McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader

by William Holmes McGuffey

XCVI. INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES. (344)

John Caldwell Calhoun, 1782-1850. This great statesman, and champion of southern rights and opinions, was born in Abbeville District, South Carolina. In the line of both parents, he was of Irish Presbyterian descent. In youth he was very studious, and made the best use of such opportunities for education as the frontier settlement afforded. He graduated at Yale College in 1804, and studied law at Litchfield, Connecticut. In 1808 he was elected to the Legislature of South Carolina; and, three years later, he was chosen to the National House of Representatives. During the six years that he remained in the House, he took an active and prominent part in the stirring events of the time. In 1817 he was appointed Secretary of War, and held the office seven years. From 1825 to 1832 he was Vice President of the United States. He then resigned this office, and took his seat as senator from South Carolina. In 1844 President Tyler called him to his Cabinet as Secretary of State; and, in 1845, he returned to the Senate, where he remained till his death. During all his public life Mr. Calhoun was active and outspoken. His earnestness and logical force commanded the respect of those who differed most widely from him in opinion. He took the most advanced ground in favor of "State Rights," and defended slavery as neither morally nor politically wrong. His foes generally conceded his honesty, and respected his ability; while his friends regarded him as little less than an oracle.

In private life Mr. Calhoun was highly esteemed and respected. His home was at "Fort Hill," in the northwestern district of South Carolina; and here he spent all the time he could spare from his public duties, in the enjoyments of domestic life and in cultivating his plantation. In his home he was remarkable for kindness, cheerfulness, and sociability. ###

To comprehend more fully the force and bearing of public opinion, and to form a just estimate of the changes to which, aided by the press, it will probably lead, politically and socially, it will be necessary to consider it in connection with the causes that have given it an influence so great as to entitle it to be regarded as a new political element. They will, upon investigation, be found in the many discoveries and inventions made in the last few centuries.

All these have led to important results. Through the invention of the mariner's compass, the globe has been circumnavigated and explored; and all who inhabit it, with but few exceptions, are brought within the sphere of an all-pervading commerce, which is daily diffusing over its surface the light and blessings of civilization.

Through that of the art of printing, the fruits of observation and reflection, of discoveries and inventions, with all the accumulated stores of previously acquired knowledge, are preserved and widely diffused. The application of gunpowder to the art of war has forever settled the long conflict for ascendency between civilization and barbarism, in favor of the former, and thereby guaranteed that, whatever knowledge is now accumulated, or may hereafter be added, shall never again be lost.

The numerous discoveries and inventions, chemical and mechanical, and the application of steam to machinery, have increased many fold the productive powers of labor and capital, and have thereby greatly increased the number who may devote themselves to study and improvement, and the amount of means necessary for commercial exchanges, especially between the more and the less advanced and civilized portions of the globe, to the great advantage of both, but particularly of the latter.

The application of steam to the purposes of travel and transportation, by land and water, has vastly increased the facility, cheapness, and rapidity of both: diffusing, with them, information and intelligence almost as quickly and as freely as if borne by the winds; while the electrical wires outstrip them in velocity, rivaling in rapidity even thought itself.

The joint effect of all this has been a great increase and diffusion of knowledge; and, with this, an impulse to progress and civilization heretofore unexampled in the history of the world, accompanied by a mental energy and activity unprecedented.

To all these causes, public opinion, and its organ, the press, owe their origin and great influence. Already they have attained a force in the more civilized portions of the globe sufficient to be felt by all governments, even the most absolute and despotic. But, as great as they now are, they have, as yet, attained nothing like their maximum force. It is probable that not one of the causes which have contributed to their formation and influence, has yet produced its full effect; while several of the most powerful have just begun to operate; and many others, probably of equal or even greater force, yet remain to be brought to light.

When the causes now in operation have produced their full effect, and inventions and discoveries shall have been exhausted—if that may ever be—they will give a force to public opinion, and cause changes, political and social, difficult to be anticipated. What will be their final bearing, time only can decide with any certainty.

That they will, however, greatly improve the condition of man ultimately, it would be impious to doubt; it would be to suppose that the all-wise and beneficent Being, the Creator of all, had so constituted man as that the employment of the high intellectual faculties with which He has been pleased to endow him, in order that he might develop the laws that control the great agents of the material world, and make them subservient to his use, would prove to him the cause of permanent evil, and not of permanent good.

NOTE.—This selection is an extract from "A Disquisition on Government." Mr. Calhoun expected to revise his manuscript before it was printed, but death interrupted his plans.