260 COMMITTEE ON 



knowledge furnished us by others, to teach us how to shun a rock, 

 escape a shoal, or find a harbour, and add nothing to the great 

 mass of information that previous ages and other nations have 

 brought to our hands ? 



l ' Tyre, Greece, Carthage, Venice, Florence, whose commerce 

 has ceased, and whose opulence is gone for ever, have still left 

 the historic glory of having shown succeeding ages the way to 

 wealth, and honour, and power, by means of knowledge. The 

 ancient commercial and naval monuments are theirs, and every 

 niche of the modern temple of Neptune is filled by others not 

 ourselves. The exports, and, more emphatically, the imports of 

 the United States, her receipts and expenditures, are written on 

 every pillar erected by commerce, on every sea, and in every 

 clime ; but the amount of her subscription-stock, to erect these 

 pillars, and for the advancement of knowledge, is nowhere to 

 be found 



" To open new sources of traffic, and of commercial wealth, has 

 gratified the pride, as well as 'the avarice of man, in every age ; 

 and the adventurous deeds by which this has been achieved, have 

 been commemorated by every historian, poet, and even fabulist, 

 in all past times; for the Argonautic expedition for the golden 

 fleece, as givq^i us by the poets and mythologists, is only in the 

 form of a generous and munificent commemoration of the voyage 

 of one who. ventured much to open a new path to commerce, for 

 the aggrandizement of his own country. 



, " We have been plundered by the English and the French, by 

 Spaniards and Neapolitans, Danes, Norwegians,, and the Barbary 

 powers, while our commerce was extended every where, and pro- 

 tected nowhere. Some of these insults and depredations have 

 been settled for, and others are quietly, but surely, approximating 

 to a day of restitution or retribution. The spirit of the nation is 

 aroused on these subjects, and can never sleep again : honour, 

 iustice, feeling, conscious of physical strength, all forbid it. 



