their previous essays, be ascribed to that combination of circumstances which usually defeats the efforts of all original inventors, whose discoveries or views are in advance of their age; to want of capital, industry or perseverance on the part of the inventor himself, and of that confidence on the part of the community on which his hopes of encouragement must depend; to the waywardness of genius; the apathy of the public; the prematurity of the discovery, or its local inapplicability. The last two causes especially must have operated against Fitch, both in Pennsylvania and New York; inasmuch as the population and business of neither of those States, were so well able at that early day to support such expensive vehicles of transportation, as when they were introduced by Messrs. Livingston and Fulton. Moreover, the Delaware and the Hudson were the only rivers of that magnitude and importance, which held forth the promise of the future substitution of steam-boats for the less expensive vessels, which were then deemed sufficient for the commerce and carriage upon them. The immense region adjacent to the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the St. Lawrence, was as yet an unsubdued forest.

Hence it was that the meritorious, but neglected Fitch, was compelled to seek in Europe those means of rendering his invention profitable, which his own country could not at that time afford. He accordingly repaired in search of patronage, to France, but dying shortly after his arrival, his papers, plans, and models passed into the official custody of Mr. Vail, Consul of the United States, at Havre, and by a coincidence as fortunate as remarkable, they eventually fell into the possession of Mr. Fulton, to whom they were some years afterwards delivered, at the request of Mr. Livingston, then Minister of the United States, at Paris. With these materials in their hands, these gentlemen commenced a series of experiments on the Seine; and having adopted those improvements, which subsequent discoveries in kindred and collateral arts, had enabled them to superinduce upon the original invention of Fitch-especially the paddle-wheels of Evans, and the improved engine of Watt-Mr. Fulton crossed the Atlantic, and in conjunction with Mr. Livingston, established his steamboats on the Hudson, under the exclusive grant, which in the mean time had been transferred by the Legislature to Mr. Liv

ingston, and in which Mr. Fulton was equally interested.

It must be borne in mind, that Fitch obtained his grant previously to the adoption of the present Constitution of the United States, and consequently before the several States had, by that instrument surrendered to the national government the exclusive powers of "securing to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their inventions and discoveries," and "to regulate Commerce;" whereas it was not until March, 1798, nearly ten years after the ratification of the Federal Constitution, that Mr. Livingston procured from the State Legislature the Act, vesting in him and his representatives, "privileges similar to those granted to John Fitch, upon the suggestion of their forfeiture by non-user, and the death of Fitch." When therefore Mr. Livingston, by means of Fitch's papers, and the assistance of his associate, Mr. Fulton, was at length enabled to avail himself of the state grant, its validity was questioned, on the ground of repugnancy to the powers above mentioned, as ceded to the United States. The opinions of eminent counsel, in different parts of the Union, were obtained to that effect, by an association formed in hostility to the legislative favorites; and rival boats, belonging to the new company, were put in operation on the Hudson. The grantees of the state applied to the Chancellor, (Launny,) for an injunction against the intruders, which was refused; but this decision was reversed by the Court of Errors. The defeated party then resolved to carry the cause into the Supreme Court of the United States, which they might do, as it drew in question the validity of a state law, as repugnant to powers vested in Congress. A compromise however was effected, by which this appeal was prevented, by the surrender of an exclusive privilege of steam_navigation on Lake Champlain, by the state grantees to their adversaries. Another rival boat was bought off, by a similar grant for his ferry between New York and Elizabeth-town point; and in order further to fortify their claims, and protect them from investigation, Messrs. Livingston and Fulton admitted several of the leading politicians in the state, with several of the most eminent men at the Bar, and among them, Mr. Colden, to share in its benefits. This political manœuvre, however, did not succeed, A new opponent appeared in the field-or rather on the waters. This was no other than the

ALL HISTORY must necessarily have reference to the existence and condition of Man. History is a memorial of the succession of time and in the created universe, Man is the only being known to Man to whom the succession of Time is an object of perception.

"This vault of air, this congregated ball. Self-center'd sun and stars that rise and fall."

can

This visible and ever wonderful universe, so far as the human senses can conceive, and the human reason discern, is a mass of inert unintelligent matter. The planets and fixed stars of the firmament, reasoning from analogy, must all be inhabited worlds, and in every one of them may be one or more beings compounded of matter and mind. On this planet there is but one, and that being is man;-to him only belongs the conception of time-the succession of eventsthe relation of cause and effect.

The laws of self-preservation, of the individual, and of the species, belong to this animal in common with all the rest. The first, urging with incessant pressure, and unintermitting necessity for daily food-the second, equally constraining the union of the sexes. Superadded to these, man by a third law of his nature is impelled to the improvement of his condition; and it is this impulse which urges him, first to the permanency of the marriage contract, and then through the several stages of the hunter-the shepherd-and the tiller of the ground-to civilization in its numberless ramifications, and in its magnificent results.

