means of these buildings and of
observers stationed in them, shall we doubt of their usefulness to every
nation? And while scarcely a year passes over our heads without bringing
some new astronomical discovery to light, which we must fain receive at
second hand from Europe, are we not cutting ourselves off from the means
of returning light for light while we have neither observatory nor
observer upon our half of the globe and the earth revolves in perpetual
darkness to our unsearching eyes?

When, on the 25th of October, 1791, the first President of the United
States announced to Congress the result of the first enumeration of the
inhabitants of this Union, he informed them that the returns gave the
pleasing assurance that the population of the United States bordered on
4,000,000 persons. At the distance of thirty years from that time the
last enumeration, five years since completed, presented a population
bordering upon 10,000,000. Perhaps of all the evidences of a prosperous
and happy condition of human society the rapidity of the increase of
population is the most unequivocal. But the demonstration of our
prosperity rests not alone upon this indication. Our commerce, our
wealth, and the extent of our territories have increased in
corresponding proportions, and the number of independent communities
associated in our Federal Union has since that time nearly doubled. The
legislative representation of the States and people in the two Houses of
Congress has grown with the growth of their constituent bodies. The
House, which then consisted of 65 members, now numbers upward of 200.
The Senate, which consisted of 26 members, has now 48. But the executive
and, still more, the judiciary departments are yet in a great measure
confined to their primitive organization, and are now not adequate to
the urgent wants of a still growing community.

The naval armaments, which at an early period forced themselves upon the
necessities of the Union, soon led to the establishment of a Department
of the Navy. But the Departments of Foreign Affairs and of the Interior,
which early after the formation of the Government had been united in
one, continue so united to this time, to the unquestionable detriment of
the public service. The multiplication of our relations with the nations
and Governments of the Old World has kept pace with that of our
population and commerce, while within the last ten years a new family of
nations in our own hemisp