

 'J'here must then be some tribunal wliose decisions shall be 



