Oration on the Centennial Anniversary of the Declaration of independence by Robert C. Winthrop
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Title:Oration on the centennial anniversary of the Declaration of independence, delivered in the Music hall, at the request of the city government. Boston, 4 July, 1876. By Robert C. Winthrop.

Author:Winthrop, Robert C. (Robert Charles), 1809-1894.

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Print Source:Oration on the centennial anniversary of the Declaration of independence, delivered in the Music hall, at the request of the city government. Boston, 4 July, 1876. By Robert C.

Winthrop.

Winthrop, Robert C. (Robert Charles), 1809-1894.

55 pp. 25 cm.

Boston,

Press of J. Wilson & son,

1876.

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E 27 .W’VV~7 ORATION ON THE CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY OF THE Declaration of 3nbcpencncc, DELIVERED IN THE MUSIC HALL, AT THE REQUEST OF THE CITY

GOVERNMENT, BOSTON, 4 JULY, 1876. BY ROBERT C. WINTHROP. BOSTON: PRESS OF

JOHN WILSON AND SON. 1876.

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ORATION. AGAIN and again, Mr. Mayor and Fellow Citizens, in years gone by, considerations or circumstances of some sort, public or private, - I know not what, - have prevented my acceptance of most kind and flattering invitations to deliver the Oration in this my native city on the Fourth of July. On one of those occasions, long, long ago, I am said to have playfully replied to the Mayor of that period, that, if I lived to witness this Centennial Anniversary, I would not refuse any service which might be required of me. That pledge has been recalled by others, if not remembered by myself, and by the grace of God I am here to-day to fulfil it. I have come at last, in obedience to your call, to add my name to the distinguished roll of those who have discharged this service in unbroken succession since the year 1783, when the date of a glorious act of patriots was substituted for that of a dastardly deed of hirelings, - the 4th of July for the 5th of March, - as a day of annual celebration by the people of Boston. In rising to redeem the promise thus inconsiderately given, I may be pardoned for not forgetting, at the outset, who presided over the Executive Council of Massachusetts when the Declaration, which has just been read, was first formally and solemnly proclaimed to the people, from the balcony of yonder Old State House, on the 18th of July, 1776; and whose privilege it was, James Bowdoin. ii aO 11 i I;

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4 amid the shoutings of the assembled multitude, the ringing of the bells, the salutes of the surrounding forts, and the firing of thirteen volleys from thirteen successive divisions of the Continental regiments, drawn up “in correspondence with the number of the American States United,” to invoke “Stability and Perpetuity to American Independence! God save our American States!” That invocation was not in vain. That wish, that prayer, has been graciously granted. We are here this day to thank God for it. We do thank God for it with all our hearts, and ascribe to Him all the glory.

And it would be unnatural if I did not feel a more than common satisfaction, that the privilege of giving expression to your emotions of joy and gratitude, at this hour, should have been assigned to the oldest living descendant of him by whom that invocation was uttered, and that prayer breathed up to Heaven. And if, indeed, in addition to this,- as you, Mr. Mayor, so kindly urged in originally inviting me,- the name I bear may serve in any sort as a link between the earliest settlement of New England, two centuries and a half ago, and the grand culmination of that settlement in this Centennial Epoch of American Independence, all the less may I be at liberty to express any thing of the compunction or regret, which I cannot but sincerely feel, that so responsible and difficult a task had not been imposed upon some more sufficient, or certainly upon some younger, man. Yet what can I say? What can any one say, here or elsewhere, to-day, which shall either satisfy the expectations of others, or meet his own sense of the demands of such an occasion? For myself, certainly, the longer I have contemplated it, -the more deeply I have reflected on it,  so much the more hopeless I have become of finding myself able to give any adequate expression to its full significance, its real sublimity and grandeur. A hundred-fold more than when John Adams wrote to his wife it would be so for ever, it is an occasion for “shows, games, sports; guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of the continent to the other.” Ovations, rather than orations, are the order of such a day as this. Emotions like those

