APPENDIX. 119 



twenty years of war ami disorder in Europe, has 

 given to our cities a premature growth. In every 

 branch of trade and commerce there are too many 

 competitors. Labourers are too numerous. Every 

 mechanic art, every liberal profession is overdone. 

 Happy would it be for the city, and happy for the 

 country, if any efforts of this Society could inspire 

 a respect, and a taste, for an art in which no man 

 need be ashamed to employ his faculties ; for a condi- 

 tion, which after all, seems most congenial to the na- 

 ture of man. It is a life, to whicli at one time or 

 other, we all aspire. For who is there, that amidst 

 the eager pursuits of wealth or ambition, does not 

 sometimes pause, and console himself with the fond, 

 though often fallacious hope, of passing his latter days 

 in the independence, the ease, the plenty, the safety, 

 and the innocence of the country ! In Pennsylvania, 

 young men of education would have peculiar advan- 

 tages in spreading themselves through the country, 

 for it is a fact (and we arc every day feeling the effects 

 of it) that in no state in the union, is education so 

 much confined to towns. There are many inhabitants 

 of this city, who hold extensive tracts of land, which 

 neither they nor their children have ever seen. This 

 is a bad state of things. For, through ignorance of 

 the quality, the situation, and value of their lands. 



