say that no event would compare with it in its importance to the people and to the interests of civilization. I am gratified that Americans have done so much to highten the effect of this rivalry of industry of the peoples among the nations of the earth. I did what I could to enlist the Government in its favor, and to promote among the people a larger desire for participation in it than they enjoyed, but I did not expect, when I did this, that we should be justified in the expectation of achieving a triumph like that we have accomplished. A recent letter from Mr. Beckwith, the American Commissioner, states that out of five hundred American exhibitors, three hundred prizes of awards have been given—a half larger proportion than has been attained by any other nation, not excepting even England or France. And this is nothing at all compared with what might have been gained by our citizens, if our country had been properly and fully represented. But it is not in the power of awards that we find the testimony of the world in behalf of the superiority of American intellect as devoted to industry. In those great powers that direct and shape the future we have been first, if not without a rival: in the locomotive that extends civilization throughout the world; in the electric telegraph that annihilates space and time; in the sewing machines that give comfort to every family in the land; in the piano forte that makes harmony and household pleasure, and extends to all the children of our country and of the world, the participation in this divine inspiration and power; in the agricultural implements that supply the place of exhaustive and inefficient labor-in these we have been the first and received the first prizes at this exhibition. But there is one point which touches me

more nearly, and gives me great gratification. The civilization of the world turns to the element of productive labor, and of course the protection and encouragement and fostering of that element of the prosperity and strength of the nation hereafter, is an important matter. In a neighboring town through which I passed, I saw todav a manufactory devoted to articles known and used everywhere, the material of which during the memory of man had been waste and utterly useless. The greatest triumph that ever is achieved in the civilization of the world, in anything appertaining to material affairs, is to create a new and national wealth out of that which had no value, by means which before had been unknown.— That man who can do it is a creator, and belongs to the creative properties. The Ratan factory is an institution of this kind; and there is scarcely a household in the whole country, or ultimately in the world, where its products will not find a place, and confer benefit and impart luxury; and yet this has sprung from the mind and genius of a single citizen of this county. If it were alone it would be of no account; but I see in this district for which I speak-I see in this district of which you are citizens-the origin of all the successful manufacture or industrial prosperity of this country. In the town in which I live, the man resided who created the cotton manufacture and made the machinery-who invented the process-who collected together under one roof the several processes which had been known before, and added to them others which will make this branch of human industy one of the most successful, one of the most powerful of the world. In my judgment, FRANCIS C. LOWELL, for whom the city of Lowell was named, was the greatest American this country has produced. I

know in what degree to estimate men who, by official position, have been able to produce great results; but here is a man at twenty-two years of age, invalided, without physical strength to discharge the ordinary duties of life, a prisoner on board a British man-of-war, looking at the flag which domineered the seas of the world-here is a sick man, a prisoner, a youth who without friends or capital, without any adventitious aid, by his own inventive genius, created a power that rules the commerce of the world. The cities which have sprung up around us are his monument. Other nations have copied his machinery, and now to-day the world gives to the city that was the result of his genius and his enterprise. the credit of having devised the most perfect development of industrial means that history has known. That is not alone. The shoe interest is another of the same character. Shoes have been made from time immemorial, but the genius and enterprize of Essex County monopolizes the manufacture and makes every part of the country subsidiary either to its products or the processes which it has invented. In my own town this characteristic is more prominent than perhaps any other. The watch, which is as perfect a time-keeper as can be suggested, is made from the roughly-shaped materials given to boys and girls in the morning, to come out from the manufactory a perfect time-keeper and measurer of the days of men. All this is done by a new process of manufacture invented here, which is filling the world with its products. Everywhere I see the evidences of this genius and power.Let the men who are learned in the world's history; let the men who have studied the various periods of civilization; let the men who know about these matters

in France, or Germany, or any other country; let the men who know the history of the United States; let them who know as well as his Excellency the Governor the capacity and power within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, point me to an exhibition of such success and such genius, such power and such far-reaching influence as can be seen in the manufactories of Essex and Middlesex counties. We have every reason to rejoice at the success which attends us in this contest of the nations of the world. We have every reason to be proud of that success which has been achieved by our fathers, and to rejoice in the prosperity which their genius has given to us; but it belongs to us to remember that our duty is of the future, and not of the present or of the past; that our pride must be, not in what our fathers have done, but in that which we shall do. Let us remember the field in which we are called to labor, as yet far wider, far more expansive; that we are placed, as it were, on the threshold of seven hundred millions of the people of Asia; that we contend foot to foot with the hundreds of millions of Europe, and that wherever we are, we are put upon an equality, and that the great contest is for the superiority. Many years ago I spoke in this room. I am naturally affected by the associations of the time and place; and although this is no occasion for political suggestions, yet I trespass upon your good nature to say that I trust the day is not far distant when all the disturbing elements of our social and political organization will be removed, and that, with the power to be a free government, the American people, with a genius like that of Essex and Middlesex, will hew its way through the thick ruins of the despotic traditions of the old world, and by their genius and success impart

to other nations an idea of what a people left to themselves can do. There was one thing that I wish we should exhibit more extensively in the Paris Exhibition than we do, and that is our people. I regret not that so many of our people went abroad; I only regret that there were not five, or ten, or twenty millions of them to show themselves to the European nations. They know but little of us across the water. A cultivated European told me that Mr. Chambers of Edinburgh, the celebrated publisher, ten of whose works are sold in America to one in Great Britain, said to him only a few years ago, that he was surprised that a man of such decent appearance should live in such a country as America. I remember, too, that the Moniteur in Paris published the fact that the Speaker of the House of Representatives, some years ago, was a negro. Perhaps he believes it now, and may be that he foreshadowed the time that is to come. But the fact shows that in the capital of France they knew very little of Americans, or of America, at that time. It is not the fault of European nations, but our own. Ladies and gentlemen, I am delighted with the opportunity of being here. If you are as much pleased to see me as I am to look upon your faces, you are in a comfortable condition. I regret I have not been here in the discharge of public duties; but I have been absent for some time, and have been living a sort of checkered life of late; but whether here or whether elsewhere, let me assure you that the memory of the past of Essex and Middlesex have always been and always will be my pride.