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which ought to fill, and which do fill, all our hearts, call for the swelling tones of a multitude, the cheers of a mighty crowd, and refuse to be uttered by any single human voice. The strongest phrases seem feeble and powerless; the best results of historical research have the dryness of chaff and husks, and the richest flowers of rhetoric the drowsiness of “poppy or mandragora,” in presence of the simplest statement of the grand consummation we are here to celebrate: - A Century of SelfGovernment Completed! A hundred years of Free Republican Institutions realized and rounded out! An era of Popular Liberty, continued and prolonged from generation to generation, until to-day it assumes its full proportions, and asserts its rightful place, among the Ages It-is a theme from which an Everett, a Choate, or even a Webster, might have shrunk. But those voices, alas! were long ago hushed. It is a theme on which any one, living or dead, might have been glad to follow the precedent of those few incomparable sentences at Gettysburg, on the 19th of November, 1863, and forbear from all attempt at extended discourse. It is not for me, however, to copy that unique original,- nor yet to shelter myself under an example, which I should in vain aspire to equal. And, indeed, Fellow Citizens, some formal words must be spoken here to-day, - trite, familiar, commonplace words, though they may be; - some words of commemoration; some words of congratulation; some words of glory to God, and of acknowledgment to man; some grateful lookings back; some hopeful, trustful, lookings forward, -these, I am sensible, cannot be spared from our great assembly on this Centennial Day. You would not pardon me for omitting them. But where shall I begin? To what specific subject shall I turn for refuge from the thousand thoughts which come crowding to one’s mind and rushing to one’s lips, all jealous of postponement, all clamoring for utterance before our Festival shall close, and before this Centennial sun shall set? The single, simple Act which has made the Fourth of July memorable for ever, -the mere scene of the Declaration,- would of itself and alone supply an ample subject for far more than 5

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6 the little hour which I may dare to occupy; and, though it has been described a hundred times before, in histories and addresses, and in countless magazines and journals, it imperatively demands something more than a cursory allusion here to-day, and challenges our attention as it never did before, and hardly ever can challenge it again. Go back with me, then, for a few moments at least, to that great year of our Lord, and that great day of American Liberty. Transport yourselves with me, in imagination, to Philadelphia. It will require but little effort for any of us to do so, for all our hearts are there already. Yes, we are all there,-
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Lakes to the Gulf, - we are all there, at this high noon of our Nation’s birthday, in that beautiful City of Brotherly Love, rejoicing in all her brilliant displays, and partaking in the full enjoyment of all her pageantry and pride. Certainly, the birthplace and the burial-place of Franklin are in cordial sympathy at this hour; and a common sentiment of congratulation and joy, leaping and vibrating from heart to heart, outstrips even the magic swiftness of magnetic wires. There are no chords of such elastic reach and such electric power as the heartstrings of a mighty Nation, touched and tuned, as all our heartstrings are to-day, to the sense of a common glory,throbbing and thrilling with a common exultation. Go with me, then, I say, to Philadelphia;- not to Philadelphia, indeed, as she is at this moment, with all her bravery on, with all her beautiful garments around her, with all the graceful and generous contributions which so many other Cities and other States and other Nations have sent for her adornment, -
not forgetting those most graceful, most welcome, most touching contributions, in view of the precise character of the occasion, from Old England herself; - but go with me to Philadelphia, as she was just a hundred years ago. Enter with me her noble Independence Hall, so happily restored and consecrated afresh as the Runnymede of our Nation; and, as we enter it, let us not forget to be grateful that no demands of public convenience or expediency have called for the demolition of that old State House of Pennsylvania. Observe and watch the movements, listen attentively to the words, look steadfastly at the counte

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7 nances, of the men who compose the little Congress assembled there.

Braver, wiser, nobler men have never been gathered and grouped under a single roof, before or since, ill any age, on any soil beneath the sun.

What are they doing? What are they daring? Who are they, thus to do, and thus to dare? Single out with me, as you easily will at the first glance, by a presence and a stature not easily overlooked or mistaken, the young, ardent, accomplished Jefferson. iHe is only just thirtythree years of age.

Charming in conversation, ready and full in counsel, he is “slow of tongue,” like the great Lawgiver of the Israelites, for any public discussion or formal discourse. But he has brought with him the reputation of wielding what John Adams well called “a masterly pen.” And grandly has he justified that reputation. Grandly has he employed that pen already, in drafting a Paper which is at this moment lying on the table, and awaiting its final signature and sanction. Three weeks before, indeed, -on the previous 7th of June, -his own noble colleague, Richard Henry Lee, had moved the Resolution, whose adoption, on the 2d of July, had virtually settled the whole question. Nothing, certainly, more explicit or emphatic could have been wanted for that Congress itself than that Resolution, setting forth as it did, in language of striking simplicity and brevity and dignity, ” That these United Colonies are, and, of right, ought to be, Free and Independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.” That Resolution was, indeed, not only comprehensive and conclusive enough for the Congress which adopted it, but, I need not say, it is comprehensive and conclusive enough for us; and I heartily wish, that, in the century to come, its reading might be substituted for that of the longer Declaration which has put the patience of our audiences to so severe a test for so many years past, -though, happily, not to-day. But the form in which that Resolution was to be announced and proclaimed to the people of the Colonies, and the reasons by which it was to be justified before the world, were at that time of intense interest and of momentous importance.

