Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol I).djvu/503

 CH. VI.] feel, that their own interests were promoted by the ruin of their neighbours. And the distant states, knowing, that their own wants and pursuits were wholly disregarded, would become willing auxiliaries in any plans to encourage cultivation and consumption elsewhere. Such is human nature! Such arc the infirmities, which history severely instructs us belong to neighbours and rivals; to those, who navigate, and those, who plant; to those, who desire, and those, who repine at the prosperity of surrounding states.

§ 481. Again; foreign nations, under such circumstances, must have a common interest, as carriers, to bring to the agricultural states their own manufactures at as dear a rate as possible, and to depress the market of the domestic products to the minimum price of competition. They must have a common interest to stimulate the neighbouring states to a ruinous jealousy; or by fostering the interests of one, with whom they can deal upon more advantageous terms, or over whom they have acquired a decisive influence, to subject to a corresponding influence others, which struggle for an independent existence. This is not mere theory. Examples, and successful examples of this policy, may be traced though the period between the peace of 1783 and the adoption of the constitution.

§ 482. But not to dwell farther on these important inducements "to form a more perfect union," let us pass to the next object, which is to "establish justice." This must for ever be one of the great ends of every wise government; and even in arbitrary governments it must, to a great extent, be practised, at least in respect to private persons, as the only security against