by the ocean-moved power-loom of international commerce, into a thread which may fetter forever the strong madness of war. Yet let us not,let us not experiment upon its tension too far. Neither the influences of Commerce, nor any other influences, have yet brought about the day, (if indeed such a day is ever to be enjoyed before the second coming of the Prince of Peace,) when we may regard all danger of war at an end, and when we may fearlessly sport with the firebrands which have heretofore kindled it, or throw down the firearms by which we have been accustomed to defend ourselves against it. Preparation, I will not say, for war, but against war, is still the dictate of common prudence. And while I would always contend first, for that preparation of an honest, equitable, inoffensive, and unaggressive policy towards all other nations, which would secure us, in every event, the triple armor of a just cause, I am not ready to aban don those other preparations for which our constitution and laws have made provision. Nor do I justify such preparations only on any narrow views of state necessity and worldly policy. I know no policy, as a statesman, which I may not pursue as a Christian. I can advocate no system before men, which I may not justify to my own conscience, or which I shrink from holding up in humble trust before my God. This is not the time or the place, however, for discussing the policy or the principle of military defences. I have only alluded to the subject, lest, in paying a heartfelt tribute to the pacific influences of commerce, I might seem to sympathize with views which would call upon Congress, at their coming session, to disband our army and militia, and dismantle our fortifications and ships of war, while Mexico is still mustering her forces upon the Rio Grande; while England may be concentrating her fleets upon the Columbia; and while Cherokees, and Seminoles, and Camanches, burning with hereditary hatred, and smarting under immediate wrongs, are ready to pounce upon the powerless wherever they can find them. I honor the advocates of peace wherever they may be found; and gladly would I hail the day, when their transcendent principles shall be consistent with the maintenance of those organized societies which are so clearly of Divine original and sanction; the day, when "All crimes shall cease, and ancient fraud shall fail, Peace o'er the world her olive wand extend, And white-rob'd Innocence from Heaven descend." In the mean time, let us rejoice that the great interests of international commerce are effecting practically, what these sublime principles aim at theoretically. It is easy, I know, to deride these interests as sordid, selfish, dollar-and-cent influences, emanating from the pocket, instead of from the heart or the conscience. But an enlightened and regulated pursuit of real interests, is no unworthy policy, either on the part of individuals or nations, and a far-sighted selfishness is not only consistent with, but is often itself, the truest philanthropy. Commandments of not inferior authority to the Decalogue, teach us, that the love of our neighbor, a duty second only in obligation to the love of God, is to find its measure in that love of self, which has been implanted in our nature for no unwise or unwarrantable ends. Yet, Gentlemen, while I would vindicate the commercial spirit from the reproaches which are too often cast upon it, and hail its triumphant progress over the world as the harbinger of freedom, civilization, and peace, I would by no means intimate an opinion, that it is not itself susceptible of improvement, — that it does not itself demand regulation and restraint. The bigotry of the ancient Canonists regarded trade as inconsistent with Christianity, and the Council of Melfi, under Pope Urban the Second, decreed that it was impossible to exercise any traffic, or even to follow the profession of the law, with a safe conscience. God forbid, that while we scoff at the doctrine which would excommunicate commerce from the pale of Christianity, we should embrace the far more fatal doctrine, which should regard the principles of Christianity as having no place, and no authority in the pursuits of commerce! The commercial spirit has rendered noble service to mankind. Its influence in promoting domestic order, in stimulating individual industry, in establishing and developing the great principle of the division of labor; its ap propriation of the surplus products of all mechanical and all agricultural industry for its cargoes; its demand upon the highest exercise of invention and skill for its vehicles; its appeal to the sublimest science for its guidance over the deep; its imperative requisition of the strictest public faith and private integrity; its indirect, but not less powerful operation in diffusing knowledge, civilization, and freedom over the world; -all conspire with that noble conquest over the spirit of war which I have described, in commending it to the gratitude of man, and in stamping it with the crown-mark of a divinely appointed instrument for good. As long as the existing state of humanity is unchanged, as long as man is bound to man by wants and weaknesses and mutual dependencies, the voice which would cast out this spirit, will come from the cloistered cells of superstition, and not from the temples of a true religion. But that it requires to be tempered, and chastened, and refined, and elevated, and purified, and Christianized, examples gross as earth and glaring as the sun, exhort us on every side. Commerce diffuses knowledge; but there is a knowledge of evil as well as of good. Commerce spreads civilization; but