No

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8 graver responsibility was ever devolved upon a young man of thirtythree, if, indeed, upon any man of any age, than that of preparing such a Paper. As often as I have examined the original draft of that Paper, still extant in the Archives of the State Department at Washington, and have observed how very few changes were made, or even suggested, by the illustrious men associated with its author on the committee for its preparation, it has seemed to me to be as marvellous a composition, of its kind and for its purpose, as the annals of mankind can show. The earliest honors of this day, certainly, may well be paid, here and throughout the country, to the young Virginian of “the masterly pen.” And here, by the favor of a highly valued friend and fellowcitizen, to whom it was given by Jefferson himself a few months only before his death, I am privileged to hold’in my hands, and to lift up to the eager gaze of you all, a most compact and convenient little mahogany case, which bears this autograph inscription on its face, dated ” Monticello, November 18, 1825: ” “Thomas Jefferson gives this Writing Desk to Joseph Coolidge, Junr. as a memorial of his affection. It was made from a drawing of his own, by Ben Randall, Cabinet-maker of Philadelphia, with whom he first lodged on his arrival in that City in May, 1776, and is the identical one on which he wrote the Declaration of Independence.” “Politics, as well as Religion,” the inscription proceeds to say, “has its superstitions. These, gaining strength with time, may, one day, give imaginary value to this relic, for its association with the birth of the Great Charter of our Independence.”

Superstitions! Imaginary value! Not for an instant can we admit such ideas. The modesty of the writer has betrayed even “the masterly pen.”

There is no imaginary value to this relic, and no superstition is required to render it as precious and priceless a piece of wood, as the secular cabinets of the world have ever possessed, or ever claimed to possess. No cabinet-maker on earth will have a more enduring name than this inscription has secured to “Ben Randall, of Philadelphia.” No pen will have a wider or more lasting fame than his who wrote the inscription. The very table at Runnymede, which some of

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9 us have seen, on which the Magna Charta of England is said to have been signed or sealed five centuries and a half before, even were it authenticated by the genuine autographs of every one of those brave old Barons, with Stephen Langton at their head,- who extorted its grand pledges and promises from King John,- so soon to be violated, - could hardly exceed, could hardly equal, in interest and value, this little mahogany desk. What momentous issues for our country, and for mankind, were locked up in this narrow drawer, as night after night the rough notes of preparation for the Great Paper were laid aside for the revision of the morning! To what anxious thoughts, to what careful study of words and phrases, to what cautious weighing of statements and arguments, to what deep and almost overwhelming impressions of responsibility, it must have been a witness! Long may it find its appropriate and appreciating ownership in the successive generations of a family, in which the blood of Virginia and Massachusetts is so auspiciously commingled! Should it, in the lapse of years, ever pass from the hands of those to whom it will be so precious an heirloom, it could only have its fit and final place among the choicest and most cherished treasures of the Nation, with whose Title Deeds of Independence it is so proudly associated! But the young Jefferson is not alone from Virginia, on the day we are celebrating, in the Hall which we have entered as imaginary spectators of the scene. His venerated friend and old legal precep tor, George Wythe,- is, indeed, temporarily absent from his side; and even Richard Henry Lee, the original mover of the measure, and upon whom it might have devolved to draw up the Declaration, has been called home by dangerous illness i n his family, and is n ot there to help him. But “the gay, good-humored” Francis Lightfoot Lee, a younger brother, is there. Benjamin Harrison, the father of our late President Harrison, is there, and has just reported the Declaration from the Committee of the Whole, of which he was Chairman. The “mild and philanthropic” Carter Braxton is there, in the place of the lamented Peyton Randolph, the first President of the Continental Congress, who had died, to the sorrow of the whole country, six or seven months before. And the noble 2

