AGRICULTURE, A NATIONAL INDUSTRY. 31 



Ionian cities, Alexandria, Marseilles and Cartlia<;e, passed 

 through the same history. And Rome fell, because, after 

 having conquered the world, she plundered all nations, and used 

 her wealth and power, not for fertilizing lands, or improving any 

 kind of industry, or extending the bounds of civilization ; but 

 for the purchasing of luxuries for the appeasing of the seditions 

 of the cohorts, and for the satisfaction of her insatiable avidity. 



Venice, Genoa, Pisa and Florence, though doomed to poverty 

 by the barrenness or smallness of their territory, accjuired yet 

 great wealth by their commerce with the agricultural regions of 

 the East and North. Not less powerful than Tyre, Sidon and 

 Carthage, they dictated laws to the Greek Empire, bade defiance 

 to the greatest monarchs, and balanced, for more than three 

 centuries, the fate of Europe. Their grandeur declined with 

 their wealth, which they imprudently sacrificed to expensive 

 wars, to a fatal rivalship and an unbounded ambition ; it 

 vanquished forever when unforeseen events turned aside the 

 current of their trade, and reduced them to tlie resources of 

 their own territorial riches and local industry. 



Before their fall, they had established numerous marts and 

 factories in the north of Europe, at Lubec, Bremen, Hamburg, 

 Bruges and Antwerp, which created for them new sources of 

 wealth and prosperity. Towns, hardly known before the intro- 

 duction of foreign commerce, were soon distinguished for their 

 wealth, splendor and power. Wiser than the cities of Italy, 

 they guarded against the dangers of rivalry, formed a confed- 

 eracy for the protection and defence of their trade, and laid tlie 

 foundations of the Hanseatic league, that monument of bold- 

 ness and prudence, in a barbarous age and among a rude people 

 — an example which the founders of our republic followed in 

 their age of enlightenment and Christian intelligence. Tliis 

 example Great Britian has not forgotten, in her tenacious hold 

 of her colonial possessions, the fruit of her long and vigorous 

 wars, held either by treaty or by a compulsory bond, and uniting 

 London and Liverpool, and Calcutta and Canton and Bombay 

 by golden chains. This example may Massachusetts and New 

 York, and Philadelphia and Baltimore long remember. 



My friends, we are a part of tlii^t community who hold in 

 their hands the farms of Massachusetts, a portion of her wealth 

 and industry, which, in an hour like this, demands all our care. 



