PAPERS OF MIRABI~AU BUONAPARTE LAMAR 329 No. 2489. ADDRESS TO THE SOUTHERN COMMERCIAL CONVENTION. LAMAR [New Orleans, January? 1855 ?l Being compelled to retire from the Presidency 0£ the late Southern Commercial Convention, at New Orleans, before the close 0£ its ses- sions, Gen. MIRABEAU B. LAMAR delivered the following brie£ but ap- propriate address. Gentlemen of the Convention. When I accepted the office 0£ President of this Convention,. the deep interest I took in its deliberations, apart from the high honor con- ferred upon me, determined me to remain with you until the close of your Session. A variety of circumstances now calls me away, and I am constrained to throw myself upon your indulgence, and ask leave to retire. My present indisposition precludes the possibility of my ad- dressing you, on this occasion, in any manner that is congenial to my £eelings. In parting from you I can only say I leave my heart be- hind-a heart whose highest aspiration is £or the good of my country, and the happiness of her patriotic champions. This hall you have consecrated as a temple, to the noblest of pur- poses-the promotion of the great industrial and social interests of your section of the Union. Those interests are intimately interwoven with all the :fibres of national prosperity. Gifted by Providence with superior natural advantages to any other part of the world, and pos- . sessed of a population happily blending all the finest varieties of the human family, so organized as to combine in the best manner, civic peace, order and happiness, with industrial development, the States whose representatives are before me, have as yet £ailed, from the oper- ation of improper legislative action, or from a culpable neglect 0£ con- certed action, to keep pace in the great progressive march of the age. We are not yet what we ought to be, either in thought or act, as mem- bers of our great confederacy- as heirs and depositories of the noblest legacy in the possession of man. We want our great highways and thoroughfares linking all parts of the country in one prosperous whole, expediting commerce and intercourse, with the velocity of Steam. We want our great lines of ocean steamers, channelling the Sea and making it a pathway for direct communion from our own now neglected ports to the emporiums of the older world. We want a full development and employment of the vast resources of commerce and commercial grandeur and opulence, that are concentrating from every zone and longitude-from the islands of the deeps-from Amazonian terri- tories:._and from the new found Pacific world, into the bosom of our own Gulf of :Mexico, and making it the Mediterranean of the West- and this and our other maritime cities, the Venice, the Genoa, and the Liverpool of "the Subject Seas"- With all this we want free public schools, colleges, and other institutions of learning, in short an enlarged mental development in popular instruction ancl literary cul- ture, adequate to our great physical grandeur, ancl adapted to our peculiar institutions and social tastes and Tendencies. To bring about this consummation has been the object of the South- ern Commercial Conventions hitherto held. What influence they have had, or what influence may result from the present assemblage con-
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