Enforcing Trade | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · Mar 29, 1900

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 15, No. 13.

Enforcing Trade.

IN these days when the national flag has come to be considered by men of wealth and power as a “commercial asset,” to be waved over foreign territory merely for the benefit of trade, if no more urgent reason for it exists, the sentiment expressed in the following is a wholesome one to keep in mind:—

“To me it seems that neither the obtaining nor retaining of any trade, how valuable soever, is an object for which men may justly spill each other's blood; that the true and sure means of extending and securing commerce is the goodness and cheapness of commodities, and that the profit of no trade can ever be equal to the expense of compelling it and holding it by fleets or armies. And I am persuaded that cool, dispassionate posterity will condemn to infamy those who advise it, and that even success will not save from some degree of dishonor those who voluntarily engage in it.”

This is not an extract from a political document of recent origin, but is what the American colonists said through Benjamin Franklin in reply to the peace mission of Lord Howe to the leaders in the American Revolution.