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10 hearted Thomas Nelson is there, -the largest subscriber to the generous relief sent from Virginia to Boston during the sore distress occasioned by the shutting up of our Port, and who was the mover of those Instructions in the Convention of Virginia, passed on the 15th of May, under which Richard Henry Lee offered the original Resolution of Independence, on the 7th of June. I am particular, Fellow Citizens, in giving to the Old Dominion the foremost place in this rapid survey of the Fourth of July, 1776, and ill naming every one of her delegates who participated in that day’s doings; for it is hardly too much to say, that the destinies of our country, at that period, hung and hinged upon her action, and upon the action of her great and glorious sons. Without Virginia, as we must all acknowledge,- without her Patrick Henry among the people, her Lees and Jefferson in the forum, and her Washington in the field,- I will not say, that the cause of American Liberty and American Independence must have been ultimately defeated,- no, no; there was no ultimate defeat for that cause in the decrees of the Most High!- but it must have been delayed, postponed, perplexed, and to many eyes and many hearts rendered seemingly hopeless. It was Union which assured our Independence, and there could have been no Union without the influence and cooperation of that great leading Southern Colony. To-day, then, as we look back over the wide gulf of a century, we are ready and glad to forget every thing of alienation, every thing of contention and estrangement which has intervened, and to hail her once more, as our Fathers in Faneuil Hall hailed her, in 1775, as ” our noble, patriotic sister Colony, Virginia.” I may not attempt, on this occasion, to speak with equal particularity of all the other delegates whom we see assembled in that immortal Congress. Their names are all inscribed where they can never be obliterated, never be forgotten. Yet some others of them so challenge our attention and rivet our gaze, as we look in upon that old time-honored Hall, that I cannot pass to other topics without a brief allusion to them. Who can overlook or mistake the sturdy front of Roger Sherman, whom we are proud to recall as a native of Massachusetts,

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11 though now a delegate from Connecticut, -that “Old Puritan,” as John Adams well said, “as honest as an angel, and as firm in the cause of American Independence as Mount Atlas,” - represented most worthily to-day by the distinguished Orator of the Centennial at Philadelphia, as well as by more than one distinguished grandson in our own State? Who can overlook or mistake the stalwart figure of Samuel Chase, of Maryland, “of ardent passions, of strong mind, of domineering temper, of a turbulent and boisterous life,” who had helped to burn in effigy the Maryland Stamp Distributor eleven years before, and who, we are told by one who knew what he was saying, “must ever be conspicuous in the catalogue of that Congress “? His milder and more amiable colleague, Charles Carroll, was engaged at that moment in pressing the cause of Independence on the hesitating Convention of Maryland, at Annapolis; and though, as we shall see, he signed the Declaration on the 2d of August, and outlived all his compeers on that roll of glory, he is missing from the illustrious band as we look in upon them this morning. I cannot but remember that it was my privilege to see and know that venerable person in my early manhood. Entering his drawing-room, nearly five-and-forty years ago, I found him reposing on a sofa and covered with a shawl, and was not even aware of his presence, so shrunk and shrivelled by the lapse of years was his originally feeble frame. Quot libras in duce summo! But the little heap on the sofa was soon seen stirring, and, rousing himself from his midday nap, he rose and greeted me with a courtesy and a grace which I can never forget. In the ninety-fifth year of his age, as he was, and within a few months of his death, it is not surprising that there should be little for me to recall of that interview, save his eager inquiries about James Madison, whom I had just visited at Montpelier, and his affectionate allusions to John Adams, who had gone before him; and save, too, the exceeding satisfaction for myself of having seen and pressed the hand of the last surviving signer of the Declaration. But Cesar Rodney, who had gone home on the same patriotic errand which had called Carroll to Maryland, had happily

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12 returned in season, and had come in, two days before, “in his boots and spurs,” to give the casting vote for Delaware in favor of Independence.

And there is Arthur Middleton, of South Carolina, the bosom friend of our own Hancock, and who is associated with him under the same roof in those elegant hospitalities which helped to make men know and understand and trust each other. And with him you may see and almost hear the eloquent Edward Rutledge, who not long before had united with John Adams and Richard Henry Lee in urging on the several Colonies the great measure of establishing permanent governments at once for themselves, - a decisive step which we may not forget that South Carolina was among the very earliest in taking. She took it, however, with a reservation, and her delegates were not quite ready to vote for Independence, when it was first proposed. But Richard Stockton, of New Jersey, must not be unmarked or unmentioned in our rapid survey, more especially as it is matter of record that his original doubts about the measure, which he is now bravely supporting, had been dissipated and dispelled “by the irresistible and conclusive arguments of John Adams.” And who requires to be reminded that our” Great Bostonian,” Benjamin Franklin, is at his post to-day, representing his adopted Colony with less support than he could wish, -for Pennsylvania, as well as New York, was sadly divided, and at times almost paralyzed by her divisions, - but with patriotism and firmness and prudence and sagacity and philosophy and wit and commonsense and courage enough to constitute a whole delegation, and to represent a whole Colony, by himself! He is the last man of that whole glorious group of Fifty, -or it may have been one or two more, or one or two less, than fifty,- who requires to be pointed out, in order to be the observed of all observers.

