YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

1946

AN

^^^I^ll^S

TO THE MECHANICS OF EASTON, PENNSYLVANIA,

DELIVERED

AT THEIR REQUEST,

BY

JAMES MABISOJV PORTER.

ON TIlE

FOURTH OF JUJLV, 1835.

EASTOJy,
Speinted by josiah p. hetrich.
1835.

At a meeting of the Mechanics of the borough of Easton, Pennsylvania,
( twenty-two trades oeing represented, ) on the 5th of June, 1835, it was re
solved to celedrate the approaching anniversary of American Independence,
by a civic procession, each trade or occupation forming separately and carrying
appropriate banners, and that a general invitation be given to the citizens to
participate with them on that day.
Col. Abraham Miller, was chosen Chief Marshal, and Messrs. William Bruce,
Hiram Yard, F. W. Muller and George Straub, Assistant Marshals.
James M. Porter, Esquire, was requested to deliver an address suited to the
occasion, and
David Barnet, Esquire, to read the Declaration of Independence.
The Marshals subsequently designated the following as the order ofthe pro-
•cession, he.
To form at eight o'clock, A. M. in Bushkiln street, the right on Pomfret, to
move up Bushkiln to Hamilton street, along Hamilton to Northampton, up
Northampton to John street, thence countermarch down Northampton to Ham
ilton — down Hamilton to Ferry street, down Ferry to Pomfret street, along
Pomfret to Spring Garden street, down Spring harden to Fermor street, down
Fermor to Ferry street, down Ferry to Water street up Water to Northampton,
up Northampton to Hamilton, down Hamilton to Ferry and down Ferry to St.
John's Church.
The order of precedence of the several trades was determined by lot.
In pursuance of these arrangements, the procession was formed at eight
o'clock, in the morning ofthe 4th of July, 1835, in the order prescribed, each
trade having its banner and each tradesman his badge. In addition t the
Mechanics, who numbered some four or five hundred, the procession was in
creased by the Reverend Clergy, the members of the Bar, the faculty and
students of Lafayette College, and the citizens generally.
The procession moved through the designated streets and arrived at the
Church at about half past nine o'clock, A. M.

The following was the order of exercises in the church.
1. Prayer, by the Reverend John P. Hecht.
2. Music, by the Choir.
3, Reading of the Declaration of Independence, by David Barnet.
4. Address, by James M. Porter.
5. Music, by the Choir.
6. Benediction, by the Reverend B. C. Wolff.
The Mechanics dined on the same day at the American Hotel, and toasted
the author of the Address as follows :
*' The orator ofthe day, J. M. Porter, Esq. — The gentleman, philanthropist,
and man of talents. His instructive address was not sown on barren ground —
but will bring forth fruit beneficial to the mechanics and workingmen of our
Borough." They then passed an unanimous vote of thanks to Col. Porter, for the Ad
dress, and appointed a Committee to request a copy of it for publication. In
pursuance of which it is now given to the public, vith the following note in
leply to the request ofthe Committee, Easxoit, Jult 4, 1835.
GisiLiKiir :
I comply with your request to furnish a copy of my address for publi
cation, but beg it to be distinctly understood that the address has little, if any
thing, original in it. It is a mere collation of facts and observations, brought
into one view before you, and as such, it is hoped, it may be useful.
J. M. PORTER.
Messrs. Thouas Bishop, -^
WiLWAM Bnucx, C Committee.
Lewis BEicHi,Bi)TiS

ADDRESS.

