Address. 



northern lakes and the Arctic regions of Alaska, with nearly fifty thous- 

 and miles of railroad that bring all sections of the Union into quicker 

 communion than existed between Boston and Washington when the first 

 agricultural society in Berkshire was established, with one hundred and 

 fifty thousand miles of telegraph enabling widely separated states and peo- 

 ple to interchange intelligence more rapidly than could have been done 

 thirty years ago between the towns of a single county, what vistas of 

 national greatness burst upon the mind when contemplating the future, and 

 how immense the responsibility resting upon us, to shape that future 

 aright, And step by step, with the expansion of territory and the increase 

 of population, is the diffusion of all knowledges. Sciences arc within the 

 reach of the school boy, no longer locked up in libraries, but disseminated 

 through schools, colleges, periodicals and papers; literature is peddled as 

 industrously, from house to house, as tin ware. Art has its multipli" 

 plication table, in photographs and chromos; the ballot box turns every 

 man into a governor, and even fools rush in and appear to do very well 

 where formerly angels feared to tread. 



Let us glance for a moment, by way of illustration, at the lessons and 

 condition of a kingdom whose past greatness and present extremities are 

 the themes of every journalist, and the tuple of familiar converse, and see 

 the disastrous results of a want of consideration for the most important 

 industrial resources of a country, of a preference lor tie glitter and show 

 of barbaric idleness, to the comforts and solid worth arising from that in- 

 dustry and hard labor, which, thank God, is our heritage, and on which 

 alone as the surest foundations can be safely erected the edifices of modern 

 states. 



Less than four hundred years ago this continent was discovered. Pile 

 four men, each a century old, on top of each other, and the lartherest re 

 moved could shake hands with Columbus as that perserving mariner waged 

 ceaseless importunities for ships to find the Indias, or was realizing his 

 dreams on the Island of Cuba, or was carried in chains back to Spain, 

 accused of manifold misdemeanors, or was winding up his eventful life in 

 servile repose. 



Three hundred years ago, and that same Spain had reached a point of 

 greatness, owing to her vast possessions in the old and new world, that 

 made her emperor and king aspire to universal dominion— a dream shattered 

 by the growth of protcstant Christianity, and the wooden walls of Old 

 England. In another century her population fell from ten to six millions : 



