16 ADDRESS. 



mulated stock of knowledge contributed by other nations for our 

 benefit as well as for their own. The inquiry is brief, and the 

 answer is at hand. By us no step has been taken to add even to 

 the science of navigation. The great improvements in mathe- 

 matical instruments, which have made the path of the mariner in 

 the darkest night, and amid rushing tempests, as easy to be ascer- 

 tained and followed as a paved street in a populous city, these 

 improvements, of which we daily and hourly reap the advantage, 

 were brought to light by the liberality of foreign governments, and 

 we still continue to sail by charts we have had no hand in making. 

 Bowditch, the Blunts, and a few others, have done somewhat in 

 aid of navigation, much, indeed, for individuals ; but our govern- 

 ment, from which alone any extended and efficient assistance can 

 proceed, has done absolutely nothing. Perhaps the present lauda- 

 ble labours in perfecting a survey of our own coast, should exempt 

 it in some measure from this unqualified censure ; but when we 

 reflect that this measure was recommended during the administra- 

 tion of Jefferson, and though urged and reurged for a long suc- 

 cession of years, has only a short time since been taken in hand, 

 we think ourselves justified in affirming that much of the merit 

 we might be disposed to assume has been neutralized by this pro- 

 longed and inexcusable delay. Thus it is that we are at this 

 eleventh hour of the day employed in obtaining an accurate knowl- 

 edge of our own coasts, when we are the second if not the first 

 commercial nation, and have more tonnage than all the nations 

 of Europe when Columbus discovered this continent, and when 

 our navy, small as it appears in point of numbers, has more 

 effective force than the combined fleets of the old world at that 

 period. 



What other nations have accomplished is everywhere to be 

 seen; in books, maps, charts, and in the collections of our com- 

 mercial libraries. Even Spain, while guided by her exclusive 

 interests, and burdened with destructive monopolies, while her 



