sert this principle. This is the voice of nature, which did not in vain disjoin our continent from the old world; nor reserve it beyond the ocean for fifty centuries, only that it might become a common receptacle for the exploded principles, the degenerate examples, and the remediless corruptions of other states. This is the voice of our history, which traces every thing excellent in our character and prosperous in our fortunes, to dissent, nonconformity, departure, resistance, and revolution. This is taught us by the marked peculiarity, the wonderful novelty which, whether we will it or not, displays itself in our whole physical, political, and social existence.

And it is a matter of sincere congratulation, that, under the healthy operation of natural causes, very partially accelerated by legislation, the current of our pursuits and industry, without deserting its former channels, is throwing a broad and swelling branch into the interior. Foreign commerce, the natural employment of an enterprising people, whose population is accumulated on the seacoast, and whose neutral services are called for by a world in arms, is daily reverting to a condition of more

equal participation among the various maritime states, and is in consequence becoming less productive to any one. While America remains, and will always remain, among the foremost commercial and naval states, an ample portion of our resources has already taken a new direction. We profited of the dissensions of Europe, which threw her trade into our hands; and we amassed a capital, as her carriers, before we could otherwise have one of our own. We are now profiting of the pacification of Europe, in the application to our own soil, our own mineral and vegetable products, our water course and water falls, and our general internal resources, of a part of the capital thus accumulated.

This circumstance is, in a general view, most gratifying; inasmuch as it creates a new bond of mutual dependence, in the variety of our natural gifts, and in the mutual benefits rendered each other by the several sectional interests of the country. The progress is likely to be permanent and sure, because it has been mainly brought about in the natural order of things, and with little legislative interference. Within a few years what a happy change has

taken place! The substantial clothing of our industrious classes is now the growth of the American soil, and the texture of the American loom; the music of the water wheel is heard on the banks of our thousand rural streams; and enterprise and skill, with wealth, refinement, and prosperity in their train, having studded the seashore with populous cities, are making their great "progress" of improvement through the interior, and sowing towns and villages, as it were broadcast, through the country.

II. If our remote position be so important among the circumstances, which favored the enterprise of our fathers, and have favored the growth of their settlements, scarcely less so was the point of time at which those settlements were commenced.

When we cast our eyes over the annals of our race, we find them to be filled with a tale of various fortunes; the rise and fall of nations ;—periods of light and darkness ;— of great illumination, and of utter obscurity ;and of all intermediate degrees of intelligence, cultivation, and liberty. But in the seeming confusion of the narrative, our attention is

arrested by three more conspicuous eras at unequal distances in the lapse of ages.

In Egypt we still behold, on the banks of the Nile, the monuments of a polished age; -a period, no doubt, of high cultivation, and of great promise. Beneath the influence of causes, which are lost in the depth of antiquity, but which are doubtless connected with the debasing superstitions and despotism of the age, this period passed away, and left scarce a trace of its existence, beyond the stupendous and mysterious structures,-the temples, the obelisks, and the pyramids,-which yet bear witness to an age of great power and cultivated art, and mock the curiosity of mankind by the records inscrutably carved on their surfaces.

Passing over an interval of one thousand years, we reach the second epoch of light and promise. With the progress of freedom in Greece, the progress of the mind kept pace; and an age both of achievement and of hope succeeded, of which the indirect influence is still felt in the world. But the greater part of mankind were too barbarous to improve by the example of this favored corner; and

though the influence of its arts, letters, and civilization was wonderfully extensive and durable, though it seemed to revive at the court of the Roman Cæsars, and still later, at that of the Arabian Caliphs, yet not resting on those popular institutions and popular principles, which can alone be permanent because alone natural, it slowly died away, and Europe and the world relapsed into barbarity.

The third great era of our race is the close of the fifteenth century. The use of the mariner's compass and the invention of the art of printing, had furnished the modern world, with two engines of improvement and civilization, either of which was far more efficacious than all united, known to antiquity. The reformation also, about this time, disengaged Christianity, itself one of the most powerful instruments of civilization, from those abuses, which had hitherto nearly destroyed its beneficent influence on temporal affairs; and at this most chosen moment in the annals of the world, America was discovered.

It would not be difficult, by pursuing this analysis, to show that the very period, when the settlement of our coasts began, was peculiarly