NATIONAL INDUSTRY. 93 



a Kane, penetrating those Arctic realms, on his errand of mercy, 

 and planting his country's flag on the topmost hill that overlooks 

 that great unknown northern sea ; than Wellington at Waterloo, 

 or Napoleon at Austerlitz, or Washington in mid-winter crossing 

 the Delaware, or our own Fisher, transferring nature to his 

 canvass, or a Thorwaldsen, or a Greenough, carving the solid 

 marble into imperial life, or Milton, with a throbbing brain, 

 defending English liberty, or Humboldt crossing seas and 

 mountains to unfold the laws of nature, or Herschel with optic 

 glass in hand, at high midnight, sweeping those southern skies 

 amid revolving constellations. These one and all belong to the 

 fraternity of industry. 



Man was created to labor. Without it, constituted as Adam 

 was, he would have grown weary of the perfections of Paradise, 

 and in idleness alone there would have been despair. All growth 

 of character, all noble energy, all true manhood, are the result 

 of work. In what are called the higher classes, men born to 

 wealth and rank, you can rarely find a large, well-proportioned 

 character, nicely balanced in the equities of health, strength, 

 moral force and intellectual capacity. 



Where, in all England, in this nineteenth century, has there 

 been seen so strong and self-reliant a nature, so robust in those 

 elements which go to make up one grand central character in 

 his country's history, as George Stephenson, the mechanic and 

 railway engineer ? There can be no clearer illustration of the 

 truth of the doctrine, that in all labor there is a " perennial 

 nobleness," and that the true nobility of a country is the 

 untitled nobility of labor. The decaying castes, ranks, and 

 orders in European society, have relied for their perpetuity 

 upon fresh accessions of blood and vigor, from the great mid- 

 dling interests of the nations ; and they know but too well, 

 that, without this, an idle and dissolute race, or body, cannot 

 long hold the sovereign sway of empire against the clear heads 

 and stout arms of millions of laborers. 



You all remember when the Duke of Grafton reproached 

 Lord Thurlow with his plebeian origin, that the noble Lord 

 vindicated his claim to his position, by the strenuous industry 

 which had placed him there, and hurled back the taunt that 

 the peerage " solicited him, not he the peerage." 



