"Friend," cries Adams, "if a man should sail round the world, and anchor
in every harbour of it, without learning, he would return home as
ignorant as he went out." "Lord help you!" answered the host; "there was
my boatswain, poor fellow! he could scarce either write or read, and yet
he would navigate a ship with any master of a man-of-war; and a very
pretty knowledge of trade he had too." "Trade," answered Adams, "as
Aristotle proves in his first chapter of Politics, is below a
philosopher, and unnatural as it is managed now." The host looked
stedfastly at Adams, and after a minute's silence asked him, "If he was
one of the writers of the Gazetteers? for I have heard," says he, "they
are writ by parsons." "Gazetteers!" answered Adams, "what is that?" "It
is a dirty newspaper," replied the host, "which hath been given away all
over the nation for these many years, to abuse trade and honest men,
which I would not suffer to lye on my table, though it hath been offered
me for nothing." "Not I truly," said Adams; "I never write anything but
sermons; and I assure you I am no enemy to trade, whilst it is
consistent with honesty; nay, I have always looked on the tradesman as a
very valuable member of society, and, perhaps, inferior to none but the
man of learning." "No, I believe he is not, nor to him neither,"
answered the host. "Of what use would learning be in a country without
trade? What would all you parsons do to clothe your backs and feed your
bellies? Who fetches you your silks, and your linens, and your wines,
and all the other necessaries of life? I speak chiefly with regard to
the sailors." "You should say the extravagancies of life," replied the
parson; "but admit they were the necessaries, there is something more
necessary than life itself, which is provided by learning; I mean the
learning of the clergy. Who clothes you with piety, meekness, humility,
charity, patience, and all the other Christian virtues? Who feeds your
souls with the milk of brotherly love, and diets them with all the
dainty food of holiness, which at once cleanses them of all impure