I~~~~~~~~~
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OF > 








A SPEECH
FOR THE USEFUL ARTS.
DELIVERED AT
NEW  HAVEN, JANUJARY 2d, 1856,
BE F O RE THE:gricqllttxral icocietj of tft',tate of I6oilucltimtt
BY
HENRY CHAMPION DEMING.
H ARTFO RD:
iPRESS OF CASE, TIFFANY AND COMPANY.
185 6.




" WHATEVER ELSE MAY TEND TO ENRICH AND BEAUTIFY SOCIETY, THAT WHICH FEEDS
AND CLOTHES COMFORTABLY THE GREAT MASS OF MANKIND SHOULD ALWAYS BE REGARDED
AS THE FOUNDATION OF NATIONAL PROSPERITY."-WEBSTER.
" HE THAT HATH A TRADE HATH AN ESTATE. HE THAT HATH A CALLING HATH AN
OFFICE OF HONOR AND PROFIT.: —FRANKLIN.




HARTFORD, January 12th, 1856.
Hon. HENRY C. DEMIING:
SIR:-At the meeting of the Connecticut State Agricultural Society,
January 2d, 1856, it was
Resolved, " That the thanks of the Society be extended to the Hon. Henry
C. Deming, for his able and eloquent address, and that he be requested to
furnish a copy of the same for publication with the Transactions of the
Society."
By order of the Executive Committee, I have the honor to transmit the
above resolution, and to request your manuscript for publication.
Very respectfully,
Yours truly,
HENRY A. DYER, Cor. Sec'y.
HARTFORD, January 15, 1856.
HENRY A. DYER, Esq.:
Dear Sir: —I have received your letter, containing the resolution of the
Agricultural Society, and asking a copy of my address, for publication. A
manuscript had been written, containing a small portion of what I had
intended to say on the State Fair Grounds, if that intention had not been
defeated by the rain. When I was unexpectedly called upon to go to New
Haven, and deliver in a January ice-storm, an address which had been
prepared to be spoken "under an October sun," and in the actual presence
of your Exhibition, I was obliged to abandon much of my previous preparation, and the sheets which I now send you, are in part a report of the New
Haven speech, written out since the second of January, and in part such
fragments of the manuscript as I found available for that occasion.
I am, very respectfully,
HENRY C. DEMING,








SPEE CH.
MR. PRESIDENT:
The Second Annual Fair of your Society, as proof and
profert, of the agricultural and industrial wealth and resources of the State, might well command our pride and
gratitude. While the display of Durhams and Devons, was
highly creditable to the breeders of fancy stock, there was an
array of native breeds and working oxen, representing the
most real and substantial uses of this animal, that was, by
universal consent, not only entirely unsurpassed in all previous exhibitions of a similar character, but so large and so
rich, as to safely challenge and defy the future.
As the commerce of a State is measured by the tonnage
of its ships, so the number and condition of its Working
Oxen, may be regarded as no unfair exponent, of its agricultural strength and capacities.
We had horses, too, of every variety, natives and thoroughbreds, for show and for use; coursers and roadsters, which
in beauty, strength, and speed, compared favorably with the
collections drawn together, by the larger premiums, and
broader competition of National Fairs, devoted to this
animal exclusively. While we had steeds that would enchant an Arab, it was my good fortune to notice one pig,
that might have converted a Turk; but he stood solitary and




alone in his swinish loveliness; the only beauty of his family
that graced the occasion.
If a more delicious and fragrant offering, can be laid on
the altars of Bacchus and Pomona, than was to be found in
your horticultural tent, I trust that I, and all lovers of good
fruit may be there to see it.
The Mechanical and Manufacturing Department of the
Fair, though commendable, so far as it went, and presenting
many beautiful fabrics, and much exquisite workmanship,
yet as a whole, was an inadequate exhibit of our wealth in
these departments, and immeasurably beneath our capacity.
For if there is one State that might throw down the gauntlet to the world, in such an exhibition, that State is Connecticut. If there is one State where mechanics and manufactures are not confined to the water-courses, and the sides
of the railroads, but like the atmosphere, pervade and permeate every part, that State is Connecticut. If there is one
State, distinguished no less by those great establishments
that throw off their products by the hundred thousand dozen,
than by those little rills and streams of industry, that sparkle
and ripple on every homestead, that State is our own.  If
but a tithe of these could have been diverted from their
channels, and turned into your enclosure, there would have
been such a numberless and nameless variety of contrivances and notions, such a museum of every conceivable and
inconceivable patent, and labor-saving machine, such a
gathering together of the multitudinous progeny of Connecticut cuteness, and cunning, and skill, as the sun in his course,
never looked down upon.
You can hardly expect from me, sir, on this occasion, or
on any occasion, any instruction in practical husbandry, or
in agricultural art and science. Neither my studies nor pursuits, have adapted me to any such undertaking.  The




