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silly enough to say, "is not the work of a philosopher, but drudgery for slaves." The valor of the North has battled for ancestral privilege, and hereditary national renown. And now the rising Genius of the West appears, to be called to a more exalted ministry yet. If it has stooped a little to gather the material jewels scattered so prodigally at its feet, let that be pardoned to the impetuosity of a young nation's blood, and the pressure of the temptation. Its true destiny is to emancipate and to bear forward the whole oppressed and obstructed life of man into its due liberty and victory. When the banner of the republic was unfurled from a rifle ramrod on the icy peak of the Rocky Mountains, by one of the bravest sons of science, it was not merely a conquest of physical adventure; it was a type of our national enterprise, a prophecy of the part we have to play in rearing the great Home of equality and freedom for social man. Every mechanic has a personal interest in that peaceful capture of the wilderness that splendid symbol of the final subjection of the empire of Nature, in her vast and most imperial solitudes, to the empire of man in the might of his Hand and Brain and Heart. The ocean to which those subjugated mountains look off-that globe-completing sea, on whose shores the last and grandest act in the world's unfolding drama is to be displayed, is the PACIFIC; name of hope, of promise, of consolation, to the weary and warring and westward-looking tribes of men!

In the settlement of those social problems which now agitate and threaten, I believe that an intelligent industry has more to do than many people have imagined. The poverty of our great cities the terrible idleness and consequent degradation of woman, inequality between work and wages, between capital and labor, slavery all these involve questions which you help to settle, just so far as you inform workingmen with just ideas

of their work, and refine the people with intelligence. That may happen again, in substance, which happened in the reign of Edward, when the introduction of woolen manufactures into England lifted up the serfs of feudalism, and a new order of self-respecting laborers was installed in British society. Open such a display of the fruits of industry as now adorns Market street in every city of the slaveholding States, and it would do more than ten thousand platform harangues to break the bondman's chains. Plant the power that your machinists know how to gear along the water-courses of the South, send a few Brindleys, Slaters, Storrows, Lawrences, Olivers, Winchesters, as missionaries among them, and you would make emancipation as much the interest of the master as the joy of the slave. In fact, I regard your Mechanics' Charitable Association as a sort of practical anti-slavery society-quietly working out the demonstration which so many tongues are talking at.

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Be assured, new greatness awaits thinking and working men, when they shall look beyond private promotion, and make these humane enterprises their immediate concern. The preamble of your Constitution contains an explicit recognition of that truth. Take Philosophy: Is it not in the nature of things that her very soul should expand for she has a soul when she turns her discoveries into treasures of mercy, and then scatters them by the waysides of common hardship, at the doors of the poor, or where the children of men grow faint, and pale, and thin, with unrewarded toil? The Arts: Can they help springing into more vigorous activity, when they feel themselves to be like angel hands, beckoning up, with their bright fingers, the neglected and debased to honorable places in the great family mansion of Christendoma reinstated line of heroes and kings brought back from their banishment of ignorance and crime? Commerce must appear a science of broader scope than the bloody

cruises of the days of Elizabeth or the avaricious merchandise of money-loving moderns have made it, when glorious expeditions of brotherly kindness chase each other into the Arctic ice, each eager to shelter its predecessor from the perils of polar night and frost-when fleets of mercy wing their flight from shores of plenty and health to starving lands and pestilential cities when peaceful navies fill their ribs with mutual blessings, mails, missionaries — and navigation is no longer the angry armor-bearer of appetite, but the friendly cup-bearer of Christian charity, from port to port, in the great festival of the climates. Knowledge needs only to let the heart beat in its breast to be what Humanity asks of it- not a sallow monk, dreaming in a clammy cave; not a selfish Sybarite, gloating over its dish of delicious reputation; not a paramour, dallying with the passions; not a respectable servant-in-waiting, keeping the door of pompous patrons; not a mystic dervise, gazing complacently at its own interiors - but the breathing, sympathizing broad-shouldered and whole-souled benefactor of the people. Under an education of industry truly catholic as this, publishing glad tidings with beautiful feet upon the mountains and in city streets, places that the old civilization left barren with bitter tears, shall be fruitful as Carmel, and the real golden age, not classical but Christian, be installed with a general Pentecost of love.

