116 CORRESPONDENCE. 



NEW BEDFORD, June 11, 1836. 



MY DEAR SIR I rejoice that I can at last congratulate you on 

 the success of your darling plan, and that now there is a hope of 

 a national duty being performed. To me it is surprising that, with 

 all our power, all our means, and all our boasted attachment to 

 the blood of our kindred, that the objects which this enterprise 

 must promote, have been so long neglected. An immense amount 

 of property in a distant sea, under the control of officers whom 

 skill and physical courage have promoted, without much regard to 

 education or general knowledge ; transported from place to place 

 upon the wide waters by the aid of men, many of whom are driven 

 from home by their vices, and when on shore in foreign ports, 

 subject to no other law than that which their own passions pre- 

 scribe; no arrangement with other governments to afford aid 

 where riot and mutiny run mad ; and sometimes, the anomaly of 

 our own ships of war being unable, from their peculiar circum- 

 stances, to give the aid which is required for the prosecution of 

 our enterpi ies. These, and a thousand other evils, which none 

 but those intimately acquainted with the state of our fisheries can 

 understand, demand, in the most emphatic terms, that the arm of 

 our government should be stretched out to the remotest island of 

 the sea. 



Why, my dear Sir, let a stranger look on the floating interests 

 of New Bedford and Nantucket ; let him be made acquainted with 

 all the hair-breadth escapes, all the real accidents, and all the 

 vacillations of fortune which result from moral as well as physical 

 causes, and unite to make up the whole of a South Sea voyage, 



