Page:Anti-slavery and reform papers by Thoreau, Henry David.djvu/149

138 been the principal, the staple productions? "What ground is there for patriotism in such a State? I derive my facts from statistical tables which the States them- selves have published.

A commerce that whitens every sea in quest of nuts and raisins, and makes slaves of its sailors for this pur- pose! I saw, the other day, a vessel which had been wrecked, and many lives lost, and her cargo of rags, juniper-berries, and bitter almonds were strewn along the shore. It seemed hardly worth the while to tempt the dano-ers of the sea between Leg-horn and New York for the sake of a cargo of juniper-berries and bitter almonds.

America sending to the Old AVorld for her bitters! Is not the sea-brine, is not shipwreck, bitter enough to make the cup of life go down here? Yet such, to a great ex- tent, is our boasted commerce; and there are those who style themselves statesmen and philosophers who are so blind as to think that progress and civilization depend on precisely this kind of interchange and activity, — the activity of flies about a molasses-hogshead. Very well, observes one, if men were oysters. And very well, an- swer I, if men were mosquitoes.

Lieutenant Herudon, whom our government sent to explore the Amazon, and, it is said, to extend the area of slavery, observed that there was wanting there "an industrious and active population, who know what the comforts of life are, and who have artificial wants to draw cut the great resources of the country." But what are the "artificial wants" to be encouraged? Not the love of luxuries, like the tobacco and slaves of, I believe, his native Virginia, nor the ice and granite and other material wealth of our native New England; nor are "the