"Aye, that is the point," he said. "You men of Boston here, look to your
harbors, crowded with English craft, and think of what is gone, lost to
you forever, unless you will strike a blow for it. Many of you are old
enough to remember how it used to be. Look at Salem Harbor, at Marblehead.
Where are the fleets of noble ships that lay side by side along the great
docks, the ships that did half the carrying trade of the world? Where are
the great merchantmen that used to sail so grandly away to the East and
that came home so richly laden? They are sunk or gone to pieces, or sold
as old timber and copper and nails to the gentlemen who build mudscows.
What are the great merchants doing who owned those fleets? They are
employing their time in building railroads with English iron and foreign
labor into desolate deserts in the West, which they hope to sell for a
handsome profit, and probably will. But when there are no more desolate
deserts and English iron and foreign labor to be had, they will wish they
had their ships again, and that in all these years they had got possession
of the carrying trade of the world, as they might have done.
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