No. 399.] 321 



ing converted largely into coined gold, and operating as kind bless- 

 slngs, both to the sellers and purchasers. 



But the proudest triumph of commerce in modern times has been 

 the employment of steam and the electric telegraph, one moving the 

 heaviest burdens, in transporting passengers and merchamlise, without 

 wind or tide, 6r the ox, the horse or the camel j and the other, com- 

 municating the results with lightning speed : one bringing all nations 

 closer together, for an interchange of improvements in ever thing, like 

 the great book fair of Leipsic for food to the German mind ; and the 

 other outstripping the wind in despatching the news of all, and the 

 wants of all, to every mart, however difficult or distant. In the 

 cheapness of carrying letters, also, almost as remarkable a discovery 

 has been made by lower postage as by the electric telegraph. 



But enough of this hasty sketch of some of the modern improve- 

 ments, already made in agriculture, manufactures and commerce. 

 They are guide-posts to the mind, for making still further advances. 

 This review has been but opening a door to see and examine some of 

 the lessons thus taught to increase our future progress in these great 

 sources of national wealth and human happiness. When any of us do 

 not hold the plough, or throw the shuttle', or hammer the anvil, or reef 

 the sail, we still regard those who do as sheet-anchors of the Republic, 

 and would fain glean something, for the benefit of each, from the 

 sybil-leaves of experience scattered over the past. But more especially 

 would we do this, first and foremost, for agriculture ; because that is, 

 confessedly, the noblest pursuit of mankind — the one whose disciples 

 keep up the most constant and purifying intercourse with God and 

 nature — who constitute, so generally, the great conservative power in 

 all governments — standing by law, order and established institutions, 

 till the latter cease to produce the chief ends of good government, and 

 whose labours make them the saviours of famished nations, and the 

 foundation hope for the continuance and multiplication of human life, 

 in every civilized portion of the globe. If asked by what special 

 means agriculture seems likely, from her progress heretofore, to be 

 improved most hereafter, I would say, by pushing further all which 

 appears heretofore to have improved her most. It is, in brief, by using 

 more and more, labour-saving machinery — by using more and more, 



•■Assembly, No. 199. j 21 



