We are apt too to forget, that were it possible, with or without the intervention of war, for a people to be cut off from all intercourse with other nations, and to be destitute themselves of mineral resources, that their very existence, at least as a civilized people, would be next to impossible. That the different degrees of refinement attained by the human race in different periods of antiquity, are marked with a precision sufficiently distinct, by their acquaintance with the metals, and the uses to which they are susceptible of being applied: and, that nearer our own times, the aboriginal inhabitants of our own continent were found existing in a higher or lower stage of progress towards civilization, in proportion to their knowledge or their ignorance of these substances. To trace a little further, the connection of mineral wealth with national prosperity, we may observe, that the wants of a people may be said to be mainly supplied, when they are provided with food, clothing and habitation, and they are better or worse supplied, according to the nature and abundance of the materials they possess for the fabrication of these, and the perfection of the instruments they may have, proper for fashioning them into convenient forms. The nation which can command for its subsistence, in greatest profusion, the varied vegetable and animal productions, of whatever clime, that constitute the necessaries and luxuries of life; whose well stored magazines of merchandize furnish, for its apparel, the finest fabrics and the richest stuffs; and which can boast, for its places of dwelling, the most commodious, splendid and durable edifices, with the various conveniences that necessarily keep pace with improvements in these, may be said, physically considered, to have well nigh attained the pinnacle of prosperity. Let us observe in what manner the mineral substances to which we have alluded, contribute to accomplish this end. Let us suppose man rude and barbarous, for the first time, to be presented with that best of gifts--iron; and for the sake of proceeding, let us anticipate the slow progress of events, and give it to him in the form into which he would soon convert it--that of the simplest implements. Instantly his habits are changed: his wandering mode of life is abandoned: his abode becomes fixed, and he himself devoted to labor. In a little time, the rugged face of nature is made to assume a softened and a brightened aspect, and to smile upon him with a novel beauty. The ample and ancient forest, his former range, falls with continued crash, day after day, beneath the repeated stroke of his axe: on all sides, broad and sunny plains open around him: the broken soil heaved up to the influence of the atmosphere by his plough, or stirred with his hoe, begins to yield in abundance the fruits of the earth; the prostrate timber rent asunder by his wedge, and hewed, sawed, or chiseled into appropriate shapes, furnishes