machinery comes in substitution of labor; wealth abounds; leisure is gained; and enjoyment, refinement, and cultivation, follow.

This is the process, and this the progress, of communities under the lead of commerce. Production and commerce, as grand departments of industry, are indeed interests of mutual and reciprocal advantage. But there is that in the spirit of commerce. in her activity, her daring, her enterprise and energy, which puts her, almost always, on the advance. She it is who points the way, and beckons skill and labor on. It was the class of merchants who caused the manufacture of silk to be undertaken in Italy, and that of sugar in Spain; whence it was transferred to our own side of the Atlantic; and those of woollen and flax, in the Netherlands. Manufactures, as well as natural products, are their stock in trade, the grand capital and basis of all their operations. The establishment of particular manufactures, in particular localities, may sometimes be opposed by portions of the mercantile interest, as when attempted under an unjust application of the restrictive policy. Freedom of trade is the motto of the class. But, as a whole, the world cannot be too busy with manufactures with production to suit the merchant. As long as a market is left, or can be found, on the face of the globe, to be supplied, he cries to the producer and the manufacturer for more. He is never satisfied till the world cries enough.

A service of incalculable importance which commerce renders to the interest of production and manufactures, and thence to the cause of human improvement, is in making a territorial division of labor possible, which would otherwise be impossible. By the operations of commerce, every separate country, and each particular section of every country, is enabled to prosecute, with undivided attention and devotion, the peculiar business for which it is exclusively or best fitted by position, soil, surface, or climate, by the physical and mental condition or genius of its population, or by the prevailing state of production, of trade, or of markets, in other places and other parts of the world. Through commerce, it becomes possible to devote one region to the culture of tea, and another to coffee and sugar; for one people to grow cotton, another rice, another wool, and another grain; for one community to engage in the manufacture of cloth, another of leather, and another of iron; for marble to be quarried in this mountain, and coal dug out of that, and gold picked out of the earth that washes down from a third. Indeed, without a territorial division of labor, there would be a narrow and impassable limit to the personal division of labor. And if it were possible now to conceive of the sudden arrest, from any cause, of the operations and business of commerce-the ceasing of the now ceaseless flow of commodities from one country to another, and between different parts of the same country-we could not fail to see that production must at once be arrested, and almost entirely cease over the world, and that, of necessity, the world must return to a primitive condition of simplicity, ignorance, rudeness, and barbarism.

But as commerce deals with commodities, buys and sells and transports, its constant desire and effort has been, as I have already intimated, to widen and extend the sphere of its active operations. This has led to territorial discovery and to colonization. The direct object has often been to find new commodities and new markets for the uses of trade; but, from the beginning, as a general thing, commerce has pursued adventure with a liberal, enlightened, and noble spirit—with a desire to enlarge the boundaries of human knowledge, and spread the light and blessings of religion and civilization over the broad In obedience to a principle wisely planted in our common natures, the

first promptings to adventure and discovery, as in the classic expedition to Colchis, have no doubt usually been the desire and the prospect of obtaining possession of the golden fleece. The first anticipation of some direct and substantial reward, must usually be found necessary to sustain and encourage adventure, where difficulties and perils are to be encountered more dreadful and appalling than those which were involved in the three memorable labors of Jason. But, as in the very case of that bold and skilful navigator and hero, other and loftier motives and aspirations are soon found to mingle themselves with the spirit of gain. The adventurer finds himself engaged in an enterprise which, if successful, must result in incalculable benefits to his country and his kind. His imagination is kindled. There will be glory as well as gain in the achievement. He becomes fired with that noblest and strongest of all passions, when once it takes possession of the human breast the desire of doing some great good to his race of working out some mighty and glorious result in human affairs; and he expects, as he has a right to expect, that, as it happened to the Argonauts, the time will come, when the very ship in which he sails will shine as a constellation among those bright and lightgiving objects which men love to gaze and wonder at, and his name be enrolled with those to which the earth pays a willing tribute of veneration and praise.

