30 
Benjamin Franklin [1750 
parative population equal to that of Great Britain, 
much sooner than it can be expected when our 
people are spread over a country six times as large. 
I think this is the only point of light in which this 
account is to be viewed, and is the only one in which 
any of the colonies are concerned. 
No colony, no possessor of lands in any colony, 
therefore, wishes for conquests, or can be benefited 
by them, otherwise than as they may be a means of 
securing peace on their borders. No considerable 
advantage has resulted to the colonies by the con- 
quests of this war, or can result from confirming 
them by the peace, but what they must enjoy in 
common with the rest of the British people; with 
this evident drawback from their share of these ad- 
vantages, that they will necessarily lessen or at least 
prevent the increase of the value of what makes the 
principal part of their private property, their land. 
A people spread through the whole tract of country 
on this side the Mississippi, and secured by Canada 
in our hands, would probably for some centuries find 
employment in agriculture, and thereby free us at 
home effectually from our fears of American manu- 
factures. Unprejudiced men well know, that all the 
penal and prohibitory laws that were ever thought 
on will not be sufficient to prevent manufactures in 
a country whose inhabitants surpass the number 
that can subsist by the husbandry of it. That this 
will be the case in America soon, if our people remain 
confined within the mountains, and almost as soon 
should it be unsafe for them to live beyond, though 
the country be ceded to us, no man acquainted with