24 AGRICULTURAL AND. COMMERCIAL 



more certain support in being employed in a productive 

 pursuit. All these become a heavy tax on the produc 

 tive population. There must always be merchants, and 

 the more articles there will be produced, the more mer 

 chants will be benefited. But to say we must take silk, 

 tea, coffee, &c., from China, when we can produce them 

 for less than one-fifth the expense of importing them, ia 

 folly. 



But besides the wisdom of our producing these things 

 ourselves, there is another reason to urge us to do so, 

 viz : to suppress one of the vilest and most fiendish 

 trades that could be invented or suggested by the com 

 mon enemy of the human race. I mean that foul, accursed 

 opium trade, which is fast demoralizing and depopu 

 lating the Eastern world. Americans ! in your trading 

 with China you aid in perpetrating that wrong on the 

 human kind. But more of this hereafter. 