civilization has its vices as well as its virtues. And is there not too much ground for the charge, that most of the trade with the savage tribes the world over, is carried on in a manner and by means calculated only to corrupt and degrade them, and even where it makes nominal proselytes to Christianity, to make them tenfold more the children of perdition than before? I look to the influence of associations like that before me, to aid in arresting this abuse, by elevating the views of those who are preparing to engage in mercantile business, above the mere pursuit of gain; and by impressing upon their hearts, while they are still open to impression, a deeper sense of responsibility for the conduct of civilized man, in those relations towards these ignorant and wretched beings which commercial intercourse creates. It cannot fail to have given joy to every benevolent bosom, to find the historian of the late Exploring Expedition, bearing such unqualified testimony to the character and services of the American Missionaries in the various savage islands which he visited; and it may be hoped, that the day is not far distant, when the American merchant will be found everywhere coöperating in the noble efforts by which the triumphs of the Cross are yet to encircle the earth! There is another stain upon the commercial spirit, of even deeper dye. I need not, in this presence, do more than name the African slave trade. Gentlemen, this flagitious traffic is still extensively prosecuted. Recent debates in the British Parliament would seem to show that it has of late been largely on the increase; and that the number of slaves now annually taken from the coast of Africa, is more than twice as great as it was at the commencement of the present century. Recent developments at Brazil, too, would seem to implicate our own American commerce, and even our own New England shipping, in "the deep damnation of this taking off." It is, certainly, quite too well understood, that American vessels, sailing under the American flag, are the favorite vehicles of the slave trader. No force of language, no array of epithets, can add to the sense of shame and humiliation which the simplest statement of such facts must excite in every true American heart. Gentlemen, we naturally look to the organized forces of our National Government to suppress these abuses of our shipping and our flag, and we all rejoice in the recent negotiation of a treaty, in the highest degree honorable to our great Massachusetts statesman, by which their suppression will be facilitated. But neither the combined navies of Great Britain and the United States, nor of the world, can accomplish this work without other aid. The coöperation of commercial men; the general combination and conspiracy, if I may so speak, of all who go down to the sea in ships, or are in any degree connected with business on the great waters, the merchants and merchants' clerks, the consignors and consignees, the captains, the supercargoes, the mates, and the common sailors alike; these must come in aid of our armed squadrons, or the slave trade will still leave a stain upon commerce, which "not all great Neptune's ocean will wash clean," but which will rather "the multitudinous seas incarnadine!" If a New England or an American vessel be concerned in that traffic, there should be at least no Boston breast, and no Massachusetts breast, capable of contain - The commercial character, the moral ing the guilty secret. character, of our City and of our Commonwealth should be vindicated on such an occasion, as they were just two hundred years ago, when one Thomas Keyser and one James Smith, (the latter a member of the church of Boston,) first involved these colonies in the iniquity of participating in the slave trade; and when, under the lead of Richard Saltonstall, (the ancestor of the late honored and lamented Leverett Saltonstall,) a cry was raised against them as malefactors and murderers; — a cry which could not be hushed, until the culprits had been "laid hold on," and their wretched victims wrested from their clutches and remitted to their native shore. I charge you, young men, to commit yourselves early to this cause, and to make it a principle of your association, not merely that you will never participate directly or indirectly in such an ignominious traffic,but that you will omit no opportunity which either any effort or any accident in after life may afford you, of exposing any one who may be concerned in it, to the public scorn and legal chastisement which he so richly merits. Mr. President and Gentlemen, I may detain you and this distinguished audience no longer. I have endeavored to say something which should impress you with a deeper sense of the dignity of the profession which you have chosen, and of the duties and responsibilities which belong to it. I have desired, also, to suggest some views which should impress upon the community a just sense of the value of your institution, and of the importance of sustaining and encouraging it. May your brightest prospects be realized, and your best hopes fulfilled. May the liberality of your patrons and friends soon supply you with a Hall of your own, arranged with every reasonable reference to your accommodation in pursuing the preparation for which you are associated. Let it be supplied with a Library, which shall leave you nothing to desire in the way of useful knowledge or profitable entertainment. Let it be adorned, from time to time, with the portraits of those whose examples are worthy of your imitation; the Merchant-Patriots, who have written their own names upon the title-deeds of our Liberty; |