In comparing man with the rest of the animated part of Creation,
it will be found that his superiority consists not in his animal powers
or capacities. He has neither the strength nor the speed that charac
terize the greater portion of the brute creation, and enable them suc
cessfully to attack or defend. He is, of all animals, the, most helpless in
infancy, and the least capable of enduring the changes ofthe seasons
and the inclemencies of the elements. His imbecility and incapacity
to take care of hiraself is continued thro' a long infancy, and even in
the maturity and vigour of manhood his physical powers are of an in
ferior order. Whence then does the superiority of man arise? It is from
the mind, the immaterial mind, which enables him to lord it over the
rest of creation and make them subservient to his wants or caprices.
Well then might the poet say :
" I would he measured hy my soul.
The mind 's the standard of the man."
Philosophers have been rauch divided on the subject of the powers
of the raind — whether the mind is a mere capacity for improve
ment which requires something to evolve it, or whether talents are in
nate. It matters however but little which is right. In either case
the improvement of the mental faculties, by reading and study, devel-
opes its capacities and enables it to bring its resourses into practical
use. _ In considering the subject, to which your attention is now necessa
rily called, it will be attempted, ia some slight degree, to trace thd in
fluence of mental developement in relation to the mechanic arts — which
at this day must be considered the most beneficial, practical illustra
tion of natural philosophy, as applied to the ordinary useful purposes
of life.
In the infant ages of mankind, the mechanic arts were littie practis
ed. Man's first lot was probably in the mild regions of the equator,
where the great luxuriance in the products of nature and the little oc
casion there existed for the erection of buildings to shelter him from
theinclemency of the weather, or the procuring of much apparel forthe
same purposes, were illy calculated to elicit the mechanical powers or

6
principles lying like an unsprouted germ in his mind. Necessity has
ever been the mother of invention, and thus we see that ere this globe
was visited by that deluge which swept all the human family, but the
favored household of Noah from its surface, which had been overspread
by wickedness, the necessities, the conveniencies or the curiosity of
man had induced considerable progress in the mechanic arts. We
learn from the word of sacred truth, that in a few generations from the
great progenitor of mankind, & perhaps even while he yet lived, cities
were builded, musical instruments constructed, & mechanism in metals
carried on. Cain built the city of Enoch — Jabal was the father of such
as dwelt in tents and have cattle — Jubal of such as handled the harp
and organ — and Tubal-cain an instructor of artificers in brass and iron.
At the period of the deluge, something over sixteen centuries and a
half from the creation, there is no doubt that considerable perfec
tion had been attained in many of the useful °and practical branches
of mechanism. The ark itself was perhaps one of the best speci
mens of art for the purpose for which it was intended, that ever was
produced, for the great Jehovah himself condescended to be the instruc
tor of its immediate maker; and wherever he has set an example of
mechanical skill or arrangement, every thing merely human stands
back abashed. Subsequent to the deluge which destroyed the earth
that then ivas and gave man this new earth which we now inhabit, and
which exhibits so many geological proofs of the existence of that deluge,
and the accuracy of the Mosaic account of the creation and early his
tory of the globe, the mechanic arts were practised and extended, as
the increase of the human family spread them abroad on the earth, as
the extent of light and knowledge and consequently the refinements of
life prevailed.
It would be out of place here to attempt a history in detail of their
progress in the various arts and sciences. Much pains and labour have
been bestowed on this subject to unbosom from the monuments or rub
bish of ages the claims of nations and ofpeople to the rank of pioneers
in the works of art.
The cities of Babylon and Nineveh were built some 250 years before
the time at which the best authenticated accounts fix the commence
ment of the first ofthe pyramids of Egypt; & the contusion ot tongues at
the attempted erection of the tower of Babel must have preceded the
commencement of the first pyramid between 50 and 100 years.
The erection ofthe first of these pyramids is ascribed toApachnes, the
third ofthe race of shepherd Kings of Egypt, about 2095 years previous
to the birth of our Saviour and some years previous to the time when
the patriarch Abraham visited Egypt, and it is evident from the skill
exhibited in their structure, the immense masses of stone of which
they Were composed, the order and system with which they were plan
ned and executed, as a consequence from which, they have endured,
in defiance of time and the elements, until the history of the men and
nation that reared them has been nearly lost to the world, and onlv
known by the unravelling of the hieroglyphics which abound in them",
that the principles and practice of permanent and durable architecture

