368 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



dence of a few broken bands of Indians. After the establish- 

 ment of the Federal Union, they swarmed over to the western 

 slope of the Alleghanies. They were not satisfied there, until 

 they had obtained Louisiana, and occupied the entire Missis- 

 sippi valley. And still, with their strong instincts of expan- 

 sion, but not of assimilation, they drove before them the sur- 

 viving remnants of the Itidians. There was more land yet 

 ahead of Ihem, and they pushed on to Texas, Oregon, New 

 Mexico and California. 



Where is all this to end ? I will not undertake to foreknow ; 

 but I see that the continual occupation of new lands, and suc- 

 cessive acquisitions of territory, are the manifestations and the 

 effect of the particular genius and personal character of the 

 people of the United States. We satisfy, in this, the inborn 

 exigencies of our nature, just as when we eat or drink. Give 

 scope for the free action of our characteristic national qualities 

 of activity, expansibility, individualism, love of land, and all 

 is well ; check it, stop it, shut it up, force it back on itself, and 

 you will discover that the letter of a written constitution is quite 

 secondary in its agency on the integrity and peace of the 

 American Union. 



We of the State of Massachusetts, unlike the United States 

 as a whole, have reached that point in our social career, where 

 agriculture is overtaken, and perhaps passed, by manufacture 

 and commerce. That is one of the critical periods in the life 

 of a community. Far be it from me to say anything, here or 

 elsewhere, to discourage the ardor of our advancement in 

 mechanic art, in manufacture, or in commerce. Nor, on the 

 other hand, do these need to be stimulated by applause ; for 

 their weak side is a tendency to hurtful excess of production 

 by means of machinery and of credit. But the interests of 

 the agriculture of Massachusetts do need to be stimulated by 

 public exhortation. 



Let those of us, then, who feel stifled in the air of over-full 

 cities, to whom the fresh breezes of the country, its green 

 fields, its fair hills and bright streams, its woods and its lakes, 

 and its ripened promise of the harvest, are never-ceasingly 

 dear; let us turn with fonder affection to all there is left to 



