At the close of the Revolutionary War, the trade of America was free and unrestrained in the fullest sense of the word, according to the theory of Adam Smith, Say, Ricardo, the Edinburgh Reviewers, and the authors of the Encyclopædia. Her ports were open, with scarcely any duties, to the vessels and merchandize of all other nations.

The rate of duties in Pennsylvania, was only two and a half per cent. Even these were nugatory: because there was a free port established at Burlington, by the state of New Jersey, where goods intended for Philadelphia were entered, and conveyed over to this city clandestinely. The same fraudulent scenes were acted in other states, and thus trade was, as I have stated, wholly free.

If enthusiasts did not too generally scorn to trammel themselves by attention to facts, which are so very troublesome; and refuse to be dove-tailed into their specious theories, this case would settle the question of unrestrained commerce for ever—and prove, that the system ought to be postponed till the millennium, when it is possible it may stand a chance of promoting the welfare of mankind. But till then, woe to the nation that adopts it. Her destruction is sealed.

To a theorist “facts are stubborn things,” not unlike those formidable obstructions in the Mississippi, which, in the elegant diction of the navigators of that immense river, are called snags and sawyers.