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privileges and exclusive castes, would be a novelty in the world; and nothing intimates that America is likely to furnish so singular an example.
REFLECTIONS ON THE CAUSES OF THE COMMERCIAL PROSPERITY OF THE UNITED STATES.
The Americans destined by Nature to be a great maritime People.—Extent of their Coasts.—Depth of their Ports.—Size of their Rivers.—The commercial Superiority of the Anglo-Americans less attributable, however, to physical Circumstances than to moral intellectual Causes.—Reason of this Opinion.—Future Destiny of the Anglo-Americans as a commercial Nation.—The Dissolution of the Union would not check the maritime Vigour of the States.—Reason of this.—Anglo-Americans will naturally supply the Wants of the Inhabitants of South America.—They will become, like the English, the Factors of a great Portion of the World.
The coast of the United States, from the bay of Fundy to the Sabine river in the gulf of Mexico, is more than two thousand miles in extent. These shores form an unbroken line, and they are all subject to the same government. No nation in the world possesses vaster, deeper, or more secure ports for shipping than the Americans.
The inhabitants of the United States constitute a great civilized people, which fortune has placed in the midst of an uncultivated country, at a distance of three thousand miles from the central point of civilization. America consequently stands in daily need of European trade. The Americans will, no doubt, ultimately succeed in producing or manufacturing at home most of the articles which they require; but the two continents can never be independent of each other, so numerous are the natural ties which exist between their wants, their ideas, their habits, and their manners.
The Union produces peculiar commodities which are now become necessary to us, but which cannot be cultivated, or can only be raised at an enormous expense, upon the soil of Europe. The Americans only consume a small portion of this produce, and they are willing to sell us the rest. Europe is therefore the market of America, as America is the market of Europe; and maritime commerce is no less necessary to enable the inhabitants of the United
