fidence call upon you to recognize and act upon the principle, that the encouragement of academic education is one of the great interests of the state. We do ask you to reject the narrow, and, as we think, the pernicious doctrine, that the colleges are not, equally with the schools, entitled to your fostering care. This, sir, is not Massachusetts doctrine. It is not the doctrine of the Pilgrims. This commonwealth was founded by college-bred men; and before their feet had well laid hold of the pathless wilderness, they took order for founding an institution like those in which they had themselves been trained, the universities of Cambridge and Oxford, in England; particularly the former. It is not the doctrine of the stern Puritan fathers, who, for a hundred and fifty years, and through the darkest periods of our colonial and provincial history, withheld not a frugal bounty from the cherished seminary. It is not the doctrine of the revolutionary worthies. Amidst all the popular susceptibilities of the day, it never entered into their imaginations that academic education, less than school education, was the interest of the entire people. In performing the great task of constituting anew by a fundamental law the framework of society, they devoted an entire chapter to the interests of the only college then existing in the commonwealth: "It shall be the DUTY of legislatures and magistrates, in all future periods of this commonwealth, to cherish the interests of literature and science, and all seminaries of them, especially the university at Cambridge, public schools, and grammar schools in the towns." Sir, it is your duty to do so. I am not afraid to use the stern, old-fashioned word. It is, however, not I, but the constitution, which uses it. It is your sworn duty to cherish the interests of the colleges.

Having placed our claim to your favor on the ground of duty, I might, in addressing a committee of intelligent and conscientious legislators, safely leave it there. But if it be necessary to seek for motives of interest, I would say that the ground of expediency and policy is as plain as that of duty. If we look only to material prosperity, to physical welfare, nothing is now more certain than that they are most

powerfully promoted by every thing which multiplies and diffuses the means of education. We live in an age in which cultivated mind is becoming more and more the controlling principle of affairs. Like that mysterious magnetic influence, whose wonderful properties have been lately brought from the scientific lecture-room into the practical business of life, you cannot see it, you cannot feel it, you cannot weigh it; but it pervades the globe from its surface to its centre, and attracts and moves every particle of metal which has been touched into a kindred sensibility.

We hear much at present of the veins of gold which are brought to light in almost every latitude of either hemisphere; in fact, we hear of nothing else. But I care not what mines may be opened in the north or in the south, in the mountains of Siberia, or the ravines of California; wheresoever the fountains of the golden tide may gush forth, the streams will flow to the regions where educated intellect has woven the boundless network of the useful and ornamental arts. Yes, sir, if Massachusetts remains true to the policy which has hitherto in the main governed her legislation, and is not now, I trust, to be departed from, a generous wave of the golden tide will reach her distant shores. Let others

"Tempt icy seas where scarce the waters roll,

Where clearer flames glow round the frozen pole,
Or under southern skies exalt their sails,

Led by new stars, and borne by spicy gales,—

yes, for me may poor old rocky, sandy Massachusetts exclaim, land as she is of the school, the academy, and the college, -land of the press, the lecture-room, and the church,—

"For me the balm shall bleed, and amber flow,

The coral redden, and the ruby glow,

The pearly shell its lucid globe infold,

And Phoebus warm the ripening ore to gold."

It matters not if every pebble in the bed of the Sacramento were a diamond as big and as precious as the mysterious Ko-hi-noor, which we read of in the last accounts from India,

on whose possession the fate of empire is believed, in those benighted regions, to depend. It matters not if this new Pactolus flow through a region which stretches for furlongs, — a wide tract of solid gold. The jewels and the ingots will find their way to the great centres of civilization, where cultivated mind gives birth to the arts, and freedom renders property secure. The region itself to which these fabulous treasures are attracting the countless hosts of thrift, cupidity, and adventure will derive, I fear, the smallest part of the benefit. Could it be peopled entirely with emigrants like the best of those who have taken their departure from among us, and who carry with them an outfit of New England principles and habits, it would be well; but much I fear the gold region will, for a long time, be a scene of anarchy and confusion, of violence and bloodshed, of bewildering gains and maddening losses, of any thing but social happiness and well-regulated civil liberty.*

If we will not be taught by any thing else, let us learn of history. It was not Mexico and Peru, nor (what it imports us more to bear in mind) Portugal, nor Spain, which reaped the silver and golden harvest of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was the industrious, enlightened, cultivated states of the north and west of Europe. It was little Holland, scarcely one fifth as large as New England, — hardly able to keep her head above the waters of the superincumbent ocean, but with five universities dotting her limited surface; it was England, with her foundation schools, her indomitable public opinion, her representative system, her twin universities; it was to these free and enlightened countries that the gold and silver flowed; not merely adding to the material wealth of the community, but quickening the energy of the industrious classes, breaking down the remains of feudalism, furnishing the sinews of war to the champions of Protestant liberty, and thus cheering them on to the great

* In revising this speech for republication, it affords me great pleasure to state that the conduct of the people of California, as a community, has thus far been extremely creditable; far more so than could have been expected, under the circumstances of the first settlement of the country.

struggle, to whose successful issue it was owing, in its remote effects, under Providence, that you, sir, sit in safety beneath the canopy that overhangs this hall.

What the love of liberty, the care of education, and a large and enlightened regard for intellectual and moral interests did for the parent state, they will do for us. They will give us present prosperity, and with it what is infinitely better, not only a name and a praise with contemporary nations who form with us the great procession of humanity, but a name and a praise among enlightened men and enlightened states to the end of time.

AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION.*

I RISE, Mr President, with your permission, for the discharge of a yet unperformed duty. We have, sir, in the hall above, in the earlier part of the day, adopted resolutions of thanks to the worthy officers of the association; to the citizens of Cambridge; and to the associations and individuals in the vicinity who have manifested an interest in the institution, and a desire to promote the convenience and gratification of the members, and the objects of the meeting. There still remains a debt of this kind to be acquitted; and I propose, sir, before I take my seat, to endeavor to perform it, by moving a vote of thanks to the ladies who have honored the meetings of the association, both here at the social table and in the sections, with their presence and countenance.

Before I do this, I will crave leave to say a few words upon the objects of the association and the character of its meetings the present year. This I shall do with the greater boldness, even though I may be breaking through the regulation which was adopted, for very good reasons, that there should be no speaking at the dinner table. We have reached the last day on which we shall meet together, and my bad example, in this respect, cannot be drawn into an inconvenient precedent for the present year.

But I am desirous of availing myself of the opportunity to say, that, in my humble opinion, the transactions of the

Remarks at the public table, on the last day of the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at Cambridge, Mass., on the 21st of August, 1849, Professor Henry in the chair.