from thenceforth, if the same spirit continues to be manifested by its members, it will not be extravagant to predict that it will soon become the most extensive and valuable public library in the United States.

I am not without apprehension that this brief statement of the affairs of the association, and its connection with that over which I have the honor to preside, may have been deficient in interest with some present, who have no immediate concern in either of the institutions alluded to, and especially that part of my audience whose approving smiles are grateful to my judgment now, as they were formerly to my vanity; but knowing, as I do, the tender relations in which many of them stand to the associates, I forbear to make an apology. There are, I trust, mothers here, watching with tender solicitude the blossoms of hope; sisters exulting with affectionate pride in the prospect of a future harvest of honorable distinction; and it does not require much penetration to discover that here also are those who fondly anticipate the time when youthful vows shall be redeemed with mercantile good faith and honor.

Commerce is a subject much treated upon, but not exhausted; followed by many, but appreciated by few, we are too apt to regard it only as the means of acquiring wealth, not as a profession tending to improve the mind, refine the imagination, and enlarge the heart of its follower.

It has ever been the policy of wise and liberal governments to foster and protect the great interests of trade; and in no country is the wisdom of this policy more apparent, and its obligations more imperative than in ours. Our form of government, and the popular character of our political institutions, derive strength from the inseparable connection between the interests of the merchant and a just and enlightened administration of the laws. The geographical position of the country, which seems to point out the advantages of foreign intercourse, without the dangers of entangling alliances; the habits of our people, ingenious, speculative and ardent, fertile in resources, and prompt in adaptation; the inseparable union and mutual reliance which exists in a pre-eminent degree between this arm of national strength and the other great interests of the community, agriculture and manufactures; all tend to prove the wisdom as well as the justice of that sound political maxim, that government is bound to protect the merchant in return for the support it derives from him. In vain shall the husbandman come "seeking fruit upon his fig-tree" unless he "dig around it and dung it." And above all, wo to our rulers, (if any such shall hereafter arise among us,) and deeply will their course be deprecated, who shall not only disregard this sacred obligation, but embarrass the operations of commerce, dry up its fountains, or obstruct its streams. The first indication of a tendency to arbitrary power in rulers, is a neglect of the just claims of the merchant to the paternal care and protection of the government; and the first blow of tyranny has always been aimed at his independence and prosperity. Let us fervently pray, then, that such a blight may never fall upon our beloved country.

Commerce affords the readiest and most natural resource of the government in times of emergency. The merchant, from the nature of his business, is nearer at hand, and more reliable on such occasions, than the landed proprietor. The frequent and quick returns of his capital, furnishes the former at times with unemployed funds, (the want of employment, perhaps, arising from the very case which creates a necessity for the supply.) These funds he can advantageously invest in government securi

ties, with a certainty of withdrawing them whenever his occasions may require it, proportioned to his confidence in the good faith of the borrowers, and their wisdom in the management of public affairs; while the difficulty and uncertainty of converting real estate into available funds, (increased by the same cause to which I have alluded,) deprives the latter of the ability to evince his patriotism by assisting to keep in motion the political machinery of the state.

When Napoleon applied to England the contemptuous epithet of "a nation of shopkeepers," he paid her a higher compliment than he intended; it was an unintentional tribute to the power she had acquired by trade; an extorted homage to that commercial policy by which her merchants had become the arbiters of Europe; of those elements of strength which the shopkeepers of the Royal Exchange, and Threadneedle street, had furnished to her rulers, by which she alone was enabled to prescribe boundaries to the ambition of the great Captain, and say to the mighty wave of Gallic usurpation, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther." Military prowess was held in check by mercantile combinations, and the shopkeeper proved an overmatch for the warrior.

Trade, by giving employment to labor, diffuses a widely-spread blessing over the land, and enriches the community by that which makes it rich. This is the true beneficence of trade. The landed proprietor, in countries where commerce does not exist, if his heart be open as his lands are productive, and his coffers full, (which, unhappily, is not always the case,) may dispense his benevolence among his poorer neighbors; and occasionally we find in that respectable class, those whose exalted privilege it is to be "a father to the fatherless," and to "cause the widow's heart to sing with joy ;" but if this benevolence be not grudgingly bestowed, it is at least subject to his will, and governed by his caprice; and the gratitude of the recipient is purchased at the expense of that noble independence which constitutes the glory and true equality of human nature. The benefits diffused among the laboring classes by the enterprising merchant, are equally felt as the uncertain bounty of the rich proprietor, and they involve no sacrifice of independence, no consciousness of inferiority, they

"Drop as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place bencath,”—

to be returned in the fruitful harvest of well-earned thrift. In the one case an obligation is created; in the other, the receiver is placed above the necessity or obligation of bounty.