had then attained to considerable perfection, and that much of mechan
ical skill must have been used in removing the material from the quar
ry ; in conveying it to and depositing it on the building and in dres
sing and finishing each block for its appropriate place.
It was not, however, in architecture alone, that the advance in the
mechanic arts, was exhibited. From the rude coverings of skins, the
first garments worn by the ante-deluvian world, subsequent to the
expulsion, the ingenuity of mankind had invented the construction of
fabrics as well for garments as for tents; Subsequent to the deluge,
and as far back as 1850 odd years before the christian era, when Eli-
ezer of Damascus was sent by Abraham to the land of his brethren to
obtain a wife for his son Isaac, he takes with him golden ear-rings
and bracelets, as presents for the intended bride, and we find them
having pichers and other utensils of convenience in housekeeping —
and the bride when she met her future husband, was veiled.
The making of bricks, we have authentic accounts, was in use more
than 2000 years before the christian era. The erections of the buildings
before mentioned — ofthe ark by the Israelites in their journey — ofthe
various heathen temples of Egypt, Greece & Rome — the splendid tem
ple by Solomon — and the Colossus at Rhodes, with other instances
araong other nations, until the overthrow of the Roman Republic, and
the establishment of the Empire, shew, that at and before the Chris
tian era, great progress had been made in various arts, tending to min
ister to the necessities and luxuries of mankind.
The Grecian models of architecture have never been excelled in el
egance. The Greeks understood the laws of proportion in the construc
tion oftheir edifices, in an especial manner. Yet there were many prin
ciples in natural philosophy little, if at all, known to them. The prin
ciples of hydraulics, which are not yet fully known, were then even
less perfectly understood. They knew not that water would rise to
its own level and hence instead ofthe simple modern resort to conduit
pipes, they incurred immense expenses in rearing arch piled upon arch,
to construct their acqueducts to carry large supplies of water over de
pressed spots of ground.'^
Archimedes flourished about 260 years before the birth of our Saviour.
Whatever might have been known in practice previously, there was
little ofthe theory of mechanics philosophically understood. He has
the credit of discovering the exact operation and power of the screw,
the inclined plane, the pully and the lever — of the latter of which he
was so enamoured as to say to the second Hiero, King of Syracuse,
I'Give me a place to stand on and I will move the world." — And yet
it would seem that these, or some at least of these powers, must have

• Pliny informs us that water can be raised by tubes of lead, and the exca
vations at Pompeii would shew that, at and before the reign of the Emperor
.Titus,bathsandfountains were thus supplied. But even among the Romans
theyknewofnomaterialofsufBcient tenacity for large supplies of water, if
they indeed supposed that conduit pipes could be used on so large a scale.

8 been in use among the Egyptians some fifteen to eighteen hundred
years before, or how could the immense masses of granite and other
stone forming the walls, the columns, the colossal figures, and other
monuments of ancient Memphis, Abydos, Antaeopolis and Thebes
ever have been raised from their natural beds and transported to the
temples, the grottos, the sepulchres and other edifiges which they,in
part, composed dr decorated.
From the days of Archimedes onward, the science of mechanics
was taught in the schools. The philosopher and mathematician search
ed further into the theory, whilst the result oftheir investigations was
put in use by practical artisans and submitted to the unerring test of
experience. In the dark ages, which succeeded, as the Roraan Em
pire declined and fell, and ignorance and superstition wrapped the
world in their sable habiliments, there was little of improvement ia
the mechanical branches of science, and little of practice, except in
the branch of architecture and those domestic arts with which the
world could not dispense.
It was notuntil towards the close of the 16th century that the rapid
developement of the physical sciences comraenced, and there is not
' perhaps on record in history, any more extraordinary contrast, than
that of the slow and limited progress of those sciences, frora the early
ages of mankind up to that time, and the rapidity with which thej
have since been enlarged and spread abroad.
Until the art of printing was discovered and put in practice, the ad-*
ditions to the stock of knowledge on all subjects were few and far be
tween. The mass of mankind were little interested in them, and if
the observations made and the knowledge acquired by a few enquir
ing minds in any age were not lost in oblivion, they were not spread
abroad. It seemed to be a part ofthe philosophy of the ancient and
the monastic schools, to keep their knowledge wrapped up in learned
mystery as a thing too sacred for coramon observation. It was not
then supposed that the sciences could exist in and be illustrated by,
coraraon objects, and have a place in the Mechanic Arts. But, no
doubt, many a bold and adventuring mind did push its enquiries
beyond the ordinary routine, and taking its Sight into the regions of
speculation, made valuable observations, which failed to benefit man
kind, because they perished without a record. Towards the middle of
the 15th century, this art of printing, of all others the raust valuable
to mankind, was discovered, and by the coraencement of the 16th cen
tury, had come into pretty general use and enabled every one to make
his ideas known to the world. On this subject it has been well said:
"The moment it took place, the sparks of information, from tirae to
time, struck out, instead of glimmering for a moment and dying away
in oblivion, began to accumulate into a genial glow, and the flame was
at length kindled which was speedily to acquire the strength and rap
id spread of a conflagration. There was an universal excitement in
the minds of raen throughout Europe produced by the first outbreak
of modern science, but even the most sanguine anticipators could
scarcely have looked forward to that steady, unintermitted progress
which it has since maintained, nor to that succession of great discov'

