2308. DUTIES, Discriminating.—[further continued].
If the commercial regulations
had been adopted which our Legislature
were at one time proposing, we should
at this moment have been standing on such an
eminence of safety and respect as ages can
never recover. But having wandered from
that, our object should now be to get back,
with as little loss as possible, and, when peace
shall be restored to the world, endeavor so to
form our commercial regulations as that justice
from other nations shall be their mechanical
result.—
To Thomas Pinckney. Washington ed. iv, 177.
Ford ed., vii, 129.
(Pa.,
May. 1797)
