have been led by one of those signal dispensations of Providence, which promise mighty blessings to the human family.

4 Though formidable obstacles were opposed, yet what amazing results have a period of less than two centuries produced. It was not merely a wilderness, separated from the civilized world by a watery expanse of a thousand leagues, that was to be tamed and cultivated-the unjust restrictions of the mother country were to be courageously resisted; even though supported by tremendous power, and maintained with ferocious obstinacy.

5 Thanks to a kind Providence, a brighter prospect opens on us. No soil seems left in which the seeds of future conflicts can vegetate. Our country is called upon to realize all the philanthropist can wish or hope.

6 In establishing for themselves and their posterity the rights of a separate and independent community, and in consecrating the fundamental principles of civil and religious liberty as the corner stone of their polity, our fathers planted the seeds from which we, their children, may hope to gather, under the blessings of that Providence which has so eminently watched over us, an abundant harvest of individual and social happiness.

7 It would be little reasonable to expect that the great results, which in the economy of Providence may be reserved for this western world, should reach an early consummation. The history of all times proves that moral advancements are the more durable for having been gradually attained. Their solidity, it would seem, was in the ratio of their march.

8 The cultivation of the youthful mind is the lever which must raise individuals and communities-It is not the business of a day to diffuse through a whole community a taste for reading and a relish for knowledge. It must be the work of time, under the influence of wise laws faithfully and diligently administered.

9 A high state of moral improvement can justly be looked for only when a people are happy-plenty is an essential ingredient in the elements of individual and social happiness. Among the pursuits promotive of public prosperity, the cultivation of the soil, and rural industry, stand pre-eminent. It would be useless to insist upon a truth so obvious.

10 With us the rural population will ever be most numerous. Though individually they may not be the most wealthy, they must collectively be the possessors of the greater portion of national wealth. In the community of public bur

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dens, they will ever sustain a full share. I claim for them, however, no extraordinary merit or virtue.

11 The tilling of the soil has every where been deemed honorable, but the farmers of United America seem destined to form a more respectable and more intelligent body of men than those of any other country. Their numbers, and our political institutions, secure to them much considerationEducation is within their reach. They are invited to the acquisition of knowledge. Intelligence and virtue are every where secure of respect.

12 After a long period of calamity and carnage, suffering humanity has demanded, not in vain, a pacificated world. A state of peace has thrown nations very much upon their own resources; such is emphatically our attitude at present. We must seek to produce those things at home, which we can obtain no longer abroad on the principle of exchange, and they are only so to be obtained without certain and speedy ruin. It ought to be our felicity, that the resources of this widely spread and growing empire are immense, and that the energies of a free people may be directed to develope them.

13 Our heretofore national prosperity has given us a taste for productions which we must either seek to domesticate or forego their use. Wine, silk and tea, may be named among these conveniences. - Millions are annually exported and expended to obtain for us those articles.

14 Household industry comprehends an essential interest in rural economy. It is the department in which the influence of that sex, to whom we are bound by the strongest ties of love and gratitude, is most conspicuous-it is the scene where the thrift, the ingenuity, the taste and intelligence of woman, has full latitude of operation.

15 How many comforts-how many enjoyments are accumulated-how many endearments are secured, by raising her to her proper elevation! A community will be formed, refined and happy, in proportion as woman is secure of respect. Employment is ever the shield of innocence, and the nurse of virtue.

16 In a farmer's house it is the best maxim, to make what you can, even when foreign commodities are most depressed. Who would not prefer having their spinner, their dyer, their clothier, for their neighbors, rather than in a foreign land? Independently of all interested considerations, we must delight to cultivate an interchange of kindnesses and mutual good offices. How much must life languish where they are wanted!

17 It is not in relation to the comforts of families only, that household manufactures deserve high regard and consideration: They are of essential importance to national prosperity. The community whose time is the most carefully and usefully employed, will be the most flourishing. Where there is no household manufactures, much time will be consumed to little purpose, and much expense must accrue, to purchase that which is not produced.

18 The wealth sent abroad for foreign conveniences, as things now are, will slowly, perhaps not at all, return. Thus the nation will become impoverished. National penury must militate against individual and domestic happiness. It is a point of sound policy, to nourish a taste for household manufactures-It is for the ladies to facilitate and effect their establishment-Teach them it is for their country's good, and they will do their duty.

SECTION IX.

Persuasive to early Piety and Moral Rectitude:-from an address delivered by FREDERICK BEASLY, D. D. Provost of the University of Pennsylvania, to the senior class of the students, on the 22d of July, 1821.