cries which has kept up the interest of the first irapulse still vigorous
and undiminished. It raay truly be said that there is scarcely a sin
gle branch of physical enquiry which is either stationary or which has
not been for many years past in a constant state of advance, and in
which the progress is not at this moment going on with accelerated
rapidity." There is an active principle in the human mind which is elicited
by excitement, but which unmoved, is inert. As in water, so in mind.
The stagnant pool soon becomes putrescent. The turbid and agitated
ocean is healthful and pure. 'Tis the action ofthe waters that secures
their purity. The difi'usion of knowledge has tended to the increase
of civilization and wealth. These, in turn, have given opportunity
to the difi'usion of taste for intellectual pursuits, and to the increased
and enlarged opportunities afibrded from the 16th century to the present
time, we must mainly attribute the great extension of knowledge in
every thing connected with science and the useful arts. Mind has
been brought into competition and collision with mind. Scientific
truths have been developed and tested and brought to bear on the
coramon affairs and business of life.
These results have been attained in all the arts and business of man.
The age in which we live may emphatically beyond all others, be
said to be the age of mechanics ; and much as we have progressed, we
must nut flatter ourselves that we have attained perfection in any of
them. As rauch as we are beyond those who preceded us, in all
probability, we shall fall behind those who succeed us. The impulse
is given : — the mind of man is pursuing the investigation of the use
ful — the knowledge of one age is transmitted to the next, and so we
may increase upon increase until the command will go forth that
"Tirae shall be no more." — Nor will the increase and developement
of our faculties then cease.
Adam Sraitb, in his 'Wealtti of Nations,' describes a philosopher^as
a person whose trade it is to do nothing, and speculate on every thing.
If Adam Sraith had lived at this day, he probably would reverse this
definition, for the great, vast and most beneficial results which have been
attained, in increasing the wealth of nations, of which he wrote much
and perhaps knew but little, have been thus attained by the labours
of philosophers, systematically applying the principles of true science
to the iraprovement of the Mechanic Arts. It is principles which are
the objects of enquiry to the natural philosopher and the elucidation
of a truth may be corapletely accomplished by the raost familiar and
common-place facts. In truth, philosophy in modern days, has descen
ded from its stilts and mixing in the common affairs and business of
life, is, by the elucidation of its principles in a familiar manner, be
come the coraraon acquaintance of all who reflect. The observation
of the fall of an apple, led the imraortal Newton to the discovery of
gravitation, and other things, equally comnrbn and apparently trivial,
have led to other important results. To the natural philosopher there
2

