tupid surviv
Wages came from the pockets of those whom their work nowise benefited
was so gratifying to them that nothing could induce them to leave the
service of their heartless employers to engage in lighter and more
useful labor. Another characteristic of “Protection” was the maintenance
at the principal seaports of “customs-houses,” which were strong
fortifications armed with heavy guns for the purpose of destroying or
driving away the trading ships of foreign nations. It was this that
caused the Connected States to be known abroad as the “Hermit Republic,”
a name of which its infatuated citizens were strangely proud, although
they had themselves sent armed ships to open the ports of Japan and
other Oriental countries to their own commerce. In their own case, if a
foreign ship came empty and succeeded in evading the fire of the
“customs-house,” as sometimes occurred, she was permitted to take away a
cargo. It is obvious that such a system was distinctly evil, but it must
be confessed our uncertainty regarding the whole matter of “Protection”
does not justify us in assigning it a definite place among the causes of
national decay. That in some way it produced an enormous revenue is
certain, and that the method was dishonest is no less so; for this
revenue–known as a “surplus”–was so abhorred while it lay in the
treasury that all were agreed upon the expediency of getting rid of it,
two great political parties existing for apparently no other purpose
than the patriotic one of taking it out. But how, it may be asked, could
people so misgoverned get on, even as well as they did? From the records
that have co
I must say I admire the length of the sentences for which you ask me to endure in your letter, as I feel they are a kindred spirit to the form, the practice, the chain of thought that I attempt to engage in in the discourse of my life, whether it be through letters or prose or simple conversations with equally simple people who cannot follow more than the first word, or possibly phrase, that comes out of my mouth and finally reaching their ears en route to a brain that is closed for repairs.