Address of Joseph R. Ingersoll at the Annual Meeting of the Pennsylvania Colonization Society, 1838 (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from Address of Joseph R. Ingersoll at the Annual Meeting of the Pennsylvania Colonization Society, 1838 The wide Atlantic separates us from the European world. Yet neither distance nor diversity of interests prevents a frequent and familiar intercourse. We are gainers by the experience of older nations in every department of science, in every variety of art. We profit by their wisdom, we study and apply to our own institutions their languages, literature and laws. We imitate their customs, adopt their fashions, improve by their instructions, delight in many of their refinements, and make use of all of their advantages which we can render available to ourselves. We are able even to derive benefit from their errors by endeavouring to avoid them, if similarity of habits, and a degree at least of advancement in the same career of civilization, might threaten to identify them among ourselves. Their religion is our religion. Their tastes are in most respects our tastes. Their inventions are more than theoretically and experimentally ours. The civilization and refinement, the power and the productions of Europe are but the growth of one portion of a vast region, widely distant from ourselves, and embracing no less than three quarters of the globe. To that advanced and cultivated portion of it to which we are especially allied we can make but inadequate returns. The balance of commercial exchange is not more uniformly against us than the debt we owe for comforts and elegancies which pervade every part of civilized society. We have little to restore in kind for the natural overflow of long accumulating wealth, and almost superhuman skill. Yet the nice sensibility which feels the force of unrequited obligations, need not suffer long under the burthen of national benefits not directly paid for, while the great cause of civilization affords a vent for gratitude. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.