Mr. Speaker, I cannot prevail on myself to hurry over this great consideration. [Footnote:  15] It is good for us to be here. [Footnote:  16] We stand where we have an immense view of what is, and what is past.  Clouds, indeed, and darkness, rest upon the future.  Let us, however, before we descend from this noble eminence, reflect that this growth of our national prosperity has happened within the short period of the life of man.  It has happened within sixty-eight years.  There are those alive whose memory might touch the two extremities.  For instance, my Lord Bathurst might remember all the stages of the progress.  He was in 1704 of an age at least to be made to comprehend such things.  He was then old enough acta parentum jam legere, et quae sit potuit cognoscere virtus. [Footnote:  17] Suppose, Sir, that the angel of this auspicious youth, foreseeing the many virtues which made him one of the most amiable, as he is one of the most fortunate, men of his age, had opened to him in vision that when in the fourth generation the third Prince of the House of Brunswick had sat twelve years on the throne of that nation which, by the happy issue of moderate and healing counsels, was to be made Great Britain, he should see his son, Lord Chancellor of England, turn back the current of hereditary dignity to its fountain, and raise him to a higher rank of peerage, whilst he enriched the family with a new one—­if, amidst these bright and happy scenes of domestic honor and prosperity, that angel should have drawn up the curtain, and unfolded the rising glories of his country, and, whilst he was gazing with admiration on the then commercial grandeur of England, the genius should point out to him a little speck, scarcely visible in the mass of the national interest, a small seminal principle, rather than a formed body, and should tell him:  “Young man, there is America—­which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men, and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, [Footnote:  18] show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world.  Whatever England has been growing to by a progressive increase of improvement, brought in by varieties of people, by succession of civilizing conquests and civilizing settlements in a series of seventeen hundred years, you shall see as much added to her by America in the course of a single life!” If this state of his country had been foretold to him, would it not require all the sanguine credulity of youth, and all the fervid glow of enthusiasm, to make him believe it?  Fortunate man, he has lived to see it!  Fortunate, indeed, if he lives to see nothing that shall vary the prospect, and cloud the setting of his day!

Excuse me, Sir, if turning from such thoughts I resume this comparative view once more.  You have seen it on a large scale; look at it on a small one.  I will point out to your attention a particular instance of it in the single province of Pennsylvania.  In the year 1704 that province called for L11,459 in value of your commodities, native and foreign.  This was the whole.  What did it demand in 1772?  Why, nearly fifty times as much; for in that year the export to Pennsylvania was L507,909, nearly equal to the export to all the Colonies together in the first period.