farm at Franklin, I observed a line of shingles stretching across my fields. Asking my farmer what was the meaning of all this, I was answered, "It is the line of our railroad." Our railroad! That is the way the people talked about it. I laughed at the idea at first; and, in conversation with a neighbor, inquired what in the world they wanted of a railroad there. "Why," was the reply, "the people want a ride behind the iron horse, and that ride they will have." This day they have had it. The result has proved, not that my friend was too sanguine, but that I was too incredulous. It is the spirit and influence of free labor, it is the indomitable industry of a free people, that has done all this. There is manifested in its accomplishment that without which the most fertile field by nature must remain for ever barren. Human sagacity, skill, and industry, the zealous determination to improve and profit by labor, have done it all. That determination has nowhere been more conspicuously displayed than here. New Hampshire, it is true, is no classic ground. She has no Virgil and no Eclogues. She has a stern climate and a stern soil. But her climate is fitted to invigorate men, and her soil is covered with the evidences of the comforts of individual and social life. As the traveller pursues his way along her roads, he sees all this. He sees those monuments of civilization and refinement, churches; he sees those marks of human progress, schoolhouses, with children clustering around their doors as thick as bees. And they are bees, except in one respect. The distinction is, that whereas the insect day after day returns to its home laden with the spoils of the field, the human creature is admitted to the hive but once. His mind is furnished with the stores of learning, he is allowed to drink his fill at the fountains of knowledge, his energies are trained in the paths of industry, and he is then sent out into the world, to acquire his own subsistence and help to promote the welfare of his kind. It is an extraordinary era in which we live. It is altogether new. The world has seen nothing like it before. I will not pretend, no one can pretend, to discern the end; but every body knows that the age is remarkable for scientific research into the heavens, the earth, and what is beneath the earth; and perhaps more remarkable still for the application of this scientific research to the pursuits of life. The ancients saw nothing like it. The moderns have seen nothing like it till the present generation. Shakspeare's fairy said he would "Put a girdle round about the earth In forty minutes." Professor Morse has done more than that; his girdle requires far less time for its traverse. In fact, if one were to send a despatch from Boston by the telegraph at twelve o'clock, it would reach St. Louis at a quarter before twelve. This is what may be called doing a thing in less than no time. We see the ocean navigated and the solid land traversed by steam power, and intelligence communicated by electricity. Truly this is almost a miraculous era. What is before us no one can say, what is upon us no one can hardly realize. The progress of the age has almost outstripped human belief; the future is known only to Omniscience. In conclusion, permit me to say that all these benefits and advantages conferred upon us by Providence should only strengthen our resolves to turn them to the best account, not merely in material progress, but in the moral improvement of our minds and hearts. Whatsoever else we may see of the wonders of science and art, our eyes should not be closed to that great truth, that, after all, "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." 426 SPEECH AT MARSHFIELD. us into further wars of ambition and conquest. In the second place, in my judgment, the interests of the country and the feeling of a vast majority of the people require that a President of these United States should be elected, who will neither use official influence to promote, nor feel any desire in his heart to promote, the further extension of slavery in this community, or its further influence in the public councils. In the third place, if I have any just estimate, if an experience not now a short one in public affairs has enabled me to know any thing of what the public interest demands, the state of the country requires an essential reform in the system of revenue and finance, such as shall restore the prosperity, by prompting the industry and fostering the labor of the country, in its various branches. There are other things important, but I will not allude to them. These three I hold to be essential. There are three candidates presented to the choice of the American people. General Taylor is the Whig candidate, standing upon the nomination of the Whig Convention; General Cass is the candidate of the opposing and now dominant party in the country; and a third candidate is presented in the person of Mr. Van Buren, by a convention of citizens assembled at Buffalo, whose object, or whose main object, as it appears to me, is contained in one of those considerations which I have mentioned; and that is, the prevention of the further increase of slavery;- an object in which you and I, Gentlemen, so far as that goes, entirely concur with them, I am sure. Most of us who are here to-day are Whigs, National Whigs, Massachusetts Whigs, Old Colony Whigs, and Marshfield Whigs, and if the Whig nomination made at Philadelphia were entirely satisfactory to the people of Massachusetts and to us, our path of duty would be plain. But the nomination of a candidate for the Presidency made by the Whig Convention at Philadelphia is not satisfactory to the Whigs of Massachusetts. That is certain, and it would be idle to attempt to conceal the fact. It is more just and more patriotic, it is more manly and practical, to take facts as they are, and things as they are, and to deduce our own conviction of duty from what exists before us. However respectable and distinguished in the line of his own profession, or however estimable as a private citizen, General Taylor is a mili |