When Americans are debarred the fishery, as will soon be the case unless a remedy is provided, all the eastern shores will become miserably poor.
Your forests embosom an immense quantity of timber for ship-building and the lumber trade, but of how little value at present you cannot be ignorant, and the value cannot increase until American navigation and commerce are placed on a respectable footing, which no single state can do for itself. The embarrassments of trade lower the price of your produce, which with the distance of transportation almost absorbs the value; and when by a long journey we have arrived at the place of market, even the finest of your grain will not command cash, at that season of the year most convenient for you to transport. Hence arises that scarcity of specie of which you complain. Your interest is intimately connected with that of the most commercial states, and you cannot separate it. When trade is embarrassed the merchant is the first to complain, but the farmer in event bears more than his share of the loss.
Let the citizens of New Hampshire candidly consider these facts, and they must be convinced that no other state is so much interested in adopting that system of government now under consideration.
A Landholder.
The Landholder presents his most respectful compliments to Hon W. Williams,[51] and begs leave to remind him that many dispensations in this world, which have the appearance of judgment, are designed in goodness. Such was the short address to you, and though at first it might excite an exquisite sensibility of injury, will in its consequence prove to your advantage, by giving you an honorable opportunity to come out and declare your sentiments to the people. It had been represented in several parts of the state, to the great surprise of your friends, that you wished some religious test as an introduction to office, but as you have explained the matter, it is only a religious preamble which you wish—against preambles we have no animosity. Every man hath a sovereign right to use words in his own sense, and when he hath explained himself, it ought to be believed that he uses them conscientiously. The Landholder, for the sake of his honourable friend, regrets that he denies his having used his name publicly as a writer, for, though the honourable gentleman doubtless asserts the truth, there are a great number of those odd people who really think they were present on that occasion, and have such a strong habit of believing their senses, that they will not be convinced even by evidence which is superior to all sense. But it must be so in this imperfect world.
P. S. The Landholder begs his honourable friend not to be surprised at his former address, as he can assure him most seriously, that he does not even conjecture by whom it was written.
The Landholder, XII.
The Connecticut Courant, (Number 1208)
Monday, March 17, 1788.