i s i 
for blasting and for fire arms : he cannot dispense with the 
wheel- wright, the mill- wright, the carpenter, the joiner, the 
tanner, the currier, the sadler, the potter, the glass maker, 
the spinner, the weaver, the fuller, the dyer, the shoemaker, 
the hatter, the maker of machines and tools, and very ma- 
ny trades and handicrafts not enumerated. Of all 
these occupations, every one of which may be employ- 
ed in furnishing articles either of immediate necessity of 
reasonable want, or of direct connection with agri- 
culture, we have in abundance the raw materials of manu- 
facture, and the raw material, uninstructed man to manu- 
facture them. Is it to be pretended that these occupations 
when fully under way at home, will not furnish a market 
for the superfluous produce of agriculture, provided that 
produce be, as it necessarily will be, suited to the demand ? 
Or ought this variety of occupation, and above all, the 
mass of real knowledge it implies, to be renounced 
and neglected for the sake of foreign commerce — that 
we may not interfere with the profits and connexions of the 
merchants who reside among us, and that we may be tax- 
ed and tolerated and licensed to fetch from abroad, what 
we can with moderate exertion supply at home ? And yet 
this is the doctrine not merely advocated and recommend^ 
ed among us, but likely to become the fashionable creed 
of political economy, wherever mercantile interests and 
connections prevail. It appears to me of national impor- 
tanc to counteract these notions. As a source of national 
wealth, I would no more encourage manufacture than I 
would encourage commerce — -I would encourage or dis- 
courage neither : for I am persuaded that the aggregate of 
individual, constitutes national wealth ; and that a govern- 
ment is conceited and presumptuous, when it attempts to 
instruct an individual how he can employ his industry and 
his capital most beneficially for his own interest. 
Every treatise on political economy ought to have its 
