500 Manufactures , 
Now this addition of men whose work is performed by ma- 
chinery, requires neither food, clothing, or lodging ; the produce 
is clear gain, and adds more to the resources of a country like 
Britain where collecting taxes is so well understood, than the ad- 
dition of German, Russian, or French territory, on which there 
existed thrice the number of agricultural inhabitants. 
The success of manufactures depends on a decided national 
approbation and support ; it is to manufactures we must look for 
the improvement of the country, by introducing good roads, canals, 
and rail ways. These in their turn will raise the value of land, 
and enrich and make comfortable the farmer ; for generally, 
though our farmers are wealthy, they experience the plagues of 
poverty from not being able with ease to convert their abundance 
into the common medium of commerce, owing to the market be- 
ing so far from them. 
You must be very sensible such a system of home manufacture 
must have great influence in keeping America out of European 
squabbles : this is very important ; and considering three fifths at 
least of the shipping merchants for the last nineteen years of my 
own experience, have either broken during their lives, or died in- 
solvent, it furnishes room for reflection and inquiry a little farther 
into the mercantile system, before we assign to it all the good con- 
sequences which its friends are willing to suppose. 
I would not from what has been said, have you conclude my 
opinions are hostile to commerce ; on the contrary, I consider it 
essential to civil society : but its brilliant and striking character has a 
tendency to mislead our judgment and induce us to consider it al- 
most exclusively as the source of productive wealth; which is not 
the fact ; its foundation is on wealth already produced ; but though it 
is an effect growing out of agriculture and labour, I acknowledge 
that in its turn it becomes a cause and assists the parents who give 
it birth. The brilliancy of foreign, is greater than domestic com- 
merce, but in my opinion far less important.— Of this truth Bri- 
tain is everyday becoming more sensible ; and her writers on poli- 
tical economy now acknowledge, that her domestic is at least six 
times her foreign commerce. 
Would it be advisable for the president to recommend the con- 
sideration of this subject to Congress ? Would it be of advantage 
to the nation to have a department under a minister or. secretary 
of domestic affairs ? The time is coming, when the nature and 
extent of cur concerns will require a separation of the foreign and 
