reverential awe before the
creating power of that commerce. We feel that the spirit of it is not a
mere money-hunting, but a mighty instrumentality of Providence for the
moral and social benefit of the world; and we at once feel that the
interests of such a commerce underlie so much the foundation of your
country's future, that not only are they entitled to enter into the
regulating considerations of your country's policy, but they must
enter--they must have a decisive weight--and they will have it, whatever
be the declamations of learned politicians who have so much looked to
the authority of past times that they have found no time to see the
imperious necessity of present exigencies.

There are still some who advise you to follow the policy of separation
from Europe, which Washington wisely advised in his days--wisely,
because it was a necessity of those times. I have on many occasions
adduced arguments against this, which to me are quite convincing. Yet to
some minds custom is of so much more power than argument, that I could
not forbear to feel some uneasiness. But to-day, gentlemen, I no longer
feel such uneasiness. I am entirely tranquillized. I want no more
arguments, because I have the knowledge of facts, and to those who still
advocate the policy of separatism I will say, "Have you seen the city of
Buffalo? Go! and look at it; when you have seen what Buffalo is,
consider what are the interests which created that city, and are
personified by that city; then trace those interests back to New York,
and from New York across the Atlantic to the Old World; and again, the
returning interests of intercourse from the Old World to New York and
hence to Buffalo, and from Buffalo to the West, and then speak of the
wisdom of separatism!"--What exists, exists. The facts will laugh at your
reflections; they will tell you that, they cannot be undone. They will
tell you that you are like Endymion, whom Diana made sleep until the
twig on which he leaned his head had become a tree. They, will tell you
that you could as well reduce Buffalo to the log-house of MIDDEAU and
LANE; the mighty democrat the steam-engine to the horse on the back of
which EZRA METCALF brought the first public mail to the sixteen
dwelling-houses, which some forty years ago composed all Buffalo; you
could as well reduce the Erie Canal to where it was when GOVERNOR MORRIS
first mentioned the idea of tapping Lake Erie, or reduce the West to a
desert, and west