starve, as well as to the cities of this countrythat while the gentry and professional men, and those who are surrounded with comforts and luxuries, live to the average age of thirty-five years, the laborers, mechanics, and farmers, live only to the average age of fifteen years. These statistics are drawn from facts in reference to the population of the city of Liverpool. The same facts apply to the city of Manchester, where professional men, and those who are blessed with the good things of life, live to the average age of thirty-eight years, and laborers and mechanics live to the average age of seventeen. Sir, these statistics ought to be considered in reference to this bill; especially as connected with the poorer classes of the cities, because it will be admitted that these facts apply, in a great degree, to the cities. But how different is it in the Western country? How different is it at the South, Southwest, and Northwest? The true statistics of our country, out of the cities, show that the professional man, he who has all the luxuries of life around him, lives to a much shorter period of life than the sinewy farmer, because, while the farmer's labor procures him necessary food and clothing for his comforts, it adds increased vigor to his constitution.

EFFECTS OF LABOR-SAVING MACHINERY ON THE

LABORER.

In looking ahead, Mr. Chairman, to provide for the future, let us consider another most important fact: The rapid increase of labor-saving machinery will gradually drive from the work-shop the mechanic. Such has been the case in England. Such is beginning to be the case in the cities of America. The law should look to this in advance, and provide for the change of occupation. This change must come. The mechanic, driven from his work-shop by labor-saving machines, must either go to work at some other occupation, or to loaf, to steal, or starve. Sir, a wise Government should look to all these probabilities, and provide for the preservation of the morality and the lives of her citizens, and prevent the growth and spread of pauperism and crime. What better change can you offer to the mechanic than a farm? What would give him more real joy, than, on the day he is told by his employers, "Sir, the profits of this establishment are not sufficient to offer you labor any longer"--what more joyful prospect, sir, could you present to him, than to say to him, "Come to the West-bring an axe and a hoe-fall to work upon the wilderness-open a farm-call upon your mother earth for food and raiment-strike her bosom with the magic rod of labor, and lo! waters and fruits, delicious and refreshing, will gush forth to bless you, and make you comfortable." This is no light consideration. Certainly, sir, it would be as well a blessing to the country as to the mechanic, to turn him into a farmer; for it must be admitted that there are too many mechanics, just as there are too many lawyers, and too many doc-|| tors, while too few farmers.

So, sir, this bill will confer benefits, not only upon the young American farmer of this day, but upon the mechanic driven from his work-shop by the inventions of art, and the giant strides of genius. So, also, upon the venerable citizen, who has paid his taxes, worked the roads, given soldiers to the ranks of your armies, and who is still without a home of his own. Under the operations of this

bill he can go to the far West, and make himself comfortable upon his own one hundred and sixty acres; and his sons and married daughters can pitch their tents in the same neighborhood; so that, in a few years, one family may have a large tract of land of their own in their possession, presenting the beginning of an agricultural dynasty, which may be destined in the future to become distinguished in the annals of the country.

THE SAFE DEFENCE OF A NATION.

Now, Mr. Chairman, let us inquire why the young farmers of the country ought to be encouraged? And in this connection I beg to refer briefly to the remarks of the honorable gentleman from Maryland, [Mr. BowIE.] That gentleman

asks:

"Are we impregnable against our enemies? Have we provided in peace against the dangers of war? Have we no rivals now to compete with? Will the strong arms and brave hearts of the yeomanry that you send into your forests be a protection against the steam navies of Europe? armed at all points, and equal to cope with them, or the No; you must have fortifications; you must have a navy, history of this Republic may be written in two words, Ilium fuit. Our oldest and most venerated statesmen warned us, in peace to prepare for war.'

The gentleman desires to retain the land, and turn it into money, and build navies and fortifications. Sir, the hearts of the people form the only safe rampart for a nation in war. The best defense you can provide is to make your people happy in their permanent homes, so that they will look to the national invaders as the invaders of the private hearth! Provide occupations which will make the arm stronger and the body hardier! the heart purer and the spirit lighter and more buoyant! Sir, as truly as private favors build up in the hearts of men temples of gratitude, so truly will national favors to your citizens build up in their hearts temples of patriotism; and this bill will perform the double occupation of nerving the arm with labor, and kindling patriotism with the gift. Has there ever been a war, even without this liberality, in which the American laborers were not the first to offer their services to the country? I speak of the laborers of all classes, as well as of the farmers. You who have been familiar with the raising of volunteers in our cities, must know that the young mechanics and the young laborers swell the column. The more fortunate and the more wealthy, too, with equal patriotism-though not in such large numbers-are there, but to take the places of command; while the laborer, the mechanic and the farmer swell the column. Go the column. Go to the South, if you please, and note the volunteering there. I have seen, on many different occasions in the South, volunteers called out into a line, and the first who marched up was a farmer boy, scarcely twenty; and the second was a farmer boy, scarcely twenty, and so on to the third and fourth, until it came to the sixtieth and the one hundredth. They were nearly all farmer boys-working-men, with few and rare exceptions. And they make the best of soldiers. They have nerved themselves by toil. They know what labor is. They can march all day and all night without falling sick and spreading pestilence in the camp. They are the men who perform the duties of war. Sir, who fought the battles of the Revolution? The American laborer. Who cleared the wilderness of its savages, in war? The American laborer. Go to the records of our last great

