The Adventures of My Cousin SmoothTempleton, Timothy
General
The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth
Templeton, Timothy
Pierce, Franklin, 1804-1869 -- Humor; United States -- Politics and government -- 1853-1857
many had been kept in view. Cotton-growing, and tobacco-planting, and
rice-cultivating, had been encouraged and fostered. Those rich
alluvial bottoms, so fertile and yet so uncultivated, had given out
their rich harvests to some purpose--untaxed prosperity would have
rewarded the hand of the hardy husbandman. India would then, besides
proving herself the greatest exporting empire in the world, have
clothed, fed and made happy her benighted millions.
"Had India been ours, Yankee enterprise had traversed it with plank
roads; Yankee enterprise had laid down strap railroads until better
ones had resulted from profits; Yankee energy had invented a species
of Mississippi steamboat, wherewith to navigate its narrow
water-courses to their source, and there develope the capabilities of
the country. Yes, Yankee ingenuity had had a steamboat where there
was scarce water for a duck to swim. But why pain the feelings with
recapitulations like these? Its resources are of little value when
government interposes a dogged obstinacy to improvements; nor is it
much better where a people seem at a loss to know whose business it is
to give out the incentive. So long as this state of things lasts will
Cotton remain king, and Uncle John be its most servile and dependent
subject. It matters little that his empire is so beautifully adapted
to its cultivation. He must shake off his love of those very ancient
and effeminating systems of his, and adopt the modern policy of
improving and nourishing industry.
"John admitted things were not conducted on the most approved
principle; but as the business belonged to the old gentleman, who was
very testy in the exercise of his power, he was at a loss to conceive
what we had to do with it. That became very easy to explain; for
whereas Young America claims a right to dictate principles that will
aid in working out manifest destiny, so also does he take upon himself
the right of pointing out the evil of all political misgovernment that
falls under his notice. It was not the honorable manner in which a
government acquired new territory or incorporated weak provinces, that
Mr. Smooth had to deal with, but the dishonorable government that
followed. Wherever waste and misery meet the eye of an energetic man,
who discovers the palpable cause at the door of wrong-headed
government, his natural feelings revolt against the powers that be;
and to an American, trained in the New England school of universal
industry, the desolation seems calling upon him to take the initiative
of working out its improvement.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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