: Benjamin Franklin [1760 
pleasant, fertile country within their reach. And if 
we even suppose them confined by the waters of the 
Mississippi westward, and by those of St. Lawrence 
and the Lakes to the northward, yet still we shall 
leave them room enough to increase, even in the 
matter of settling now practised there, till they 
amount to perhaps a hundred millions of souls. 
This must take some centuries to fulfil; and in the 
mean time this nation must necessarily supply them 
with the manufactures they consume; because the 
new settlers will be employed in agriculture; and 
the new settlements will so continually draw off the 
spare hands from the old, that our present colonies 
will not, during the period we have mentioned, find 
themselves in a condition to manufacture, even for 
their own inhabitants, to any considerable degree, 
much less for those who are settling behind them. 
Thus our trade must, till that country becomes as 
fully peopled as England (that is, for centuries to 
come), be continually increasing, and with it our 
naval power; because the ocean is between us and 
them, and our ships and seamen must increase as 
that trade increases. 
The human body and the political differ in this: 
that the first is limited by nature to a certain stature, 
which, when attained, it cannot ordinarily exceed; 
the other, by better government and more prudent 
policy, as well as by the change of manners, and 
other circumstances, often takes fresh starts of 
growth, after being long at a stand, and may add 
tenfold to the dimensions it had for ages been con- 
fined to. The mother, being of full stature, is in a 
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