Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v2.djvu/74

68 now pursue different systems of duties in regard to each other. By this, and for want of general laws of prohibition through the Union, we have not secured even our own domestic traffic that passes from state to state. This is contrary to the policy of every nation on earth. Some nations have no other commerce. The great and flourishing empire of China has but little commerce beyond her own territories; and no country is better circumstanced than we for an exclusive traffic from state to state; yet even in this we are rivalled by foreigners—by those foreigners to whom we are the least indebted. A vessel from Roseway or Halifax finds as hearty a welcome with its fish and whalebone at the southern ports, as though it was built, navigated, and freighted from Salem or Boston. And this must be the case, until we have laws comprehending and embracing alike all the states in the Union. But it is not only our coasting trade—our whole commerce is going to ruin. Congress has not had power to make even a trade law, which shall confine the importation of foreign goods to the ships of the producing or consuming country. If we had such a law, we should not go to England for the goods of other nations; nor would British vessels be the carriers of American produce from our sister states. In the states southward of the Delaware, it is agreed that three fourths of the produce are exported, and three fourths of the returns are made, in British bottoms. It is said that, for exporting timber, one half the property goes to the carrier; and of the produce in general, it has been computed that, when it is shipped for London from a southern state, to the value of one million of dollars, the British merchant draws from that sum three hundred thousand dollars under the names of freight and charges. This is money which belongs to the New England states, because we can furnish the ships as well as, and much better than, the British. Our sister states are willing that we should receive these benefits, and that they should be secured to us by national laws; but until this is done, their private merchants will, no doubt, for the sake of long credit, or some other such temporary advantage, prefer the ships of foreigners; and yet we have suffered these ignominious burdens, rather than trust our own representatives with power to help us; and we call ourselves free and independent states! We are independent of each other, but we are slaves to Europe. We