One circumstance, that makes the matter still more favourable for Britain is, that the western country of America, by far the most fertile, as well as the most extensive, is now peopling very rapidly. The labour and capital of the inhabitants are entirely turned to agriculture and not to manufactures, and will be so for a great number of years; for, when there are fifty millions of inhabitants in the United States, their population will not amount to one-half of what may naturally be expected, or sufficient to occupy the lands. The fertility of the soil will enable the Americans, with great ease to themselves, to make returns in produce wanted in Europe, so that we may expect a durable, a great, and an advantageous trade with them. In British [end of page #268] manufactures our trade was not near so great before the revolt, for we then supplied America with every article. This, however, will depend partly on our circumstances; for, if wages and the prices of our manufactures rise, as they lately have done, our merchants will buy upon the continent of Europe, what they otherwise would purchase in England, to supply the American market. America is the only country in the world where, with respect to the wages of labour, and the produce of industry, money is of less value than in England. The Americans will then be able to afford to purchase English goods, when other nations will not; but then, they will only purchase such articles as cannot be had elsewhere; for though they may and will continue able to purchase, they will not do it if they can get goods that suit them elsewhere. {206} No country, that we read of in history, ever enjoyed equal advantages with the American states; they have good laws, a free government, and are possessed of all the inventions and knowledge of the old world. Arts are now conveyed across the Atlantic with more ease than they formerly were from one village to another. It is possible, that a new market of so great an extent being opened may do away those jealousies of commerce, which have, for these two or three last centuries, occasioned many quarrels, and which are peculiarly dangerous to a nation that has risen high above its level. All those things, with care and attention, will prove advantageous to Britain in a superior degree. They afford us much reason for hope and comfort, and do away one of the causes for fearing a decline that has been stated, namely, the being supplanted by poorer nations, or by not having a market for our increasing manufactures. There remains yet another consideration in favour of Britain, as a manufacturing and a commercial country; for, as such, we must view it, reckoning more on industry than on the ideal wealth of our colonies in the West, and our conquests in the East. It is this, we are the