26 THE DOMESTIC SHEEP. 



There need be no surprise at the result, which has been 

 that our American Merino is the best sheep of its class in 

 the world, and that our breeders have the whole world at 

 their feet, offering the highest prices for our ranis for the 

 improvement and support of foreign flocks. It has been a 

 marked example of the fitness of our soils and climate and 

 of our fertile pastures for the special industry of the shep- 

 herd. 



A combination of circumstances, however, soon combined 

 to bring on a disastrous speculation, by which, first, the 

 prices of w r ool advancing on account of the war of 1812, led to 

 an equivalent advance in the value of these sheep. Wool 

 sold for $2.50 a pound, and sheep brought a thousand dollars 

 for ewes, and fifteen hundred for rams. As soon as the war 

 ended, in 1815, of course the sustaining prop to this specula- 

 tion gave way, and sheep that had been purchased at these 

 high prices were unsalable at one dollar a head. This is 

 only one instance of the many that have occurred of the 

 injury done to the most intrinsically valuable interests by 

 senseless speculation, in which the cursed thirst for wealth 

 leads men to lose their heads, and not only to ruin them- 

 selves but overwhelm the most valuable and important busi- 

 ness interests in temporary disaster. This is especially true 

 of the sheep, which has been all through its civilized history 

 a sort of foot ball for politicans, sometimes protected unduly, 

 when it becomes an object for the frantic antics of the spec- 

 ulator; then after a time of excessive inflation a collapse 

 comes by reason of its abandonment to the competition of 

 the rest of the w T orld, in which it is sacrificed with as sense- 

 less want, of judgment as in the previous instance of its 

 undue speculative inflation. The history of the Merino is a 

 most conspicuous instance of this unwise and wholly de- 

 structive course of public policy. It would seem to be the 

 wise part to either leave the sheep alone to work out their 

 own destiny in competition with the world, or to adopt such 

 a wise policy as would ensure due protection to this impor- 

 tant source of wealth, and at the same time produce an ade- 

 quate revenue for the government from imports of wool 

 and woolens, and adhere to this for a term of twenty-five 

 or forty years, during which this great interest might have 

 become so firmly fixed and established, that if it wero 



