He discovered the
West Indies, which he thought were the East; and ten guns would be
enough for them. It is probable that he did open the way to the
discovery of the New World. If he had waited, however, somebody else
would have discovered it,--perhaps some Englishman; and then we might
have been spared all the old French and Spanish wars. Columbus let
the Spaniards into the New World; and their civilization has
uniformly been a curse to it. If he had brought Italians, who
neither at that time showed, nor since have shown, much inclination
to come, we should have had the opera, and made it a paying
institution by this time. Columbus was evidently a person who liked
to sail about, and did n't care much for consequences.
Perhaps it is not an open question whether Columbus did a good thing
in first coming over here, one that we ought to celebrate with
salutes and dinners. The Indians never thanked him, for one party.
The Africans had small ground to be gratified for the market he
opened for them. Here are two continents that had no use for him.
He led Spain into a dance of great expectations, which ended in her
gorgeous ruin. He introduced tobacco into Europe, and laid the
foundation for more tracts and nervous diseases than the Romans had
in a thousand years. He introduced the potato into Ireland
indirectly; and that caused such a rapid increase of population, that
the great famine was the result, and an enormous emigration to New
York--hence Tweed and the constituency of the Ring.
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