they are, has never paid the expense of their publication. An occasional legacy, like that so liberally bequeathed by the late Governor Gore, with subscriptions solicited in cases of emergency from public-spirited individuals, have enabled the society thus far to sustain itself, and to become possessed of its present commodious premises. But a moderate fund for the support of a librarian, and for other incidental expenses, is absolutely necessary. It is unreasonable to expect of any person well qualified for the office, to discharge gratuitously the confining and laborious duties of librarian. No small part of the usefulness of the institution consists in the facility of access to its collections. But it is obvious, that, if the doors are kept open to all students of history who wish to examine those collections, (which of late years has been the case,) a moderate provision should be made for the support of a librarian. It is unjust that the important services of such an officer should be performed, as they are by the present learned incumbent, (Rev. Joseph B. Felt,) for a merely nominal compensation. Neither ought an institution of this kind to be solely dependent on donations for the increase of the library.

THE WESTERN RAILROAD.*

MR EVERETT observed that nothing would have induced him to present himself, at so late an hour, but his engagement to the committee charged with the preparations for the present meeting. The gentlemen who had preceded him had exhausted the subject, and his fellow-citizens in this vast assembly, satisfied, he was well persuaded, with what they had heard, were now desirous, by an earnest and unanimous vote, to prepare for action. But he had been requested to address them on the subject, and he was sincerely of the opinion that, next to the great questions of liberty and independence, the doors of Faneuil Hall were never thrown open on an occasion of greater moment to the people of the city and the state.

But, sir, continued Mr E., I do not approach this subject of an enterprise which promises great benefits to the community, with feelings of despondency in reference to our present condition. I would, on the contrary, speak the language of confidence, hope, and self-assured resource. The people of Massachusetts, and the citizens of Boston, as the capital of the commonwealth, have been favored with as large a share of blessings as ever fell to the lot of any people; and the greatest of all these blessings is the sagacity with which they

* Speech on the subject of the Western Railroad, delivered in Faneuil Hall, 7th October, 1835. The object of the meeting was to take measures to complete the subscription to the capital stock of the railroad, to the amount of two millions of dollars. The object was effected; and in the course of the ensuing winter, an act passed the legislature of Massachusetts, authorizing an additional subscription of one million of dollars, on behalf of the state.

are accustomed to perceive what industry, and energy, and enterprise can do, to supply that which nature leaves to the coöperation of man. For carrying on the foreign trade and the fisheries, we have every thing that the heart of man can desire; for agriculture, we have the soil and the climate. best adapted, not to the raising for exportation of the great agricultural staples, but for the support of a frugal and industrious yeomanry; for manufactures, we are by this last circumstance admirably prepared, as we are, in most other respects, able to compete, in many branches of manufacturing industry, with any other people on earth. In short, sir, we want nothing but what we are able ourselves, with enterprise, energy, and the wise application of capital, to acquire; and I have greatly mistaken the character of the people of Massachusetts, town or country, if any such wants remain long unsupplied. On the contrary, it is their peculiar characteristic, by the use of capital, by energy, and enterprise, not merely to supply what are commonly called natural defects, but to open mines of wealth, where others see only the marks of barrenness.

This trait of our character strikes all observers. It was observed by the president of the United States, (General Jackson,) on his visit to this part of the country a year or two since, that what struck him most in New England, were the marks of plenty and comfort on a soil which, in some places, seemed little else than a mass of rocks. It is even so; and if (over no small part of our beloved native state) Nature, like an unkind step-dame, when her children ask for bread, has given them a stone, they have, by their frugality, industry, and enterprise, turned the very stones back into bread. I speak literally. The gentleman from Springfield, before

(Hon. George Bliss, president of the Senate,) was good enough to send me a pamphlet this morning, from which it appears that thousands of tons of the marbles of Berkshire are sent to Philadelphia, and sold to advantage, although their own quarries lie within sixteen miles; and the City Hall in New York is chiefly built from the same Berkshire marble. In like manner, the granite from the quarries of Quincy, by

the almost magical virtue of three miles of railroad, is now building up the stately piles of New York, Philadelphia, and New Orleans. Look at the outside of Cape Ann, Sandy Bay, Pigeon Cove, Halibut Point, and Squam,—a region where the very genius of sterility has taken up his abode, if there is such a genius, (there ought to be, for nothing so sharpens the ingenuity of man,)—and behold it converted, in the same way, through the industry, energy, frugality of its substantial population, and the judicious application of capital, into a region of thrift and plenty!

But the great thing wanting to the prosperity of Massachusetts is COMMUNICATION WITH THE WEST. The internal commerce of this country is prodigious; and of all that part which is accessible to us, on the present system of communication, we have an ample share. With the south we have, in our freighting and coasting trade, every thing that can be asked. With the south-west, in reference to all that portion of commerce which is calculated to seek the route by sea to New Orleans, we have nothing more to desire; - and the intercourse already established, in this way, with the whole region drained by the Mississippi and its tributaries, is most extensive, various, and mutually profitable. In ascending the Mississippi and its tributaries, in 1829, on which occasion I was successively on board several boats, I continually saw casks, packages, and bales, containing articles of merchandise of various kinds from New England. A distinguished gentleman of Pittsburg told me there was a regular battle between the Boston nails and the Pittsburg nails, on the Ohio River; the Boston nails coming all the way round, and the Pittsburg made on the spot, from Juniata iron; and that, though the Pittsburg nails sometimes fought their way down the river to Louisville, the Bostonians at times had driven them up as far as Wheeling. I was informed, by a respectable trading house in Pittsburg, that they had, in the year preceding, imported two thousand barrels of pickled mackerel; and I think I did not enter a public house in the west to take a meal, morning, noon, or night, without seeing a pickled mackerel on the table. I remember, a year or two ago, that

one of my neighbors from Charlestown, who had emigrated to the north-west corner of Arkansas, a spot not then even laid out into counties, told me that in that remote region, -the last foothold of civilization, where you have but one more step to make to reach the domain of the wild Indian and the buffalo, a settler did not think himself well accoutred without a Leominster axe. But give him that, give him, sir, that weapon which has brought a wider realm into the pale of civilization than the sword of Cæsar or the sceptre of Justinian, give him a narrow Yankee axe, he'll hew his way with it to a living, in a season; though I shrewdly suspect, without the least disparagement of emigrants from other quarters, that after sending the Yankee axe into the country, the best way to give it full effect would be to send a little Yankee bone and sinew to facilitate its use.

But, sir, though by the way of New Orleans we have a considerable trade with the south-west, there is a vast region which that channel does not reach. A direct communication is greatly wanted. This is THE want, which is daily becoming more serious, and must be supplied. The destinies of the country, if I may use a language which sounds rather mystical, but which every one, I believe, understands, — the destinies of the country run east and west. Intercourse between the mighty interior west and the sea-coast is the great principle of our commercial prosperity and political strength. Nature, in the aggregate, has done every thing that could be desired to promote this intercourse, and art has done much to second her; but as far as the single state of Massachusetts is concerned, the course of the rivers from north to south, and of the mountains between which they flow, deprives us of the share of the benefits of this intercourse which we should otherwise enjoy. And this operation of natural causes has been aided by several important works of artificial communication, enumerated in the able report of the committee. The consequence is, that a very considerable part of the territory of Massachusetts has its commercial interests in one direction, and its political and social relations in another; so much so that, as we all, I am