7
pleasures of the farmer's life! have they not been said and
sung from the days of Theocritus and Virgil, to the last
orator of the day? I should despair attempting to decorate
a theme, already so amply illustrated, or to increase the interest we all feel, and the respect we all entertain, for the
healthy, honest, and honorable vocation of those, who, masters of their own acres, as well as of their own wants and
passions, are the truest exemplars of republican frugality, independence, and manliness. Although, sir, under the auspices of your Society, and although agricultural productions
and implements constitute a large part, still your exhibitions are intended to display all the industrial arts and
resources of the State, and it is this aspect of them, that
naturally suggests the general theme, to which I have ventured, with many misgivings, to call your attention, for a few
moments, to wit:
THE BENEFICENT AGENCIES OF THE USEFUL ARTS.
I am aware that Agriculture is not included in those classifications of the USEFUL ARTS, that are merely scientific; but
as I know no good reason for the omission, and am moreover aiming at no severe distinction, but seeking.a convenient
term, to embrace most of the forms of industry, represented
in your Exhibition, I shall use the term, as if Agriculture was
confessedly within its purview.
Among the instrumentalities which affect the condition of
man, the precedence is quite uniformly, and rightfully given
to those, which address themselves to his spiritual nature,
to Religion, Education, Law, and the Fine Arts. But if
these agencies were the first, in order of time, as they are in
rank, to which he is subjected, and after they had done for
him their utmost, he should be bereft of others, equally in



8
dispensable to his welfare, he would find himself the most
miserable  and  pitiable specimen, of the mamalian family.'
He might be good, wise, upright, "noble  in  reason, infinite in faculties, in form and moving express and admirable,
in action like an angel, in apprehension like a god," but he
would be a naked, thin-skinned, hungry, thirsty, short-winded,
shame-faced biped, without hide, fur or feathers. In such a
condition, the USEFUL ARTS receive the paragon of animals,
from the hands of his spiritual guardians. They feed, clothe,
shelter, cleanse, adorn  him.   In  comparison  with  other
creatures, they find him weak, and endow him with a strength
* Bishop Potter, in his valuable little treatise "on the Principles of Science
applied to the Domestic and Mechanical Arts," says, in substance, " that the difficulty with which man maintains even life, when deprived of some of his customary tools and weapons, and left without the assistance of his fellows, is strikingly
illustrated by the adventures of Ross Cox, who, while traveling with a company
of traders, in the North-West Territory, was one day, when he had fallen asleep,
accidentally left by his companions, and not found again till several days after. It
happened, that owing to the extreme heat of the weather, he had divested himself
of his weapons, and of nearly all his clothing, which was carried off by the party.
He was left, therefore, like other animals, to his natural resources; and the picture which he gives, of the extremities to which he was quickly reduced, by hunger,
by the torturing stings of insects, the terror of wild beasts, and the impossibility
of tracing his companions, is equally affecting and instructive. It is quite evident, that, if he had not been most opportunely found, lie must soon have perished."  In a note to the above passage, he adds, "It maybe possibly objected,
that this example of man's natural imbecility, is taken from an individual who
has once lived in civilized society, and had thus been rendered effeminate; and
that we ought rather, to adduce the case of those who have lived, like animals,
only in a state of nature. One or two such individuals have been discovered,
within the last century, living alone, in forests; as for example, Peter, the Wild
Boy, in Germany, and the savage of Arvignon, in France. They were found,
however, in the lowest physical and intellectual condition, subsisting on the bark
of trees, unable to distinguish, by touch, between a carved and painted surface,
and having hardly a trace of humanity. Such cases afford the most conclusive
proof, that, as men, we owe most of our power and dignity to culture.




9
superior to all; defenseless, and equip him with arms that
vanquish all; slow, and give him wings that outstrip the
eagle; in short, they encircle his perishable, with comforts
and luxuries, worthy of his imperishable nature.
Though the USEFUL ARTS find MAN thus destitute personally, he is no beggar, but the undoubted and rightful
heir of a most splendid inheritance,-useless and unavailable, it is true, in its normal condition, but under proper culture and management, an inexhaustible mine of plenty and
wealth. It consists of the rough matter which composes the
solid earth; of the soil and water which cover it; of the
birds of the air, the beasts of the field, and the fishes of the
sea. Of this inheritance, the USEFUL ARTS become the most
serviceable and trustworthy of stewards. They convert the
solid earth into innumerable objects of convenience and value.
They open communications, secure the harvests, collect the
flocks, cultivate the soil, improve the fisheries; in short, they
render the world, over which dominion was given to man, a
comfortable, convenient, and elegant abode.
God creates matter, but the USEFUL ARTS create its utility,
or, in the language of Political Economy, they are producers,
and production is the sole, the only fountain -head, of that
enviable stream, the Wealth of Nations.  Commerce, to be
sure, is an important agent, in diverting the current, and in
changing the relative position of wealth, but it adds not one
drop to the golden stream, for which countless myriads
thirst. Production is its only origin, and every flight of human credulity, every device of human ingenuity, to discover
some other source of this Pactolus, has signally failed. The
Golden Fleece, the dreams of the Alchemist, the visions of
El Dorado, South-Sea Bubbles, tulip-manias, multicaulismanias, California fevers, stock-jobbing, and up-town lots,
are the weighty authorities and confirmation strong, which
2




