176 
Political Arithmetic . 
cellaneous services for the same year, and you may pick out about 
half a million more that goes to the debit of the same account. Ad* 
mirabie system l which purchases an annuity of 3 millions and a 
half at the certain expence of an annuity of 1 7 millions, and the pro- 
bable expence of as much more. For war and commerce are stea- 
dy companions.* 
I say nothing as to the East India Company, That concern is 
insolvent. 
Much indeed of all this expence has been owing to the system 
of colonization : but colonization is the immediate offspring of fo- 
reign commerce, whose life and soul on the modern system is 
monopoly. I am decidedly convinced that colonies are millstones 
round the neck of every European nation that has fostered them ; 
the very worst part of the system of Commerce. I am sorry to 
say, that, much of the calculations which demonstrate this, are 
applicable to the conduct of the United States, in their mode of 
peopling the wilderness of America. The frontier is extended 
till the strength of the country is weakened. I almost doubt if we 
are at this moment so competent to meet hostilities, as at the be- 
ginning of the revolutionary war. 
llthly, The modern system of foreign commerce* is the most- 
productive source of human misery. 
Almost all modern wars are purely commercial : none of them 
are free from commercial motives and considerations. Would to 
God the means existed of, easily, cheaply, and surely destroying a 
ship of war 1 The quarrels of nations are no longer local. Sting the 
pride, or touch the interest of England or France, and devastation 
•extends at once to every quarter of the globe l 
It was not better two centuries ago, when the colonizing and 
commercial system began to rage. Turn your eyes to the con- 
duct of the Spanish in South America— the Portuguese in Africa 
—the British and Dutch in the East Indies— to the slave trade, 
that disgrace of humanity, and say if this position requires farther 
proof.— 
1 Stilly, The most flourishing? populous.) and best cultivated parts, 
of Europe , are not maritime or commercial . I except Holland; 
that is not a country but a city of merchants ; driven into the sys- 
* This is not much unlike the infatuation of Great Britain as to the woollen 
trade. It seems to me proved, that the whole comiiiercial profit of that avari- 
cious manufacture, has been taken from the pocket of the English farmer, who 
has been prohibited from exporting his wool. But the farmer is an animal., 
whom the merchant and the manufacturer can shear with impunity. 