The history of discovery and of colonization, is nearly identical with the history of commerce; and the march of mprovement and civilization has been, by an equal step, in company with discovery and colonization. It is curious to observe how uniformly these important movements have had their origin, or their chief conduct and agency, among commercial nations, or with commercial men. When Necho, an Egyptian king, at a very early period, sent out an expedition, with a view of ascertaining, if possible, the form and termination of Africa, he was fain to trust its execution to Phoenician navigators. It was the Tyrians who founded Carthage and Cadiz. And it was Carthage, in her turn, that sent out Hanno, with sixty ships and many thousands of emigrants, of both sexes, to pass the pillars of Hercules, to seek out new and unheard of territories, and found new colonies. Rome contented herself with making discoveries on land, and by the march of her conquering armies; and it was at once, perhaps, a cause and a consequence of the want of commercial enterprise among the Romans, that they religiously believed to the last, with Pliny the naturalist, and the learned and philosophic Cicero at their head, that, of the zones of the earth, two only, namely, the temperate zones, were habitable. That these two were antipodal, and all the communication between them forever impassible, by the interposition of a tropical region, which was perpetually burnt up with heated vapors," and unquenchable flames! Since the period when extended navigation became possible, by the use of the magnetic needle, discovery and colonization have been almost exclusively in commercial hands. Portugal was a maritime state, and led the way. The Spaniards, the Dutch, and the English, all engaged in these enterprises. The connexion of discovery with commerce is traceable, indeed, in every direction. Americus Vespucius was a native of Florence, where he was thoroughly instructed in natural philosophy, astronomy, and geography-three branches of learning which engrossed attention at the time in Florence, expressly on account of their importance to commerce. John Cabot was a Venetian pilot, of great skill in navigation, and Sebastian Cabot was his son. Columbus, too, had his origin in commercial Italy. He was a native of Genoa. So it is with discovery,

and attempts at discovery, in more modern times. The hand of commerce is in it all. The efforts to break through the ice of the polcs, early began, long continued, and still persevered in; and the formidable South Sea expeditions of our own times-the resolution to penetrate every sea and every clime to leave no portion of the earth unexplored, or unvisited, by the foot of civilized and christian man, all this is the work, and the mission of commerce- comes of commerce belongs to commerce and will finally be

accomplished by commerce.

But there is another department of human action and enterprise, in which the agency of commerce has been, and must continue to be, exerted with the happiest effect-leading, indeed, to results of the highest interest, and of the last importance to mankind. I allude to the matter of the improved and improving means and facilities of intercommunication, for transit and for transport, whether by water or by land. I set down, without hesitation, to the account and credit of commerce, about all that has yet been done, and by anticipation, all that may be done, in this sort of improvement; because, without pretending that whatever has been done in this way, has always been begun and prosecuted by commerce-yet commercial intercourse has always been the direct object in view and so it must be in future. The interests of trade are apt to be the first to prompt to these improvements; and whether that be so or not, all other interests, agriculture, manufactures, mechanic arts, and trades, with ten thousand incidental benefits, are favorably affected and promoted by them, according as trade is advanced through their instrumentality.

In speaking of these improvements, I mean to include every thing that affects navigation and transport by sea, or on rivers and canals, or carriage by land. The science of navigation itself, with the various sciences and branches of learning more immediately connected with it—the art of building ships, as well as the art of sailing them -the discovery of the magnetic needle, made by a navigator-the progress which has been made in the knowledge of meteorology; of climates, currents, winds, and storms - the discovery and establishment of channels, harbors, and roadsteads, with the various artificial works relating to them -the method of propelling vessels by steam, destined, no doubt, to effect new and mighty revolutions yet in maritime and naval operations- the increased protection afforded to ocean navigation and to trade, not more by an adequate show of naval force, than by the prevalence of sentiments and doctrines at once more humane and more just-the establishment and growth of commercial tribunals, conducted on the principles of equity, and the advance which has been made in building up a system of international and commercial law, on the foundations of justice. Add to all this, improved river navigation, the construction and use of canals, road making on new and improved plans, and finally, the adoption of rail-ways, with the employment of steam-power upon them, for draft and for speed. Here is a most lame and imperfect enumeration of particulars, in regard to which, the agency and the interests of commerce have been exerted and wielded, not for the purposes of general utility and advantage merely, but for the rapid and substantial advance of the race of men in knowledge and wisdom, in civilization and power.

Improvements in the means, securities, and facilities of transports, considered in two principal divisions, have reference either to ocean navigation, or to carriage by way of the land. In regard to ocean navigation, if any one would understand the progress it has made, and the progress of mankind

along with it, for want of a better mode of arriving at the truth, and comprehending the whole of it, he might take a single instance or example. Let him look at a ship of Grecian construction, and compare it with some specimens of modern naval architecture. Certainly one of the most celebrated maritime expeditions in the world, was that undertaken by the Greeks to Colchis-not, I suppose, by any means wholly fabulous. The ship in which the adventurers sailed, was the Argo, described as magnificent in her proportions, as well as exquisitely finished, and altogether of such worth as finally to attain the distinction of having her name, as if for a perpetual memorial, written on the heavens among the stars. This stately ship was forced to make a tedious circuit on her return home, after the immediate objects of the voyage had been accomplished; and it is remarkable, that a part of this circuit was a journey on solid ground, or over the mountains and valleys that lie between the Danube and the Adriatic. Of course, the carrying was equitably divided between the parties to the enterprise. The ship bore the navigators by water, and the navigators bore the ship by land. So, too, one of the most famous naval battles recorded in history, was the fight between the Greeks and Persians, at Salamis, into which the Greeks brought three hundred and eighty ships-all, of course, mighty men-of-war, but not a deck, nor a quarter of a deck, among them all. "Look on this picture, and then on this." Think of the moving mountains of wood and iron, which compose one of our ships of war, of the larger class- -the Pennsylvania, for example-her lofty decks, rising tier upon tier- her enormous length-the fearful height between her top mast and hold-the batteries she carries, and the army of men that musters within her walls. Or take an instance from our commercial marine - one of our own beautiful liners, for example — or, if you please, the Great Western, as a specimen of her class, and typifying the latest triumph of human skill and human power, over those most formidable obstacles, which broad oceans, capricious gales, and raging tempests, have always interposed to the intercourse of distant nations and peoples, and thence to the progress of mankind in general cultivation and improvement.

