Wherever hammers beat, or wherever factory chimneys smoke,
wherever hands are busy, or the clanking of machinery resounds--
wherever, in a word, there are masses of industrious human beings
whom their wise Creator did not see fit to constitute all body, but
into each and every one of whom He breathed a mind--there, I would
fain believe, some touch of sympathy and encouragement is felt from
our collective pulse now beating in this Hall.
Ladies and gentlemen, glancing with such feelings at the report of
your Institution for the present year sent to me by your respected
President--whom I cannot help feeling it, by-the-bye, a kind of
crime to depose, even thus peacefully, and for so short a time--I
say, glancing over this report, I found one statement of fact in
the very opening which gave me an uncommon satisfaction. It is,
that a great number of the members and subscribers are among that
class of persons for whose advantage Mechanics' Institutions were
originated, namely, persons receiving weekly wages. This
circumstance gives me the greatest delight. I am sure that no
better testimony could be borne to the merits and usefulness of
this Institution, and that no better guarantee could be given for
its continued prosperity and advancement.
To such Associations as this, in their darker hours, there may yet
reappear now and then the spectral shadow of a certain dead and
buried opposition; but before the light of a steady trust in them
on the part of the general people, bearing testimony to the
virtuous influences of such Institutions by their own intelligence
and conduct, the ghost will melt away like early vapour from the
ground.
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