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Show [21] [2°l national induflry, and extend and animate every part of our foreign and domeflic commerce. This would be a curious fubjeCt indeed-but I mull prefcribe bounds to mylelf in a matter fo vaft and various. Ii'pafs therefore to the Colonies in another point of view, their agriculture. This they have profecuted with fuch a fpirit, that, befides feeding plentifully their own growing multitude, their annual export of grain, comprehending rice, has fome years ago exceeded- a Million in. value. Of their lallt harveft, I am, perfuaded, they will export much more. At the beginning of the century, fome of thefe Colonies imported corn from the mother country. For fome time pail, the old world has been fed from the new. The {carcity which you have felt would have been a defolating famine; if this child of your old age, with a true filial piety, with a Roman charity, had not put the full? breaft of its youthful exuberance to the mouth of its exhaufied parent. As to the wealth which the Colonies have drawn from the {ea by their filheries, you had all that matter fully opened at your bar. You fure ly thought thofe acquifitions of value; for the feemed even to excite your envy; and yet the fpii‘it, by which that enterprizing emp loyment has been exercifed, ought rather, in my opinion, to have raifed your efleem and admiration. And Pray: pray, Sir, what in the world is equal to it? Pafs by the other parts, and look at the manner in which the people of New England have of late carried on the Whale Fifhery. Whilfi we follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice, and behold them penetrating into the deepefl' frozen receflés of Hudfon's Bay, and Davis's Streights, whilfl: we are looking for them beneath the Arétic circle, we hear that they have pierced into the oppofite region of polar cold, that they are at the Antipodes, and engaged under the frozen ferpent of the fouth. Falkland Ifland, which feemed too remote and romantic an objeét for the grafp of national ambition, is but a itage and refting-place in the progrefs of their viétorious induftry. Nor is the equinoé'rial heat more difcouraging to them, than the accumulated Winter of both the poles. \Ve know that whilf't fome of them draw the line and {trike the harpoon on the coaft of Africa, others run the longitude, and purfue their gigantic game along the coafi of Brazil. No tea but what is vexed by their fifheries. No climate that is not witnefs to their toils. Neither the perfeverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dextrous and firm fagacity of Englilh enterprize, ever carried this mofi perilous mode of hardy induf'cry to the extent to which it has been pufhed by this recent people; a people who are fiill, as it were, but in the griftle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood. When I contemplate rhefc C 3 things |
