tion. With the raw material in profusion, how strange and unnatural must be the policy which would interdict its fabrication by ourselves into all the forms which our condition requires. This principle of security is applicable to most of the manufactures now existing in this country, which even in their present state, render us safe from the hostility of other nations. How dangerous would it be to abandon them. "A people engaged exclusively in any one pursuit, must necessarily be a dependent people. Their chances of prosperity are obviously increased with the number and variety of their resources. So that if one fails, they have others upon which they may rely. And no pursuit is subject to more casualties than agriculture, from causes too well known to you. How important then that an agricultural people should have other employments. A self-sustaining people must be the most independent, the most active and enterprising, the most wealthy, and the most happy. Independent, because neither their necessaries nor comforts. will depend upon foreign policy, or upon foreign wars and revolutions; active and enterprising, because the variety of employment gives scope to faculties of every grade and character, invigorates genius, and stimulates to exertion. These produce the really valuable wealth of a country, the active, circulating, animating wealth, which forms the life blood of the system, moving rapidly through its veins and arteries, and carrying health, vigour, and cheerfulness into every part. And such a people must therefore be the most happy; unfettered by restraints, the choice of employment is before them; if one fails, another is at hand; hope continually illumines their path, competition rouses their energies, and man is developed in all his best faculties and proportions.

"That such has been mainly the condition of our own country, is owing, in my humble judgment, not only to our free institutions, but chiefly to the diversified employments of our people, which have been created, fostered, and extended by the policy of the government, which, with a few exceptions, has generally been pursued. Friendly and just relations have been maintained with foreign nations; treaties have secured us access to their ports and markets upon the most favourable terms, discriminating duties have compelled the abandonment of onerous charges upon our products, or upon the ships that transported them; exchanges of our surpluses for theirs, have been freely made, and thus a healthful, mutually beneficial foreign market has been opened and preserved for what we did not consume at home, and for the products of our manufacturing and mechanical industry. At the same time, the home market has been nursed, established, and expanded by judicious duties upon foreign fabrics, until it has come to consume an amount of our bread-stuffs and provisions, greater than that exported to the other countries of the world. This general policy, originating with the great and wise men who laid the foundations of our political fabric, has been, with occasional exceptions, pursued by their succes

sors.

I have endeavoured to show, that by maintaining this policy, your interests as agriculturists will be cherished and promoted, that the best markets, and a choice of them, will be provided for your products, and that the whole country will be really independent, prosperous, and happy."

EDUCATION OF ORPHANS.

GIRARD COLLEGE.

The able discourse of J. R. Tyson, Esq., delivered on the first anniversary of the Girard College for orphans, exhibits in a very strong light the munificent charity of Stephen Girard. This institution is one of the most remarkable in the world. Its object is to educate poor orphan boys, according to a system entirely original. The founder, who died in Philadelphia, the possessor of an immense fortune which he had acquired by persevering and patient toil, seems to have experienced in his own case, the disadvantages of orphanage and poverty combined, and left a large sum to establish and perpetuate a school for the instruction of those labouring under similar difficulties. The building erected for the purpose is after the plan prescribed by himself. The style of architecture is imposing, and the finish costly. The corner-stone has been laid fifteen years, but only a year ago was the edifice completed, and ready for the admission of pupils. The management of the college is confided to able hands; its prospects of usefulness are highly gratifying, and it must exert a great influence upon the community in which it is located. Mr. Tyson thus draws the character of the founder.

"Stephen Girard was a Frenchman by birth. He came to this country at an early age, and acquired his immense estate in Philadelphia. While his heart glowed with fondness for the civil and religious freedom of his adopted country, he imbibed a peculiar attachment to the city of his residence, as the scene of his labours, and the field of his financial glory. Removed by local distance, but still further by personal peculiarities from the endearments of childhood, he nursed, in the stern austerity of solitude, a spirit of social aversion, which grew more intense, from year to year, until it seemed to divorce itself from any communion with his fellows. When his fortune became so expanded and colossal, as to be a subject of general notice, he was a stranger to familiar life. He interchanged few or no offices of courtesy and kindness with his neighbours. He seemed to glide through the world unobserved; not knowing others, and unknown himself. When ap

proached, his speech was short and to the immediate subject; not a word escaped beyond the business of the occasion. It was only in the commercial relations of society, that he permitted himself to appear. He was satisfied that his deeds should speak for him.-At early dawn he issued from the damps of his abode in Water street, in the plain garb of a decent citizen. He might be traced to his bankinghouse, in Third street, where, until the closing hour of three, he transacted, in person, his extensive concerns as a banker; instructed and received reports from the captains of his vessels, sailing to and from the remotest seas; and entered into all the details of his multiplied affairs. After the engagements of the morning, he retired to his farm, and there directed, and sometimes led the workmen in their rural employments. Returning to his bank in the evening, the midnight hour found him alone, silently revising the business of his officers of the previous day, and subjecting the account of each to a keenness of inspection, which no error, inadvertence, or oversight, could hope to escape. In this incessant toil, this unintermitted diligence, the history of a day is the history of his life.-Though publicity attended his footsteps, he shunned the gaze of the multitude. He seemed to shrink from observation. Without a note of warning, the public ear was occasionally startled by some grand project or daring and gigantic enterprise. While the air was ringing with the rumour, he quietly withdrew to the retirement of his farm, and seemed dead to the sensation it produced.