10
is no natural object unimportant. From tbe least of Nature's works,
the greatest lessons may be learned. Tbe scientific mind applies prin
ciples readily to every incident as it occurs and finds improrement
and delight in the pursuit. He finds
'^Jbnguesin trees — hooks in ihe running brooks —
Sermons in atones, and good in every thing."
« Accustomed," says an able writer, « to trace the operations of
general causes and the exemplification of general laws, in circumstan
ces where the uninformed and unenquiring eye perceives neither nov
elty nor beauty, he walks in the midst of wonders. Every object
which falls in his way elucidates some principle — afibrds some instruc
tion and impresses him with a sense of harmony and order. Nor is it
a mere passive pleasure that is thus communicated. A thousand ques
tions are continually arising in his mind — a thousand subjects of en
quiry presenting themselves which keep his faculties in constant ex
ercise and his thoughts perpetually on the wing, so that lassitude is
excluded from his life and that craving after artificial excitement and
dissipation of mind, which leads so many into frivolous, unworthy and
destructive pursuits, is altogether eradicated from his bosom."
It may be'asked 'what has all this to do with the present occasion ?'
The answer is, that every mechanic art is the reduction to practice of
scientific principles. The carpenter or mason who lays out his buil
ding by the use of the base 6, the perpendicular 8, and the bypothenuse
10, or corresponding numbers, has the demonstration that he is laying
out the building^t right angles, in the 47th proposition of the first
book of Euclid's elements ; — the sum of the squares of the base and
perpendicular being equal to the square of the bypothenuse. They
too, will more fully understand how to spring their arches and truss
their girders, by understanding the principles upon which the means
used accomplish the ends intended, than in the mere copying, with
out reflection, the work of others. For although a theorist, without
practice, would, in ail probability, erect but a sorry edifice, yet where a
knowledge of principles is combined with practice, the advantage is
apparent to all. The tanner, in preparing his leather, is a chemist ia
practice — so too, the saddler and shoemaker, even in the preparation of
their wax ends, in giving proper consistency and tenacity to ue materi
als used, independent of the philosophical principles in the shapes
and forms of their work, and its adaptation to its intended purposes.
It were endless however to enumerate afl the examples of this truth
in the trades and occupations here assembled. It exists in them all,
and the instances I have cited are perhaps the least striking of any
that might be given.
What was it that raised David Rittenhouse, a native of Pennsylva
nia, above the ordinary clockmakers of the country in which he lived,
and placed his name high among the learned of the world? What was
it that raised Brindley, from an apprentice to a Derbyshire millwright

11
to one of the greatest engineers and mechanics which the world ever
produced. — Neither of these great men originally received more than
tbe rudiments of an English education. It was the application oftheir
giant minds to the study of principles that placed the one at the
head of the philosophers and astronoraers ofhis tirae and made the oth
er the companion and the adviser of the King, Lords and Commons of
his native land, so that scarcely any public work was entered upon
without his superintendence and advice.
And what too placed Fulton, another son of Pennsylvania, so high
in the estimation of the world ? — It was not birth. It was not this
world's wealth. It was the cultivation of his raighty intellect, which,
but for his reading and rejection, like the diamond in the mine, might
have Uifl obscure, unnoticed and unknown.
Oliver Evans, of Philadelphia, in his day, and that too within theje-
collection of him who now addresses you, was esteemed a crack-brained
enthusiast, when he avowed that the child was then born, who by the
force of steam should travel from Washington to New York in a day.
His language was, "People will travel in stages moved by steam
from one city to another, almost as fast as birds fly — fifteen or
twenty miles an hour." " A carriage will set out from Washington
in the morning, the passengers will breakfast at Baltimore, dine at
Philadelphia, and sup at New- York, the sarae day."
The first of these assertions has been accomplished, and the second
will be, before we are three years older. Yet this man, when in 1787,
he petitioned the Legislature of Pennsylvania for encouragement and
assistance, to test the possibility of using steam as a motive power for
waggons or carriages, was considered insane.
Oliver Evans, was originally an apprentice to a waggon maker or
wheelwright. But he was a boy who thought and read, and his atten
tion was called to the expansive power of steam by the heating ofa
gun barrel in a blacksmith's fire, in which about a gill of water had
-been confined. He read and reflected, until he made as great an im
provement in the use of steam, as perhaps any who preceded him;
As steam has been referred to, let us for a moment advert to the
mighty engine it has become in the hands of men.— Its expansive pow
er was known to the ancients:— "The elegant toys of Hero— the beau
tiful experiments of Porta and Decaus— the modification ofthe lireeK
machine by the Italian Branca— the ingenious ideas of Hauteleuilie
and their masterly extension and developement by Papin, contain au
the rudiments required for a perfect machine, wanting only to be toucB-
ed by the magic hand of some mechanica. magician, to form ^ structure
of surpassing ingenuity and semi-oranipotent power."
The total neglect with which these individual schemes were regard
ed, is not the least extraordinary circurastance in the history of the
steam engine. And when the marquis of Worcester, towards the close