10
successive centuries have brought to the truth, that production is the only real source, of the aggregate wealth of Nations. Many falser images have been used than that which
declares, that " Gold, in its last analysis, is the sweat of the
poor and the blood of the brave."
It is a liberal estimate, which assigns one-fifth of the human family, in civilized countries, to the non-producing class;
the USEFUL ARTS provide for the remaining four-fifths, and
thus convert into props, and pillars, and bulwarks, what
would otherwise be, intolerable drags and burthens and nuisances, in a State. They give employment, not servile and
degrading, but honorable and remunerative employment, to
a vast majority of the human family.  This consideration
alone, if it was all that could be urged, would place them
foremost, among the agencies which contribute to the welfare of the race.
But still higher commendation belongs to them. They
are the grand instruments, by which LABOR acts upon the
world, and thus the paramount obligations justly due to
LABOR, become justly due to the USEFUL ARTS.  "In the
sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat bread," is a curse which
carries a blessing with it.  Like Mercy, labor is twice
blessed," It blesseth him that gives and him that takes."
That toil to which we are condemned, as the tenure of
existence here below, is the training, which invests both
body and soul, with the insignia of true and genuine manhood. Effort is the only school for the muscles of the frame,
and the muscles of the intellect.  W'here but in that rocky
mine which LABOR delves, can be found those priceless gems,
will, efficiency, courage, pluck, perseverence, patience, selfconfidence, self-reliance, contempt for difficulties? These
are the sheet-anchors of the heroic character,-this is the stuff




11
of which martyrs and heroes are made, —these fashion those
souls, that are adamant in a just cause. Goethe gracefully
compares the effect, of a strong necessity, imposed upon a
mind, habitually untasked, to an oak planted in a China
vase; when the branches expand and the roots strike out,
the vessel flies to pieces.
Invaluable as is this disciplinary function of LABOR, it is
but a pebble picked up on the shore-a drop in the boundless ocean of her beneficence. LABOR is a universal solvent,
a philosopher's stone, with transmuting powers, magical and
gorgeous, beyond the dying alchemist's dream. Entering
into all the dead, sluggish, inert matter of the earth, she imparts to all the life-like properties of Utility and Value.
There is nothing in the caverns of this round globe, in the
depths of the sea, I had almost said the realm of Air, which
LABOR transforms not into a necessity or a luxury.  No
sweep of ocean, no forbidding desert, no fastnesses of forest or
of wilderness, can hide a product, useful to man, from the
omnipresent eye of this great benefactor. She catches from
the passing breeze, the waste white down of the cotton
shrub, and lo! bleaching cloth lies in the place of idle litter,
and the nakedness of man is covered.' She stumbles upon
a worthless mass of vitrified sand, and behold! window-panes
for every man's dwelling, cheap drinking cups for every
man's table, the mirror, the Portland vase, the prism, the telescope, the microscope, the Crystal Palace. It stretches its
hand over the waste places of the earth, and " instead of the
thorn, comes up the fig-tree, and instead of the brier, the
myrtle-tree." Iron, in its fingers, is as flexible as clay in the
potter's, while language struggles in vain to depict, the infinite variety of texture, and utility, which it imparts, to the
fleece of an animal, the gum of a tree, and the entrails of a
- Carlyle.




12
worm. There are no such words as " useless,"" "worthless,"
in her vocabulary. Refuse and rubbish are no longer such,
when touched by her wand. The dead animal, which was
formerly banished to the wilderness as a nuisance, she now
transmografies into something useful or ornamental; she
even brings life out of death, vitalizing exhausted soils, by
the moldering relics of mortality, which she digs from the
Blenheims, the Austerlitzes and Waterloos of the world.
The blessings which mankind owes to PRODUCTIVE LABOR,
can be vividly realized, by imagining the state of things, if
it should be annihilated. Suppose, then, by some all-pervading distemper, or by some fiat of divine displeasure, the
arm of universal LABOR was paralyzed. It would break the
main-spring which sets the whole machinery of existence in
motion. It would cut off the supply of life at the fountain.
The wheel of business, losing its only momentum, would
soon cease to revolve.  Grass would grow in our most
crowded thoroughfares. Those great marts, where traffic
now chaffers in its thousand tongues, where cheerful art
rings its innumerable sounds, and busy and hurrying myriads
proclaim the bright and joyful reign of LABOR, would become
noiseless, and blighted, and petrified, like some vast city of
the dead. Not the clink of a hammer, nor the rattle of a
shuttle, nor the whiff of a steam-engine, nor the roll of a
wheel, would break the sepulchral stillness of an idle world.
The axe, the file, and the saw, would lie silent, where they
had dropped from the hands of the yawning artizan; the
plough would rust where it had stopped in the furrow. All
the products of the now idle weaver, would soon drop piecemeal from the shelves of the merchant, and tattered rags,
hanging on a universe of sluggards, would pre-announce
man's speedy return, to his original Nakedness.  Crops
would decay in the field. The ungathered fruits would rot




13
upon the ground; the granary would soon surrender its last
kernel. Starvation would follow Nakedness. Ships, sailorless, would toss upon the seas, the forests would be burnt for
fuel, the mine would no longer send to our wharves the
grateful coal, and Frost-a third fury-would follow in the
footsteps, of Nakedness and Famine. The palaces of the
great, the habitation of every family, would be burnt for fire,
whole cities would be consumed, and naked and starving
man would soon be houseless, shelterless, and gathering
round the dying embers of their dwelling, would rake together
the feeble sparks, with skeleton fingers. Religion, Education, Law, the Church, the Altar, and the Capitol, would all
be whelmed and wrecked in a world-wide maelstrom, of
wretchedness and despair.
If it is true that the USEFUL ARTS are thus of indispensable
necessity to mankind, it would be reasonable to suppose,
that they had always been, the special objects of supervision
and care, on the part of the science and learning of the
world. So unwarranted, however, is this supposition, that
for nearly two thousand years, from the days of Aristotle, at
least, to the days of Bacon, there was not only no cordial
alliance, between the man of thought and the man of work,
between PHILOSOPHY and the USEFUL ARTS, but mutual
alienation and distrust. PHILOSOPHY, disdaining to minister
to the vulgar wants, or vulgar resources of the race, was
absorbed in abstractions, barren and useless to man, as those
God-forsaken wastes, which cover the accursed cities of the
plain. Her super-refined and exquisite spirit, shrunk instinctively, from the vulgar useful, and the dirty practical. She
was ashamed of her accidental improvements, of her involuntary inventions.  She disowned and repudiated any
chance offspring, which contributed, at all, to the relief of
rnman's estate. She rebuked and denounced one disciple, for




