Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1851-09-22
Free Soil Nominations.
FOR GOVERNOR,
Our Progress.

Our Progress.
The two extremes of life are a state Of nature, and
the highest state Of civilization. The former is the
point from which humanity has advanced; the latter is
the point which the foremost of the human have
attained Between those two conditions all others,
graduating up from the first towards the second, stiv
ing to get away, with all the might of divine faculty,
from the nakedness and desttution of the wilderness,
to the opuIence and elegance of the city. Look at
man before he takes the first step from Chaos. He is
Naked houseless, and hungry; and looks around him
almost without purpose. But he has divine faculties
within him, which, stirred by want, whisper to his do
Gle hands and bids them do.
He makes to himself rude wigwam with branches
which he breaks from the trees with his unassisted
hands. He covers it with herbs which he tears from
the ground He lies in ambush for some beast of the
field, which he Stays with club stone. He eats its
flesh, and clothes himself with its skin; and the first
step taken. Chaos is behind, one STEP Man has
provided for the bodily wants of to morrow; he can
afford to think to-day.
Lo, he dreams Of a higher condition beyond him. 1t
is not the unaained but the attainable to which he
looks he yokes all his faculties to his purpose and
steps forward. This in its eternity of notion is DO.
gress This it is which has brought us from the boat
of bull-hide, in which our ancient Brition fathers
crossed the RENDER and the Mersey, to the locomotive
palace in which their grandsons cross the ocean,
This it is which has embarrassed the weary steed of
flesh and boaes and yoked, in his place, the iron rib
bed horse which knows WEAKNESS and laughs at the
speed of the wind And this it is which has brought
US, nation, from the night of our Plymouth Rock
poverty and obscurity into this our morning of great
ness and power among all the people of the world
This present moment seems to us to be peculiarly
suspicious as time for contemplating and elictatng
ourselves upon American progress. We see it around
as in the exhibitions of immediate agricultural
and mechanical productions. We hear it in the ubi-
lee.voices Of the metropolis and comes echoine to
us from the temple Of fame across the ocean Fortv
years ago we were very poor people, with scarcel,
any other instrument save the axe with which f.
combat the forest for homestead; and little more tina,
wooden pillow with which 10 scratch the face Of III,
wilderness for bread The labor that might have la
down roads, and cut canals, and built ships and wharye
and cities, was rammng down cartridges into foreign
made rifles, and lodging round the trees of the forest
repel the invader. Forty years are something in tb
age of man, they nothing in the age of nation
and yet. in this time, have advanced from that es
tate at which proud Edmund Burke pointed his fuge
IN contempt, and at which he laughed with scorn mt;
have left Brittana behind us on the seas and have
according to that organ of the Absolutsts the Ioodo
Times, surpassed all other nations in the practca
arts.
We have bounded over the path of progress, Will
other peoples have crept over it, and vet the eaIon
critics who hate the institutions by which we preserv
our individual sovereignty, and who have roared aoain
our mechanical pretensions' with all their throas
brass, have been constrained to listen to the ,v;nf
OF heaven the waves Of the sea- and the fruits Of II
earth, singing in the triumphs of our
and executive skill
There is modesty in this progress which at,rac
our hearts to her, aud makes us love her. She did NJ
come forth with banners before her. and trumne
uio"s' az tne warriors do She sat in her closet an
dreamed OF ten thousand things to benefit and bIe
mankind; and then she sent her servants out into n
heids and 5Igh~aysto do them. She yoked the might
streams to her water-wheels and forced them IN min;
ter to the needs of She caught the winds in h.
hands, and harnessed them to the mechanical now q
that they might give them motion. She opened I'M II
imPenetrable forest, drained the swamp, and led II
joaming river through the palms. and welded it to d
Gilseid lake. She conquered nature, and gave her d
min'Sos to civilization. Blessed principle of educ
ton. cshch keeps the arcana Of nature from rustae
have still to advance under its direction, and throu
its .ifnpHlses. Blessed principle of peace, which b
takendhc gun and bayonet from the hands of brothe
John and Jonathan, and made them kindly forget I
offences and disputes, they embraced each other
the foot Of Bunker HILL 1t is now in the light Of 9
agricultural horticultural and mechanics fairs, /
Railway Jubilee at Boston, and the great Worlds
hbition thstwe can note the rapid, peaceful, perm
nent character Of progress, and estimate the XII
and condition of Americas true glory.