VINE IN ITALY. 97 



to the inhabitants of Cape May, the entire extinc- 

 tion of that profitable branch of industry. 



There are perhaps few parts of the country 

 that would be less sensibly affected by an inroad 

 so sweeping of a staple production. No public 

 highway from city to city, makes a thoroughfare 

 of the country, and it may be questioned if any 

 part of the Union has, from generation to genera- 

 tion, preserved, since the early settlement of the 

 country, a more primitive character. Luxury, 

 comparatively speaking, is but little known 

 among them, and there are but few parts of the 

 country, remote from a populous capital, enjoy- 

 ing, in such profuse abundance, the solid com- 

 forts of life. A pure, undefiled republicanism 

 exists in their society ; and though there are still 

 among them many landed proprietors, who yet 

 possess the extensive grants of the original settlers, 

 and whose descendants, like the Swiss, consider 

 it a sacrilege to alienate the freehold of their 

 progenitors, it appears as though the distance be- 

 twixt man and man, which in Europe springs so 

 frequently from a capricious blindness of fortune, 

 prevails there to a less extent than in any coun- 

 try I have seen. The mutual dependence of the 

 land holder on his poorer fellow citizen, in a 

 country where slavery has been long abolished, 

 and of the labourer on his employer for direc- 

 tion and friendly sympathy, have so knit together 

 the several branches of their community, that 

 this feeling is transmitted to succeeding genera- 

 tions, and establishes between them an interest 

 beneficial to both parties. The reduction at Phi- 

 ladelphia of the value of their staple, and the di- 



