steamboats; in the other, by railroad cars, moved by locomotive steam engines. In speed, the advantage in favor of the latter may be taken at one third, which will be decisive as to passengers, other things being equal. For merchandise, the river will have an advantage in freight, not overbalancing the advantage of an additional market, and that the first market for all that part of business of which Boston is the natural emporium. This will be the state of things while the river is open. While, for three or four months, at least, of the year, the river is closed, the railroad will monopolize the travel and the trade; and Boston will be New York. I am as far, however, from thinking, as from wishing, that New York should be injured. As for destroying the commerce of New York, it will be destroyed when the Atlantic Ocean evaporates, and the Hudson River dries up. It will be no detriment to her that the commercial world behind her should be in full exercise and healthy action in the winter season, rather than lie dormant and torpid; and with her advantageous position, both for foreign and domestic trade, whatsoever benefits her neighbors, and particularly whatsoever benefits the great interior behind her, will benefit her. It would be of no advantage to New York to have Boston droop and decline. The main centre of trade is always benefited by the prosperity of every other seat of business. Sometimes, sir, the best mode of judging of the value of a work is to ask how we should be affected by its loss, if, after possessing it, it should be taken away. Suppose we had at this moment a navigable river from Boston to Albany, or a canal, and it should, by some convulsion of nature, sink or dry up, would it not be thought the direst of calamities? Suppose we had a railway, a natural railway, a level ridge from Boston Bay to the confluence of the Mohawk and the Hudson, laid down by the hand of Providence, and ready for use; and the philosophers had been able, by their tables. and instruments, to predict some great catastrophe which would destroy it, and had foretold the day when the earth would open and swallow it up,-should we not regard it almost as the day of approaching doom, and be ready to open our churches, and fall on our knees, and implore a merciful Providence to avert the calamity? And how does the case differ, sir, in a practical point of view, between the loss of a great blessing, proceeding from an overwhelming natural convulsion, and its want, arising from our own neglect and apathy? Sir, I have almost done. I have trespassed too long on your patience; but I will add a few words more on another aspect of the question; one to which, in this place, in Faneuil Hall, although it is a view of the subject remote from financial questions, I may, in common with the gentlemen who have preceded me, with propriety allude. The great political basis of all our prosperity is union; the great political danger that menaces us is disunion. All else can be borne if we can avoid this calamity; and if this is fated to befall us, all our other blessings will turn to dust and ashes. The rapid growth of our country, the prodigious population and resources of single sections, tend to disunion. I am sorry to say that, on the floor of Congress, I have heard calculations of the capacity of individual states to support themselves as independent governments. I know of nothing so well adapted to counteract the centrifugal tendency as to increase the facilities for intercourse. They will prove not merely avenues of business, but pathways of intelligence and social feeling. They will make the distant near, and the many one, for all the purposes of defence, strength, and good neighborhood. It is the great prerogative of science and art, applied to the business of life, to conquer the obstacles of time and place; to redress the wrongs of nature. By promoting the rapid circulation of knowledge, the prompt communication of intelligence, we shall carry on and perfect the noble work HERE begun by men, some of whose portraits are now looking down upon us. No subject, after the liberty of his country, lay nearer to the heart of Washington than the opening of a great line of communication between the east and west. It was the very first subject to which he turned his attention, at the close of the revolutionary war. I hold in my hand an ex tract from a letter, written by the father of his country, in 1784. I would not, while the bell is ringing for nine o'clock, obtrude with any lighter authority on the audience. But who will not listen to the counsels of Washington, on the question before us? "I have lately," says he, "made a tour through the Lakes George and Champlain, as far as Crown Point; then, returning to Schenectady, I proceeded up the Mohawk River to Fort Schuyler, crossed over to Wood Creek, which empties into Oneida Lake, and affords a water communication with Ontario. I then traversed the country to the head of the eastern branch of the Susquehanna, and viewed the Lake of Otsego, and the portage between that lake and the Mohawk River at Canojoharie. Prompted by these actual observations, I could not help taking a more contemplative and extensive view of the vast inland navigation of these United States, and could not but be struck with the immense diffusion and importance of it, and with the goodness of that Providence which has dealt his favors to us with so profuse a hand. Would to God we may have wisdom enough to improve them!" Such, sir, is the voice of him whose sagacity in all the civil concerns of life was equal to his patriotism in council and conduct in the field; and to this affecting prayer of Washington, who can deem it irreverent to add, Let all the people say, AMEN! ANNIVERSARY OF THE SETTLEMENT OF MR EVERETT, after returning his thanks for the honor done him by the chair and the company, and expressing his gratification at learning, from the eloquent orator of the day, (Judge Morris,) what he was ignorant of before, that a person of his own name and family (Richard Everett) was one of the first settlers of Springfield, went on to observe, that he felt, at all times, a peculiar satisfaction in attending a celebration of this character. I rejoice, sir, he remarked, in the recurrence of these anniversaries, at which the dust is swept from the sepulchres of past times, the stone rolled away from their moss-grown graves, and the venerable forms of the departed, the dead saints of ancient days, in the eye of a patriotic imagination, walk forth, in dim procession, like the ancestral forms of a Roman funeral pageant. We seem to see reproduced to us the dark and serious visages of the fathers of the republic, the modest countenances and sober costume of the matrons, the timid maiden, the bounding, athletic youth, all in visible presentment, as when they lived and moved upon the scene of actual existence. I regard such a celebration as a noble day of recompense for the tribulations of other times. Would not William Pyncheon, sir, on the very day when his book, smitten with the heavy rebuke of the fathers of church and state, was ignominiously burned on Boston Common, have felt his heart cheered and his spirit soothed, even under the infliction of that stigma, could he have foreseen that, when near two centuries should Delivered at the public dinner, on the 25th of May, 1836, in commemoration of the first settlement of Springfield, Mass. have passed, on an occasion like this, amidst thousands of an admiring posterity, his name would be repeated with respect, gratitude, and veneration, as the great founder of what we behold around us! Could I hope, sir, that, after the lapse of two hundred years, my humble name would be remembered with kind feelings by those who shall come after us, as one who had sought to promote the public good, I should deem any labor, care, and sacrifice, as cheaply encountered for such a recompense. If to the moral interest of the festival which has called us together, you add the attractions of nature, at this pleasant season of the year, and in this beautiful region, you will not wonder, sir, at our readiness to leave the noisy streets and smoky atmosphere of the city for a visit to the banks of this most lovely river. A well-known poet, (Joel Barlow,) a native of our sister state, which bears its name, has exclaimed, in the most beautiful lines of a long work, "Thy stream, my Hartford, in its misty robe, I confess, sir, I cannot behold this enchanting prospect, I could not perform the commodious, rapid, and agreeable journey by which it is now approached, without my heart melting within me at the thought of the trials and sufferings of our fathers, the hardships of the wilderness, and the perils of the savage foe which they were called to face, amidst these to us so peaceful and charming scenes. Sir, the emigration to the banks of the Connecticut was a bold and hazardous step. At the time when it was taken, I believe the learned orator of the day will tell us, that Concord, in Middlesex county, was the most western settlement in Massachusetts, and that was barely commenced. It is always, of course, dangerous to march in the advance of civilization; to place yourself on the outposts of society, in the neighborhood of uncivilized Indians; but the settlers of Springfield, by a brave bound, plunged into the midst of a |