g ADDRESS. 



These facts must show conclusively, that the elements of mari- 

 time enterprise have been from the earliest period of our history 

 incorporated with the character of our people. 



From this lucrative employment foreign commerce grew and 

 flourished, and through this and the lumber and fur trade, was 

 derived the circulating medium of the country ; but still much of 

 the trade of the interior was subject to many inconveniences from 

 the difficulties of transportation. The increasing power of Eng- 

 land, as manifested by the prosperity of her American colonies, 

 was viewed by France with undisguised alarm, and was the prin 

 cipal cause of the first and second French wars, in which the main 

 struggle was upon American ground. This put into requisition 

 all the energies of the colonists, who, at their own expense, fitted 

 out numerous privateers, which were the source of no less annoy- 

 ance to the enemy than of wealth to their owners, and which 

 contributed the most timely and efficient assistance to the mother 

 country. 



It was in this school of hardship, at an early period, that we 

 acquired that naval science, and familiarity with the ocean, which 

 soon after enabled us to compete with that power whose peculiar 

 boast is that she rules the waves, and whose sons glory that their 

 " march is on the mountain wave, their home is on the deep." It 

 was by passing this trying ordeal, and braving the winter's cold 



national ambition, is but a stage and resting place in the progress of their victorious 

 industry. 



"Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them, than the accumulated 

 winter of both the Poles. We know that whilst some of them draw the line, and 

 strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude, and pursue their 

 gigantic game along the coast of Brazil. No sea but what is vexed by their fisheries. 

 No climate that is not witness to their toils. Neither the perseverance of Holland, 

 nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise, 

 ever carried this most perilous mode of hard industry to the extent to which it has 

 been pushed by this recent people; a people who are still, as it were, but in the 

 gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood." 