14
having ventured to claim for her, the discovery of the principle of the arch, and the introduction of the use of metals,
and ostracized another, for prostituting Geometry to the
invention of Machinery, and the most practical of her school,
the inventor of the pulley and the endless screw, regarded
these contrivances, as scientific trifles, beneath the dignity,
and unworthy the severer studies of PHILOSOPHY. " What,"
said she, in sovereign scorn, " has PHILOSOPHY to do with
houses, roofs, iron, copper, ploughs, looms and machinery.
PHILOSOPHY raises man above these sublunary wants and
expedients, these groanings, sufferings, and complainings, of
his mere animal nature.  While forming the soul, etherealizing the mind, and lifting both above the visible, the tangible,
into the sublimated region of pure thought, and immutable
essences, how can she bend her lofty pinion, to brood over
mere bodily wailings and wants?" The true philosopher
ought not to know, whether he is sheltered, fed, and clothed,
cold, hungry, sick, and destitute; Oh! no, he should feel
nothing, but the rapture of contemplation, see nothing, but
the beauty of virtue, hear nothing, but the music of the
spheres! That "there is no reasoning with hunger" or
"arguing with pain," are modern fallacies. According to
ancient PHILOSOPHY the cravings of a famished stomach, and
the wailings of a gouty toe, were both to be cured, by simply
convincing their victims, "that pain was no evil."  She was
eternally in search of the "wise man," and thought that
hunger, thirst, pain, the loss of friends, and all the other ills
that assail this worthless and contemptible soul-case, could
be baffled by some superlative, transcendental, ultra-mundane state of the soul itself. What a perversion here of the
name, the ends, and the uses of divine PHILOSOPHY! What
a caricature on the benevolent attributes and objects of Wisdom! Advanced as the ancients were, in some sciences, up




15
to the modern standard, and in others possessed of principles
of inestimable value, the good of mankind, the physical comfort of the race, the increase of human power, the subjugation
of nature's laws, material progress and amelioration, entered
not into the dreams of those, who in the Academy and Portico
wasted on abstractions the divine energies of Thought, or
wrapped in esoteric exclusiveness, those treasures of Wisdom
and Science, God-appointed, like the sunlight and rain, to a
beneficence, impartial, undiscriminating, and universal.
When Christianity triumphed over Paganism, these absurdities of the old PHILOSOPHY, were engrafted upon the
new religion, and the reign of barrenness and desolation, was
prolonged for several centuries, by the Schoolmen squandering on dialectic subtleties, an amount of intellect, hardly
inferior to that, which the Platonists had lavished, on these
phantasmagoria of brain. While the PHIIOSOPHY of the
world, was thus on the cloud-capped mountains, of visionary
speculation, isolated, insulated, as it were, from the wants
and business of daily life, the USEFuL ARTS were toiling on,
in the hot and dusty plain, in hand-to-hand conflicts with
man's necessities and wants, struggling blindly and recklessly
under the heavy load, trying one random experiment after
another, without knowledge or principle to direct them,
abandoned by their guides, having received no counsel or
aid from Science, from the age of Archimedes, to the age of
Galileo. Uncared for by Astronomy or Mathematics, during
the long night of the Middle Ages, the mariner crept along
the threatening lee shore, from headland to headland; the
husbandman, in utter darkness as to the constituents of soil,
employed no more perfect means of culture, than Jacob
might have used, on Laban's farm, and the Mechanic, desponding of further assistance from the Natural Sciences,
sank down, in a sort of dogged despair, with such tools and




16
implements, as had descended to him, from the first apprenticeship of the Arts. William the Conqueror led his army,
from Normandy to England, with no better means of transportation, than Ulysses had used, in leading his hardy islanders, from Ithica to Troy, and the same kind of weapons, smote
our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, with which Joshua-smote the
Canaanites.
As late as the middle of the fourteenth century, our own
ancestors, in " Merry England," were no better skilled in the
working of metals, and the weaving of fabrics, than were the
inhabitants of forgotten Tyre, and patriarchal Damascus;
and in houses, house-hold equipments, and what are now
regarded, as the mere necessities of life, they were hardly upon a
par with Robinson Crusoe, in his desolate island. Even down
to the time of Charles the Second, Dublin was further from
London, than Sebastopol is now, and Boston merchandize
was longer in reaching Hartford, than it now is in reaching
Iowa. In the reign of William and Mary, and of Louis XIV.,
a French fleet which swept the Channel, is represented, as
composed in great part, of galleys resembling rather those
ships with which Alcibiades and Lysander disputed the
sovereignty of the _Egean, than those which contended at
the Nile and at Trafalgar.
Yes, to this ignorance on the part of PHILOSOPHY, of its
true mission, the USEFUL ARTS owe a servile bondage, of
twice ten centuries, to the blind guides of tradition, and the
narrow teachings of personal experience.  Under such tutelage, they limped and staggered along the path of improvement. But while thus bereft and at the same time
performing unassisted, all the drudgery of society, before
the eclipse that darkened and veiled the sun of science
had entirely passed away, as an antepast of the blessings
they would dispense, when he burst upon them in full-orbed,




