No. 216.] 183 



adventurous enterprise pushing itself into every nook and corner of the 

 globe, where the materials and opportunities of commerce may be 

 found, or, industry may be sure of a reward. Nor is this spirit impel- 

 led by the pressure of any general poverty or want of employment at 

 home, which bears so heavily upon some of the European nations; but 

 it is nourished by a natural love of independence, harmonizing with 

 the theory of our own institutions — by a sense of self-reliance and 

 the hope of fortune, which more or less actuates every individual. 

 It is a spirit of progress, the spirit of the age, in which our country 

 seems destined by Providence to take the lead. 



But it is at home that the workings of American enterprise are 

 to be seen on the grandest scale. Here, untrammelled by ancient 

 customs, uncurbed by despotic institutions or royal monopolies, the 

 American artizan finds a fair field for the exercise of his powers. 

 His talents and energies are ever in a state of productive activity. 



He toils, he invents, he wills. Cities arise in the wilderness; the 

 habitations of man take the places of the huts of the savage; and 

 the wheat fields move their yellow ears where but a few months be- 

 fore, stood the beautiful ever green hemlock of the forest. It need 

 not be denied that the American, in all this, is mainly actuated by 

 the selfish principle, the desire of acquisition, which is the very life 

 of commerce and enterprise; but v;e do maintain, that the pursuit of 

 money here is dignified, as it is nowhere else, by a sense of the vast 

 ultimate effects of industrial causes upon the destiny of the country. 

 The American feels that he is working not for himself alone, but in 

 furtherance of the glorious experiment of building up a free people, 

 whose protecting shield may yet cover the whole contineiit. His 

 natural pride partakes of this peculiar sentiment of expansiveness, 

 the grand feature of the country and climate; and he glories not 

 only in his county as it is, but he looks forw^ard to a future which 

 he may almost hope to see realized, when the valley of the Hudson 

 alone shall contain its millions of people, and when the cities and 

 towns of the Pacific, by way of the great pass of the Rocky Moun- 

 tains, the Oregon Railroad, and the Hudson, shall seek a market for 

 their treasures in the emporium of North America. 



It would be a curious subject of speculation to inquire into the 

 causes that have conspired to mark the American people with such 

 an extraordinary degree of enterprise; but such an^ inquiry would 

 lead me altogether too far from the immediate object of the inform- 

 ation which you desire. I shall therefore proceed, without further 



