Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1846-01-29
WI 8,


This year many good men will die, but their
works will follow them, not out of the world,
but in the world. If good works were mortal,
then every generation woalL have to begin back
at some dark age Of barbarism, and the subse-
quent one at the same place. Nay, they would
travel backward and downward in the scale of
moral being, if it were not in the constitution of
Gods government that the good which a man
does shall live after him. The present condition
of the human race is not exactly the harvest but
the sced.time of this divine promise when
whosoever shall sow abundantly, shall reap abun-
dainty. We repeat, the present condition and
prospects of humanity are an evidence, %illustri.
GUS as the sun, that good men have lived in all
generations, and the aggregate of their immor-
ial virtues has elevated US of the present day to
a sublime stand point in the destiny of the race.
This point is not only the sum but the product
Of the present and the past, embracing the earli-
est clements and attainments Of human progress
ion. 1t appears to us as plain as anything dem
o~nstrated by mathematics, that the Eternal Mind
has ordained, by a marvellous constitution, that
this progression shall not be arithmetical but ge-
ometrlcal. In consequence Of this divine order
Of things, the present generation has reached a
point b. this ratio of progression, whence each
step must be a vast result to the race for it is
not one step the more, but outmeasures in its
stride the distance made by all the steps taken
on this earth since Adam first began to step
The worlds mind of the present day obeys I'M
consciously this law nay, obedience thereto is
inevitably sequent and natural. Begin with any
department; of this general progression, and you
will see this truth as plain as the sun.
Fulton strained his mind to distraction with
the idea that he could propel a vessel up the
Hudson by the mere force ofsteam at the rate of
four miles an hOur-a large vessel-one that
would carry a hundred men. He was a genius,
and it had worked like a steam engine in him
but when it had forced out Of his mind this STU
p%enduous idea, his friends looked at him with
fixed eyes and then shook their heads ~sorrowfully,
saying to each other in a low voice, 4" What a
pity he !; trazy!" In vain he protested that he
was not mad ; and he went to France, and there,
at the dinner table with the Partisan nobility and
aristocracy, when the wine had passed and soft
ened the inequalities of rank, that young enthu-
~siastic man uttered his f%anatical proposition. 1t
sobeyed in a moment the current Of conversation.
All eyes were directed toward the young Ameri-
can at the foot of the table. Talleyrand set
down his glass and said in a formidable tone of
inquiry DO | understand you to say, that by
the mere force Of steam you can propel u YES
sci continuing 100 armed men, in a dead calm,
at the rate of four miles an hour % What a
moment for the young enthusiast "Yes," re-
piled he, with a faith in his heart that steadied
his voice before the French statesman. French
politeness repressed the exclamation, "What a
pity that he is crazy !' but the man of one idea
understood the shrugs of incredibly which greet
ed his reply.
-Four miles an hour by steam who would
dare to advance such a proposition now? Full.
ton himself, if alive, would pronounce such a
man crazy. Nothing short of a hundred miles
an hour by steam would now be considered a
proposition adequate to express the sanest effort
of reason. Fulton's idea, that half shipwrecked
his mind by its magnitude, and which the world
was not strong enough to bear yesterday, as it
were, has been absorbed and constitutes but a
minute element in the mighty idea of steam pow
err now working its inventive e%nginery in the hu-
man mind.
Thus it is in every department of this intense
progression. A few years ago, a narrow ditch
called canal, and conducting a small thread of
navigation around the rapids in a river, was con-
sidered a great event, and celebrated with the
joyful explosion Of rum and powder. Now talk.
of a canal, and it is proposition to open a river
across a continent to lock the Pacific through
the Andes to the Atlantic, bearing tall-masted
ships, laden from the EXTREMIST indie, homeward,
as it we're, by land. A Railroad, in our fresh
est remembrance, was a tremendous affair, II 1t
opened an iron highway between Lowell and
Boston, Albany and Schenectady. Now, the
very boys on their way to school, are projecting
double track railways strait on through a dozen
Kingdoms and men are discussing in halls OF
Legislation whether a hemisPherical colure oil