^20 [Assembly 



supi)lie(l and guarded, commerce has dared to plunge into new seas, 

 and visit oflener new races. 



Commercial treaties are extended to all sides of the earth ; and 

 foreigners every where are less regarded either as barbarians or enemies. 

 Commerce, in seeking new markets, has broken through even the 

 gigantic wall of Chinese monopoly that had withstood the assault of 

 a thousand years, and has thus established and increased intercourse 

 with 400,000,000 of the human family. She has, in this way, dis- 

 covered not only new markets and new articles of trade, but new 

 fishing grounds, and drawn richer harvests from the depths of the 

 ocean ; and though commencing here, the whale fisliery, earl) as the 

 17th century, and by courage and enterprise in it, long ago deserving 

 the eloquent eulogies of Burke, yet she has pushed it since, with a 

 daring and success, eclipsing all other nations ; and not only ventured 

 to chase both the seal and the whale among the icebergs of the 

 Antarctic circle, but cross the Equator twice, and harpoon the levia- 

 than of the seas, in sight of China, whose boasted " celestial" popula- 

 tion, with five thousand years of traditional experience, have never 

 yet dared to attempt this, even on their own shores. 



Slrangers,in travelling through the southern portions of New-England 

 and New- York, often wonder how its dense population can subsist, and 

 apparently become thrifty. But they forget, that beside the little 

 obtained from their sterile soil, the females earn much in manufactories, 

 and the sons and the fathers cultivate the wide fields of every ocean, 

 circumnavigate the globe, and plough for wealth among the shoals of 

 mackerel and cod, herds of whale, and rookeries of seal and sea ele- 

 phant, to the utmost range of earthly existence. From four to five 

 millions of dollars are in this way drawn yearly from the sea by that 

 enterprising race, almost amphibious, and I may say half web-footed. 



Other portions of New-England, more northeast, and almost as 

 sterile, flourish in some degree from a similar kind of commerce con- 

 nected with these fisheries, and of late years have added rich exports, 

 even from what otherwise most people would regard as curses — their 

 rocks and their ice j these, by the talismanic wand of commerce, be- 



