7 
Bat how is the conviction I have spoken of as so desirable to be pro- 
duced ? How sink it deeply into the public mind ? In my opinion 
nothing is more likely to accomplish this than the consideration of sev- 
eral things, which have already been done here in the use of science, 
and which have proved very successful to better our condition. Let me 
caution you, that I do not refer to a retrospect of the improvements 
which have been made here in the sciences themselves, (to a critical 
knowledge of which I make no pretension,) but rather to some of the 
most striking cases, where their assistance has been widely invoked 
among us, and proved highly useful. Under many disadvantages, pri- 
vate enterprise, as well as public, have much oftener than most believe, 
resorted to scientific aids for ameliorating our condition. Not so far or 
so fast, I grant, as some have desired, yet always as fully as public opi- 
nion became convinced it was advantageous, and as other imperative 
duties, growing out of our national condition, would warrant. If you 
ask for particular evidences of this, I could point them out on almost 
every river, every hill, as well as prairie and valley, in our extensive 
Union. Look, first, at one or two illustrations in private life. Suppose 
a traveller in some remote gorge of the upper Nile to come suddenly on 
a structure, several stories in height, and over four hundred feet long — ■ 
as was my lot the last summer, near one of the numerous waterfalls of 
the Merrimack, in my native State, and where, fifteen years ago, stood 
a forest, skirting a mere sand-bank. To the boundless power of what 
Sesostris, or Pharaoh, would the vast pile be attributed ? Yet, in my 
case, the whole was the voluntary production of free men, during a few 
months only ; and that, put in motion by the enterprise of only a small 
number of capitalists in the neighboring country and cities. But let the 
traveller pause longer, and lifting his eyes, see, beyond, below, and 
around, many other structures, nearly equal in magnitude, all instinct 
with life, crowded with every age and sex — thousands of busy spindles 
and looms, swelling the Babel hum, and all animated by machinery, on 
which genius and science combined have worked every wonder, except 
imparting the faculty of varied speech ! Let him see them, all devoted 
to shape into new forms an article of our own growth, which (fifty years 
ago, hardly known to be produced among us) has, by the aid of scien- 
tific ingenuity through the cotton gin, been made to furnish more than 
two-thirds of the raw cotton for the whole human race ; and moving 
onward, let him discover similar edifices rising, as if by magic, on hun- 
dreds of other waterfalls : and, where these do not exist, starting up in 