war, and you will find that nine out of ten of the soldiers were of the laboring men of the country. Nor is it in this capacity alone, that they are always foremost. Whenever there is any work to be done, or great duties to be performed, the working-man-the mechanic or the farmer-is the man to do it. Who constitutes the fire companies in your cities? The laboring man. In my country, we have a system of working the roads ten or fifteen days in each year, and the first man upon the ground to perform his duty, is the young farmer, with his hoe, or his axe, or his spade on his shoulder. Sir, the working men of the country-the farmers and the mechanics-as the records show-are the men that do the manual labor for the public. And hence, I proclaim it to be our duty, as the organs of the public, that in dispensing the blessings of government, we should confer some favors at least, upon the American laborer.

THE COMPLAINTS OF THE PEOPLE.

There is another reason that ought to enter into the consideration of this bill. You ought to listen to the complaints of the people. You must and shall listen to the murmurs of the people. You hear them in every breeze. You see them in every newspaper column. They are complaining that Congress does nothing for the working man, nothing for the laborer, nothing for the farmerfor the starving denizen. The people say to their Representatives, "We elect you upon your solemn pledges to do the best you can for the people. You go to Congress. You become lost in the magnificence and grandeur; you pitch headforemost into the formation of companies and monopolies, giving millions of dollars to steam navigation companies, create railroads out of the public lands, forgetting the people-the farmer and the mechanic "Sir, there is truth and reality in these complaints, and it is to be lamented that the complaints are authorized by facts. A man has to guard himself here carefully, so as not to forget his people, his own immediate constituents. When I visited the Baltic, I was overpowered by I have experienced this difficulty. the grandeur of the ship. My national pride was stirred and excited. I felt proud while walking the deck of that noble vessel; and when I came off, if any man had told me that there was any such a thing in the world as a canoe, a flat-boat, or a barge, I should have denied the fact. [Laugh

ter.]

Mr. Chairman, I refer to these things to show the truth of the remark, that it is our first duty to guard ourselves here, in order that we may remember little, but important things, in the midst of those great and gigantic schemes which, under the deceitful guise of adding glory to the country, are really intended to create an order of nabobs.

Sir, if you pass this bill you will silence these murmurs to which I have referred, for a while at least; and the people will rise up, perhaps for the first time in the last quarter of a century, and say, "Well done, for once!" It will be a bright day in the history of Congress, when this bill becomes the law of the land.

and proclaims himself a friend to the people, he is looked at askance by some, as using his time and opportunities to cultivate the favor of the people, and to court the popular breeze. Well, sir, there is something good in cultivating the favor of the people, because it keeps a man's heart in the right place. This is important; for when a Representative ceases to remember the sources of his own power and position, he has lost his patriotism, and should no longer be trusted. I shall be the last man to pander to the popular delusion; I shall prove my faith by advocating the just rights of the people, and by telling them, to their teeth, of their errors and follies. These are sometimes numerous and amusing, as recent occurrences show. The people run mad very often, Mr. Chairman, and he is the best patriot who is the most candid to tell them when they are mad.

NATIONAL GRANDEUR.

Then, sir, it is unjust to denounce a man as a popularity hunter when he avows himself the people's friend. The people of this vast country are not niggardly. They are willing that the Government should be conducted on a scale of grandeur and magnificence commensurate with our historical fame and our advancing glory. But they do in the midst of grander contemplations. not choose to have their home interests neglected

Not long ago, sir, I voted for the appropriation of $500,000 to extend this Capitol. I believe that the glory of a country depends greatly upon the grandeur of its public buildings, and the magnificence of its courts. The poet's couplet, which honorable gentleman from Massachusetts, [Mr. was sung very sweetly a few days ago by the FOWLER]

The

contains more poetry than truth. It has passed as a truth for a long time, but it is a popular faltical truth, that houses grow larger, and men lacy, a delusion of the ever-deceitful MUSE. sentiment comes in direct conflict with the pracgrow smaller, as you approach them. We all know it to be true, that when you approach a great man he gets smaller than he seemed in the distance, and that when you approach a great by degrees, and does not swell with its full force house it gets larger, its grandeur breaks upon you until you find yourself clasped in its marble arms. Sir, in the simplicity of my verdant nature, when I came to Washington, I expected to see a President who would weigh at least a thousand; and that his Secretaries would weigh a quarter of a ton each. [Laughter.] You may imagine my surprise, sir, and utter astonishment when I met with the Secretary of War, [renewed laughter,] and saw that he did not stand any higher in his boots than I did in mine. [Excessive laughter.]