12
of the seventeenth century made his first attempt, imperfect as it was
— >yet successful, in applying steam as a moving power, he was unable
to interest the public in the matter, and it fell almost, if not entirely,
into oblivion, until Captain Savery thirty years afterwards, succeeded
in combining a mechanisra in which steam ur elastic vapour was the mo
tive power. Newcoramen carried it somewhat farther. The improve
ment thence progressed, until the invention of Bolton and Watts, per
fected, as was supposed, the system of condensation so as to give the
greatest possible power to a given quantity of steam generated. Our
own Fulton adapted it in practice, the first successfully, to the propel
ling of boats, and, in the short period he lived thereafter, not less than
fifteen steamboats were built and put in use, under his own direction.
SufiSce it to say, that it is now used as the motive power for almost
every purpose. Steam has added to the productive faculties of Britain
what would be equal to some hundreds of millions of operatives ; and
what has it not done for our own Country, where the price of labor is
higher than iu foreign countries ?
Steam and water by the aid of improved machinery are accomplish
ing wonders, and indeed it would seem that we knew not where the
perfection of machinery will end. This much we do know, that we
must keep pace with the improvements of the times. Who now would
think of raaking cut nails with the hand machine in use less than thir
ty years' since ? On a recent examination before the House of Com
mons in England, it was testified "A cotton manufacturer who left
Manchester seven years since, would be driven out of the market by
the men who are now living in it, provided his knowledge had not kept
pace with those who have been during that time, constantly profitting
by the progressive improvements that have taken place in that period."
There is a very common error existing among those who have never
reflected on the subject, that these improvements in the Mechanic Arts
which have so increased and economized the products of labor, are
prejudicial to individuals, by depriving them of work. All experience
has shown that it is not the result. The reduction of price always in
creases the quantity sold in a corresponding degree, and thus the a-
mount of labor which must be done by hand, is kept up, so as to give
equal, if not encreased employment to operatives. To give a familiar
illustration :— Some years since all the floor boards used in our cities,
were planed, tongued and grooved by hand, now they are principally.
if not altogether, done by machinery. Sash, too, in all our lar^e
cities, until lately, were made entirely by hand; now they are madem
many places by machinery. In both these items, the prices of the arti
cle have been reduced fifty to seventy-five per cent; Many carpenters
were apprehensive that these things would ruin their business, and
throw them outof employment. Has such been the result? On the con-
traryj has there not been an increased demand for carpenters in those
very cities, from the fact that the diminished expense of building in con
sequence of these and other improvements by labor-saving raachinery
has induced so many more persons to invest money in buildings f and

13
has not the price of labor among carpenters been so enhanced, that ma-
ny have gone from the country to the cities, induced by this advance
in wages P
Now, believe me, such will ever be the case in every branch in me
chanism and manufactures.
The invention of the spinning machine undoubtedly threw hand
spinners out of eraployment at hand spinning, but gave them increased
employment at other branches, in consequence of the increased de
mand, from their reduced price, for the articles spun.
So too, with power looms — so too with the carding machine — the
cotton gin-^the last of which actually doubled the value of the cotton
lands to the planter; and who now never sees a pair of hand cards used,
unless it be for some very special purpose ?
All these things had the effect of changing the direction of labor,
and yet, no one will doubt but that they have all tended to advance
the interests of the community at large, — and, it may be laid down as
an axiom in political economy, that, whatever benefits' the comraunity
at large, must eventually benefit all the members of that community.
The great which object I have had, in throwing together these desul
tory observations, has been to call your attention to the propriety, nay,
necessity, of improving yourselves in your various callings and trades,
by learning, in addition to the practice, the principles on which your
work is done — in other words, to ask you to think, to reflect, to read
and learn what others have done before you, and to add your own ex
perience to the existing stock of knowledge.
The mechanics of our country, and I flatter not when I make the
assertion, areas useful and valuable a class of citizens as our country
contains. In general they may be said to fill that happy medium posi
tion in society, in which neither overgrown wealth nor abject poverty
is found. To this there raay be, and are some exceptions, but not
enough to operate against the truth of this, as a general assertion. The
question you are asked to answer fairly, and truly, is, Have you avail
ed yourselves of all the raeans placed within your reach, to increase
your own resources, or to sustain in society, and in the governraent of
the country, that station to which your numbers and moral standing
entitle you P Ifyou have not, to what is it attributable? Your good
sense and your patriotism are sufficiently known. It was to the me
chanics of our country — of Boston — that we are perhaps indebted for
the final adoption of the present Constitution of the United States.
They met at the Green Dragon in Boston — in January 1788, and re
coramended to the Convention of Massachusetts the adoption of the
Constitution. It was Paul Revere, a brass founder of Boston who car
ried these resolutions to Samuel Adams, who presented thera to the
Convention, and they tended much to induce that body of men to de-
.cide in favor of the adoption of the Constitution^ For the interesting
circumstances which took place on that occasion, I beg leave to refer to

