[Extract]

Our commerce . . . is at once the source of our wealth and our power; it both gives us seamen to man our fleets, and money to pay them; without commerce this island, when compared with many countries on the continent, is but a small insignificant spot: it is from our commerce alone that we are intitled to that consequence we bear in the great political scale. When compared with several of the great powers of Europe, England, in the words of Shakespeare, being no more than a "bird's nest floating on a pool."