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commerce, and enlarge all its capabilities for good, as well as contribute 
a full share to the progress of useful science — then the peculiarities of 
our institutions will, for most purposes, prove worthless, and our citizens 
must cease to exult in them. It may turn out, likewise, that our people 
and governments will not be persuaded to patronise, so much as some 
others do, abstruse inquiries and curious researches. For, though the 
pursuit of alchemy or the philosopher’s stone, as well as of an elixir to cure 
all diseases, probably led to the great discovery of gunpowder, and some 
of the first improvements in modern chemistry ; and though the study 
of astrology was the parent of modern science in astronomy, it can hard- 
ly be expected among a people and governments, where the tendencies, 
the impulses, and ends are all practical, that remote benefits will attract 
favor so strongly as more immediate ones ; and hence, the more secluded 
walks of science must here generally rely more on the bounties of a few 
than the encouragement of the many — or of public bodies — and depend 
as much on the taste, means, and perseverance of its own votaries, as do 
in most cases all those pursuits which yield only very distant returns ; 
or those which, looking to pleasure and glory more than profit, find their 
greatest reward in expanding the mind, and producing .more elevated 
feelings, and a higher purity of life. But the impression is yearly gain- 
ing ground in this country, that it becomes us all, under every discou- 
ragement, to discover and reward the usefulness of science, however, 
wherever, and whenever, it may be developed. Such a course, it is 
beginning to be seen, will not merely extend her empire, but enlarge 
the empire of the very classes who usually heretofore have been sup- 
posed to possess least interest in her progress; for the masses have already 
been aided, if not enabled through her, to control many of the adverse in- 
fluences in society, whether of birth, ambition, or monopoly; and, as one 
instance, by a new scientific combination only of nitre, sulphur, and char- 
coal, imparting a much greater importance to the lower classes in wars, and 
preserving from extirpation, by barbarians, the arts, letters, and civiliza- 
tion of modem times — they have found that these arts and letters are 
now, by their longer life from this cause, and their wider diffusion, even 
to new worlds, by another application of science, through magnetism, 
to aid navigation — and by another still, through the press — are now 
penetrating deeper into all the under layers of society, and working 
among them most unprecedented revolutions. The masses, then, that 
possess an influence here so predominant, must, and do, see and feel 
' more, every year, this auspicious truth. Conviction of the utility of 
