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AMERICAN INDUSTRY.

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AMERICAN INDUSTRY.-A. L. STONE.

WHEN We seek to fill out the inventory of the country's wealth, we are accustomed to rehearse our continental breadth of territory, our double shore-line inviting the tribute of two oceans, the far reaches of our interior navigable waters, the number and magnitude of our internal improvements, the grandeur of our forests, the inexhaustible treasures of our mines, the concrete wealth of our cities, fortresses and navies; but there is one item beside, more seldom named, less magnificent to the ear when we speak of it, but of richer promise and larger copiousness than all-the industry of the people. We are a nation of workers. We have no idlers here. It is our industry, with all its brawny arms, with its manifold arts and inventions-with its mechanic skill and endless train of machinery; with its ten thousand iron nerves subsidizing and economizing labor-with its untiring and ever multiplying enginery, busy in every field of toil, manufacturing every fabric for the comfort and use of man, and keeping the land ajar day and night with its perpetual play—that keeps us so strong in all material wealth. It is this that enabled us, in the stern exigency of war, to keep two million of men under arms, to compensate the loss of their labor, to equip them for war's great ministry, to clothe them and feed them, and transport them by land and by sea, and endure all the waste of war's thriftless husbandry, to pour forth the deep and broad streams of a noble charity, such as the valleys of a continent never ran before, and at the same time to furnish supplies of bread for the granaries of all the world. This is the wonder of the age, the marvel of history. Under so tremendous a draught we are a self-sustaining nation. This achievement of our home-bred industry draws upon us, from abroad, more eager and curious eyes than any other feature or fact of our national life. All labor of the old world looks to us for instruction. Invention, the world over, turns hither to study our models, to copy our art, and to learn the secrets of such a vast productiveness. All the sons of toil stretch forth their brown hands to lay hold upon our implements for turning the curse of labor into a blessing and a recreation. All our swarthy workers were ready-made soldiers. They had only to hear the call-"Fall in for country, and liberty and human

ity!" and lo! a great army, which for numbers, discipline, endurance and heroic valor the world had never seen in all its historic fields!

The step that tracked a straight furrow through the acres of tillage could move as straight to the deadly charge. The eye that was so sure and true amid the mazes of mechanic skill could glance as keen and cool along a rifle barrel. The invention that produced its triumphs in mouse-traps and baby-rockers, in sewing machines and mowers and reapers, and all the enginery of work, could cast cannon and build Monitors, and revolutionize the whole art of war.

GROWTH OF CALIFORNIA.-F. P. TRACY, 1858.

A LITTLE more than ten years ago, California lay in the indolence and silence of that summer noonday in which she had been basking for ages. A few idle villages slept by the shores of her bays; a few squalid ranches dotted the interior with patches of wretched cultivation. There were herds of cattle in her valleys, but they were almost valueless for the want of a market. There were churches, but their chiming bells woke only the echoes of a vast solitude. The sun ripened only the harvest of wild oats on the hills, and the beasts of prey made their lairs in security close by the abodes of men. Seldom did a merchant ship spread her white wings in the offing; seldom did the vaquero in his solitary rounds hear the dip of the oar upon our rivers. Silence, deep and everlasting, brooded over all the land, and the lone oaks on the hills appeared like sentinels keeping guard around the sleeping camp of nature.

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The cession of the country to the United States by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and the discovery of gold in the early part of the year 1848, changed the whole scene as if by the power magic. As in the Naumachia of old time, the dry arena was instantly converted into a great lake on which contending navies struggled for the mastery; so, instantly on the discovery of gold,

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California was filled with people as if they had risen from the earth. The port of San Francisco was crowded with vessels. The rivers were alive with the multitudes that made them their highway, and the din of commerce broke forever the silence of centuries. It seemed as if the people had stolen the lamp of Aladdin and wished for the creation, not of palaces merely, but of royal cities, and an empire of which these should be the chief places; and at their wish, the cities of our State arose, not by slow, toilsome growth, but complete and princely at their very birth. The rattle of the shovel and the pick was heard in every mountain gorge, and a wide stream of gold flowed from the sierra to the sea. The plains, rejoicing in their marriage to industry, bore fruitfully their yellow harvests. Villages, hamlets, farmhouses, schools, and churches sprung up everywhere; wharves were built, roads were opened; stage-coaches and steamers crowded all profitable routes; lands, houses aud labor, rose to an enormous value; and plenty, with her blessings, crowned the rolling year.

