It has been my
constant object through my public life: and with respect to the English
and French, particularly, I have too often expressed to the former
my wishes, and made to them propositions verbally and in writing,
officially and privately, to official and private characters, for them
to doubt of my views, if they would be content with equality. Of this
they are in possession of several written and formal proofs, in my own
hand-writing. But they have wished a monopoly of commerce and influence
with us; and they have in fact obtained it. When we take notice that
theirs is the workshop to which we go for all we want; that with them
centre either immediately or ultimately all the labors of our hands and
lands; that to them belongs either openly or secretly the great mass of
our navigation; that even the factorage of their affairs here, is kept
to themselves by factitious citizenships; that these foreign and false
citizens now constitute the great body of what are called our merchants,
fill our sea-ports, are planted in every little town and district of
the interior country, sway every thing in the former places by their
own votes, and those of their dependents, in the latter, by their
insinuations and the influence of their ledgers; that they are advancing
fast to a monopoly of our banks and public funds, and thereby placing
our public finances under their control; that they have in their
alliance the most influential characters in and out of office; when they
have shown that by all these bearings on the different branches of the
government, they can force it to proceed in whatever direction they
dictate, and bend the interests of this country entirely to the will of
another; when all this, I say, is attended to, it is impossible for us
to say we stand on independent ground, impossible for a free mind not
to see and to groan under the bondage in which it is bound.
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