alluded, the Massachusetts Plough and the Virginia Reaper, which have recently carried off the prizes at the World's Fair, and given new celebrity to American invention and Yankee skill; and which, let me add, are remembered by us not the less gratefully to-day, as having associated in the triumphs of modern art, those two ancient Commonwealths, which were so closely and so gloriously associated in the early struggles of American Independence. Nor will agriculture forget its indebtedness to invention and the mechanic arts, while it is in the enjoyment of those noble highways of intercommunication whose completion we have just celebrated, and which have brought the markets of Canada home to our very doors. Why, I have heard, Sir, within a few hours past, that since the opening of these roads, during the last week, one of your Middlesex farmers has found a ready sale for thirty or forty bushels of fresh peaches in the city of Montreal! But, Mr. President, I am admonished that these railroads are like the wind and tide in at least one respect-"they wait for no man," and I hasten to secure my own passage, as well as to relieve your patience, by proposing as a sentiment, as I most cordially do, "Success to the Farmers, Manufacturers, and Mechanics of Middlesex, and may they ever continue to cherish and cultivate those feelings of mutual respect and fraternal regard, which have united them to-day in a common and brilliant Festival." 1 THE MECHANIC ARTS. A SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE FESTIVAL OF THE MASSACHUSETTS CHARITABLE MECHANIC ASSOCIATION, IN FANEUIL HALL, ON WEDNESDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 1, 1851. [In reply to a complimentary call from George G. Smith, Esq., the Chief Marshal of the occasion.] I COULD have wished, Mr. Chief Marshal, that your worthy Vice-President, whose privilege it is to preside over the neighboring Observatory, as well as over this Association to-night, and who has so long been a living Bond between science and art, might have brought some star of larger magnitude than myself within the range of his glass at this moment, and have allowed me to remain still longer unobserved. But we all know that there is no escape from his telescope, and I willingly yield myself to his summons, as kindly announced by yourself. I thank you most heartily, ladies and gentlemen, for this friendly reception. I thank you still more for the opportunity of enjoying this most agreeable occasion. I have often, in other years, attended your festivals as a guest, and always with renewed gratification. But you must pardon me, if I cannot consent to be considered as a mere guest this evening; for, since you have accorded me the distinction of being enrolled among your honorary members, I feel emboldened to assert my privileges as a brother. A most unworthy and unprofitable brother, I do confess, and little better than a drone in your industrial hive; but one, who is all the more deeply grateful for your liberality, in allowing him to come in for a share of your honey, and especially in admitting him to-night to join with you in doing homage to your Queen Bees. * Mr. Bond, the Cambridge Astronomer, the Vice-President of the Association, occupied the Chair. And never was there a moment, Mr. President, in the history of mankind, when any one might be more justly proud to find his name on the rolls of a Mechanic Association. Never, certainly, was there a year when the inventors and artisans of the world could hold up their heads with a loftier consciousness of their importance to their fellow-men, than they may in this year of our Lord, 1851. Wherever we turn, at home or abroad, we see the strong hand of the mechanic, aided and guided by science, impressing itself upon the condition of society, and giving form and character to the age in which we live. As it was in the procession of the late Railroad Jubilee here in our own streets, to which the Mayor has so happily alluded, so is it everywhere in the great procession of human events, as we see it passing along over the highways of human existence, and on the stage of daily life; the emblems of the trades, the insignia of the arts, the triumphal banners of mechanic labor and invention, are the chief features of the scene, and furnish its most striking and attractive ornaments. - The highest praise has been awarded from all quarters to Prince Albert, of Old England, for proposing and patronizing the noble scheme, which has been so successfully and brilliantly carried out, of an exhibition of the industry of the world, and there is no one here who would detract one jot or tittle from the credit which belongs to him. But, after all, Sir, he has only recognized the grand fact of the times. He has only made a seasonable and just acknowledgment of that which could no longer be denied. The Crystal Palace, (as was truly said by the Earl of Carlisle, so well and so favorably known to us all as Lord Morpeth,) is only "the formal recognition of the dignity and value of labor." But that dignity and that value existed, whether they were formally