And now, ye men of the new States of the South!  You are not of the original thirteen.  The battle had been fought and won, the Revolution achieved, and the Constitution established, before your States had any existence as States.  You came to a prepared banquet, and had seats assigned you at table just as honorable as those which were filled by older guests.  You have been and are singularly prosperous; and if any one should deny this, you would at once contradict his assertion.  You have bought vast quantities of choice and excellent land at the lowest price; and if the public domain has not been lavished upon you, you yourself will admit that it has been appropriated to your own uses by a very liberal hand.  And yet in some of these States, not in all, persons are found in favor of a dissolution of the Union, or of secession from it.  Such opinions are expressed even where the general prosperity of the community has been the most rapidly advanced.  In the flourishing and interesting State of Mississippi, for example, there is a large party which insists that her grievances are intolerable, that the whole body politic is in a state of suffering; and all along, and through her whole extent on the Mississippi, a loud cry rings that her only remedy is “Secession,” “Secession.”  Now, Gentlemen, what infliction does the State of Mississippi suffer under?  What oppression prostrates her strength or destroys her happiness?  Before we can judge of the proper remedy, we must know something of the disease; and, for my part, I confess that the real evil existing in the case appears to me to be a certain inquietude or uneasiness growing out of a high degree of prosperity and consciousness of wealth and power, which sometimes lead men to be ready for changes, and to push on unreasonably to still higher elevation.  If this be the truth of the matter, her political doctors are about right.  If the complaint spring from over-wrought prosperity, for that disease I have no doubt that secession would prove a sovereign remedy.

But I return to the leading topic on which I was engaged.  In the department of invention there have been wonderful applications of science to arts within the last sixty years.  The spacious hall of the Patent Office is at once the repository and proof of American inventive art and genius.  Their results are seen in the numerous improvements by which human labor is abridged.

Without going into details, it may be sufficient to say, that many of the applications of steam to locomotion and manufactures, of electricity and magnetism to the production of mechanical motion, the electrical telegraph, the registration of astronomical phenomena, the art of multiplying engravings, the introduction and improvement among us of all the important inventions of the Old World, are striking indications of the progress of this country in the useful arts.  The net-work of railroads and telegraphic lines by which this vast country is reticulated have not only developed its resources, but united emphatically, in metallic bands, all parts of the Union.  The hydraulic works of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston surpass in extent and importance those of ancient Rome.