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There is a glorious possibility, which has sometimes haunted the dreams of thinkers, at whose grandeur all common hopes of scholars kneel with veneration. It is the unity of all sciences arts, labors, letters under one all-embracing and connecting principle, or law. If that majestic idea shall ever be realized, what shall be the one unifying truth? What girdle shall be vast enough to encircle all knowledge? ple shall be comprehensive enough to contain

What princi

all systems,

schools, discoveries, conclusions clasping into its starry belt. all the constellations of human thought? I answer, it is no other, it can be no other, than the Brotherhood of men, beneath the Fatherhood of God.

I remember, gentlemen, that one significant and gracious term in the title by which you are so honorably known is "Charitable!" What an undertone of Christian melody that soft word, charity, breathes through all the rough collisions of the shop and the market, all the conflict of the Hands, and the contriving of the Brain! It speaks of the hallowed amenities of home, where delicate tastes assemble, and simple pleasures breed content; of the workman's genial evening, after the working-day is over, where music, and woman, and childhood, refine the out-of-door roughness with peace and purity; and where man learns to scorn the vulgar calculation which would rob the familiar household of graceful courtesies, to pay them all away in politic politeness to the customer at the shop. It speaks of the conciliating influence of such jubilees as this you are holding, bringing kindred faces together, healing jealousies and cooling the fever of rivalries, wakening a generous goodwill, melting misunderstandings, creating a common spirit. It speaks of pity for the needy neighbor, who has gone down, overborne in the fierce competition or calamity of life, and of sorrow for the tempted one, falling by the way of the magnanimity that rescues Hunger from despair of the liberality that leads the widow and the orphan gently. Every benevolent cause has a fuller treasury for the large-hearted mechanic's bounty; all good learning, a servant and a patron in his munificence; the church an unostentatious worshipper, and a sincere defender against time-serving, hypocrisy and cowardice, in his believing confession and his godly life.

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So, then, my three-fold theme completes its circuit. Hands, Head, Heart. In the consummate kingdom of a man, the Hands are offices of departments; the Head is the hall of legislation, the Heart is the holy of holies. In the personal administration, the Hands are the executive; the Brain is the lawgiver; the Heart is the prophet of God. The Hands perform, accomplish, do; the Head designs, organizes, shapes; the Heart inspires, ennobles, humanizes. A man is wide with his hands, high with his head, but deep with his heart. For the Hands you look out, for the Head up, for the Heart in. Grand and witty forces as brain and fingers are, the heart is a grander strength, and rules by a diviner right. All valor and goodness are by that. For into that descends, if only the door of faith stands open, the spirit of the Holy One, Fountain of all light and purity and power.

Here, then, my fellow-laborers and fellow-students, is our present task, and our future way. Standing here on this eastern and original shore of the westward-opening country, it is our part to aim at liberal, rational, fraternal forms of social life. All the omens and conditions favor us. They point to the expanding cluster of growing commonwealths. In that august American crucible where the Divine Chemist is pouring the mixtures of the earth's elder bloods, to yield a fair, and, Heaven grant, a lasting sway of justice and love, there must be a contribution, and yet a correction, of every stock that has flourished under the sun: the strong heart of the Saxon, without his bloody hand the graceful loyalty of the Norman, without his levity and pride the bravery of the Celt, without his impudent ferocity the iron will of the Senatus Populusque Romanus, without the audacity of its ambition and the cruelty of its eagles the airy ingenuity of the Greck, divorced from the worship of the senses the reverence of the Hebrew, cleared

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