ABSTRACT
Trade is a bond between nations, and it contributes to universal civilization, but commerce also excites a hidden rivalry of everyone against all, and it only builds the prosperity of one producer on the ruins of the author's brother. They have seen no society governed with such wisdom that its agricultural or commercial wealth would have given to its citizen all the happiness one could expect therefrom. He shows us what the consequences have been of the almost total adoption of what are habitually called wholesome doctrines of government, in the one country in the world that seemed to be the most suited to receive them. The conservative part of the nation, the part that guards established customs, has been totally suppressed; there exists no American who does not intend to make his fortune, and a quick fortune at that.