"We may cease to wonder at the magical transformations of his Midas touch. His secret lay in the patient application of a remarkably clear and sagacious intellect to the single work of accumulation, aided by inexpensive personal habits and the observance of general frugality. He sought, through a long life, the philosopher's stone, with a sedulous and untiring assiduity. Assuming that he intended to apply it, when discovered, to the erection of one of the greatest monuments of benevolence of which history or tradition speaks, it cannot be doubted, that the means and the end may be justified, upon the principles of an elevated philosophy.

"Girard either threw himself or was thrown, at an early period of his life, beyond the protection of the paternal roof. Poor, and practically an orphan, he comes within the description of the persons for whom his college is erected. Houseless and exposed, surrounded by temptation, degraded by ignorance, and chilled by penury,-can we doubt that the recollections of his own bitter experience suggested the first idea of a safe-guard and an asylum to the fatherless wanderer?"

Mr. Tyson then proceeds to set forth the object, plan, and benefits of the institution.

"But in whatever motive and from whatever feeling, the idea of this college had its origin, its plan is a high philosophical conception, and VOL. II.—MARCH, 1849.

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does honour to the mind which conceived it. Its direct effect will be not merely to diffuse individual blessings, but to stem, at their source, the torrents of pauperism and crime; to elevate the working classes of society; and to come in aid of our free institutions by giving them the sustaining props of moral virtue and cultivated intelligence, from the least promising members of the state.

"The ample endowment of the Girard College, is now and hereafter to be applied to the moral and intellectual training of poor white male orphans. In the exposition of his system, the testator did not omit the delineation of any feature necessary to its completeness. His mind surveyed the whole, and took in each particular part. No child is eligible until the age of six, nor after the age of ten years. Between the ages of six and eighteen years, the inmates may be taught all those branches of useful learning which the interval permits. But not stopping here, the founder, with equal sagacity and benevolence, follows these youths from the college walls. At the moment of quitting college, they are to be severally apprenticed to some useful calling or pursuit. He does not launch them into the dangerous ocean of life, and expose them, like inexperienced mariners, to the rocks and tempests of the voyage, but he gives them a conductor through the insidious narrows, and a chart for the open sea.

"The institution has little in common with the ordinary colleges of Europe, or of this country. It is accessible only at a tender age, and is confined to a particular class. The founder knew the ills to which youthful poverty was exposed, in a large city, when emancipated from parental restraint. Aware of the lasting influence of young impressions, he assumes the whole work of their moral as well as mental cultivation. He begins at the dawn of childhood; he quits them only at the age of legal maturity.

"But it is no less distinguished from an ordinary college by the age and character of the inmate, than by his studious and future career. He is to be taught, says the testator, things and not words. The modern, and even the ancient languages, may and perhaps will be taught, but as each scholar is to serve an apprenticeship to some useful art, pure and practical science will form the ground-work of the educational scheme.

"The pupils are drawn from the ranks of the poor, and are to belong to the productive classes of society; to those who aid the necessities, and multiply the comforts and conveniences of life. They are the children of adversity, not the spoiled expectants of fortune; not the nati consumere fruges, who may subsist without the necessity of labour. This college does not propose to change the destiny of their lot, but to assist them in the fulfilment of its duties. It does not intend to change the nature of a calling, but to exalt it by increasing the ability of its professors. The terms of the will look to practical utility and

chiefly to manual art, but do not exclude high and various scholarship, nor any variety of useful pursuit. It enjoins apprenticeships to stable occupations, as those of agriculture, navigation, arts, mechanical trades, and manufactures, according to the capabilities and acquirements of the scholars respectively, consulting, as far as prudence shall justify it, the inclination of the several scholars as to the occupation, art, or trade to be learned.'

"The training will, of course, be adapted to the various parts which the learners are to play in the drama of practical life. The physical powers, and those of the understanding, will be developed together, in order that the habits of mental and manual activity, formed at college, may be successfully applied to such pursuits as fitness or choice may determine to be best. Though the cultivation of the understanding and judgment, is an object of paramount importance, the extent and period of studies permit, that the taste should be cultivated and improved. The studies will be as various as the capacities and destinations of the learners, and commensurate, in dignity, completeness, and extent, with the highest aims of learning. They include all the branches of a thorough education, whether in the sterner fields of science or in the flowery gardens of literature, whether in the experimental arts or in those which embellish and adorn existence.

"In the attempt to make good citizens, reason and experience show, that we must begin with the child. It is the young idea that must be taught how to shoot. We must watch it in the tender germ of infancy, remove the weeds which would choke or poison it, and so water and invigorate it, as it rises to catch the air and the sun, that like a healthy and useful plant, it may bring forth fruit, as well as leaves and flowers. SMITHSON, the munificent benefactor of the nation, believed that he could add to the sum of human happiness, by the diffusion of knowledge among men. GIRARD, with the same object in view, thought that it could be better attained, by means of a school and nursery for boys.

"It offers not merely an asylum, but a nursery and a school. Not only these, but a home, with all the comforts, and more than the security and advantages of the parental roof. It takes the poor orphan at the age of six years, trains, nurtures, and educates him, teaches him a trade, and sends him into the world at the age of majority.

"The social atmosphere which surrounds him in the college, is invigorating and healthy. Snatched from the polluted air which environed him in the world, he is transplanted into a soil which will rear him into a genial and fructifying manhood. The taints he has contracted, which the superficial eye cannot detect, and superficial remedies cannot remove, will be purged away by the refining process to which he is subjected. No spectacle can be more pleasing and beautiful than to see