I refer thus particularly to the Ohio, because she happens to be in our waters. But in so doing I do not take the strongest case afforded by our Navy. Other ships have absorbed still larger sums. The expense of the Delaware in 1842, had been one million and fifty-one thousand dollars.
Pursue the comparison still further. The expenditures of the University during the last year, for the general purposes of the College, the instruction of the Under-graduates, and for the Schools of Law and Divinity, amount to $46,949. The cost of the Ohio for one year in service, in salaries, wages, and provisions, is $220,000; being $175,000 more than the annual expenditures of the University; more than four times as much. In other words, for the annual sum which is lavished on one ship of the line, four institutions, like Harvard University, might be sustained throughout the country!
Still further let us pursue the comparison. The pay of the Captain of a ship like the Ohio, is $4,500 when in service; $3,500, when on leave of absence, or off duty. The salary of the President of the Harvard University is $2,205; without leave of absence, and never being off duty!
If the large endowments of Harvard University are dwarfed by a comparison with the expense of a single ship of the line, how much more must it be so with those of other institutions of learning and beneficence, less favored by the bounty of many generations. The average cost of a sloop of war is $315,000; more, probably, than all the endowments of those twin stars of learning in the Western part of Massachusetts, the Colleges at Williamstown and Amherst, and of that single star in the East, the guide to many ingenuous youth, the Seminary at Andover. The yearly cost of a sloop of war in service is above $50,000; more than the annual expenditures of these three institutions combined.
I might press the comparison with other institutions of Beneficence, with the annual expenditures for the Blind—that noble and successful charity, which has shed true lustre upon our Commonwealth—amounting to $12,000; and the annual expenditures for the Insane of the Commonwealth, another charity dear to humanity, amounting to $27,844.
Take all the Institutions of Learning and Beneficence, the precious jewels of the Commonwealth, the schools, colleges, hospitals and asylums, and the sums, by which they have been purchased and preserved, are trivial and beggarly, compared with the treasures squandered within the borders of Massachusetts, in vain preparations for War. There is the Navy Yard at Charleston, with its stores on hand, all costing $4,741,000; the Fortifications in the harbors of Massachusetts, in which incalculable sums have been already sunk, and in which it is now proposed to sink $3,853,000 more;[[10]] and besides the Arsenal at Springfield, containing in 1842, 175,118 muskets, valued at $2,999,998,[[11]] and which is fed by an annual appropriation of about $200,000; but whose highest value will ever be, in the judgment of all lovers of truth, that it inspired a poem, which in its influence shall be mightier than a battle, and shall endure when arsenals and fortifications have crumbled to the earth. Some of the verses of this Psalm of Peace may happily relieve the detail of statistics, while they blend with my argument.
Were half the power that fills the world with terror,
Were half the wealth, bestowed on camp and courts,
Given to redeem the human mind from error,
There were no need of arsenals and forts.