Benjamin Franklin [1760 
ings, rents, and the value of land and of the produce 
of land; even if he goes back no farther than is within 
man’s memory. Let him compare those countries 
with others on the same island, where manufactures 
have not yet extended themselves; observe the 
present difference, and reflect how much greater our 
strength may be, if numbers give strength, when our 
manufactures shall occupy every part of the island 
where they can possibly be subsisted. 
But, say the objectors, “there is a certain distance 
from the sea, in America, beyond which the expense 
of carriage will put a stop to the sale and consump- 
tion of your manufactures; and this, with the diffi- 
culty of making returns for them, will oblige the in- 
habitants to manufacture for themselves; of course, 
if you suffer your people to extend their settle- 
ments beyond that distance, your people become 
useless to you’’; and this distance is limited by some 
to two hundred miles, by others to the Appalachian 
mountains. 
Not to insist on a plain truth, that no part of a 
dominion from whence a government may on occa- 
sion draw supplies and aids both of men and money 
(though at too great a distance to be supplied with 
manufactures from some other part) is therefore to 
be deemed useless to the whole, I shall endeavour to 
show that these imaginary limits of utility, even in 
point of commerce, are much too narrow. The in- 
land parts of the continent of Europe are farther 
from the sea than the limits of settlement proposed 
for America. Germany is full of tradesmen and 
artificers of all kinds, and the governments there, 
40