AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 45 



sure the importance of recent agricultural improvements — of 

 railroads — of the telegraph, the daguerreotype and photograph — 

 of the cotton gin that creates the cotton crop 1 The sewing ma- 

 chine will work as great a change in the flimily as railways have 

 in communities and States. We have seen at this exhibition a 

 perfect watch, unsurpassed in beauty of w^orkmanship and for 

 service, that is made by machinery, and under one roof, where 

 the roughly swedged materials are fashioned into the perfect 

 watch in the hours intervening between morning and evening — an 

 achievement never before attempted in any part of the w'orld. 

 And I understand that machinery is in progress of construction 

 that will secure the manufacture of as perfect time-keepers at a 

 cost of three dollars, as are now imported at a cost of three hun- 

 dred. Time is no inefficient agent in the work of civilization. It 

 was among the last of the public declarations of Sir Robert Peel, 

 that England owed to her mechanic industry the power with 

 wiiich she had passed through the wars of half a century : that 

 furnished her exchequer; that sustained her credit, floated her 

 triumphant navies, and placed for a time in her hands the trident 

 of the seas. The same element of national wealth in France and 

 England enabled them to breast and turn the tide of Russian ag- 

 gression in the late war. Supreme in everything material, it has 

 also attained the dignity and elevation of the fine arts. The 

 grandest conceptions and creations of genius, in sculpture, paint- 

 ing, poetry, and music, are repeated in perfect and numberless 

 copies, until they are universally known and appreciated. How 

 is it possible to enumerate the multitude of beneficent inventions 

 that impart the elements of science and truth to the young, and 

 make happy the declining moments of honorable age ; that spread 

 before us, morning and evening, in the daily newspapers, the 

 transactions of every part of the world; that accompany us through 

 every moment of life, softening its cares, deadening its sorrow^s, 

 and heightening its joys, from the moment that the infimt presses 

 the white breast of its mother, until that other moment wlien it 

 moves upward on the inclined plane of life, until — a second time 

 a child — it gently falls upon the bosom of God. What higher 

 appeal can be made to healthful ambition — what names upon the 



