Constitutional history -- United States -- Sources; Constitutional law -- United States
An unrestrained intercourse between the States themselves will advance
the trade of each by an interchange of their respective productions, not
only for the supply of reciprocal wants at home, but for exportation
to foreign markets. The veins of commerce in every part will be
replenished, and will acquire additional motion and vigor from a free
circulation of the commodities of every part. Commercial enterprise
will have much greater scope, from the diversity in the productions of
different States. When the staple of one fails from a bad harvest or
unproductive crop, it can call to its aid the staple of another.
The variety, not less than the value, of products for exportation
contributes to the activity of foreign commerce. It can be conducted
upon much better terms with a large number of materials of a given value
than with a small number of materials of the same value; arising
from the competitions of trade and from the fluctuations of markets.
Particular articles may be in great demand at certain periods, and
unsalable at others; but if there be a variety of articles, it can
scarcely happen that they should all be at one time in the latter
predicament, and on this account the operations of the merchant would
be less liable to any considerable obstruction or stagnation.
The speculative trader will at once perceive the force of these
observations, and will acknowledge that the aggregate balance of the
commerce of the United States would bid fair to be much more favorable
than that of the thirteen States without union or with partial unions.
It may perhaps be replied to this, that whether the States are united
or disunited, there would still be an intimate intercourse between them
which would answer the same ends; this intercourse would be fettered,
interrupted, and narrowed by a multiplicity of causes, which in the
course of these papers have been amply detailed. A unity of commercial,
as well as political, interests, can only result from a unity of
government.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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