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has given to this court in the late Courant, relating to the fitting out of a ship by the government, and truly acknowledges his inadvertency and folly therein in affronting the government, as also his indiscretion and indecency when before the court, for all which he intreats the court's forgiveness, and praying a discharge from the stone prison where he is confined by order of the court, and that he may have the liberty of the yard, he being much indisposed and suffering in his health by the said confinement; a certificate of Dr Zabdiel Boylston being offered with the said petition.

"In the House of Representatives, read, and

"Voted, That James Franklyn, now a prisoner in the stone gaol, may have the liberty of the prison house and yard, upon his giving security for his faithful abiding there.

"In Council, read and concurred; consented to,

"SAMUEL SHUTE."

An attempt was made in the Council to follow up their blow by an order which passed that body, providing that "no such weekly paper [as the Courant] be hereafter printed or published, without the same be first perused and allowed by the Secretary, as has been usual." This order, however, was not at this time concurred in by the House. It is given at length in the History of Printing, together with the proceedings of the following January, when such an order passed both branches. See Thomas's History of Printing in America, Vol. II. pp. 220, 221.

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What the Council meant by the phrase as has been usual," is not so clear. It was omitted in the order as it finally passed both houses, in January, 1723.

FOURTH OF JULY AT LOWELL.*

FELLOW-CITIZENS :

I HAVE Cheerfully complied with the request received from you a short time since, that I would address you on this great national festival. A considerable part of my time, since I was honored with your invitation, has been necessarily devoted by me to fulfilling a previous engagement. I therefore appear before you this morning under circumstances creating some claim to your indulgence.

It seemed, however, to me that this was peculiarly the occasion when a man ought to be ready and willing to appear before his fellow-citizens with little or no preparation. It is, in fact, eminently the day for short notice. It could not well be shorter than that which our fathers had to gird on the harness for the great conflicts which led to the declaration of independence. Rarely, in the course of human affairs, is shorter notice of important events given than that which called the citizens of Middlesex to arms on the nineteenth of April, 1775. Their deeds were not those of veteran armies manœuvring for whole campaigns under skilful generals. The very name which they gave themselves is their best description. They were minute men; they held themselves ready to move without any notice; — and their marching orders came at last from the alarm-bell, at midnight.

I might go a little farther, and say, fellow-citizens of

Delivered at Lowell, on Monday, the 5th of July, 1830, and now first published. A lecture before the Charlestown Lyceum was delivered by the author, on the anniversary of Governor Winthrop's landing, the preceding week.

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Lowell, that your town itself, in its very existence, affords signal authority for doing things at short notice. If, on the fourth of July, 1820,- ten years ago only, a painter had come to the confluence of the Merrimack and Concord Rivers, and sketched upon his canvas the panorama of such a city as this, and pronounced that, in ten years, such a settlement would be found on this spot, it would have been thought a very extravagant suggestion. If he had said, that, in the course of forty or fifty years, such a population would be gathered here, with all these manufacturing establishments, private dwellings, warehouses, schools, and churches, he would have been thought to indulge a bold, but pleasing, vision, not, perhaps, beyond the range of probability. The Roman history contains a legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, who, having prolonged their slumbers to the unusual extent of two hundred and seventy years, were a good deal bewildered, when they awoke, to find a new emperor on the throne, strange characters on the coin, and other very considerable innovations. A person who should have gone to sleep in one of the two farm-houses which, ten years ago, stood on the site of Lowell, would have found greater changes on waking.

Finally, my friends, without wishing to run down the idea, I may remark, that our whole country has taken her present position in the family of nations on very short notice. Our history seems a great political romance. In the annals of most other states, ancient and modern, there is a tardiness of growth, which, if our own progress be assumed as the standard of comparison, we hardly know how to explain. Greece had been settled a thousand years before she took any great part on the theatre of the world. Rome, at the end of five centuries from the foundation of the city, was not so powerful as the state of Massachusetts. It is not much short of two thousand years since the light of the ancient civilization — such as it was - began to dawn on Great Britain. Its inhabitants have been a Christianized people for nearly fifteen centuries; and I have read in a newspaper, this morning, an extract from an English print, in

which we are informed that turnpike roads and canals have been introduced into that country for seventy years: and this is mentioned as a long time. It is not one hundred years since the mail coach was first introduced into that country; and yet in this and all similar enterprises we know that our brethren in England are far before the rest of the European world.

What do we witness in this country? Compare our present condition with that of this then barbarous wilderness two centuries ago. With what rapidity the civilization of Europe has been caught up, naturalized, and, in many points of material growth and useful art, carried beyond the foreign standard! Consider our rapid progress even in the last generation, not merely in appropriating the arts of the old world, but in others of our own invention or great improvement. Take the case of steam navigation as a striking example. It has been known, for a century or more, that the vapor of boiling water is the most powerful mechanical agent at our command. The steam engine was brought near to perfection, by Bolton and Watt, sixty years ago; and it is not much less than that time since attempts began to be made to solve the problem of steam navigation. Twenty years ago, there were steamers regularly plying on the North River and Staten Island Sound; but so lately as eleven years ago, I think, there was no communication by steam between Liverpool and Dublin, or between Dover and Calais; nor did the use of steamers spread extensively in any direction in Europe till they had covered the American waters.

Take another example, in the agricultural staple so closely connected with the industry of Lowell. The southern parts of Europe, Egypt, and many other portions of Africa, and a broad zone in Asia, possess a soil and climate favorable to the growth of cotton. It is, in fact, an indigenous product of Asia, Africa, or both. It has been cultivated in those countries from time immemorial: the oldest European historians speak of its use. It is, also, an indigenous product throughout a broad belt on the American continent; and was cultivated by the aborigines before the discovery of Columbus. Al

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though it was the leading principle of the colonial system to encourage the cultivation in the colonies of all those articles which would be useful to the manufactures of the mother country, not a bale of cotton is known to have been exported from the United States to Great Britain before the revolution. Immediately after the close of the revolutionary war, attention began to be turned to this subject in several parts of the Southern States. The culture of cotton rapidly increased; and, since the invention of the cotton gin, has become, next to the cereal grains, the most important agricultural product. It is supposed, that, for the present year, the cotton crop of the United States will amount to one million of bales five times, I presume, the amount raised for exportation in all the rest of the world.

Take another example, in commerce and navigation, and one peculiarly illustrative of the effect, on the industry of the country, of the political independence established on the day which we commemorate. The principles of the colonial system confined our trade and navigation to the intercourse of the mother country. The individuals are living, or recently deceased, who made the first voyages from this country to the Baltic, to the Mediterranean, or around either of the great capes of the world. Before the declaration of independence, the hardihood and skill of our mariners had attracted the admiration of Europe. Burke has commemorated them in a burst of eloquence which will be rehearsed as long as the English language is spoken.* But though he exclaims, "No sea but what is vexed by their fisheries, no climate that is not witness to their toils," the commerce and navigation of the colonies are scarce worthy of mention, in comparison with those of the United States. All that Burke admired and eulogized is inconsiderable, when contrasted with what has

"Neither the perseverance of dexterous and firm sagacity of

Speech on Conciliation with America. Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the English enterprise ever carried this most perilous mode of hard industry (the whale fishery) to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people a people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone, of manhood,"

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