MY YOUNG BRETHREN,

1 Your intentions, are, no doubt, at this time upright, and all your views laudable. --The evil propensities and passions which are common to your race, you must be presumed to possess, but they have not yet gained the ascendency over your better powers. If vicious inclinations have occasionally transported you into excess, this excess has been speedily succeeded by remorse and penitence, which have operated as an immediate corrective of such evil.

2 Whatever may have been the follies er vices, into which you may have been hurried, habits of irregularity and excess are not yet contracted, and evil propensities have not subjected you to their dominion. From your commerce with a corrupt world, and exposure to the allurements of its pleasures, and its temptations to dishonor, you have not yet relaxed your principles or tainted your morals.

3 If you are beginning to lisp the language of profanity, a delicate and sensitive conscience gives you warning of the outrage you are committing against God. If you have given way to the impulses of unbridled passions, the pangs of

contrition have been their bitter fruits. At the prospect of shame, dishonor and infamy, your spirits would shudder within you.

4 Not only are you free, as yet. from the slavery of sinful passions, but the virtuous principles of your constitution, aided by the holy spirit of God, maintain a decided preponderance over those which incline you to evil. Your heart dilates with secret emulation and delight, when you hear recounted any generous and noble deeds which have been performed by others. Your moral feelings are alive to all the claims of duty.

5 The doctrines of the gospel interest and touch your heart, while its moral precepts recommend themselves by an irresistible evidence to your understandings. You cannot walk abroad and contemplate the wonders of creation, without feeling a sacred glow of gratitude and love to their beneficent Author.

6 Such, at this time, my young brethren, in all probability, is your moral condition, and such are your views, feelings and principles of action. It is a happy and most precious moment of your lives, could you but be rendered sensible of its full importance. This is to you emphatically the accepted time, this is the day of salvation.

7 From the days of infancy to those of boyhood, and from those of boyhood to those of youth, no determinate plans are formed, and scarcely ever any definite character impressed upon the mind. Through this portion of the journey of life, almost all of us pass with equal thoughtlessness and frivolity, and when arrived at youth find ourselves at the same stage and pursuing the same road.

8 Not so, however, when we have attained to youth and manhood. From the moment in which you commence an intercourse with the world on your own account, and mingle amongst its actors, entering into its interests, its sympathies and its conflicts, the paths in which you walk begin to diverge from each other. Some of them will lead you to respectability, peace, honor, fame, immortality; while others will conduct you in a downward course to shame, disgrace, misery and everlasting contempt.

9 You stand, my young brethren, upon the point from which this divergence begins. - Does it not infinitely concern you to give heed to the steps which you shal! take next, to pause seriously, reflect and deliberate before you precipitate yourselves into unseen dangers, and begin to contest with enemies with whose strength and wiles you are unacquainted? 10 Hitherto amidst the levity and heedlessness of younger years, reflection and seriousness were more difficult to be at tained by you; but it is now time, that you should be sus ceptible of the impressions of truth and duty, and should im bibe the lessons of wisdom and sobriety.

11 It is fearful to reflect upon the changes which ofter. take place in the fortunes and conditions of young men, immediately after that period of life to which you have now attained. How many opening prospects of youth are soon clouded or sunk in perpetual night! How many hearts of parents and friends are wrung with anguish at the sudden disappointment of those hopes which they had long and fondly cherished!

12 You yourselves are entirely unapprised of the severity of that trial to which you must be subjected in making your way through the world-what evil communications will essay to corrupt your good manners. What blasphemies and impieties will incessantly assail your ear and insinuate a secret poison into your hearts!

13 And it is to be remarked as an awful admonition, on this head, that the progress which our unruly appetites and passions make towards subjecting us to their despotism, is imperceptible; and that the demands which they make upon us are increased by every indulgence which we grant them. We are subjected to their yoke before we are aware; and then, of all the criminal desires, it may be truly said, that increase of appetite doth grow by the very aliment they have fed upon.

14 How precious, in this point of light, is the period of youth, and how infinitely important the restraining influence of religion, to save it from the miseries it may bring upon itself!

15 My young brethren, you may now be awake to every virtuous and noble sentimert, and susceptible of the tenderest impressions of religion and yet, a little familiarity with scenes of guilt, may diminish your sensibility in this respect, gradually harden your heart, and vitiate your thoughts and principles of action.

16 Vice insidiously spreads its contamination through the youthful mind; and when once it is deeply imbibed, where is the antidote that shall check its fatal progress?-What an impressive lesson does this consideration teach you, to cultivate an early piety, which is the only effectual expedient by which you shall be saved from the evils to come!