But not to dwell on this point, and considering navigation as now in the act of approaching all the perfection of which the imagination can conceive it to be capable; let us recur, for a moment, to the consideration of the subject of internal improvements of improved facilities for intercourse and communication through or by way of the land.

The agency of commerce, in this department, has been conspicuous from the beginning. We have an instance or two, in its early history, to illustrate the promptness with which it lays hold of the idea of internal improvements, as essential to the success of its own enterprises. To say nothing of the celebrated canals of ancient Egypt, when Alexander the Great had opened the trade of India to the Greeks, and the Europeans generally, at the city of Alexandria, to be carried on by way of the sea, and the Arabian gulf, his next concern was to open the same great magazine of supplies, by some convenient route, to his Asiatic subjects, situated about and above the sources of the Tigris and the Euphrates. For this purpose, he commissioned his officer Nearchus, in command of a competent fleet, to explore and examine the coast-wise course of navigation, between the mouth of the Indus and the entrance to the Persian gulf. One serious obstruction he knew existed in another part of the proposed route, namely: at the mouth of the Euphrates, in the cataracts, so called, which the jealous and narrow-minded Persians, in their time, had caused to be constructed, as an effectual barrier against the

approach of strangers to their territory, in that direction. Now this obstruction Alexander proposed and was prepared to remove, however difficultthe first example, it is believed, on record, of a plan to free the channel of a river from impediments to its navigation, whether natural or artificial. This was, comparatively, in the infancy of the world, as well as of commerce. At a later period, after the race in Europe, which, in the lapse of time, had grown up to the stature of incipient, though uncouth and awkward manhood, had been struck back again into mere childishness, ignorant, stupid, and ferocious; and when the first glimmerings of returning intelligence and civilization began to appear, another instance occurred of a grand conception for a work of internal improvement. This was the conception of Charlemagne, who, by subduing, and uniting together, under his own sway, a large number of hitherto independent, and jealous, and jarring tribes and nations, prepared the way for a renewal of the intercourse and commerce between various points and places in Europe, which had existed under the dominion of Rome. To favor the interests of commerce, and the improvement of his people still more, he formed the magnificent project of opening a direct communication between the German ocean and the Black sea, by uniting the waters of the Danube and the Rhine. Unhappily, the low state of scientific attainment and skill at that day, would not allow of the execution of the work.

It cannot be necessary to allude to other cases of the like kind, with those just referred to, in ancient or early times, to show what was then the tendency and spirit of commerce; and this lecture has already been drawn out to too great a length, to admit of any thing more than a naked reference to the wonderful progress which works of internal improvement have made, and are making, in modern times, in all the civilized quarters of the globe. The improvement of natural river channels, and the construction of artificial ones; with the more recent device of reticulating the broad surface of extended territories and districts of country with rail-roads, are leading to consequences of which the first and faintest effect only are beginning to be flt; but which, in their ultimate and grand features, have as yet been but most imperfectly imagined. Foreign commerce, from the very necessity of things, is greatly dependent upon, and limited by, domestic and internal trade. And as domestic and internal trade must always depend, for its extent and its prosperity, on means and facilities which can only be afforded by liberal and enlightened systems, and works of internal improvement; so may these systems and works be deemed secured and guarantied to the world, by the very interests of commerce, as well as by the generous, and enterprising spirit which is commonly known to actuate it. What has been already done in this matter in the several countries of Europe, and in the United States the more commercial communities among them being always on the lead is the pledge and earnest of the efforts and the successes which are certainly to follow. The command of Heaven to man, that he should subdue the earth, will never have its answer in complete obedience, till he shall have conquered, and all but annihilated, the spaces that intervene between the seas and the centres of territories and continents, and between the various extremities of the land, and points of departure and approach, for the population and the business that must swarm and swell upon its surface. That this consummation must sooner or later be realized, it would be most unreasonable to doubt, in the face of all the enterprise, activity, energy, and skill, which so eminently characterize this age of the world. The human intellect is awakened and aroused and no where more thoroughly than among our