For one grain of wheat committed to the earth, she renders
twenty, thirty, and even fifty fold; whereas to the labor of the
manufacturer nothing is added. Pounds of flax, in his hands, on the
contrary, yield but penny weights of lace. This exchange, too, laborious
as it might seem, what a field did it promise for the occupation of the
ocean; what a nursery for that class of citizens who were to exercise
and maintain our equal rights on that element! This was the state of
things in 1785, when the Notes on Virginia were first published; when,
the ocean being open to all nations, and their common right in it
acknowledged and exercised under regulations sanctioned by the assent
and usage of all, it was thought that the doubt might claim some
consideration.
But who, in 1785, could foresee the rapid depravity which was to render
the close of that century a disgrace to the history of man? Who could
have imagined that the two most distinguished in the rank of nations,
for science and civilization, would have suddenly descended from
that honorable eminence, and setting at defiance all those moral laws
established by the Author of Nature between nation and nation, as
between man and man, would cover earth and sea with robberies and
piracies, merely because strong enough to do it with temporal impunity,
and that under this disbandment of nations from social order, we should
have been despoiled of a thousand ships, and have thousands of our
citizens reduced to Algerine slavery.
Pages:
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478