It was stated by Chief Justice Marshall, about thirty years
ago, that Whitney's cotton-gin had saved five hundred millions of
dollars to the country; and the saving, upon the same basis, cannot now
be less than one thousand millions of dollars,--a sum too great for the
human imagination to conceive. When we contemplate these achievements of
mind, by which manual labor has been diminished, and every physical
force both magnified and economized, how unstatesmanlike is the view
which regards a human being as a bundle of muscles and bones merely,
with no destiny but ignorance, servitude, and poverty!
Ancient commerce, if we omit to notice the conjecture that the mariner's
compass was in possession of the old Phoenician and Indian navigators,
reproduced, rather than invented, in modern times, did not rest upon any
enlarged scientific knowledge; but, in this era, many of the sciences
contribute to the extension and prosperity of trade. After what has been
accomplished by science, and especially by physical geography, for
commerce and navigation, we have reason to expect a system, based upon
scientific knowledge and principles, which shall render the highway of
nations secure against the disasters that have often befallen those who
go down to the sea in ships. Science gave to the world the steamship,
which promised for a time to engross the entire trade upon the ocean;
but science again appears, constructs vessels upon better scientific
principles, traces out the path of currents in the water and the air,
and thus restores the rival powers of wind and steam to an equality of
position in the eye of the merchant.
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