Wheeling daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, Va. [W. Va.]) 1852-1859, 1858-09-29
RrIdrinr NatIonnl miuIsyZays.

-9fedt Speee6 OF Rette0ae al. Se1dTdS IN
de 4Bany Bridge Case
The N. Y. Courier and Enquirer contains in
full, the great speech of Hon VIM. Il. Seward.
before the q. s. Court, in favor of drsw-bridge
across the Hudson river at Albany. We have
space for but mere extract from it. It is .
fine passage-one Characteristic of the great
statesman
And this already great nation approaches its
/ true condition just in proportion as each man
/ is so placed in relation to others, thatno bar
trier stands between him and his self-appointed
life's work. so as to prevent his filling that place
\ in the State which most tends 10 his own happi-
ness and the public welfare
Who are the parties interested in the deter
mination of this great question: Grant, il
you please, that on one side are all the ship
builders, and steamboat owners, and inn keep
ers of Troy and Albany; and all the merchants
Everywhere who maintain navigation in those
ports above the site of his proposed bridge
They are relatively an inconsiderable number
i practically every bushel of corn and every foot
of lumber that in the absence of the bridge
passes Exchange street, will in the event of its
erection, reach the market just as soon, and
without additional expense, only some existing
arrangements of trade will be disturbed and
need to be readjusted. Do we not see on the
Eother side the City of New York inpatiently
waiting the arrival of the country trader from
every interior city, town and village, and on
the other hand, the manu- facturer in his factory
and the farmer in his field waiting for the COM
ing of the purchasers of his fabrics and his pro-
auctions? Can you estimate the losses, the
IPecuniary losses, which may result from the ac-
cidentala delay for day or an hour of five
hundred or a thousand men on the way to their
various destinations2 Can you estimate the
misfortunes darkening the entire course of life
that may follow such disappointments
i When we thus enlarge the field of inquiry,
i the question whether tho projected improvement
shall be made looms up before us in all the pro-
portions of social lnstitution-an institution
for the use and benefit Of all classes and condi.
tons of men; an institution, for trade Alone
but for social intercourse and peace, and for
defence in war, and for relief in seasons Of fam
inc and peStilence.
Like the usefulnss Of the cotton gin when
that invention was new, or of the steam engine,
Tor of the Erie Canal, or of the railroad or of
the telegraph, the benefits of the bridge over
the Hudson river at Albany are to be dscov.
cred and determined, not by a microscopic exs
animation Of existing facts, or even by judicial
weight of speculative opinions, but by that large
and intuitive sagacity which groups and classi.
fes clements and pierces into the future. May
Int please your honors, you have left Your own
narrow chamber and entered the halls Of legis-
lation. You must leave your dim and twink
ling lights and use the only one that legislators
| have. If apply this sagacity, we cannot fail
to notice that this is period of movement of
mankind from the east always westward-that
through the action Of that movement an.empire
Of free, educated, refined, emulous, sell govern
4 ing men-the first of such empires the world
has knowu-is forming itself here to cover the
continent and even to overshadow other conti-
nents; that its financial, commercial and politi-
cal center is on the banks of,the Hudson, on the
very spot where we stand; that the State ofNew
York, although it is politically an equal constit-
uent member of this rising empire, is neyerthe.
less the chief architect of the wholesystem. She
tits Who availing herself of that susidencc cfthe
Allegheny Mountain barrier which occurs only
within her own domain, from the Hudson river
through tbs alley OF the Mohawk, has stretched
tout, and still goes stretching out, articialh high
4 ways of water and artificial highways over land
all of which practically radiate from this one
great centre, and extend so as to graspan con-
duct Through this valley the trade and travel
of the continents system of high ways that
Twill not be left incomplete, 5uttwill, at no dis
tant day connect the Pacific with the Atlantic
coast.
Albany aud Troy with their suburbs stands
lust at the gate where these great continental
4 floods of trade and travel reach the Hudson
River and separate-the one to descend by the
Inow relatively tedious process of steam naviga.
luon, and the other to hurry impetuoqsly onward
with the uninterrupted speed of the locomotive
projected bridge at Albany will be no isolated
l structure, but part of whole system appoint
led by the Legislature of New York to relieve
4 the pressure upon that important gatss-a sYs.
tenn which combines four several outlets of the
Erie and Champlain Canals with as many termi.
mi of therailroads the several ferries at Albany
/ and Troy, with the bridge at that place-a sys-
I tenn yet,inadequate and incomplete only for the
want of the structure at Albany which this tri-
.Ebunal isidToked t6lcondemn and abolish. q s
sthebridge at Albanysis nottobea localin-i
Estitution, soft willnot be amerely temporary one
1t will be aninstituti6n not for our lives,
but for centuries, for ages, for that indefinite
jperiod which human foresight calls forever
The numbers which are now passing over the
site of the proposed bridge annual 9o0t number
the armies ofttie Persian invader, Or those of
the Grecian eonquerorgof the Eastpor the armed
missionaries of the Koran, or the chivalrons cru
saders- Who, then, shall estimate their future
4 numbers; when society shall have been consolfg
Idated upon the American continent? What,
now. doesthe State of New York owe to those
hosts of living mem thatisbe Fissthus drawing
aside from old and accustomed ways and.desti.
nations to the new ways and new destinations
that she has appointed2 She owes anpassage.
across the Hudson River at Albany, quick, safe,
easy and comfortable, by night and by day, in
Winter aud in.Sunmer, in peace and,in war,
for the young.and the old, the Inaie and. the fes
I male, her own citizen and the stranger With