When we turn our reflections to the natural and political history of our species, we cannot fail to be struck with the influence of Society upon the condition of man. It is the property of all animated nature to be gregarious. It is that of man alone to be social. The beasts of the forest and the fields, are drawn by the laws of their nature together in herds-the birds of the air in flocks-the fishes of the ocean in sculls; reptiles cluster in the recesses of the earth, and the insect tribes no sooner quicken from their shells into life, than they people the sunbeam in

swarms. This universal propensity of all living beings of the same species to congregate in multitudes together, like all the physical laws of nature, was instituted by an all powerful and beneficent Creator, undoubtedly for wise, but to us in some respects mysterious purposes. It is a disposition altogether as distinct from sexual union, as from the instinctive attachment between the parent animal and its young. It is neither conducive to the subsistence of the individual nor to the continuance of the species. It affords no means of intellectual communion, where there is no mind to cultivate; no accession of strength to resist the destructive power of the elements, or the ravin of superior animals. The pigeon, surrounded by myriads of others, is as defenceless as in solitude against the talons of the hawk. There are in natural history a few instances of animals, perhaps exaggerated by human wonder, who unite in common labor for a common benefit-like the beaver, the ant and the bee; they are rare examples of animals partaking of the social nature, but not of the principle of progressive improvement. They exercise no powers but such as have always been exercised by their species. Powers untaught and unteachable, and no more vivified with mind, than the tendril that seeks a hook for its support, or the ivy that creeps around the oak.

But whatever may be the motive or cause of the impulse which congregates together animals unendowed with reason, no doubt or uncertainty is left with regard to that which associates man with his fellow creature. Blest with an ethereal and immortal soul, encumbered with a material and perishable body, of all physical creation man comes into life the most helpless and dependent being; abandoned to solitude at its birth, a few hours must terminate the existence of the human infant. In the care and affection of the parent, Providence has provided for its preservation by a principle different from that of society, but leading directly to it. This parental affection is an impulse common to man with all other animals, but differently modified in him, as adapt

ed to his rational nature. In the brute creation it continues no longer than it is necessary for the preservation of its object. In man it ceases but with life, and after having fully attained its primary purpose of preservation, becomes the corner-stone to the fabric of civil society.

It is only in society that man can exercise his prerogative of reason and his faculty of speech. A solitary human being loses every impulse to action, other than that of self-preservation. Instances have occurred of men found in this condition with no more indication of mind than there is in the Ourang Outang of Africa. Speech is the instrument of reason-the vehicle of intelligence. It can be acquired only by communication from others. It can be used to any purpose only by communication to others.

In the history of mankind, there are four different modes, by which, in different ages and in divers regions, men have been associated together in numbers. 1. As Hunters, 2. As Shepherds, 3. As Tillers of the ground, and 4. As civilized, or inhabitants of cities. The progress of human society is in this order. 1. The hunter state is that in which human association is first formed. From the dispersion of mankind which followed the confusion of languages at the building of Babel, their subsequent associations have followed the course of Nature, in such a manner as a being organized like man, following the impulse of nature, would congregate with his fellow creatures, upon a planet constituted like this earth.

His first, most urgent and constantly recurring want is food for the subsistence of his body. The next, in the variation of the seasons, is clothing. The third is a habitation. For all these wants the hunting condition of society very ineffectually provides.

We are told in the Holy Scriptures that upon the fall of man from innocence, the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken; that the ground was cursed for his sake; and that in the sweat of his face he should eat bread.

Since that day the earth has ceased to produce spontaneously the means of subsistence to man. The bread upon which he is doomed to live, can be drawn from the earth only by the tillage of the ground, and prepared for his use only by the sweat of his face.

In the hunting state there is no tillage of the ground. The forest, the thicket,

and the den, are the only scenes where man the hunter can pursue his occupation or find his prey. From the moment that the ground is tilled, the victim of the hunter disappears. To the hunter belongs no permanent habitation. The region over which he ranges in quest of prey is soon depopulated of game by his success, and he is compelled to seek another. His associations with his fellow creatures are loose and precarious. His tribes can never be numerous, and they must be scattered over extensive tracts of country. The charm of human life in this condition consists in individual independence. The influence of society is scarcely felt, either in its burthens or its blessings. Men congregate in tribes rather for defence against each other than for the promotion of a common welfare. Hunting and war, the destruction of beasts or the destruction of men, are the only occupations of the savage man, andhis life is passed in continual alternations of furious passions, and prostrate indolence, while the wants of his physical nature are enduring the continual interchange of a surfeit and a famine.

