Page:The future of Africa.djvu/77

Rh How strongly contrasted is the beneficial influence of commerce! How prolific the favors and the fruits it everywhere begets! How numerous the blessings it scatters abroad on every side! It is a remark of Dr. Arnold, "Well, indeed, might the policy of the old priest-nobles of Egypt and India endeavor to divert their people from becoming familiar with the sea, and represent the occupation of a seaman as incompatible with the purity of the highest castes. The sea deserved to be hated by the old aristocracies, inasmuch as it had been the mightiest instrument in the civilization of mankind." The page of history proves this. There are few secular agencies so life-giving, so humane, and so civilizing, as is commerce. Let a nation sleep the sleep of a century's dulness, and then some propitious providence draw towards it the needs and desires of the nations; and up it starts to life and vigor. Long, long eras had passed away, vast generations of men had gone down to the slumbers of the sod; and all the while, from the world's infant days, the wild waters of the Pacific had laved the banks of California, undisturbed by the fluttering sails and the flying wheels of commerce. But the report of its gold encircled the globe, and all the world, civilized and heathen, sends its representatives to her shores; civilization crowns and adorns her valleys and her hills; and religion and enlightenment set up their standard along the Pacific shores of America for all future times. Equally apparent is the elevating and civilizing influence of commerce. Contact and acquaintance