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It is the tendency of what is called public opinion to change, 

 and to vibrate from one extreme to another. There are few 

 men at any time capable of forming and maintaining a just and 

 independent judgment on any subject of much importance. 

 The public are moved by impulse, by caprice, by acclamation, 

 by accident, by sympathy, by fashion. In no case has this 

 caprice been more exemplified than in respect to the culture of 

 silk. Over estimates of its productiveness, made under the 

 inlinence of the imagination stimulated by an inordinate ava- 

 rice, first kindled the fire. The introduction of a new plant 

 into the country promised extraordinary facilities and advan- 

 tages in its cultivation. The enthusiasm, when the public 

 mind from other causes was in a state of feverish excitement, 

 every where became inflamed. There were those sagacious 

 enough, not to say wicked enough, to take every and some- 

 times the basest advantage of the public credulity ; and to 

 seek, on the top of one of the high tides which occasionally 

 occur in the affairs of men, to float into fortune. But it was 

 one of those unnatural swells whose ebb soon follows its flood, 

 which, leaping over all natural barriers, forebodes only destruc- 

 tion, and many a pitiable and forlorn wreck was left high and 

 dry upon the shore. My allusions are well understood. The 

 Morns Multicaulis speculation is a most extraordinary chapter 

 in our history, blotted and blurred all over with folly, credulity, 

 delusion, imposture, fraud, disappointment, bankruptcy and 

 ruin. The chagrin and disgust growing out of these miserable 

 results extended themselves most unreasonably to the cultiva- 

 tion of silk itself. But after the smoke and dust of the excite- 

 ment have cleared away, men will look at the subject with a 

 more just discrimination ; and silk will find its place in New 

 England among its valuable products. 



The importance of this subject is very imperfectly appreciat- 

 ed. How few among us are not, in one form or another, in- 

 debted to the silkworm for some portion of our dress, furniture, 

 comfort or luxuries. An importation of silk amounting to 

 more than twenty millions of dollars a year, and for a large 

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