These remarks are applicable to all stages of society's progress; for, if the world were so enlightened, that, in the scale of intellect, such a man as Daniel Webster could only be classed as an idiot, there would still be the "ignorant vulgar," the "uneducated classes." Society is one entire web--albeit woven with threads of wool and silk, of silver and gold: turn it as you will, it must all turn together; and if a whirlwind of enlightenment should waft it to the skies, although each thread would be immeasurably above its present condition, the relation of one to another would still be the same. If the baser wool should be transmuted into gold, the very same process would refine and sublimate the precious metal, in a corresponding ratio; and the equilibrium of God's appointed relations would remain undisturbed. But it is more especially in the primitive periods, before the great political truths become household words, and while the reign of law and municipal organization is a vague and distant thing, that most citizens shrink from official duties. Diffidence, in this matter is, fortunately, a disease which time will alleviate--a youthful weakness, which communities "outgrow," as children do physical defects; and, I believe, of late years, few offices have "gone begging," either east or west of the great barrier of the Allegheny. In the earlier periods of its history, we have seen that the western country was peculiarly situated. The settlements were weak and the population small; with the exception of a few narrow fields, in the vicinity of each frontier fort, or stockade, the land was a wilderness, held in undisturbed possession by the savages and wild beasts. The great struggle, which we call the Revolution, but which was, in fact, only a justifiable and successful rebellion, had exhausted the force and drained the coffers of the feeble federal government; had plunged the infant states into enormous debts; and the only means of paying these were the boundless but unclaimed lands of the west, which the same causes rendered them unable to protect. The scattered settlements on the Mississippi side of the Alleghenies, were thus left to their own scanty resources; and the distance was so great, that, had the older states been able to afford assistance, the delays and losses attendant upon its transmission across so wide a tract of wilderness, would have made it almost nugatory.