The acquisition of wealth may arise from adventitious circumstances; from the successful labors of progenitors; or from a rise of property which the possessor has had no agency in producing, and from which no superiority can rightly be claimed, except so far as it better enables him to "do good and distribute," to promote the objects of charity, beneficence, and public spirit, and to furnish honest employment to those whose labor and skill offer a fair equivalent to his wealth; and the very nature of trade, its pursuits and employments, its necessities, and its immediate intercourse with those objects which look up to and rely upon its countenance and support, afford the most frequent opportunities, and give the largest scope to the indulgence of those propensities from which human nature derives its highest patent of nobility.

In nothing is the beneficial influence of trade more sensibly felt, and

more widely extended, than in the employment it gives to poor, but honest industry, and the consequent increase of its compensation. The opinions of Adam Smith, the practical and philosophical political economist, on the subject of high wages, are worth infinitely more than certain others, which may be better adapted to subserve a local and transient object. The true doctrine on this subject is contained in the following extract from the "Wealth of Nations :"

"The wages of labor are the encouragement of industry, which, like every other human quality, improves in proportion to the encouragement it receives. A plentiful subsistence increases the bodily strength of the laborer; and the comfortable hope of bettering his condition, and of ending his days, perhaps, in ease and plenty, animates him to exert that strength to the utmost: where wages are high, accordingly, we shall always find the workmen more active, diligent, and expeditious than where they are low."

Another writer observes, with equal sagacity, "As trade has increased, the miseries of the people have abated; the poor being employed by manufacture, by navigation, and the ordinary labors which trade furnishes for their hands, they have accordingly lived better, their poverty has been less, and they have been able to feed, who before might be said only to starve. And in those countries 'tis observable that where trade is most effectually extended, and has the greatest influence, there the poor live best, their wages are highest; and where wages are highest, the consumption of provisions increases most; where the consumption of provisions is most increased, the rate of provisions is highest; and where provisions are dearest, the rents of lands are advanced most."*

The same author illustrates his doctrine by the following example of the miserable effect of labor inadequately compensated: "We are told that in Russia and Muscovy, when for want of commerce labor was not assisted by art, they had no other way to cut out a large plank but by felling a great tree, and then with a multitude of hands and axes hew away all the sides of the timber, till they reduced the middle to one large plank; and that yet, when it was done, they would sell this plank as cheap as the Swedes or Prussians did the like, who cut three or four or more planks of the like size from one tree, by the help of saws and sawmills. The consequence must be that the miserable Russian labored ten times as much as the other did for the same money."

In no country are the fatal effects of low wages so apparent, and the miserable condition of the mass of the people so calculated to call forth the sympathy of the philanthropist, as in China, where the policy of arbitrary power has ever been exerted in the restriction of trade and the discouragement of commerce. In this degraded country, where the women do the labor of horses, and men, enervated from the want of proper food to sustain nature, perish under the lash of their taskmasters, millions of human beings, occupying a rank in the scale of creation inferior to that of the household animals in more favored countries, drag out a wretched existence upon a daily pittance of about five cents; and so hopeless is their condition, that the despairing mother not unfrequently perpetrates the dreadful crime of infanticide, to save her offspring from the misery of protracted existence.

* Defoe's English Commerce.

We do not, however, require those extreme cases to illustrate a doc trine so obvious to experience and philosophy, that the high price of la bor conduces to the glory of a nation, and the prosperity of its people. It should undoubtedly be graduated by the price of commodities, and the products of the earth should bear an equitable proportion to the cost of production; but in the business of life, as well in the graduation of value as in the endowments of the mind and the exercise of the moral faculties, it is the interest of all classes of the community that we should level upwards, and elevate as high as possible the rateable standard.

Commerce has in all ages been the great promoter and supporter of civil and religious freedom. She lives only in the atmosphere of liberty, and pines away under the restraints of superstition, fanaticism, or tyranny. The principles which regulate her action must be free as the air which fills her sails, and true as the compass which directs her course. Enterprise and sagacity "marshal her the way which she should go." Prudence and foresight sustain her in her course, and knowledge and refinement follow in her path. The light which she has shed upon the world has tended greatly to dispel the mists of ignorance, and to illumine the page in which man may read the story of his natural rights, and learn his true position in the scale of humanity. She brings home with the natural riches and productions of other countries the results of their discoveries, and the benefits of their experience. The blessings of rational religion, and the maxims of free government, are endeared to us by contrast, or enforced by example; and we may reasonably hope that there is nothing in human nature so perverse as to prevent us from growing better as we grow wiser.