But I must not stop here. It is fit, above all other things, that, while we do justice to the great actors in this scene from other Colonies, we should not overlook the delegates from our own Colony. It is fit, above all things, that we should recall something more than the names of the men who represented

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13 Massachusetts in that great Assembly, and who boldly affixed their signatures, in her behalf, to that immortal Instrument. Was there ever a more signal distinction vouchsafed to mortal man, than that which was won and worn by John Hancock a hundred years ago to-day? Not altogether a great man; not without some grave defects of character; - we remember nothing at this hour save his Presidency of the Congress of the Declaration, and his bold and noble signature to our Magna Charta. Behold him in the chair which is still standing in its old place,- the very same chair in which Washington was to sit, eleven years later, as President of the Convention which framed the Constitution of the United States; the very same chair, emblazoned on the back of which Franklin was to descry “a rising, and not a setting sun,” when that Constitution had been finally adopted, - behold him, the young Boston merchant, not yet quite forty years of age, not only with a princely fortune at stake, but with a price at that moment on his own head, sitting there to-day in all the calm composure and dignity which so peculiarly characterized him, and which nlothing seemed able to relax or ruffle. He had chanced to come on to the Congress during the previous year, just as Peyton Randolph had been compelled to relinquish his seat and go home, returning only to die; and, having. been unexpectedly elected as his successor, he hesitated about taking the seat. But grand old Benjamin Harrison, of Virginia, we are told, was standing beside him, and with the ready good humor that loved a joke even in the Senate House, he seized the modest candidate in his athletic arms, and placed him in the presidential chair; then, turning to some of the members around, he exclaimed: “We will show Mother Britain how little we care for her, by making a Massachusetts man our President, whom she has excluded from pardon by a public proclamation.” Behold him! He has risen for a moment. He has put the question. The Declaration is adopted.

It is already late in the evening, and all formal promulgation of the day’s doings must be postponed. After a grace of three days, the air will be vibrating with the joyous tones of the Old Bell in the cupola over his head, proclaiming Liberty to all mankind, and with the

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14 responding acclamations of assembled multitudes. Meantime, for him, however, a simple but solemn duty remains to be discharged. The Paper is before him. You may see the very table on which it was laid, and the very inkstand which awaits his use. No hesitation now. He dips his pen, and with an untrembling hand proceeds to execute a signature, which would seem to have been studied in the schools, and practised in the counting room, and shaped and modelled day by day in the correspon dence of mercantile and political manhood, until it should be . meet for the authentication of some immortal act; and which, as Webster grandly said, has made his name as imperishable, “as if it were written between Orion and the Pleiades.”

Under that signature, with only the attestation of a secretary, the Declaration goes forth to the American people, to be printed in their journals, to be proclaimed in their streets, to be pub lished from their pulpits, to be read at the head of their armies, to be incorporated for ever into their history. The British forces, driven away from Boston, are now landing on Staten Island, and the reverses of Long Island are just awaiting us. They were met by the promulgation of this act of offence and defi ance to all royal authority. But there was no individual respon sibility for that act, save in the signature of John Hancock, President, and Charles Thomson, Secretary. Not until the 2d of August was our young Boston merchant relieved from the perilous, the appalling grandeur of standing sole sponsor for the revolt of Thirteen Colonies and Three Millions of people. Six teen or seventeen years before, as a very young man, he had made a visit to London, and was present at the burial of George II., and at the coronation of George III. He is now not only the witness but the instrument, and in some sort the im personation, of a far more substantial change of dynasty on his own soil, the burial of royalty under any and every title, and the coronation of a Sovereign, whose sceptre has already endured for a century, and whose sway has already embraced three times thirteen States, and more than thirteen times three millions of people! Ah, if his quaint, picturesque, charming old mansion-house, so long the gem of Beacon Street, could have stood till this day,