MEMORY OF THE PIONEERS.

more humble occupation of agriculture. They have their descendant representatives in all the various occupations of life, from the more exalted to the more humble. A great race, true to liberty and religion. In their name, as the first pioneers, I demand the passage of this bill. Do you remember those woodland pioneers, so beautifully referred to by the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. BOWIE]" as the soldiers of peace;"--who entered the Western wilderness alone to cleave it away for the use of coming generations;-who met the Indian, with his grim and bloody visage, in his own shadowy home, and beat him down in the solemn and solitary fight? For what was this great risk of life and limb? The mere excitements of desperate adventure? The sport and pastime of a wild and turbulent life? The exhilerations of a day-the hunter's joy and the hunter's strife? No, sir; there was something loftier than thisthe energizing idea of building up a home for future generations. Well, these generations have come-generations of farmers, laborers, agriculturists. In the name of Daniel Boone, as the leader, and all the other Western pioneers and their descendants, I demand the passage of this bill. Mr. BOCOCK, (in his seat.) But Daniel Boone is dead.

Mr. SMITH. Dead! Well, if he be dead, then, in the name of his ghost, which is abroad || in the Western wilderness-whose gigantic proportions in the dark forest is the animating enchantment of the wild scene-its colossal arms beckoning the young and starving population of the East to fly from the pestilent breath of its crowded and polluted habitation, and come to the West, where there is pure water and pure air, and best of all, elbow room for labor:-in the name of that ghost, I demand the passage of this bill. [Exclamations of "Good!" "Good!” in various parts of the Hall.]

Sir, it is the duty of Congress to pass this bill. It will be the pleasure of Congress to pass it. A conviction of its merits has seized upon the country, and it grapples the hearts of the people. Knowing this, you will be afraid not to pass it. It has come to this. It has become popular, and I proclaim, with the utmost confidence, that you dare not refuse to pass it. I do not use this phrase as a threat or as a boast. It grows out of my firm belief, that a majority of the people's Representatives are honest, and willing, and anxious to carry out the ascertained will of the people. I do not think there are many here who would be willing to bear the responsibility of defeating this bill, independently of their constitutional scruples. And those who oppose it, I am sure, will do it upon principle.

AMERICAN PROGRESS.

But it has been said, that if this bill passes this body, it would be defeated in the other end of the Capitol. Why, Mr. Chairman, the Senate is going ahead of us in matters of progress. Animated by an enlarged liberality and a young and expanding intellect, the Senate is the incarnation of YOUNG AMERICA. It belongs to the rising generation, looking to the future. Fogyism has perished in

that ancient Hall!

Intimately connected with this bill and its merits, Mr. Chairman, is the idea of progress, of which so much has been recently said in this House.

And here I may be permitted to allude to a remark made some time ago by the gentleman from Mississippi, [Mr. NABERS,] who thought he saw an inconsistency in my notions of progress, contrasting my position against the Kossuth infatuation with the idea of progress, as identified with Young America. I beg to say to that gentleman, that I see a vast difference between progress at home and progress abroad. The progress which I favor, is the progress of AMERICA at home, regardless of the concerns of the other portions of the earth. Young America does not mean any man, or any set of It does not mean any principle, or set of principles, politically, as now existing between the parties. Young America is not a thought, nor a part of a thought. It is the living, breathing, energized action of the greatest generation the world has ever seen-an action which looks alone to the permanency, the welfare, the grandeur, and the glory of America, disconnected with factions at home and phantoms abroad. She carries her own hod, her own mortar, her own marble, for the grand temple she is building, while she invites all the laborers of the earth to come and aid in its erection, and then to repose in its shade.

men.

1 must be allowed here, Mr. Chairman, to refer to the playful remarks made not many days ago, in this Hall, by the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania, [Mr. CHANDLER,] for whom I have a very sincere regard. It will be remembered that, as a slam upon Young America, he referred to the young and rebellious Absalom hanging in a tree, for the sin of trying to obtain possession of his father's kingdom, representing Absalom as Young Israel, and David as the Old Fogy. I propose to refresh the memory of the honorable gentleman, as to the history of fogyism in the ancient day, and to show from his own chapters the true version of Absalom's case. The history of the earth proclaims the solemn lesson, that as Old Fogyism in the ancient day fell before Young Israel at various times, so it must in this day fall before Young America. You remember that, while Israel was suffering under the bad government of long-continued fogyism, there was a young peasant named Saul, who went out one evening to look for his father's asses, and found a kingdom. He received the crown, and in his youth flourished exceedingly, filling the earth with blessings, and covering his country with glory and honor. But in the course of time, when he began to totter down the shady side of the hill of life, his accumulating sins and errors gathering about him, he fell into the meshes of fogyism-became an old fogy himself, disobeying the orders of the Almighty; so that it became necessary to kill him off. And Young Israel brought forward about this time another peasant boy-a shepherd minstrel--in the person of David, the lad who with one stone killed two fogies-Goliah literally, and Saul effectually and incidentally;-for the fame of the achievement of the death of Goliah brought David to the throne. Here you see Young Israel in the person of the boy David, taking possession of the throne, while Saul, in the bewilder ing excitement of his fogy imagination, could find nothing better to do than to hold familiar conversations with the witch of Endor:--just as certain antiquated politicians of this day utter delphic and oracular phrases to interpret the mysteries of the past, and to illustrate the uncertainties of the

future.