meridian splendor, they were enabled to give the Telescope
to Astronomy, the Mariner's Compass to Navigation, Gunpowder to War, and to Letters, that second savior of the
human family, the glorious art of Printing.
It was more than twenty years after the commencement
of the seventeenth century, before the Utilitarian Era may
be said to have dawned. When Lord Bacon gave to the
world a new method of interrogating nature, and declared
that the " end of all science is to enrich human life with useful inventions and arts," he annulled the long divorce, between
PHILOSOPHY and LABOR, harmonized Thought and Work,
and thus two seraphs, which since the fall, in separate
spheres, had burned and sung, now blended in a common
beam, and swelled a common harmony.
What countless blessings have sprung from this auspicious union! When the voice of Spring passes over the frozen
North, the silent and ice-locked water-courses, run sparkling
and babbling to the sea; the stripped and mournful trees,
throw all their gaudy ensigns, and pennants, and fluttering streamers to the fragrant breeze, the air is musical with
the liveliest notes of birds, and the living green of the earth,
is almost peopled with those fairy folk,-the flowers: in a
word, Life springs from Death, as if some divine voice had
broke the fetters of the tomb. A change as wonderful, as
radical, as universal, as beneficent, consecrated the union between the USEFUL ARTS and the NEW PHILOSOPHY. The
night was passed, and the morning broke brightly; the years
of famine were ended, and the years of plenty commenced.
The thought of the world was turned from theories, dry as
the dust of Pharaoh, and from problems, visionary as those,
which sought to extract sunbeams from cucumbers, and
wholesome food from its digested elements, to theories which
were fruit producing, and to problems, which were practica3




18
ble. For the first time, those four mighty powers, the will,
intelligence, skill and strength of the race, united, harmonized, put their shoulders to the wheel of progress and amelioration. Invention followed invention, discovery discovery.
Nature began to surrender her secrets and powers. Man,
for the first time, began to possess the Earth; for him, the
ground brought forth abundantly; for him, Old Ocean
smiled serene; for him, wafted on the willing Air, came the
"spicy gales of Araby the blest;" to him bowed the winds
and the waves, and Steam, Electricity, Galvanism, assumed
the yoke of Man, their master, as humbly and willingly, as
the ox and the horse.
In the benefits dispensed, by this harmonious co-operation
of Science and Labor, no class of mankind has participated
more largely than the laborers themselves. It has united intellect and work, and wiped out the narrow and conventional distinction between the thinker and the worker, for the
worker is now often thinking, and the thinker working, and
thus thought has been made healthy by labor, and labor happy
and honorable by thought.' In the place of his own limited experience, it has given him, the accumulated experience
of all generations of men, reduced to principles, and systematized to laws. It has warned him away from  aims that
were visionary or impossible, like the pursuit of the perpetual
motion, and guided him into paths that would certainly lead
to new and valuable adaptation of Nature's laws. It has
economized all the forms and processes of labor.  It has
lifted the intolerable load, which formerly ground him to the
dust, precluding all intellectual and moral culture, and placed
it upon the untiring muscles and sinews of inanimate machinery. It has sharpened his intellect, enlarged his per* Mr. Ruskins' " Stones of Venice," suggests this idea.




19
ceptions, elevated his position, increased his comforts and
enjoyments, improved his health and lengthened his days'
The beneficent influences of this union, upon the general
welfare of mankind, is of itself a theme which a folio could
not exhaust.
We are told of a Geological Era, when the globe was only
suited to fishes, saurians, and cold-blooded animals, and
that great elemental and organic changes were required, to
adapt it to be the dwelling-place of man. Since the harmnonious co-operation of Work and Thought, the USEFUL ARTS
have completed, what this Geologic revolution commenced,
and have finished up the world as a habitation, not only
for man the animal, but for man the moral, intellectual, social, industrious, aspiring being. Its heat, frost, lightning,
water, darkness, and exhalations, they have rendered innoxious, by equipping him with armor and weapons, that
securely defy them all. They have broken through, or leveled down its mountainous upheavals, that Man might
circulate broad and free. Its rivers, friths, arms of the sea,
and the sea itself, they have bridged, with subaqueous telegraphs and steamships, that to all nations, might be dispensed
those blessings, which formerly hovered over a few enviable
Edens, and that the interchange of business, and of all
friendly offices, between all earth's families, might be as
frequent and as facile, as if they were but one community.
Its space and distance, which formerly rendered the different nations, as much strangers to each other, as they are to
the inhabitants of Saturn, the USEFUL ARTS have broken
down and annihilated. Within one short month, the artisans and scholars of all lands, can now be gathered together
in some central Crystal Palace, and in half a month, the armies and the armories of Western Europe be thrown upon the
Euxine. Many of its diseases, which once, swept him off in




