2 



Annual Address. 



national and state governments had but recently been 

 organized; our finances were disordered; a debt, very 

 heavy in proportion to our small means and population, 

 pressed upon us ; our internal resources were undeveloped ; 

 our agriculture was rude and unscientific, and we bad no 

 journals or other means of diffusing information on the 

 subject; we were dependent upon foreign countries for 

 almost every article of manufacture we used; our com- 

 merce was small and mainly by way of exchange of pro- 

 ducts with some of the West India islands ; Europe was 

 separated from us by a voyage ordinarily of from sixty to 

 ninety days — its scientific publications and the transactions 

 of its learned societies were accessible to but few among 

 us ; the western part of our own state was but little known 

 and still partially occupied by remnants of the Indian 

 tribes, and all beyond was an unbroken wilderness. Be- 

 tween England and ourselves the resentments and aliena- 

 tions, growing out of the war, still burned in the breasts 

 of both peoples, and all the more that we were of the same 

 family ; while France, to whom we had been indebted for 

 sympathy and aid in our struggle, was herself in the midst 

 of that revolution that broke up the very foundations both of 

 her society and of her political institutions. Thus we stood, 

 isolated from the rest of the civilized world, occupying only 

 the eastern margin of the great continent, over which we 

 were destined soon to extend our power and population, 

 few in numbers and weak in all but our own resoluteness 

 and energy of character. But we had great men among 

 us — men of keen foresight and large grasp and compre- 

 hension of mind — men accustomed to grapple with diffi- 

 culties and who had learned in the great training school 

 of the revolution both the needs and the resources of the 

 country, and who now brought to the new task of leading 

 us up through the arts of peace, to the condition of a 

 prosperous and self-reliant people, the same practical 



