MR. CUSHING'S ADDBESS. 17 



residence of a few broken bands of Indians, After the estab- 

 lishment 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 en- 

 tire Mississippi Valley. And still, with their strong instincts 

 of expansion,, but not of assimilation, they drove before them 

 the surviving remnants of the Indians. There was more land 

 yet ahead of them, 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 Avritten Constitution is 

 quite secondary in its agency on the integrity and peace of the 

 American Union. 



Gentlemen, 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 any 

 thing, here or elsewhere, to discourage the ardor of our ad- 

 vancement in mechanic art, in manufacture, or in commerce. 

 Nor, on the other hand, do these need to be stimulated by ap- 

 plause ; for their weak side is a tendency to hurtful excess of 

 production by means of machinery and of credit. But the in- 

 terests of the agriculture of Massachusetts do need to be stimu- 

 lated 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 

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