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15 our Centennial decorations and illuminations might haply have so marked, and sanctified, and glorified it, that the rage of reconstruction would have passed over it still longer, and spared it for the reverent gaze of other generations. But his own name and fame are secure; and, whatever may have been the foibles or faults of his later years, to-day we will remember that momentous and matchless signature, and him who made it, with nothing but respect, admiration, and gratitude. But Hancock, as I need not remind you, was not the only proscribed patriot who represented Massachusetts at Philadelphia on the day we are commlemorating. His associate in General Gage’s memorable exception from pardon is close at his side. He who, as a Harvard College student, in 1743, had maintained the affirmative of the Thesis, “Whether it be lawful to resist the Supreme Magistrate, if the Commonwealth cannot otherwise be preserved,” and who during those whole threeand-thirty years since had been training up himself and training up his fellow countrymen in the nurture and admonition of the Lord and of Liberty; -he who had replied to Gage’s recommendation to him to make his peace with the King, “I trust I have long since made my peace with the King of kings, and no personal considerations shall induce me to abandon the righteous cause of my country;” -he who had drawn up the Boston Instructions to her Representatives in the General Court, adopted at Faneuil Hall, on the 24th of May, 1764, - the earliest protest against the Stamp Act, and one of the grandest papers of our whole Revolutionary period; -he who had instituted and organized those Committees of Correspondence, without which we could have had no united counsels, no concerted action, no union, no success; -he who, after the massacre of March 5, 1770, had demanded so heroically the removal from Boston of the British regiments, ever afterwards known as “Sam. Adams’s regiments,” - telling the Governor to his face, with an emphasis and an eloquence which were hardly ever exceeded since Demosthenes stood on the Bema, or Paul on Mars Hill, “If the Lieutenant-governor, or Colonel Dalrymple, or both together, have authority to remove one regiment, they have authority to remove two; and nothing short of the total

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16 evacuation of the Town, by all the regular troops, will satisfy the public mind or preserve the peace of the Province;” he, “the Palinurus of the American Revolution,” as Jefferson once called him, but - thank Heaven! - a Palinurus who was never put to sleep at the helm, never thrown into the sea, but who is still watching the compass and the stars, and steering the ship as she enters at last the haven he has so long yearned for: - the veteran Samuel Adams, - the disinterested, inflexible, incorruptible statesman,- is second to no one in that whole Congress, hardly second to any one in the whole thirteen Colonies, in his claim to the honors and grateful acknowledgments of this hour. We have just gladly hailed his statue on its way to the capitol. Nor must the name of Robert Treat Paine be forgotten among the five delegates of Massachusetts in that Hall of Independence, a hundred years ago to-day; -an able lawyer, a learned judge, a just man; connected by marriage, if I mistake not, Mr.

Mayor, with your own gallant grandfather, General Cobb, and who himself inherited the blood and illustrated the virtues of the hero and statesman whose name he bore,- Robert Treat, a most distinguished officer in King Philip’s War, and afterwards a worthy Governor of Connecticut. And with him, too, is Elbridge Gerry, the very youngest member of the whole Continental Congress, just thirty-two years of age, who had been one of the chosen friends of our proto-martyr, General Joseph Warren; who was with Warren, at Watertown, the very last night before he fell at Bunker Hill, and into whose ear that heroic volunteer had whispered those memorable words of presentiment, “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori; “
who lived himself to serve his Commonwealth’ and the Nation, ardently and efficiently, at home and abroad, ever in accordance with his own patriotic injunction, -” It is the duty of every citizen, though hle may have but one day to live, to devote that day to the service of his country,” - and died on his way to his post as Vice-president of the United States. One more name is still t o b e p r onounced. One more star of that little Massachusetts cluster is still to be observed and noted.

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17 And it is one, which, on the precise occasion we commemorate, -one, which during those great days of June and July, 1776, on which the question of Independence was immediately discussed and decided, - had hardly “a fellow in the firmament,” and which was certainly “the bright, particular star” of our own constellation. You will all have anticipated me in naming John Adams. Beyond all doubt, his is the Massachusetts name most prominently associated with the immediate Day we celebrate. Others may have been earlier or more active than he in preparing the way. Others may have labored longer and more zealously to instruct the popular mind and inflame the popular heart for the great step which was now to be taken. Others may have been more ardent, as they unquestionably were more prominent, in the various stages’ of the struggle against Writs of Assistance, and Stamp Acts, and Tea Taxes. But from the date of that marvellous letter of his to Nathan Webb, in 1755, when he was less than twenty years old, he seems to have forecast the destinies of this continent as few other men of any age, at that day, had done; while from the moment at which the Continental Congress took the question of Independence fairly in hand, as a question to be decided and acted on, until they had brought it to its final issue in the Declaration, his was the voice, above and before all other voices, which commanded the ears, convinced the minds, and inspired the hearts of his colleagues, and triumphantly secured the result. I need not speak of him in other relations or in after years. His long life of varied and noble service to his country, in almost every sphere of public duty, domestic and foreign, belongs to history; and history has long ago taken it in charge. But the testimony which was borne to his grand efforts and utterances, by the author of the Declaration himself, can never be gainsaid, never be weakened, never be forgotten. That testimony, old as it is, familiar as it is, belongs to this day. Johni Adams will be remembered and honored for ever, in every true American heart, as the acknowledged Champion of Independence in the Continental Congress, -” coming out with a power which moved us from our seats,” -” our Colossus on the floor.” 3