The enlightened policy of Great Britain, which leads her government to encourage commerce, and protects those who turn her iron into silver, her coal into diamonds, and who realize the fable of the argonauts, not by going in search of a golden fleece, but by the more profitable transmutation of her own, has in all ages of her history resulted from the free exercise of liberal opinions, and a just administration of laws framed to guard the essential rights of the people; and experience happily comes in aid of reason in enforcing this wise and liberal policy upon her rulers, by showing the disastrous consequences attending every departure from it. The resistance of John Hampden to the payment of a tax of only twenty shillings, unjustly imposed under the name of ship-money, led the way to revolution and regicide; and the arbitrary enactment of a colonial port bill, and a degrading distinction between her children abroad and at home, wrested from Britain the brightest jewel in her crown.

Spain presents a striking instance of the incompatibility of the exercise of arbitrary power with the wholesome operations of trade, and the deleterious effects of religious intolerance upon the enterprise and ingenuity of mankind. She was prevented by those bad influences from availing herself of the advantages of the discovery of America. The influence of her lovely queen, the "bright particular star" which pointed the way of Columbus to this western world, and irradiated his path on the unknown waters of the great deep, was insufficient to remove the deeplaid foundations of political error, or counteract the blighting effects of religious superstition; and history gives us too much reason to believe that even the noble mind of the illustrious Isabella was prone to regard with unmerited favor the erroneous maxims of state and church govern

ment, which until her time no arm had been found strong enough, no heart pure enough, no head sound enough, successfully to resist, if she had been so minded. Spain ought to have been, but was not, a commercial nation; and it was eloquently said of her by a learned ecclesiastic,* whose essay on commerce proves him to have been as well acquainted with that subject as with those more immediately connected with his sacred vocation, "Spain was never in possession of those advantages which spring from a steady and permanent commerce. Instead of establishing a regular system of trade, she grasped at the power and revenue of sovereignty; instead of encouraging domestic industry, she drained her blood and wasted her vigor in the working of foreign mines; instead of giving security to property, she shackled the exertions of useful labor by harsh and ill-judged restraints.'

Another example of the injurious effects of arbitrary laws and bad government upon the salutary operations of trade, may be found in the history of Portugal, where the spirit of commercial enterprise sprung up, and simultaneously mingling its brightness for a short space with that of its neighboring kingdom of Spain, seemed about to reveal the beauty of truth, and expose the deformity of superstition; but, alas for humanity! the world's vision was not prepared to receive the light of liberal opinions, and the sacred flame was transient as it was brilliant.

The bright visions of extended empire and commercial greatness which were presented to the Portuguese by the noble enterprises of Prince Henry, the royal merchant of Portugal, the discovery of a new passage to India by the undaunted navigator Vasco de Gama, and the military prowess and benignant rule of the illustrious Albuquerque, were in a few years dissipated by the rapacity of the government of the mother country, and the barbarous policy of the delegated depositaries of power within their newly acquired possessions.

The hideous spirit of the Cape of Tempests, "called from the vasty deep" by the sublime imagination of the immortal poet of the Lusiad, seems to have been endued with a foreknowledge of the fatal influence to be exerted, ere a generation had passed, by the bad passions and corrupt institutions of man, to counteract the beneficial effects of this glorious enterprise.

"His red eyes glowing from their dusky caves,
Shot livid fires,"

not in angry repulsion of the adventurous mariner, who sought to estab lish his country's glory, and the benignant reign of commerce and civilization in unknown lands; but of his successors, the ruthless minion of power, whose steps would be marked by blood and rapine, and the unrelenting Jesuit, preparing already to enforce by chains and racks the mild doctrines of "peace on earth and good will to men," and to plant the cross of a blessed Redeemer within the gloomy walls of an eastern inquisition.

It is grateful to pass from those dark pages of commercial history, which have been cited to prove that where freedom dwells is alone the country of commerce, and to turn to the bright examples of nations and communities, who, under the operations of just laws and free institutions, have cultivated trade as a liberal and honorable profession, promoting that

* Bishop of Down and Connor.