228 [Assembly 



commerce, our own resources are sufficient. We need no Sicilian 

 or Sardinian colonies. Within ourselves v;e possess all that soil or 

 climate may afford for domestic use or foreign export. What they 

 supply, however, would quickly and inevitably compose a stock which 

 commerce could not easily dispose of, if from our own shores the raw 

 material and that alone were to be shipped. And thus the necessity 

 exists for the protection and encouragement here at our own doors of 

 the third of those great interests, whose triple alliance shall confirm 

 and establish each other, and can alone perfect our self-relying strength. 

 For no nation is independent whose essential wants are unsupplied at 

 home. Nor has the lesson of the past been learned, if we are not yet 

 convinced that the people who only raise but do not make, are in no 

 condition to deal on equal grounds with foreign industry. If the phy- 

 sical strength of our nation should be expended on the soil, not only 

 would the accessible markets abroad be overstocked, but the muscle 

 and sinew of our men would be forced to wage an unequal war with 

 the half paid labor of the world beside. 



Such is not the destiny which God has marked out for us, if we 

 use his gifts aright ; for not reason alone, but nature, would condemn 

 us, if as a people in very truth we take no thought wherewithal we 

 shall be clothed. The thousand water falls, whose voices chorus the 

 music of the forests, would condemn us ; for their significant notes 

 have not fallen upon dead ears. We have understood their meaning 

 as plainly as if the genius whom the old mythologies placed over 

 them, should rise from their green banks to interpret it in literal 

 speech. These running rivers were made for human use, as truly as 

 the soils they nourish. The poet who dreams beside the brooks may 

 sorrow if the discord of earthly machinery shall interrupt the song of 

 the stream ; but the man — if he be poet too — in that machinery itself, 

 complete in all i'.s parts, and by volition seeming to perform its work, 

 coming in aid of the running waters, and enabling them to minister 

 in a new form to human wants, shall read a perfect poem, the great 

 idea of which God gave to man. 



In respect to this great interest which has within a few years past 

 absorbed such vast ainounls of capital, and controlled to such extent 

 human labor, it is not singular, perhaps, that the opinions of praciical 

 statesmen have varied, and that even now such diverse views are en- 

 tertained by men who, with equal honesty of purpose, would promote 