20
masses, they have extinguished, and have rendered safe for
himself, broad expanses of his domain, where before, pestilence and miasmas could only be acclimated. The Montgolfier, the Safety Lamp, and the Diving Bell, have vindicated
his right to possess and occupy the Air, the Caverns, and the
Sea. In short, Life, Health, Happiness, Comfort, Manufactures, Commerce, Art, Letters, all the great interests of
society, have been improved, promoted, perfected, by the
USEFUL ARTS, since this new evangel; and I must dismiss
this part of my theme, with this imperfect generalization,
because this part of it is endless.
Glance now, for a moment, at the social and political influences of the USEFUL ARTS, under the new dispensation.
Race, Climate, Soil and Government, were previously recognized, as the grandest instrumentalities, in changing the
seats of civilization and empire. But in the august procession of causes, that lead to such magnificent results, they
must now yield the precedence to the USEFUL ARTS. The
invention of Whitney, adjusted the social position and relations of our Southern brethren, more decisively, than their
cotton-perfecting soil and climate. In her Titanic struggle
with France, during the first half of the present century,
England was as much indebted to Watt, as to Wellington,
and to Arkwright, as to Nelson. In peopling and civilizing
the wilderness, the institutions of Government, must hide
their diminished heads, in the presence of the institutions of
Steam. What government, laws, or system, or code of laws,
could have done so much for our Mississippi Valley, as the
practical development of the great idea which germinated
in the brain of JOHN FITCH, of Windsor. It would almost
seem, that they were the counter-parts of each other; that
the Mississippi Valley was unfinished until the Steamboat
was added to it, and that the Steamboat was incomplete until




21
it was stemming the majestic current of the Father of
Waters. What woes population in old Connecticut, from
the hill-tops to the valleys, like the whistle of the Locomotive? What stretches out the city into the country, and
shoves the country on to the city, like the Railroad? What
is blending nations together, and blotting out the confusion
of tongues, like the Steamship? To what are we indebted
for the social unity of the Republic? Primarily, doubtless,
to common historic antecedents, to a common language,
common institutions and interests. But all these connecting
ties have existed, at other periods, and under other conditions,
ana yet"' Lands intersected by a narrow frith,
Abhor each other, and Mountains interposed,
Make enemies of nations, which else
Like kindred drops, had melted into one."
We owe our exemption, from that distrust and alienation,
which have hitherto overtaken homogeneous communities,
scattered over wide belts of the earth's surface, to the beneficent agencies of the USEFUL ARTS. For the first time in
the world's history, friths and mountains, and rivers, and
space, are no barriers, to the free and rapid interchange, of
thought and feeling. The Railroad, the Telegraph, and the
Double Cylinder Press, have so perfected intercommunication, "that as a matter of mere routine," (as it has been
strongly and truthfully put,) " the intelligent community
from Portland to New Orleans, from Savannah to Chicago,
read the same public information, in the same version of it,
and the reflecting minds of the whole country are brooding
upon the state of affairs in every part, and maturing their
judgment concerning it, at the same moment; and when the
high debate opens, when the powerful writer or the great




22
orator, utters the developed sentiment of one region, and confirming echo or bold challenge answers from another, proposition and reply, assertion and replication, are alike submitted
to the simultaneous judgment of the whole community. It
is then no mere fiction or hyperbole, to speak of a nation of
twenty millions, as sitting in perpetual council, subjected
ever to the same kind of impression, and permeated with the
same currents of influence, as swayed the fierce democracy
of Athens, driven within the scarlet cords of the Lexiarchs,, or
govern the sober democracy of New England in town meeting assembled." "
Still higher triumphs, I confidently believe, await the
Magnetic Telegraph.  In spite of recent experimental failures, it is yet destined to cross the ocean, and to interlace
and amalgamate continents and hemispheres, as firmly and
closely as it does this sisterhood of States. As many cities
will claim the invention of the Sub-marine cable, as claim
the birth of Homer. In the remote ages of the future, as far
removed from us, as we are from the Ptolemies, it may be
the only event, in our day, of sufficient splendor, to render
visible to their eyes, that little point in the infinite vault of
Time, known as the nineteenth century. I shall be pardoned,
I hope, in this connection, if I place thus early upon your
records, the claim of my own municipality to this honor.
In the winter of 1842-3, a citizen of Hartford-the same who,
without loan or discount from the Banks, carries on his single
shoulders the tremendous load of our South-Meadow Improvements, but at the time of which I speak, so poor, that
he could scarcely call his mathematical instruments, or even
his watch his own-he, Sir, laid down on the bottom of the
East river, near the line of the Fulton ferry, a Sub-marine
x Oration on "Public Life," by William M. Evarts.




23
cable, and higher up at Hell-gate another, which differed
only from the one, recently lost between Nova Scotia and
Newfoundland, in this respect, that in the latter, gutta-percha
was used as an insulator, whereas in the former (gutta-percha
being then unknown,) a combination of asphaltum and beeswax was used as an insulator. He actually had in working
order, an Electric-Telegraph between Coney Island and the
Merchant's Exchange, in which this Sub-marine cable was a
part of the communication. I, therefore, file my caveat here,
in behalf of Col. Samuel Colt, of the City of Hartford, for
the invention of the Sub-marine cable.
I have frequently attempted to divine, what would be the
emotions of an intelligent mind, if all the surprising revelations of modern art, burst at once upon it, instead of overcoming its special wonder, by their single approach, and slow
and gradual development.  Suppose the stately form of the
Apostolic Hooker,' could rise from yonder grave-yard, and
gaze once more on this beautiful valley, how would his mind,
richly furnished with all the learning of his time and ingenious and God-trusting, beyond his fellows, regard the changes
which- two centuries have wrought? Let us meet him, after
the first glow of gratitude and admiration, have faded from
the manly beauty of his countenance, at finding cities and
villages, in the place of the overarching forest, and cultivated
farms, instead of an unbroken wilderness. All this, astonishing and wonderful, as indications of progress, were within
the range of his anticipations and hopes. Cities as large,
fIn this speech as originally prepared, I had intended to use " Hooker," as the
representative of the past. When it was delivered in New Haven I used the name
of " Davenport" as more appropriate to the locality, and varied the sequel accordingly. The text now follows the original manuscript.




