76 OUR CONSTITUTIONAL SHIPPING POLICY. 



"Under a vigorous national government, the natural strength and 

 resources of the country, directed to a common interest, would baffle all 

 the combinations of European jealousy to restrain our growth. This situa- 

 tion would even take away the motive to such combinations, by inducing 

 an impracticability of success. An active commerce, an extensive naviga- 

 tion and a flourishing marine would then be the inevitable offspring of 

 moral and physical necessity. We might defy the little arts of little poli- 

 ticians to control, or vary, the irresistible and unchangeable course of nature. 



"But in a state of disunion, these combinations might exist and might 

 operate with success. It would be in the power of maritime nations, availing 

 themselves of our universal impotence, to prescribe the conditions of our 

 political existence; and as they have a common interest in being our carriers, 

 and still more in preventing our becoming theirs, they would, in all prob- 

 ability, combine to embarrass our navigation in such a manner as would 

 in effect destroy it, and confine us to a passive commerce. We should thus 

 be compelled to content ourselves with the first price of our commodities, 

 and to see the profits of our trade snatched from us to enrich our enemies 

 and persecutors. That unequalled spirit of enterprise which signalizes 

 the genius of the American merchants and navigators, and which is in itself 

 an inexhaustible mine of national wealth, would be stifled and lost; and 

 poverty and disgrace would overspread a country which, with wisdom, 

 might make herself the admiration and envy of the world." 



Alluding to the defects of the general government then existing, and 

 to its unfitness for the administration of the affairs of the country, Mr. 

 Hamilton declared that several "powers" were lacking. 



"The want of a power to regulate commerce is by all parties allowed 

 to be of the number. The utility of such a power has been anticipated 

 under the first head of our inquiries; and for this reason, as well as from 

 the universal conviction entertained upon the subject, little need be added 

 in this place. It is indeed evident, on the most superficial view, that there 

 is no object, either as it respects the interests of trade or finance, that more 

 strongly demands a Federal superintendence. The want of it has already 

 operated as a bar to the formation of beneficial treaties with foreign powers, 

 and has given occasions of dissatisfaction between the states." 



It might be said of the discussions of the time that the preservation of 

 the Union, coupled with the "regulation of commerce," foreign and domestic, 

 was an idea often and generally expressed. James Madison, of Virginia, 

 afterwards styled "the father of the Constitution," wrote thus: — 



"Every man who loves peace, every man who loves his country, every 

 man who loves liberty, ought to have it ever before his eyes, that he may 



