An event similar to this has taken place in Baltimore. The reputation for business which Baltimore had acquired just at the close of the war, brought merchants here from every part of the world, and almost one half of the town has been built within two years. How, in the name of common sense, do the merchants expect to find business? The people who come to this market, multiply gradually, and double in about thirty years. But the merchants who supply the goods have doubled, if not trebled, in numbers and stock, within three years. There is, however, an expedient which will yet enable them all to liv by trade. Let every merchant send abroad to Ireland or Germany, and bring over his hundred able industrious farmers, and fix them on the fertile lands of Maryland, which now lie useless and uncultivated in the hands of the Nabobs: Or let three fourths of the traders quit the business. Either of these expedients will make cash plentiful; and one of them must take place.
I will just make one further remark; the want of a proper union among the States, will always render our commerce fluctuating and unprofitable. We may do as much business as we please; but if the duties and restrictions on our trade remain, and the flag of the United States is insulted as it has been, and each State is laying duties on the trade of its neighbor, our commerce cannot be reduced to a system, and our profits must be uncertain. The want of a Continental Power to guard the honor of the whole body, and reduce our measures to one uniform system, is the great source of endless calamities. We shall feel national abuse, till Congress are vested with powers sufficient to govern and protect us; and till that period, foreigners, like so many harpies, will prey upon our commerce, and disappoint the exertions of our industry.
NO. IX.
On REDRESS of GRIEVANCES.
NEWBURY PORT, 1786.
By some resolves of the discontented people of this State, (Massachusetts) it appears that the true cause of public grievances is mistaken, and consequently the mode of redress will be mistaken. It is laughable enough to hear the people gravely resolving, that the sitting of the general court at Boston is a grievance, when every body may recollect that about twelve years ago, the removal of the Legislature to Cambridge, was a grievance; an unconstitutional stretch of power, that threw the province into a bustle. A great change, since Hutchinson's time! Boston then was the only proper seat of the Legislature.
Lawyers, too, are squeezed into the catalogue of grievances. Why, sir, lawyers are a consequence; not a cause of public evils. They grow out of the laziness, dilatoriness in payment of debts, breaches of contract, and other vices of the people; just as mushrooms grow out of dunghills after a shower, or as distilleries spring out of the taste for New England rum. The sober, industrious, frugal Dutch, in New York, and the Quakers and Germans in Pensylvania, have no occasion for lawyers; a collector never calls upon them twice, and they feel no grievances. Before the war, there was, in Orange county, New York, but one action of debt tried in eighteen years. O happy people! happy times! no grievances.
Mr. Printer, I saw a man the other day, carrying a bushel or two of flaxseed. Flaxseed is a cash article, and cash pays taxes. The man wanted cash to pay his taxes; he must have cash; but, Mr. Printer, half an hour afterwards, I saw him half drunk, and his saddle bags filled with coffee. But, sir, coffee pays no taxes.
Another, a few days ago, brought a lamb to market. Lambs command cash, and cash pays taxes; but the good countryman went to a store, and bought a feather; five shillings for a feather, Mr. Printer, and feathers pay no taxes. Is it not a grievance, sir, that feathers and ribbands, and coffee and new rum, will not pay taxes?