SPEECH

ON THE SUBJECT OF THE WESTERN RAIL-ROAD, DELIVERED IN FANEUIL HALL, 7TH OCTOBER, 1835.*

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

But, sir, continued Mr E., I do not approach this subject of an enterprise which promises great and beneficial changes to the community, with feelings of despondency in reference to our present condition. I would, on the contrary, speak the language of confidence, hope, and self-assured resource. The people of Massachusetts and the citizens of Boston, as the capital of the Common

* The object of the meeting was to take measures to complete the subscription to the capital stock of the rail-road, to the amount of two millions of dollars. The object was effected; and in the course of the ensuing winter, an act passed the Legislature of Massachusetts, authorizing an additional subscription of one million of dollars, on behalf of the State.

wealth, have been favored with as large a share of blessings as ever fell to the lot of any people;--and the greatest of all these blessings is the sagacity with which they are accustomed to perceive,—what industry, and energy, and enterprise can do, to supply that which nature leaves to the cooperation of man. For carrying on the foreign trade and the fisheries, we have every thing that the heart of man can desire ;-for agriculture, we have the soil and the climate best adapted,-not to the raising for exportation of the great agricultural staples, but for the support of a frugal and industrious yeomanry; for manufactures, we are by this last circumstance admirably prepared, as we are, in all other respects, able to compete, in many branches of manufacturing industry, with any other people on earth. In short, sir, we want nothing but what we are able ourselves, with enterprise, energy, and the wise application of capital, to acquire;—and I have greatly mistaken the character of the people of Massachusetts, town or country, if any such wants remain long unsupplied. On the contrary, it is their peculiar characteristic, by the use of capital, by energy, and enterprise, not merely to supply what are commonly called natural defects, but to open mines of wealth, where others see only the marks of barrenness. This trait of our character strikes all observers. It was observed by the President of the United States, on his visit to this part of the country a year or two since, that what struck him most in New-England, were the marks of plenty and comfort on a soil, which in some places seemed little else than a mass of rocks. It is even so; and if (over no small part of our beloved native State) nature, like an unkind step-dame, when her children ask for bread, has given them a stone, by their frugality, industry, and enterprise, they have turned the very stones back into bread. I speak literally. The gentleman from Springfield, before me, (Hon. G. Bliss, President of the Senate), was good enough to send me a pamphlet this morning, from which it appears, that thousands of tons of the marbles of Berkshire are sent to Philadelphia, and sold to advantage, although their own quarries lie within sixteen miles; and the City Hall in New-York is chiefly built from the same Berkshire marble. In like manner, the granite from the quarries of Quincy, by the almost magical virtue of three miles of rail-road, is now building up the stately piles of New

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

But the great thing wanting to the prosperity of Massachusetts is COMMUNICATION WITH THE WEST. The internal commerce of this country is prodigious; and of all that part which is accessible. to us, on the present system of communication, we have an ample share. With the South, we have, in our freighting and coasting trade, every thing that can be asked. With the South-West, in reference to all that part of commerce which is calculated to seek the route by sea to New-Orleans, we have nothing more to desire; -and the intercourse already established in this way, with the whole region drained by the Mississippi and its tributaries, is most extensive, various, and mutually profitable. In ascending the Mississippi and its tributaries, in 1829, on which occasion I was on board several boats, I continually saw casks, packages, and bales, in all of them, which I knew came from New-England, by their marks, by the mode of doing up,-by a certain indescribable something, in which to a true Yankee eye there is no mistake. A distinguished gentleman, of Pittsburgh, told me there was a regular battle between the Boston nails and the Pittsburgh nails, on the Ohio river;-the Boston nails coming all the way round, and the Pittsburgh made on the spot, from Juniata iron; and that, though the Pittsburgh nails sometimes fought their way down the river to Louisville, the Bostonians, at times, had driven them up as far as Wheeling. I was informed by a respectable trading house in Pittsburgh, that they had, in the year preceding, imported two thousand barrels of pickled mackerel; and I think I did not enter a public house in the West, to take a meal, morning, noon, or night, without seeing a pickled mackerel on the table. I remember, a year or two ago, that one of my neighbors from Charlestown, who had emigrated to the north-west corner of Arkansas,a spot not then even laid out into counties,―told me, that in that re

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

use.

But, sir, though by the way of New-Orleans, we have a considerable trade with the South-West, there is a vast region, which that channel does not reach. A direct communication is greatly wanted. This is THE want, daily becoming more serious, and which must be supplied. The destinies of the country, if I may use a language which sounds rather mystical, but which every one, I believe, understands,-the destinies of the country run East and West. Intercourse between the mighty interior West and the seacoast, is the great principle of our commercial prosperity and political strength. Nature, in the aggregate, has done every thing that could be desired, to promote this intercourse, and art has done much to second her; but, as far as the single State of Massachusetts is concerned, the course of the rivers from North to South, and of the mountains between which they flow, deprives us of the share of the benefits of this intercourse which we should otherwise enjoy. And this operation of natural causes has been aided by several important works of artificial communication, enumerated in the able report of the committee. The consequence is, that a very considerable part of the territory of Massachusetts has its commercial interests in one direction, and its political and social relations in another; so much so, that, as we all, I am sure, heard with pain from the distinguished gentleman from Springfield, (Mr Calhoun), the feeling of State pride, which ought of all feelings that end in temporal affairs, to be among the dearest and deepest in the bosom of a Massachusetts man, was daily growing weaker among the people of one of the most intelligent and substantial portions of the State.

This commercial alienation has gone to a length, which I suspect the citizens of Boston are not generally aware of. The entire region west of the hills of Berkshire communicates with New-York through the Hudson,—and the whole valley of the Connecticut, in and out of Massachusetts, communicates with Long Island Sound. I am afraid to say, in how large a part of Massachusetts I think a complete non-intercourse reigns with the capital; but I will state to you a fact, that lately fell beneath my personal observation. Having occasion, last week, to go to Deerfield, I took the north road from Worcester, through Templeton, Athol, and the country watered by Miller's river. If there is a spot in Massachusetts where one would feel himself entrenched, shut up, land-locked, in the very bosom of the Commonwealth, Athol Green, surrounded with its rising grounds, is that spot. And what, Mr President, do you think I saw ? We had scarce driven out of the village and were making our way along through South Orange and Erving's Grant, when I saw two wagons straining up a hill,-the horses' heads to the east, the wagons laden with crates, casks, and bales of foreign merchandize, which had come from Liverpool, by the way of Hartford, from New-York! I hold that, sir, a little too much for a Massachusetts man to contemplate without pain.

Now, Mr President, this is the matter which we wish to put to rights. We do not wish to deprive New-York of her trade; but to regain our own. It is the object of this meeting to remedy principally this evil. To open a great route of communication between the East and the West, by means of a rail-road from Boston to Albany, which with lateral routes, afterwards to be constructed, shall replace Boston in its natural position toward the trade of the interior.

And here, perhaps, we shall be met by the general vague objection, that it is impossible, by artificial works, to divert commerce from its great natural channels. Abstractions prove nothing. There are two kinds of natural channels,-one sort made directly by the hand which made the world; the other, constructed by man, in the intelligent exercise of the powers which his Creator has given him. It is as natural for a civilized man to make a rail-way or canal, as for a savage to descend a river in a bark canoe, or to cross from one fishing place to another, by a path through the woods.