where every man carries about with him the thing in greatest request; where the labor and skill of the human hands, and every kind of talent and acquisition, possess a relative importance elsewhere unknown-in other words, where an industrious man is of the greatest consequence.

These considerations are well calculated to awaken enterprise, to encourage effort, to support perseverance; and we behold on every side that such is their effect.-I have already alluded to the astonishing growth of our navigation after the adoption of the federal constitution. It affords an example, which will bear dwelling upon, of American enterprise, placed in honorable contrast with that of Europe. In Great Britain, and in other countries of Europe, the India and China trade was, and to a great degree still is, locked up by the monopoly enjoyed by affluent companies, protected and patronized by the state, and clothed, themselves, in some cases, with imperial power. The territories of the British East India Company are computed to embrace a population of 115,000,000 souls. The consequence of this state of things was not the activity, but the embarrassment, of the commercial intercourse with the East. Individual enterprise was not awakened. The companies sent out annually their unwieldy vessels of twelve hundred tons burden, commanded by salaried captains, to carry on the commerce, which was secured to them by a government monopoly, and which, it was firmly believed, could not be carried on in any other way. Scarcely was American independence declared, when our moderate-sized merchant vessels, built with economy, and navigated with frugality, doubled both the great capes of the world. The north-western coast of America

began to be crowded. Not content with visiting old markets, our intelligent ship-masters explored the numerous islands of the Indian Archipelago. Vessels from Salem and Boston, of two and three hundred tons, went to ports in those seas, that had not been visited by a foreign ship since the days of Alexander the Great. The intercourse between Boston and the Sandwich Islands was uninterrupted. A man would no more have thought of boasting that he had been round the world, than that he had been to Liverpool. After Lord Anson and Captain Cook had, by order and at the expense of the British government, made their laborious voyages of discovery and exploration in the Pacific Ocean, and on the coast of America, it still remained for a merchant-vessel from Boston to discover and enter the only considerable river, that flows into the Pacific, from Behring's Strait to Cape Horn. Our fellow citizen, Captain Gray, piloted the British admiral Vancouver into the Columbia River; and, in requital of this service, the British government now claims jurisdiction over it, partly on the ground of prior discovery!

This is but a single instance of the propitious effect on individual enterprise of the condition of things under which we live. But the work is not all done; it is, in fact, hardly begun. This vast continent is as yet no where fully stocked,—almost every where thinly peopled. There are yet mighty regions of it, in which the settler's axe has never been heard. These remain, and portions of them will long remain, open for coming generations, a sure preservative against the evils of a redundant population on the seaboard. The older parts of the country, which have been settled by

the husbandman, and reclaimed from the state of nature, are now to be settled again by the manufacturer, the engineer, and the mechanic. First settled by a civilized, they are now to be settled by a dense population. Settled by the hard labor of the human hands, they are now to be settled by the labor-saving arts, by machinery, by the steam engine, and by internal improvements. Hitherto the work to be done was that, which nothing but the tough sinews of the arm of man could accomplish. This work, in most of the old states, and some of the new ones, has been done, and is finished. It was performed under incredible hardships, fearful dangers, with heart-sickening sacrifices, amidst the perils of savage tribes, and of the diseases incident to a soil, on which deep forests, for a thousand years, had been laying their deposit, and which was now for the first time opened to the sun. The kind, the degree, the intensity of the labor, which has been performed by the men who settled this country, have, I am sure, no parallel in history. I believe that if a thrifty European farmer from Norfolk in England or Flanders, a vine-dresser from Burgundy, an olive gardener from Italy-under the influence of no stronger feelings than those which actuate the mass of the stationary population of those countries were set down in a North American forest, with an axe on his shoulder, and told to get his living, that his heart would fail him at the sight. What has been the slow work of two thousand years in Europe, has here been effected in two hundred, unquestionably under the cheering moral stimulus of our free institutions, We have now, in some parts of the United States, reached a point in our progress, where, to a considerable degree, a new

form of society will appear; in which the wants of a settled country and a comparatively dense population will succeed to those of a thin population, scattered over a soil as yet but partially reclaimed. We shall henceforth feel, more and more, the want of improved means of communication. We must, in every direction, have turnpikes, unobstructed rivers, canals, rail-roads, and steamboats. The mineral treasures of the earth, metals, coals, ochres, fine clay, limestone, gypsum, salt, are to be brought to light, and applied to the purposes of the arts, and the service of man. Another immense capital, which nature has invested for us in the form of water power, (a natural capital, which I take to be fully equal to the steam capital of Great Britain,) is to be turned to account, by being made to give motion to machinery. Still another vast capital, lying unproductive, in the form of land, is to be realized; and no small part of it, for the first time, by improved cultivation. All the manufactures are to be introduced on a large scale; the coarser-where it has not been done-without delay; and the finer, in rapid succession, and in proportion to the acquisition of skill, the accumulation of capital, and the improvement of machinery. With these will grow up, or increase, the demand for various institutions for education; the call for every species of intellectual service; the need for every kind of professional assistance, all increased by a political organization, of itself in the highest degree favorable to the creation and diffusion of energy throughout the commonwealth.

These are so many considerations, which call on the rising generation of those destined for the active and mechani

cal arts, to improve their minds. It is only in this manner, that they can effectually ascertain the true bent of their own faculties, and, having ascertained it, employ themselves with greatest success in the way for which Providence has fitted them. It is only in this manner that they can make themselves highly respected in society, and secure to themselves the largest share of those blessings, which are the common objects of desire. In most of the countries of the older world, the greatest part of the prizes of life are literally distributed by the lottery of birth. Men are born to wealth, which they cannot alienate; to power, from which they cannot, without a convulsion of the body politic, be removed; or to poverty and depression, from which, generally speaking, they cannot emerge. Here it rarely happens, that, even for a single generation, an independence can be enjoyed without labor and diligence bestowed on its acquisition and preservation; while, as a general rule, the place to which each individual shall rise in society is precisely graduated on the scale of capacity and exertion-in a word, of merit. Every thing, therefore, that shows the magnitude and growth of the country,—its abundance and variety of resources, its increasing demand for all the arts, both of ornament and utility, is another reason, calling upon the emulous young men of the working classes to enter into the career of improvement, where there is the fullest scope for generous competition, and every talent of every kind is sure to be required, honored, and rewarded.

There is another reflection, which ought not to be omitted. The rapid growth and swift prosperity of the country have their peculiar attendant evils, in addition to those in