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18 And when we recall the circumstances of his death, the year, the day, the hour,- and the last words upon his dying lips, “Independence for ever,” - who can help feeling that there was some mysterious tie holding back his heroic spirit from the skies, until it should be set free amid’the exulting shouts of his country’s first National Jubilee! But not his heroic spirit alone! In this rapid survey of the men assembled at Philadelphia a hundred years ago to-day, I began with Thomas Jefferson, of Virginia, and I end with John Adams, of Massachusetts; and no one can hesitate to admit that, under God, they were the very alpha and omega of that day’s doings, -the pen and the tongue, -the masterly author, and the no less masterly advocate, of the Declaration. And now, my friends, what legend of ancient Rome or Greece or Egypt, what myth of prehistoric mythology, what story of Herodotus, or fable of Esop, or metamorphosis of Ovid, would have seemed more fabulous and mythical, - did it rest on any remote or doubtful tradition, and had not so many of us lived to be startled and thrilled and awed by it,- than the fact, that these two men, under so many different circumstances and surroundings, of age and constitution and climate, widely distant from each other, living alike in quiet neighborhoods, remote from the smoke and stir of cities, and long before railroads or telegraphs had made any advances towards the annihilation or abridgment of space, should have been released to their rest and summoned to the skies, not only on the same day, but that day the Fourth of July, and that Fourth of July the Fiftieth Anniversary of that great Declaration which they had contended for and carried through so triumphantly side by side! What an added emphasis Jefferson would have given to his inscription on this little desk, -” Politics, as wel] as Religion, has its superstitions,” - could he have foreseen the close even of his own life, much more the simultaneous close of these two lives, on that Day of days! Oh, let me not admit the idea of superstition! Let me rather reverently say, as Webster said at the time, in that magnificent Eulogy which left so little for any one else to say as to the lives or deaths of Adams and Jefferson:

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19 “As their lives themselves were the gifts of Providence, who is not willing to recognize in their happy termination, as well as in their long continuance, proofs that our country and its benlefactors are objects of His care?” And now another Fifty Years have passed away, and we are holding our high Centennial Festival; and still that most striking, most impressive, most memorable coincidence in all American history, or even in the authentic records of mankind, is without a visible monument anywhere!

In the interesting little city of Weimar, renowned as the resort and residence of more than one of the greatest philosophers and poets of Germany, many a traveller must have seen and admired the charming statues of Goethe and Schiller, standing side. by side and hand in hand, on a single pedestal, and offering, as it were, the laurel wreath of literary priority or preeminence to each other. Few nobler works of art, in conception or execution, can be found on the Continent of Europe. And what could be a worthier or juster commemoration of the marvellous coincidence of which I have just spoken, and of the men who were the subjects of it, and of the Declaration with which, alike in their lives and in their deaths, they are so peculiarly and so signally associated, than just such a Monument, with the statues of Adams and Jefferson, side by side and hand in hand, upon the same base, pressing upon each other, in mutual acknowledgment and deferenrce, the victor palm of a triumph for which they must ever be held in common and equal honiior! It would be a new tie between Massachusetts and Virginia. It would be a new bond of that Union which is the safety and the glory of both. It would be a new pledge of that restored good-will between the North and South, which is the herald and harbinger of a Second Century of National Independence. It would be a fit recognition of the great Hand of God in our history! At all events, it is one of the crying omissions and neglects which reproach us all this day, that “glorious old Johni Adams” is without any proportionate public monument in the State of which he was one of the very grandest citizens and sons, and in whose behalf he rendered such inestimable services to his country. It is almost ludicrous to look around and see who

