One more century; another act in the great drama of empire; another
French and Indian War beneath the banners of England; a successful
Revolution, of which some of the most momentous events occurred within
your limits; a union of States; a Constitution of Federal Government;
your population carried to the St. Lawrence and the great Lakes, and
their waters poured into the Hudson; your territory covered with a
net-work of canals and railroads, filled with life and action, and
power, with all the works of peaceful art and prosperous enterprise with
all the institutions which constitute and advance the civilization of
the age; its population exceeding that of the Union at the date of the
Revolution; your own numbers twice as large as those of the largest city
of that day, you have met together, my Friends, just two hundred years
since the erection of the little church of Beverswyck, to dedicate a
noble temple of science and to take a becoming public notice of the
establishment of an institution, destined, as we trust, to exert a
beneficial influence on the progress of useful knowledge at home and
abroad, and through that on the general cause of civilization.