recognized or not. They did not wait for the breath of princes to call them into being, nor require a World's Fair for their blazonry. They were created by no royal patent, and made manifest by no crystal palace. By the strength of millions of stout arms, by the energy of millions of intelligent minds, and by the countless products which industry, invention, science, and skill, have brought to the advancement of civilization and the improvement of society, they have forced them 63 selves upon the attention, the acknowledgment, and the admiration of the world. They have asserted their own title, and made their own way, to the recognition and respect of mankind. Sir, I am not about to detain this brilliant assembly from the pleasures which await them, by any detailed remarks about the World's Fair, or about our own particular section of it. You have heard already, to your hearts' content, of Stevens's Yacht, and Colt's Revolver, and Maynard's Primer, and Palmer's Wooden Leg, and Prouty's Plough, and McCormick's Reaper,— which may literally be said to have made the farmers of Old England" acknowledge the corn," and of that marvellous lock of our own Boston Hobbs, who seems to have settled the point, that if Love ever laughs at locksmiths again, it will not be at Yankee locksmiths. You have all heard, too, of that frank admission of the London Times, "that every practical success of the season belongs to the Americans." We may well be content with such compliments from such sources. We need have no fear after this, that "those who live in glass houses will throw stones" again in this direction. We can afford to adopt the language of the wise man, "let another praise thee, and not thine own mouth; a stranger, and not thine own lips." We can afford to do more, Mr. President; we can afford to acknowledge our own deficiencies. We can afford to admit, as, indeed, we cannot help admitting, that notwithstanding so many notable successes and triumphs in these practical machines and implements of industry, our manufactures and our mechanic arts are still greatly inferior to those of the old world, both in the quantity and quality of great varieties of products. And how could it be otherwise? Why, Sir, for young republican America to have gone out to a contest with the old world, in the arts which depend on long experience, consummate skill, and accumulated capital, and which have required royal courts and princely establishments for their existence and patronage elsewhere, would have been simply ridiculous. For her to have come off victorious in such a contest, would have equalled the triumph of the stripling of Israel, with his sling and his stone, over the giant of Gath, with the staff of his spear like a weaver's beam. It would have been more than human. But let me ask, Sir, who of us is sorry that we are behind, far behind, the old world in articles of mere taste and ornament? Who does not rejoice that we cannot vie with Europe and Asia in arts that minister only to the lust of the eye, and the pride of life? Who is in haste to see the day, when the tissues and tapestries, the jewels and porcelain of India or of France, shall be native to our own land? Who, on the contrary, does not desire that such a consummation may be postponed, until that double problem shall be solved, of which the history of mankind as yet affords no solution,-first, how these sumptuous and gorgeous decorations of the rich can be fabricated, without the degradation and debasement of the poor; and second, how the morality and purity, which are the very vital air of republican liberty, can withstand the fascinations and blandishments of a corrupting and cankering luxury. And this leads me to say, Mr. President, in a single concluding sentence, that there is at least one element wanting in that great exhibition, for the purposes of any just comparison between our own and other countries. We see there the products; but we do not see the producers. We see there the fabrics; but we do not see the hands which made them. Sir, if it had been possible to exhibit in any tangible shape, or by any personal representation, the real condition of the artisans and mechanics of the world; if the makers of every article could have been seen standing by their work, with their ordinary dress on their back, with their ordinary food at their side, and with all the advantages or disadvantages of their relative condition fully developed and displayed, — their intelligence, their education, their wages, the amount of individual comfort, independence, and happiness they enjoy, - the whole moral, social, and political position which they occupy,-what contrasts would not have been witnessed! If this very hall, with all that it now contains, could be wafted over the waters by a wish, on some magic carpet, like that described in one of the tales of the Arabian Nights, —if it could be set down safely in that much-talked-of " vacant space" in the American section of the Crystal Palace, and if your excellent President, now there, could be on the spot to meet you *Jonas Chickering, Esq. - |