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latest of European nations that has risen to wealth by commerce and manufactures.  In looking over the map, there does not seem to be any one to supplant us; all those, who have great advantages, have already gone before, and, till we see the example of a country renewing itself, we have a right to disbelieve that it is possible.

Russia is the only country in Europe that is newer than England, and many circumstances will prevent it from becoming a rival in commerce.  It does not, nor it ever can increase in population, and carry civilization and manufactures to the same point.  Though, very new, as a powerful European nation, the people are as ancient as most others in Europe; the territory is so extensive, the climate so cold, and the Baltic Sea so much to the north, and frozen so many months in the year, that it never will either be a carrying or a manufacturing country.  To cultivate its soil, and export the produce of its mines, the skins, tallow, hides, timber, &c. &c. will be more profitable, and suit better the inhabitants than any competition in manufactures.

It is not in great extensive empires that manufactures thrive the most, they are great objects for small countries, like England or Holland; but, for such as Russia, Turkey, or France, they are a less object than attention to soil and natural productions; and, thus we see, that China, the greatest of all countries in extent, encourages interior trade and manufactures, but despises foreign commerce. {207}

One peculiar advantage England enjoys favourable to manufactures, deserves notice.  The law of patents, if it does not make people invent or seek after new inventions, it at least encourages and enables them to improve their inventions.  Invention is the least part of the business in respect to public wealth and utility.  There has long been a collection of models, at Paris, made by one of the most in-

—–­ {207} The smaller a district, or an island is, the exports and imports will be the greater, when compared with the number of inhabitants.  Take the exports and imports of all Europe, with the other quarters of the world;—­considering Europe as one country, and it will not be found to amount to one shilling a person per annum.  Take the amount in Britain, it will be found about forty shillings a person.  Consider what is bought and sold by a single village, and it will be still greater than that; and, last of all, a single labouring family buys all that it uses, and sells all that it produces.  And the meanest family, taken in this way, does proportionably =sic= more buying and selling than the richest state, taken in a body.  Consider the whole earth as one state, and it neither exports nor imports. -=-

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genious mechanics of the last century, (Mr. Vaucusson,) at the expense of that government, in which were nearly all the curious inventions brought forth in England, together with many not known in it.  Some Englishmen, in going through it, brought over new inventions here, for which they obtained patents, and, by which, they, as well as the public, were gainers, while the inventions lay useless and dormant in France.