24
villages as flourishing, he had seen before. Let us meet him,
when his inquiring mind, is attempting to fathom some modern enigmas, which shock and startle, all the deductions of
his science, and all the suggestions of his past experience.
He might expect to find, that even the rich alluvial of the
valley, worn out by two hundred years of tillage, had driven
his murmuring descendants, into another Exodus, from their
ancestral seats. But he learns, that by a process, called the
rotation of crops, and by adapting newly discovered fertilizing agents, to the chemical affinities of the various soils,
that great mother bosom, the earth, is as unexhausted and
prolific, as when he first looked upon its charms, in the sacred
solitude of nature. We will say nothing of his surprise, at
finding Brindle and Spot, which dragged his wagons from
Cambridge, superseded by cattle of blood and lineage, the
lordly Devon, and the high-bred Durham, or at finding the
stately Saxon and Merinos, in the place of the coarse-wooled
dwarfs, or the bow-legged otters, nor of his glance of mingled
astonishment and contempt, at the gallinaceous Brobdinags
which have invaded the dunghill.
With what unfathomable wonder he surveys those glittering points on chimney-top and steeple, which guide the
lightning "innocuously from heaven to earth;" these attenuated wires that flash along the thought of widely separated
communities, and searches in vain, for this invisible fluid
that 1" lights up the night with the splendor of day? "
As he gazes round the horizon, he was prepared to find
the cattle-path, which led him through the wilderness, grown
into the smooth and convenient highway, but he sees an
immense causeway, stretching off beyond the reach of his
vision on an unbroken level, and on it, (drawn by an agent,
whose sole function in his time, was to lift the lid of his




dinner-pot;, or sing in the nozzle of his tea-kettle) a conveyance, which,
" Singing through the forest,
Rattling over ridges,
Shooting under arches,
Rumbling over bridges,
Whizzing through the mountains,
Buzzing o'er the vale,"would carry him and his colony, luggage and live stock, over
that long and weary march of fourteen days, in four short
hours. As it rushes over its iron track, with wings of fire, he
is not in sober Newtown but in a land of Genii, enchanters,
magicians! In examining more closely, the snorting, firebreathing monster, which drags this immense load, at such
marvelous speed, he recalls in vain the hydras and dragons,
the gorgons and chimeras dire, of his classic reading, for its
type or parallel, and with all his senses confused, and his
previous knowledge and associations, utterly confounded and
bewildered, by its preternatural ferocity and strength, he can
only lift his hands in holy horror, as he thinks of the terrible
beast in the Apocalypse, or apostrophize it in the language
of one of his devout descendants, " Hell in a hIarness!"
Instead of the bark canoe, which skimmed its placid waters,
when he last gazed on the loveliest of rivers; instead of the
tall galleon-spoil of vanquished Spain,-or those huge English war-dogs, that under the great Lord Protector, plucked
the laurels of Van Tromp,-some of which he may have seen,
ere he left his island home, he beholds sea-palaces, miracles
of naval architecture, spreading no canvass to the favoring
breeze, but puffing, whistling, screaming, and belching volcano-like smoke and flame, they walk the waters, with
incredible velocity and power, moving backwards, forwards,
4




26
in all directions, turning, tacking, veering, defiant alike of
wind, waves, and current, and of all sailing rules, invented
by merely mortal mariner. They upset the infallible certainties of science, violate the laws of nature, run counter to all
his experience, and gazing upon them, as he would upon
Orion or the Pleiades, the infinite awe and reverence of the
man can find but this utterance —'" How wonderful are thy
works, in wisdom Thou hast made them all."
On all sides he would see edifices, that in their vastness,
remind him of the monuments of Egyptian or Roman grandeur, but not reared as mausoleums to kings, or votive offerings to the Gods, but temples of industry devoted to the
welfare of man, and in their spacious halls, he would see the
benignant genius of machinery, " summon around him his
willing myriads, assign to each the regulated task, substituting for painful muscular effort, on their part, the energies of
his own gigantic arm, and demanding in return, only attention and dexterity, to correct such little aberrations, as occasionally occur in his workmanship."
In the whole circle of modern improvements, there is nothing to which he bends with such profound homage, as the
magical powers of machinery. He is dumb with amazement
to find, that matter can be so animated by geniusi as to perform with skill, exactness, and precision, all fhe various,
complicated, and delicate functions, of the human hand, alike
dexterous, in weaving the most gossamer-like threads, in
whittling and shaping, to any conceivable form, the hardest
metals, in rending rocks, crimping paper, and sticking a pin.
With what emotions he would bend over a power-loom, or a
sewing-machine, or a screw-machine, or a steam-plough, or
wonder of wonders, a " Steam Paddy," grubbing, digging,
picking, excavating, embanking, performing most of the
functions of its animate name-sake.




