appointed to inquire into the expediency of so amending the Constitution, as to enable the Society, with appropriate limitations, to extend aid to Institutions at the West of a lower grade than Colleges and Theological Seminaries. Should such modification be adopted, it would give the Society a more direct and extensive bearing upon popular education, and greatly increase the power of its antagonism to the educational movements of the Jesuits. The prevalence of popular ignorance, beyond dispute, constitutes one of the most alarming features in our present condition as a nation. By universal consent our national fabric rests upon two grand pillars, intelligence and virtue. An ignorant people cannot govern themselves. We have no reason to fear that some daring usurper will rise from the midst of us, and' Samson-like, lay hold of the pillars and prostrate the fabric. The very attempt would cause national indignation every where to burst out like devouring fire. If the fabric ever falls, it will be by gradual decay weakening the pillars, till they are unable to sustain the superincumbent weight. But every mind shrouded in ignorance is a decayed particle. These particles too are beginning to exist by the million! Here, then, is a great department of philanthropic and Christian effort, which it is in the highest degree perilous to neglect!

Not a few have regarded the Society as an organization "born out of due time;" but we trust, nevertheless, that it bears the " signs" of a heavenly origin, and will eventually perform its full share of the sublime work of saving the West. Once more, therefore, we commend it to the patronage of the friends of learning and religion, and fervently invoke divine aid under a deep consciousness that EXCEPT THE LORD BUILD THE HOUSE, THEY LABOR IN VAIN THAT BUILD IT."

In behalf of the Board of Directors.

THERON BALDWIN,

Corresponding Secretary.

RECEIPTS of the Society for the year ending October, 1845.

APPENDIX.

ADDRESSES AT THE SECOND ANNIVERSARY.

ADDRESS OF REV. N. S. S. BEмan, D. D.

The Rev. Dr. Beman rose, he said, to move the adoption of the Report which had now been submitted to the meeting. He had consented to do this with much reluctance, because he had not had time, since his return from the great West, (the field of our operations,) to arrange his thoughts, to appear before such an audience, for a public address. But he would not shrink from the responsibility laid upon him, for he felt a deep interest in the subject, and he had some things which he wished to say, and which ought to be said, respecting the sublime enterprise in which we have engaged. We are assembled, Mr. President, for a grand purpose, and I design to divert your attention to some of the measures which may promote its accomplishment, and to some of the considerations which should excite a deep and active interest in its progress and final success.

Cast your eye for a moment, over the field which this Society has chosen for its cultivation, and where they have undertaken to accomplish what some might deem impossibilities. It lies between the great lakes on the North and the Ohio river on the South, and extending from the Alleghanies on the East to the Missisippi on the West. But this, let it be remembered, is only our present limits. Our operations must soon pass, with the tide of population, the mighty Father of Waters, and spread out before us a territory not less interesting to the far, and to the still farther West. We must keep pace with existing circumstances, and the necessities of this almost literal world. We must estimate the importance of this country, not from what it is now, in its rude state, almost as it came from the hand of nature, but as it will be, and cannot fail to be, when its resources are thoroughly explored and fully developed.

Let us endeavor to form an estimate of the future from what we know of the present; and in this estimate we should include soil, mines, facilities for commerce, and prospective population.

The soil of the great valley of the Mississippi, is the richest in the world. I do not deem this remark extravagant-I say deliberately, the richest in the world. There are some parts of it which have not their parallel this side of the garden of Eden,-a spot now blotted from the map of our globe. It is true, that a small proportion of it only is yet under cultivation. We have the almost boundless Prairie, with its sod yet unbroken, the dense, primeval forest which has never echoed to the sound of the axe-man, the oak-opening, though in appearance like cultivated parks, untouched by the hand of art. But all these, as we look upon them, tell us what they will be. Plenty follows upon the very ploughshare of the husbandman. If, said he, I have ever rejoiced in looking at the products of agriculture, it was while crossing some of those vast

prairies, or other fertile portions of the west, and seeing a single field of waving wheat, already white to the harvest, a mile square, owned by a single man, and yielding not less than five and twenty bushels to the acre; or while gazing upon immense forests, I had almost said, of Indian corn which promised not less than sixty or eighty. As an agricultural country, no part of this land or any other, can surpass, and very few equal the great valley. Its productions are already immense, affording us some data by which we may estimate what they will be in a century, or even in half a century to come. This territory will probably be one of the richest farming countries on the surface of our globe,-affording almost every production needful for the supply of human wants.

But in estimating the future importance of the great West, we must not overlook its exhaustless and unnumbered mines. These, so far as they have been discovered and partially explored, lie on the borders of the vast lakes of the North, and stretch along the margin of the Mississippi river. Lead and copper are found in untold abundance, and these mines, when fully explored, and their treasures disinterred and brought into the market, will effect a great change in the existing commerce of the world in relation to these articles. They will probably exist, for ages to come, the sources of great wealth to the western country. Nor are these useful metals the only treasures which lie beneath the fertile soil of that far-famed valley. In some localities, iron and tin abound, and marble-quarries, and beds of coal have been discovered. The subterranean treasures are hardly less valuable than those which now exist upon the surface, or which may be seen, by the prophetic eye, as covering the face of that country when civilization, and the arts, and agriculture, and commerce of man in its various workings, shall make it what it is destined to be, in taste and wealth and beauty.

The commerce of that country must be immensely great. It is true it lies remote from the Atlantic, but it has inland seas of its own. It has outlets to the common highway of nations by large navigable rivers, not to be surpassed by any in the world; and these, in connection with the great chain of lakes which contain half the fresh water on the globe, form communications with New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico on the South, with the Gulf of St. Lawrence on the Northeast; and, by means of artificial channels, with the metropolis of the Empire State, and the emporium of continental commerce on the East. Over the waters of these mighty lakes, and along the channels of these majestic rivers, and along the line of these extended canals, will be transported the products of this rich soil, and the wealth of these exhaustless mines, and enlist the enterprise of nations and augment the commerce of the world. But I need not dwell upon a point which has not failed to attract the eye, and fix the attention of every intelligent observer of this great valley, in this land and every other land, as connected with commercial operations.

As to the future population of that country, it must be immense. The comparatively small portion of the West now embraced, or which must soon be embraced, in the field of our operations, can sustain more than fifty millions of inhabitants. It is not like the East,-it is almost all capable of cultivation. It is a rare thing to find a square mile of waste land. The hand of art will reclaim, and convert to some useful purpose, almost every acre. I verily believe, that it is capable of sustaining a population as dense as that of China. Indeed, civilization and Christianity may yet, for aught I know, make it far more populous than that empire. These States and others connected with them, in the great Western valley, must, in the process of time, and that too not very remote, command the balance of power in this Republic, and sway the