266 [Assembly 



our humble labors to contribute to the advancement of these great 

 interests, we may not escape the charge of presumption — we hope 

 at least, to gain credit for patriotic intentions. As our efforts are to 

 be directed to the connection and investigation of facts — to the exa- 

 mination of the sure sources of national wealth and prosperity — as 

 we propose, from time to time, to appeal to the public attention 

 "with established facts and principles, with dispassionate reasoning 

 and researches alone — may we not reasonably confide, not only that 

 our motives will be favoraby appreciated, but that some success may 

 follow our exertions? A beneficial influence may always be exerted 

 upon the public mind by stimulating inquiry; erroneous notions and 

 prejudices may be corrected, and we may aid in inspiring that self- 

 reliance upon American skill and American industry, which becomes 

 a nation of our population and resources. In a government like ours, 

 the basis on which all legislative encouragement to national industry 

 can alone repose, must be the information and wishes of the people. 

 "We have all seen and felt the importance, when the public sentiment 

 "was to be warmed into action, of concentrating the scattered rays of 

 light by artificial means. It is thus that animation and movement 

 are produced, while, in the ordinary course of events, an atmosphere 

 would have prevailed, dense with palpable ignorance, and fatal to 

 activity and enterprise. 



Similar societies for the promotion of domestic industry, have for 

 many years existed in several of our sister cities; much of the valua- 

 ble information, and the tone of public sentiment throughout our 

 country, in favor of the American System, may be traced to their 

 activity and concert. Their example may serve at once for our 

 guide and our encouragement. 



The permanent prosperity of our country, we conceive, must rf«- 

 pend upon maintaining a perfect union; a healthful action and re- 

 action between the three great branches of our national industry. To 

 maintain such an equilibrium among them as nearly as possible, is 

 the avowed object, and as we believe, the sure tendency of the prin- 

 ciples of the American System. The agriculture, or the commerce, 

 or the manufactures, of any particular country, may either of them, 

 under supposable circumstances, be so lucrative a channel of em- 

 ployment, that the great mass of its capital and all its enterprise 

 shall tend toward that particular employment for years together. As 

 long as the circumstances exist which gave that impulse and direc- 

 tion to them, so long will that particular channel swell with a tide 

 of capital and industry, which shall overflow and enrich the whole 



