and with those of the parent country, since in the persons of her representatives, she approves or annuls their proceedings, we find that manufactures have been altogether neglected, while their agriculture and plantations, while, in fine, the exportation of raw materials, whether the natural or artificial productions of these colonies, has been promoted in every possible manner.  That this is the system which ought to have been pursued, we have a still more forcible proof in the instance of the United States of America, and of many of the ancient nations of Europe; which, unfettered by any dependence whatever on any foreign power, and having consequently adopted that policy, which has been found the most consistent with their respective interests, have made but very little progress in manufactures, and are therefore still under the necessity of having recourse for manufactured commodities to other countries.  If then the promotion of agriculture be more politic in many independent states, which have not yet attained the same maturity of growth and civilization, that characterize the principal manufacturing nations of the world, by how much more prudent must the encouragement of it be in a dependent colony like this; possessed as it is of all the requisites for an unlimited extension of its agriculture in the fertility of its soil, the benignity of its climate, and the extent of its territory, and wanting all the essentials for the production of manufactures, skill, capital, and population?

The existing state of things, therefore, is not only contrary to the welfare of the colony itself, but also in diametrical opposition to the interests of the parent country.  A great manufacturing nation herself, it is her undoubted policy, and that which on every occasion I believe but the present she has pursued, to augment in her colonies, at one and the same time, the consumption of her own manufactures, and the growth of such productions as she has found essential to her own use, or to the supply of other nations.  The toleration, therefore, of a system so averse to her acknowledged interests, can only be attributed to ignorance, or inadvertence.  But it is not in the forcible abolition of these manufactories, created by necessity, and still rendered indispensable by the same irresistible law, that the condition of the colony is to be ameliorated or redressed.  So long as the same pernicious disabilities which have already reduced the colonists to beggary and despair, and rendered unavailing the resources of a country that might rival in the number and value of its exports, the most favoured of the globe are enforced, this manufacturing system is a lamentable but necessary evil.  After putting it out of their power to purchase the more costly clothing of the mother country, it would be an intolerable exercise of authority to prevent them from having recourse to the homely products of their own industry and ingenuity.  Under existing circumstances, indeed, there is no alternative between