Read it through once

To this school--and it was one embracing many able men and thinkers--trade was more important than any other consideration, and the greatest object of external policy was the development of friendly relations with the United States. American extension of territory was not looked upon with alarm even when it took a slice of the Maine boundary and threatened trouble over that of Oregon. The Republic had not yet gone in seriously for high protection and did not, therefore, vitally touch the pockets of patriots who could not foresee, even in their keen regard for commerce and its development, that trade and territory were in the future to be most intimately related.