1698, but Watt did not commence those experiments which fitted it for universal application till 1763, and it was not perfected, or extensively applied to machinery, till many years after. Spinning-to instance one branch of manufacture-in the early part of this century, was still done entirely by hand; and as an active weaver could keep three spinners in constant employ, he was therefore obliged to visit them frequently and urge them to exertion by extra wages, that he might complete the order of the wholesale dealer in time: in the woollen manufacture too, we are told that "some clothiers employed five hundred persons, who were not all collected in a factory, many of them carrying on their particular process of the manufacture under their own roofs. The weaver received materials from the clothier, and when he brought back his cloth, it was given to workmen engaged in another branch, and thus it passed through various hands till it was completed; the clothier being the capitalist who supplied the raw material, and sold the manufactured commodity." It will at once be seen, that a system like this must necessarily be driven into improvement by the pressure of demand, which soon outran any possibility of supply; and this cause undoubtedly forced into being that wonderful series of machinery in all departments, which has since so completely changed the face of the manufacturing world.

From this period, there is nothing in the history of England particularly interesting to us as American mechanics; no new principles have been developed there

the various classes have kept the same relative social position, and the mechanic therefore remains as he was. To be sure the operation of christian principles has brought improved political institutions, and the prince and peasant are equal in the eye of the law; but what

avails all this to the destitute and ignorant myriads who throng England's factories or toil in her mines? What avails it that they are surrounded by all the splendors of intellect, if their hard fate forbids one ray to reach their darkened minds? The lights of science, yea, and the blessings of liberty, are to them as though they had never been; alternating between half paid labor and the degradation of the poor house, they struggle on through life, until worn out with fruitless toil they sink into the grave, with the bitter reflection that their children, and their children's children, are destined to the same mournful inheritance.

In leaving this sad picture to speak of our own country, I would premise, that any thing like a detailed history of the productive arts, as they have existed here, is quite beyond the limits as well as the intention of this address. I shall, therefore, confine myself to the brief notice of a few prominent facts, and to the reflections, which they will naturally suggest.

Before the revolution, the condition and business prospects of mechanics were exceedingly precarious, as an act of parliament might totally interdict many handicraft professions, and thereby greatly cramp the exercise of all the rest. It is, perhaps, not generally supposed, that these professions were any more restricted then than now we are apt to imagine, from their perfect freedom at present, that they have always been equally free this, however, is a great mistake. The interdictory power was exercised more than once. For instance, by an act of the fifth year of George II, in 1732, the colonies were prohibited from exporting hats even from one colony to another, so that a hat made in Boston could not be sold in New-Hampshire or Connecticut; and this grievance was felt the more severely,

as they could, from the great plenty and cheapness of furs in those days, be manufactured much cheaper and better than in England; also because we had been in the habit of exporting them in large quantities, and at considerable profit, to many parts of Spain, Portugal, and the West Indies. But the act did not stop here: by another clause, no man who had not served a regular apprenticeship, was allowed to make a hat even for his own use; and no hatter was allowed to take more than two apprentices, nor those for less than seven years. Indeed the house of commons had previously, in 1719, expressly declared, that the introduction of manufactures into the colonies tended to lessen their dependence on Great Britain, and after the iron manufacture had sprung up amongst us, they had voted, in 1728, under pretence of encouraging the importation of American naval stores, that none in the plantations should manufacture iron wares of any kind whatever, to which the house of peers added a prohibition of every forge going by water for the making of bar or rod iron. In 1732, this manufacture had become so important, that there were in Massachusetts alone six furnaces and nineteen forges for the smelting of iron, and they fabricated all sorts of iron work for ships. In 1750, however, parliament enacted, that "no mill or other engine for slitting or rolling of iron, or any platting forge to work with a tilt hammer, or any furnace for making steel shall be erected or after such erection, continued, in any of his majesty's colonies in America."

This course of restriction continued to be the avowed policy of Great Britain up to the period of the revolution, and it was openly said in parliament, that America 66 must not be allowed to manufacture so much as a hob nail." It is evident from all this, that even the more indis

pensable of the mechanic arts, though permitted, were not encouraged under the colonial governments, and that productive industry, although some branches thereof might have enjoyed toleration, could never have looked for prosperity.

After the revolution, a new day dawned upon our country; every thing was unrestricted, and every branch of labor-agriculture, commerce, manufactures, the mechanic arts-all felt the genial influence of freedom, and shot forth into new luxuriance. Their progress ever since has resembled rather a creation than a natural inThe mechanical genius of our countrymen has proved itself able to grapple with every emergency, and while we have in some instances returned to Europe her own inventions, doubled in power and utility by American skill, we can point to the thousand evidences which cover our land, that the higher gift of invention, the creative power, has not been withheld from us.

crease.

Of the condition of the mechanic himself, under our republic, we have very little to say: his standing is well known, and affords little matter for comment. The very comfort and security which surround him take away from his position every particle of romance, and we can only say, that here he lives, and labors, and prospers, dwelling under his own vine and his own fig tree, with none to molest or make him afraid — until he tranquilly enters the house appointed for all the living, knowing that those who come after him will pass through life protected by the same institutions which have given him security, contentment, and peace.

We have thus traced the mechanic, loaded but too often with the burden of his unrequited toils, through community after community, always laboring, producing, sustaining, yet for the most part despised, or at best

neglected, by that society to which his exertions have continually been as the very life blood, and vital breath, and without which those miracles of intellect and art, which have shone like stars along the dark pathway of human destiny, dazzling the nations with their radiance, and throwing into the shade his own humbler lot, would either never have existed, or have shed their light in vain. And if it be asked, why has he been thus neglected and despised, why this feeling of avowed contempt or haughty condescension, on the part of the more favored classes, and of depression and hopeless inferiority on his own, has, under various modifications, endured even to the present day, not only in those countries. whose social order encloses aristocratic indolence with a barrier over which useful industry may not pass - but in our own land; if it be asked, why does some tinge of those feelings yet linger here? I answer, that the principle upon which the original idea of the operative's inferiority was founded, is yet partially recognized here, and must be till he himself, by his own advancement, does it away. The principle, I think, was this; that intellectual labor, having always and justly claimed the chief homage of civilized man as the main source of human improvement, the mechanic arts were therefore contemned, on the understanding that their exercise required mere manual dexterity, calling the intellect but little if at all into use; and that therefore the mechanic, though certainly useful as performing a vast amount of disagreeable labor, was yet merely a superior kind of laboring animal

unfitted by his ignorance, still more by his rudeness and want of courtesy, for the society of the refined and intellectual, and who might look to be well fed and taken care of, certainly, but nothing more. That this was once the universal feeling has been demonstrated in the