27
When he sees too, that the gross and sensualizing tendencies, of so much material prosperity, are chastened by the
cultivation of the ideal, and by the refining influences of the
liberal arts, and that Churches, Colleges, Schools, Academies of Painting and Sculpture, follow the pathway of the
Steam-Engine and the Power-Loom; when he sees too, that
the guardians both of man's spiritual and material interests,
are here working in harmonious cooperation, and that along
the iron track of the railroad, and the iron wires of the telegraph, run not only matter and mind, but the eternal plans
of Providence, everlasting Truth and Right; when he sees
that the poor, tender, persecuted vine which, with so many
prayers, and tears, and sad forebodings, he had planted
in the wilderness, has been watched, and watered, and
guided, by the God of the desolate and oppressed, the stern
heart of the old Puritan, melting into joy and gratitude,
breaks forth, in the exulting imagery of the Psalmist's paDon,;" Thou brought a vine out of Egypt, Thou cast out the
heathen and planted it, Thou madest room for it and it filled
the earth. The hills were covered with its shadow, and the
boughs thereof, were like the goodly cedar trees.  She
stretched forth her branches unto the sea, and her boughs
to the river."
The world is not yet finished! God has indeed completed
his six days' work, but the dawn is now purpling the East,
in the first, of man's countless days of labor.
The FUTURE opens before us with the most auspicious
omens, and in inconceivable grandeur. We can not indeed
lift the veil, but the analogies of the past, throw such rays
and scintillations into the void, that we can for a moment
fathom its depths and penetrate its gloom. All inventions
and discoveries are procreative. The spinning wonder of
Arkwright speedily begat the weaving wonder of Cartwright.




The railroad is the legitimate progeny of the steamboat.
The Ambrotype, the Photograph and sun-painting in colors,
were all within the grasp of time and patience, when Daguerre
succeeded in arresting, the fleeting image of the Camera.
Every year now, adds more to the usefulness of steam, than
the two hundred years, that separated Watt from Worcester.
It is thus that every new conquest becomes a point of vantage gained-a parallel carried-a Malakoff taken, from
whence new batteries can be directed, and redoubled energies
turned, upon the undiscovered and unknown. All the science
too of the world, and a large proportion of its intellect, at
this era, culminate upon the single point of practical aggrandizement.  Astronomy is not now  calculating nativities,
while the mariner is struggling in the breakers, nor chemistry
using quicksilver as an amalgum only, while the miner and
metallurgist are separating the ore, by wearisome processes,
nor mechanical philosophy flying off in search of the perpet.
ual motion, while the cotton-planter picks out the seed from
the fiber, with his fingers.
In the light of such facts and analogies, and in that of the
progressive law of cooperating Thought and Labor, and of
past experience, we repose securely upon the conviction, that
the realities of THE FUTURE, will immeasureably transcend
the wildest dreams of prophecy. We seem sailing along the
very borders, hearing the ripple that breaks upon the shore,
where the USEFUL ARTS are finally to be installed, in absolute
and immutable perfection. The cloud lifts, and we catch, for a
moment, a glance at the wonders beyond. We see meadows
and pastures green, oppressed with unknown varieties of
vegetable life, the barren places of the earth, rejoicing in such
crops, as the Nile might have witnessed, in those seven years
of plenty. The air is navigated, the mountains leveled, great
arms of the sea bridged with cables or spanned by arches.




29
We strive in vain, to estimate the infinite progeny, that have
sprung from some well-known invention. We see heaped
together, in all the beautiful and fantastic shapes of a magical Architecture, piles upon piles, of granite, marble, and
iron, towering upward to the clouds, in their vastness, resembling the mountainous upheavals of the convulsed earth, and
in splendor and gorgeousness, that celestial city which Bunyan saw in vision. We stand beneath domes, compared
with which, St. Peter's is as an emmet's tumulus, and before
palaces, in whose vestibule the Vatican might be lost. We
guage and measure the capacities, of new powers and forces
added to the resources of man, beside which Steam is weak
and Electricity slow. We behold machinery so marvelous in
strength, adaptation, and economy, that the steam-engine
has been driven into the museum of the antiquary, and the
spinning-jenny discarded, as a toy of childhood. We see
curious workmanship wrought from  new metals, or new
combinations of the old ones, and beautiful fabrics, fitting in
and supplying wants and necessities, now unanswered, and
all woven from natural products, as much unknown to us, as
cotton to the Saxons, or caoutchouc to the Chaldeans. Winding around an immense plaza, sparkling with jets and fountains, here somber with the umbrage of unknown monarchs
of the wood, there gay, gaudy and fragrant with a tropical
vegetation, surpassing an Epicurean's dream, and everywhere
adorned with the colossal images of immortal inventors and
contrivers, we see, (celebrating some high festival of industry, or inaugurating an Agricultural Fair, in the 25th century,)
a triumphal procession, jubilant with the shoutings and
rejoicings of emancipated labor, radiant with ruby and
amethyst, with diamonds and pearls, the spoils of the sea
and the land, with the crowns, trophies, and ensigns of vanquished nature, with the emblems of new arts, manufactures,




30
and handicrafts, and proudly preeminent among them all,
though chained to the victorious car, the terrific elements
that have been discovered and enslaved; and on the architrave of the vast temple that flings open its golden gates, to
receive the exulting multitude we read, as an incentive to
industry and enterprise even in the presence of seeming
perfection" WORK ON, WORK EVER-THE WORLD IS NOT YET FINISHED.7