ADDRESS.

"Ir is universally admitted that the combined operations of the mechanic powers, have been the source of those useful inventions and scientific arts, which have given to polished society its wealth, conveniences, respectability and defence, and which have ameliorated the condition of its citizens.

"Rational therefore is the inference, that the association of those who conduct these powers in their operations, will prove highly beneficial in promoting good offices and fellowship; in assisting the necessitous, encouraging the ingenious, and in rewarding fidelity."

THIS, my friends, you are aware, is the preamble to our Constitution; and it is to carry out these ideas of our founders, to gather new motives "for mutual good offices and fellowship," to stimulate each other in the good work of "assisting the necessitous, encouraging the ingenious, and rewarding fidelity," that our triennial celebrations have been continued.

On these occasions, our audience must not anticipate any especial display of intellect, since the speaker, being always a member of the association, and generally immersed in the duties of some handicraft, is thereby necessarily debarred from those opportunities of mental cultivation which are indispensable to so high an aim; and I have therefore chosen the plainer task of endeavoring to collect such facts and observations as may best cultivate and strengthen the spirit of fellowship; and by

considering our present condition as compared with that of the great operative fraternity in other times and countries, by contrasting the privations and oppressions under which they groaned with our own manifold blessings, to strengthen our confidence and interest in each other, increase our love of country, and awaken in us a lively sense of that Supreme goodness from which these blessings flow. I shall endeavor also to gather from these ideas certain principles, having, as I think, an important bearing upon the social position of our order; as it has been affected by differences in the political institutions of various countries, as well as by the general progress of improvement.

My subject then will lead me briefly to consider the condition of the mechanic in the principal nations of antiquity, and among the barbarous tribes who succeeded them; also to present such facts as I have been able to gather, illustrating in any way that gradual improvement, which, as we approach our own times, is the most interesting point in his history. And in pursuing this train of thought, I may bring forward matter having no apparent connection with it. I am fully conscious also, that much of what I shall have to say is already well known to most of you; but considering every striking trait of national manners or modes of living, and every prominent fact in legislation, as influencing the condition of the mechanic directly or indirectly, I have thrown these materials together as best I might, without any scrupulous regard to order or accurate chronological arrangement. I hope therefore to be excused for any errors in the selection of my materials, or want of clearness in their disposition.

We have very little information respecting the operative classes of the early ages; history has, until within a

few years, been a mere record of political events, and throughout the whole duration of Roman or Grecian institutions, all is darkness except as to the more prominent facts which affect the national power. In Rome, however, the researches of some modern historians seem to prove, that the plebeians, or common people, comprising of course the whole body of the operatives, originated from those captive families, which it was the uniform custom of the Romans, in the early ages of the republic, to drag from their homes, in order to swell their own population. These families having been always the principal inhabitants of the conquered cities, felt their degradation therefore the more keenly; and from this cause, says Guizot, "arose that struggle between the plebeians and the patricians, which commenced in the very cradle of the republic, and was merely a prolongation of the war of conquest; the struggle of the conquered aristocracy to participate in the privileges of the conquerors;" and which continued till the popular liberty was absorbed in the despotism of the Cæsars. We learn, also, that in every Roman city the operatives were divided into colleges, corresponding no doubt with the guilds of later times; but of the constitution of these bodies, or their internal regulations, we know nothing. It is evident, however, that they did not contain sufficient vitality to rescue their order from its social abasement. The condition then of mechanics in Rome, although surrounded by the semblance of freedom, was hopeless; and although we find them, while the republic lasted, continually battling with the aristocracy, yet there was obviously nothing of that gradual improvement which, amidst every discouragement, finally conducted the populace of the middle ages to comparative emancipation and happiness.

Among the Greeks there was more political freedom, the principle of their governments generally was more purely democratic, and there was not, as among the Romans, a privileged aristocracy engrossing all dignities, and under the sanction of law, holding the people in hopeless degradation. But the mechanic was equally ignorant and equally despised; and although the law enslaved him not, yet custom, stronger than law, retained public honors within a few ancient families, and as the operative was in the early ages, so he remained as long as Grecian history had a name.

I have not spoken of Grecian or Roman art, as that subject is a familiar one, and also because our object is to trace what the operative classes have been, rather than what they have done; and a mere catalogue of temples and statues and pictures, would neither lend the subject new light, nor develope new principles.

In pursuing our task, as connected with the other nations of antiquity, we find ourselves for the most part compelled to make use of Grecian authorities; and so profound was the contempt of the Greeks for every other people, that they are merely noticed as events in their history have a bearing upon the destinies of Greece: we can only gather then, as it were incidentally, along the scanty record of political convulsions, some detached hints, which seem to indicate that the condition of operatives among them was not greatly different from what it now is in the more barbarous nations of Asia; the inferior classes, as they were called, being considered little better than beasts of burden, born to be taxed, and plundered, and slaughtered, at the king's pleasure; and subject in all things to the will of every inferior despot, whom chance or court favor may have placed over them; and so they lived, and died, genera

tion after generation, unpitied, unimproved, hopeless; leaving the same mournful legacy of labor and sorrow to their descendants, age after age.

So was it too in Egypt, where existing monuments afford us the evidence which history denies : long lines of laborers dragging immense stones; groups of artisans and husbandmen, all urged to their task by the whip of the taskmaster, are the frequent subjects of their basreliefs and pictures; affording melancholy evidence that there, also, labor was considered a degradation, and the laborer a slave.

And how could it have been otherwise? The nations of antiquity had not the means of popular instruction; the ignorance of the populace was a non-conductor, over which the electric spark of intelligence might not pass; and however vivid may have been the light elicited from individual talent, it could not penetrate the surrounding darkness. But although the minds of the commonalty slumbered, their passions were awake. Intellectual illumination could not reach them, but vice and sensuality could, and with fatal effect; for as the degeneracy of courts gradually infected the mass of the people, the old habits of simplicity and industry were relaxed, and the whole mass of society became more and more corrupt; until finally, with scarce an effort to save it, the decaying fabric of the ancient civilization was ingulfed by that mighty northern wave which rushed over the land, purifying while it destroyed, and sweeping away every vestige of the existing social order; but bringing with it also the elements of another, destined to carry forward the human race in a career of improvement, which the dreams of antiquity had never imagined.

Amid the universal breaking up of society which took place at the destruction of the Roman empire, the con