The second stage of human society is that of the pastoral state. It follows the discovery that among the beasts of the field, and the fowls of the air, there are many suited by their nature to supply mankind both with food and raiment, and susceptible of being tamed and subdued to his will, so as to save him the labors, the hazards, and the perils of the chase. Of these animals, the bull and the sheep are the chief. Tamed to the will of man, and bred in multitudes to suit his wants, they necessarily change the condition of his existence. They supply him with food not only by their flesh when slaughtered, but by their milk while living. They supply him even with habitation, by furnishing in their hides the materials of the tents which compose the dwelling of the pastoral man. But from the moment when man becomes a shepherd, the forest can no longer be his abode. His flocks and herds can subsist only by grazing. Open fields and verdant meadows, are the scenes of his habitation. His dwelling is not yet permanently fixed, for as the productions of the earth, upon which his cattle feed, are gradually consumed in one quarter, he is compelled to move them with himself to another. He pitches his tent therefore but for a time, and dwells in a tabernacle in the presence of all his brethren.

This condition is in the natural history of the human species, a great improvement upon that of the hunting state. The hunter lives in the forest. The face of nature as exhibited to him is dark, impenetrable and gloomy. If he casts his eyes around him his vision is intercepted by the woods, if upwards he has but a glimpse at the wonders of the skies. To him all nature itself is but a thicket, in which the only object of research is a beast to destroy.

The life of the hunter is a life of action, intent upon the pursuit of his gameor of idleness, in which the mind feels no call for the exercise of its powers. His passions are all violent and fierce. There is nothing in the aspect of nature with which he is conversant, tending to melt his soul into tenderness, or to allure it into contemplation. His very domestic affections are languid and cheerless. He is the tyrant rather than the friend and protector of his wife; and his filial piety consists in releasing his parent from the burthen of life.

Far different is the condition of man in the pastoral state. He lives with his flocks and herds on

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'Plains immense And vast savannas, where the wandering eye,

Unfix'd, is in a verdant ocean lost." The care and custody of his cattle, lead his heart to cherish and cultivate the sentiments that tend to preservation and not destruction. He forms attachments even to the animals which he has subjugated to his will. His interest dictates to him feelings of kindness, benevolence, and even gratitude towards them. It saves them not from his slaughtering hands; but even in shedding the blood of the ox who licks his hand, the act is mingled with a yearning of the heart, which will have an habitual influence upon his temper, and which the savage of the forest never knows. The face of nature, as exhibited to him, is soothing and delightful; the landscape blooms in beauty to his eye, and fills with fragrance the air that he breathes. Subject to neither the extremes of plenty nor of penury, which beset the hunter of the woods, he is neither impelled by want, nor inured by habit, to those alternate transitions of riotous excess and perishing want, which form at once the joy and torment of savage life. The condition of the shepherd consists rather in repose than in action. The care of his flocks requires

The

specially his watchfulness in the hours of the night. Then in the tranquillity of darkness, the canopy of heaven in all its ineffable sublimity is opened to his view. He sees, night after night, the apparent revolution of the heavenly bodies around the earth. His mind, by the very position in which he is placed, unoccupied with any active pursuit, discomposed by no absorbing passion, engaged in the beneficent object of preservation, is disposed and invited to meditation. In the unnumbered multitude of gems that spangle the heavens, he sees the regular, unaltered course of the fixed stars, and soon discriminates among them the mazy dance of the planets. They soon urge themselves upon his experience as the natural instruments for the measurement of time. He groups them into constellations of equal extent in their rise, culmination and decline. It is thus that the pastoral state becomes the parent of the science of astronomy, and thus the ram and the bull, the two animals which form the foundation of its condition upon earth, become the images of its first constellation in the skies. The pastoral state multiplies, complicates and strengthens the ties of human society. means of subsistence being no longer precarious and occasional, the passions which lead to the multiplication of the species, and in which heaven has concentrated the principal happiness of man, assume a wider range, and operate with accumulated power. be the slave, and becomes the choicest of treasures to her husband, individual independence loses the charm which it had possessed; instead of seeking all his felicities in himself, the pastoral man is humanized to social feeling. He leans for enjoyment on the partner of his tent; on the offspring of their union; on the neighbor near whom he dwells; on the very animals which constitute his wealth. Hence it is, that even in the more advanced stages of society, the pastoral state presents to the imagination of man, pictures of tenderness and delight. It is the golden age of poetry. In the sacred Scriptures, both of the Old and New Testament, while the character of the hunter is presented in colors of disapprobation and reproach, that of the shepherd is exhibited in all the attractions of beneficence and love. It is one of the most impressive images under which the Divine Being himself is presented to the devotion and gratitude of man—the image under

Woman ceases to