14
a speech delivered by the great champion of our Constitution, Daniel
Webster, at Pittsburg, two years ago this day.
On you, my friends, the preservation of that glorious Constitution,
and the liberty we enjoy under it, may very much depend. What
boots it that our fathers fought and toiled and many of them fattened
their native soil with their blood, if their descendents should not prop
erly prize the blessings handed down by them? And how can we
prize those blessings properly if we will not use every means for in
creasing knowledge — intellectual light — among us. And why are
you, mechanics, specially required to carry on this glorious work ? —
because in doing so, you will be peculiarly advancing your own secu
lar interests, whilst you will be better fitting yourselves to play your
parts, as constituent members of that Government, a portion of whose
sovereingty you are.
You have advantages, which, in early life, neither Rittenhouse, nor
Olivet Evans, nor Fulton enjoyed. You have all the lights they have
shed ; and all the improvements by those who preceded and those who
succeeded them, both in Europe and our own beloved land, are placed
around and before you, and within your reach and power, to use and to
improve if you will".
It is astonishing the amount of information which one hour alone,
out of the twenty-four, bestowed on the acquisition of useful know,-
ledge will bring forth. It is almost incredible, the amount of scienti
fic works which a trifling contribution from each member of an associ
ation raay bring together. There is no axiora truer than that *Time is
Money' — nor than, that the heaviest taxes we pay, (as Dr. Franklin
averred,) are those imposed upon us, by our idleness — our pride — and
our folly. The daily expense, which almost every one incurs, ofa six
pence, for some matter ofan.usementor refreshment, which might just
as well be dispensed with, would, if contributed by five hundred me
chanics, and our town surely contains more than that nuraber, pro
duce over ten thousand dollars per annum. Yet such a tax imposed
by Government would be esteemed outrageously oppressive. One hour
out of the twenty-four, now perhaps spent in conversation, perhaps,
in'a beer house or the bar-room of a tavern, perchance, in discussing
politics or the merits or demerits of some candidate for popular favor,
in which neither side, in all probability, consults the best rules of cour
tesy, or the most conciliating means of persuasion, and each leaves his
adversary just where he found him, or it may be yet more firmly wed
ded than ever to his own opinions — this hour per day, if spent in
reading some improving work, or listening to a sound and sensible
lecture on an interesting and appropriate topic, might enable you in
the course of a few years to lay in a stock of valuable information, the
benefit of which no one can calculate.
Can you then better close the labors of this grand Jubilee of Free
dom, than in associating yourselves permanently together, as a Mechan
ic's Institute, and by your united efforts obtain a library suited to me-

15
chanical pursuits, and -make provision for hearing during a part of the
year, lectures from scientific men, on the various subjects connected
with the sciences of Natural Philosophy and the Mechanic Arts.
The result will be that reflection will be induced. Your appren
tices will be taught to read and think, aUd reading and thinking ap
prentices make intelligent journeymen, who in turn will make intelli
gent master workmen, fit to fill any station to which they may be cal
led. An Athenaeum or Reading Room is a much more fitting and im
proving school than sorae that are resorted to for spending evenings.
This plan has generally been resorted to in our cities, with great appro
bation and unbroken success. And if the Mechanics' Celebration of
Easton on the 4th of July, 1835, shall lead to a sirailar result here,
then, indeed may every citizen rejoice that it has been gotten up, and
join in the aspiration that such an association may annually assemble on
the anniversary of American Independence, and rationally celebrate
the birth day of Freedom, long as the sun holds his course or the love of
Liberty and Intelligence shall exist in the breasts of Americans.