404 [AsSEMBi^Y 



tioD. In order to lull us into quiet, England says slie has mixed 

 flax with cotton successfully, by cutting the fibre of the former 

 to short lengths ; but I must believe that when so cut, there will 

 be obtuse heads and points to it, and its strength thereby vitiated. 

 But we must do the work by machinery. Some say that pound- 

 ing the flax renders it finer and softer, and more fit for spinning. 

 Suffice it to say, the long flax fibre has required human fingers to 

 spin it. We have lately seen a wonderful machine — Hoe's print- 

 ing press — delivering, in one hour, with a speed almost beyond 

 observance, twenty thousand copies of the Sun newspaper, 

 using its nerves and fingers with superhuman accuracy, as 

 well as velocity. Here is evidence of what can be done by 

 machinery. Who shall doubt the ability of American genius to 

 invent equal powers for other purposes 1 Should we succeed in 

 spinning and weaving flax as we now do cotton, we may have 

 even Egypt and the world at our feet. Within my memory, our 

 flax seed was of such a character as to induce England to come 

 here for the most she required, even in her dear Ireland, for 

 growing her flax, because her own seed would not answer. She 

 went, also, to Riga for seed. 



By her conduct towards us, at an early day, she put us into 

 the school of adversity, and it turned out to be the best college 

 for all other purposes she could have sent us to. Her restrictions 

 against our commerce and our industry taught us the love of 

 liberty. It was persecution and the fires of Smithfield which 

 learned us the wisdom and the value of toleration. If we had 

 been cherished by her like rich men's sons, we should have proved 

 the usual fate of men too tenderly dealt with. It was well for 

 us to have been educated in that school of adversity. We already 

 see in our approaching manhood, what a constitution we have 

 received — what a position among the powerful nations we have 

 already obtained. France has been some 1,500 years in arriving 

 at her position in the civilized world, and Britain about ten or 

 twelve hundred years in gaining her attitude, while the United 

 States, fresh from the school of adversity, has in only seventy 

 years gained her place among the nations of the earth. 



The flax plant gives a certain parasite (I don't mean a politi- 

 cal one) a chance to climb its stem, which the parasite always 



