136 |Ai}8EMBLY 



selection of sudi a sui)Ject, The purposes of your Iu^titAlt^on, 

 as declared in your cliarter, authorise its choice, and free mo from 

 the suspicion of attempting to pervert this occasion to a partisan 

 use. You are incorporated " for the purpose of encouraging and 

 promoting domeLtic industry, in this State, and in the United States, 

 in Agriculture, Manufactures, and the Arts, and any improvement 

 mada therein." Such is the language of your charter. An at- 

 tempt to enforce the importance of national independence iji the 

 great objects for the promotion of which you exist, cannot be in 

 appropriutti h) tiiis occasion. 



In exaii!'.;' ::; tijis subject, permit me briefly to review tlie ear- 

 ly conditiuii of th'.s country in respect to the Industrial Art3. 



The immediate cause of our Revolutionary struggle was un- 

 doubtedly the right of taxation claim^ed by the British Govern- 

 ment; but there were even then far-seeing men who felt that we 

 had more serious grievances, ' The Stamp Act and tlie tax on tea 

 IV ere not the greatest evils to which our colonial condition expo- 

 sed us. Dependence in manufacturers and in com.meroe was evi- 

 dently a far more important consequence of that condition, and 

 to hold us in subjection in tho.so res])ects w^as the great C'bject of 

 -the British Government. Thi3 was avowed by Dr. Johnson, in 

 his celebrated tract entitled ^'Taxation 7x0 Tyranny, ^^ written in 

 1775, at tlie request of the Government, in reply to the Resolu- 

 tions and Address of the American Congress. He argued that 

 the ascendancy of Eritisli commerce with America could only be 

 retained by keeping the Colonies in subjection. ^' That our com- 

 nierce with America h profitable," he snys, " however less than 

 ostentatious or deceitful estimates have made it, and that it is our 

 interest to preserve it, has never been denied, but surely it will 

 most elfoctually be preserved by being always kept in (jur own 

 power; concessions may promote it for a moment, but superiority 

 only can insure its continuance." In the same remarkable pro- 

 duction, after showing conclusively, as he supposes, that the re- 

 Bult of the quarrel with the Colonies will be conquest and contin- 

 ued supremacy, he indulges in a pleasant and ironical supposition, 

 that the English Government may j;>ossibly be checked in their 

 career of conquest, and reduced to peace upon equal terms, or 



