ened train across kingdoms and continents, or driving leviathan ships, 

 with resistless force, over the storm crested billows of the ocean. 



Time and space have thus, for purposes of travel and transmission, 

 been practically annihilated. Differences in position, soil and climate, 

 have been adjusted upon a scale approaching equality. By a rational 

 division of labor, far greater excellence has been attained in the several 

 branches of industrial pursuit. The facilities of land and water transit, 

 now open the world as a market for the producer, whilst the products of 

 every clime are easily reached by the consumer. Measured by the 

 standard of present attainment and progressive improvement in the 

 various arts of peace, civilization is far in advance of any former period. 



We have now reached a point of view from whence we may still 

 more closely inspect the three grand departments of human industry, 

 Agriculture, Manvfactures, and Coramerce. In this general division, 

 agriculture includes all the products of the soil, resulting from human 

 skill and labor, together with the avails of all domestic animals. By 

 manufactures we understand the j^roducts of mechanic art, whatever 

 the materials used or means employed by the artificer. And by com- 

 merce we mean the export and import, the sale, exchange, or other dis- 

 position of all marketable commodities. As thus defined, each of these 

 three departments has challenged the attention of our race from the be- 

 ginning. Although each originated in the necessity or convenience of 

 man, there has ever been not only a perceptible but a marked dift'erence 

 in their general estimation and progress. Despotic power, national pride, 

 personal renown and luxurious habits of living, have each contributed 

 to swell the amount of that difterence. 



Commercial enterprise has ever been cherished, both as a source of 

 profit to the merchant, and for the articles of taste it has been wont to 

 furnish for the palate and the person. I speak now of the extent and 

 variety of the traffic, and not of the facilities of land and water transit 

 Beasts of burden for the land, and clumsy ci-aft for water, were the 

 means employed for ages. As recent as the time when Venice, through 

 her merchant-[)rinces, controlled the commerce of southern Europe and 

 the Mediterranean, but slight improvements had been made in naval 

 architecture, always excepting the high-beaked, elegant, scull-driven, 

 gondolas of her own canals. 



Mechanic art, in its extended sense, was early pushed to its utmost 