SUPPOSED SPEECH OF JOHN ADAMS IN SUPPORT OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE.-DANIEL WEBSTER.

SINK or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote. It is true, indeed, that in the beginning, we aimed not at Independence. But there's a Divinity which shapes our ends. The injustice of England has driven us to arms; and, blinded to her own interest for our good, she has obstinately persisted, till Independence is now within our grasp. We have but to reach forth to it, and it is ours. Why, then, should we defer the Declaration? Is any man so weak as now to hope for a reconciliation with England? Do we mean to submit to the measures of Parliament, Boston port-bill and all? I know we do not mean to submit. We never shall submit.

Sir, the Declaration will inspire the people with increased courage. Instead of a long and bloody war for restoration of privileges, for redress of grievances, for chartered immunities, held

under a British king, set before them the glorious object of entire Independence, and it will breathe into them anew the breath of life. Read this Declaration at the head of the army: every sword will be drawn from its scabbard, and the solemn vow uttered, to maintain it, or to perish on the bed of honor. Publish it from the pulpit; religion will approve it, and the love of religious liberty will cling round it, resolved to stand with it, or fall with it. Send it to the public halls; proclaim it there; let them hear it, who heard the first roar of the enemy's cannon; let them see it, who saw their brothers and their sons fall on the field of Bunker Hill, and in the streets of Lexington and Concord, and the very walls will cry out in its support.

Sir, before God, I believe the hour is come. My judgment approves this measure, and my whole heart is in it. All that I have, and all that I am, and all that I hope, in this life, I am now ready here to stake upon it; and I leave off as I begun, that live or die, survive or perish, I am for the Declaration. It is my living sentiment, and, by the blessing of God, it shall be my dying sentiment; Independence now; and Independence FOREVER.

SLAVERY THE CORNER-STONE OF THE SOUTHERN CON. FEDERACY.-ALEX. H. STEPHENS.

THE new Constitution has put at rest, forever, all agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution-African slavery as it exists among us-the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. The foundations of our new government are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man. That slavery-subordination to the superior

race is his natural and normal condition.

This, our new government, is the first in the history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral

truth.

The truth may be slow in development, as all truths are, and ever have been, in the various branches of science. It was so with the principles announced by Galileo; it was so with Adam

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Smith, and his principles of political economy. It was so with Harvey and his theory of the circulation of the blood. It is said that not a single one of the medical profession, living at the time of the announcement of the truths made by him, admitted them. Now, they are universally acknowledged. May we not, therefore, look with confidence to the ultimate universal acknowledgment of the truths upon which our system rests? It is the first government ever instituted upon principles in strict conformity to nature, and the ordination of Providence, in furnishing the materials of human society. Many governments have been founded upon the principle of the enslavement of certain classes; but the classes thus enslaved were of the same race, and in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature's laws. The negro by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system. The architect, in the construction of buildings, lays the foundation with proper materials-the granite-then comes the brick or the marble. The substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it, and by experience we know that it is best not only for the superior, but for the inferior race that it should be so. It is, indeed, in conformity with the ordi

nance of the Creator.

LAUS DEO.-JOHN G. WHITTIER.

[On hearing the bells ring for the Constitutional Amendment abolishing slavery in the United States.]

IT is done!

Clang of bell and roar of gun

Send the tidings up and down.

How the belfries rock and reel,

How the great guns, peal and peal,

Fling the joy from town to town!

Ring, O bells!

Every stroke exulting tells

Of the burial-hour of crime,

Loud and long, that all may hear,

Ring for every listening ear
Of Eternity and Time!

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