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fibre grows much more luxuriantly in warm climates than in colder 

 ones, but also from the analogy of nature in her apportionment of 

 valuable qualities to quantity. In regard to the second question, it 

 may be that a fabric of superior elegance may be produced from it, as 

 compared with cotton ; and the properties of the two products, as con- 

 ductors of heat, and their compartive comfort as materials for clothing, 

 may remain unchanged ; but the very object to be obtained by the pro- 

 cess of cottonizing the flax, seems to preclude the idea of superiority in 

 respect to strength and durability. The subject may be worthy of scien- 

 tific investigation and cautious experiment ; but conclusions should not 

 be jumped at by taking things for granted which are by no means self- 

 evident. The idea of producing flax cotton as a measure of indepen- 

 dence, or a means of undermining slavery, regardless of considerations 

 drawn from nature, would be as absurd as that of a certain old lady 

 who suggested to her lord the propriety of buying a cotton rain and 

 raising their own cotton that way. 



Another phase of bad economy in the adaptation of products to soil 

 and climate, (or rather, to the latter) is, in not confining each product 

 within proper limits in respect to contiguous territory; in other words, 

 in not knowing where to drop the cultivation of one product and intro- 

 duce another. As already shown, every product has its appropriate 

 range of latitude, and many of them of longitude also, beyond which 

 they cannot be freed without sensible deterioration ; and we cannot doubt 

 that such is the economy of nature, that, by confining each product to 

 the precise range wherein it is produced to the greatest advantage, the 

 world would best be supplied with an abundance of each. But the efiect 

 not only of political divisions and the interference of authority, but of 

 State pride and false emulation, and even of neighborhood example, is, 

 to crowd products beyond those natural limits. This is particularly the 

 case in respect to the three great staples, sugar, cotton and tobacco. 

 There is no portion of the United States as well adapted to the growth 

 of sugar, as many localities within the tropics, and no portion of the 

 tropics as well adapted to the growth of cotton, as the southern portions 

 of the United States. Yet the cultivation of sugar is forced into the 

 United States by the imposition of taxes upon that imported from the 

 tropics, equal to the difference in the productive powers of nature, in 

 respect to the product, between the two localities ; while, but for the 

 shackles imposed upon commerce, the sugar plantations of the United 

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