60 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



lation of other States. An eastern stage driver a short time 

 since astonished an English earl who sought to confer an honor 

 upon the Yankee whip, by making his journey with him on the 

 box — " Hop on, squire," said the driver, " Hop on ! " So we 

 say to the nations, " Hop on : " — and we hardly debate the 

 question wliether they come to assist or to govern. A people 

 whose existence a century since was unknown to three-fourths 

 of the world, will, at the close of the present half century, 

 number a hundred million inhabitants. 



In this brief history there is nothing so marvellous as the 

 extent, variety and increase of our industrial products. A 

 commerce whose entire import and export trade with Great 

 Britain, at the close of the revolutionary war, was less than 

 twenty-two million dollars, now has a trade exceeding five 

 hundred million, and has created, and finds employment for a 

 tonnage equal to that of the British empire. The commerce of 

 American lakes and rivers exceeds six hundred and fifty million 

 dollars annually. 



The augmentation of national wealth by manufacturing and 

 mechanical industry is not less surprising. As in commerce 

 there is no sea that is not vexed by the toils of our mariners, 

 and no trade that is not stimulated by the enterprise of our 

 merchants, so there is no avenue of employment or product in 

 mechanic arts that is not subjected to the successful competition 

 of our manufacturers. And we not only accomplish our pur- 

 poses, but by new combinations of mechanical powers absolve 

 the human frame from no small part of its former toil. The 

 inventive genius of our countrymen seems to comprehend at a 

 glance the purpose and method of successful and unsuccessful 

 labor, and to provide new and royal means of accomplishing 

 what has been done, or to do that which never before has 

 been accomplished. From the pointing of a needle to the 

 bending of a ship's knees, there would hardly seem to be a 

 single demand for individual toil or the sluggish processes of 

 nature, that some inventive mind did not propose to circumvent 

 by the aid of machinery. Every departmenf, of human indus- 

 try is alike its debtor. Commerce, manufactures and agricul- 

 ture, through such instrumentality, have attained their present 

 power, and cherish reasonable aspirations for new and enlarged 

 spheres of action. 



