5711. NAVIGATION, Encourage.—
Our
people have a decided taste for navigation
and commerce. They take this from their
mother country; and their servants are in
duty bound to calculate all their measures
on this datum. We wish to do it by throwing
open all the doors of commerce, and knocking
off its shackles. But as this cannot be done
for others, unless they will do it for us, and
there is no great probability that Europe will
do this, I suppose we shall be obliged to adopt
a system which may shackle them in our
ports, as they do us in theirs.—
To Count Van Hogendorp. Washington ed. i, 465.
Ford ed., iv, 105.
(P.
1785)
