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Why did the Dutch in De Witt's time have admirals of their

whaling fleets?  Why did Louis XVI of France, at his own

personal expense, fit out whaling ships from Dunkirk, and politely

invite to that town some score or two of families from our own island

of Nantucket?  Why did Britain between the years 1750 and 1788

pay to her whalemen in bounties upwards of 1,000,000 pounds?

And lastly, how comes it that we whalemen of America now outnumber

all the rest of the banded whalemen in the world; sail a navy of

upwards of seven hundred vessels; manned by eighteen thousand men;

yearly consuming 00824,000,000 of dollars; the ships worth,

at the time of sailing, 20,000,000 dollars; and every year importing

into our harbors a well reaped harvest of 00847,000,000 dollars.

How comes all this, if there be not something puissant in whaling?



But this is not the half; look again.



I freely assert, that the cosmopolite philosopher cannot,

for his life, point out one single peaceful influence,

which within the last sixty years has operated more potentially

upon the whole broad world, taken in one aggregate,