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20 has been commemorated, and he neglected! He might be seen standing alone, as he knew so well how to stand alone in life. He might be seen grouped with his illustrious son, only second to himself in his claims on the omitted posthumous honors of his native State. Or, if the claim of noble women to such commemorations were ever to be recognized on our soil, he might be lovingly grouped with that incomparable wife, from whom he was so often separated by public duties and personal dangers, and whose familiar correspondence with him, and his with hier, furnishes a picture of fidelity and affection, and of patriotic zeal and courage and self-sacrifice, almost without a parallel in our Revolutionary Annals. But before all other statues, let us have those of Adams and Jefferson on a single block, as they stood together just a hundred years ago to-day, -as they were translated together just fifty years ago to-day: -foremost for Independence in their lives, and in their deaths not divided! Next, certainly, to the completion of the National Monument to Washington, at the Capital, this double statue of this “double star” of the Declaration calls for the contributions of a patriotic people. It would have something of special appropriateness as the first gift to that Boston Park, which is to date from this Centennial Period. I have felt, Mr. Mayor and Fellow Citizens, as I am sure you all must feel, that the men who were gathered at Philadelphia a hundred years ago to-day, familiar as their names and their story may be, to ourselves and to all the world, had an imperative claim to the first and highest honors of this Centennial Anniversary. But, having paid these passing tributes to their memory, I hasten to turn to considerations less purely personal. The Declaration has been adopted, and has beeli sent forth in a hundred journals, and on a thousand broadsides, to every camp and council chamber, to every town and village and hamlet and fireside, throughout the Colonies. What was it? What did it declare?

What was its rightful interpretation and intention? Under what circumstances was it adopted? What did it accomplish for ourselves and for mankind? A recent and powerful writer on ” The Growth of the English

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21 Constitution,” whom I had the pleasure of meeting at the Commencement of Old Cambridge University two years ago, says most strikingly and most justly: “There are certain great political documents, each of which forms a landmark in our political history. There is the Great Charter, The Petition of Rights, the Bill of Rights.” “But not one of them,” he adds, “gave itself out as the enactment of any thing new. All claimed to set forth, with new strength, it might be, and with new clearness, those rights of Englishmen, which were already old.” The same remark has more recently been incorporated into “A Short History of the English People.”

“In itself,” says the writer of that admirable little volume, ” the Charter was no novelty, nor did it claim to establish any new Constitutional principles. The Charter of Henry I. formed the basis of the whole; and the additions to it are, for the most part, formal recognitions of the judicial and administrative changes introduced by Henry II.” So substantially, - so, almost precisely, - it may be said of the Great American Charter, which was drawn up by Thomas Jefferson on the precious little desk which lies before me. It made no pretensions to novelty. The men of 1776 were not in any sense, certainly not in any seditious sense, greedy of novelties, - “avidi novarum rerunm.” They had claimed nothing new. They desired nothing new. Their old original rights as Englishmen were all that they sought to enjoy, and those they resolved to vindicate.

It was the invasion and denial of those old rights of Englishmen, which they resisted and revolted from. As our excellent fellowcitizen, Mr.

Dana, so well said publicly at Lexington, last year,- and as we should all have been glad to have him in the way of repeating quietly in London, this year, -” We were not the Revolutionists. The King and Parliament were the Revolutionists. They were the radical innovators. We were the conservators of existing institutions.” No one has forgotten, or can ever forget, how early and how emphatically all this was admitted by some of the grandest statesmen and orators of England herself. It was the attempt to subvert our rights as Englishmen, Which roused Chatham to some of his most majestic efforts. It was the attempt to sub

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22 vert our rights as Englishmen, which kindled Burke to not a few of his most brilliant utterances. It was the attempt to subvert our rights as Englishmen, which inspired Bartr and Conway and Camden with appeals and arguments and phrases which will keep their memories fresh when all else associated with them is forgotten. The names of all three of them, as you well know, have long been the cherished designations of American Towns.

They all perceived and understood that we were contending for English rights, and against the violation of the great principles of English liberty. Nay, not a few of them perceived and understood that we were fighting their battles as well as our own, and that the liberties of Englishmen upon their own soil were virtually involved in our cause and in our contest. There is a most notable letter of Josiah Quincy, Jr.‘s, written from London at the end of 1774,- a few months only before that young patriot returned to die so sadly within sight of his native shores,-
iii which he tells his wife, to whom he was not likely to write for any mere sensational effect, that “some of the first characters for understanding, integrity, and spirit,” whom he had met in London, had used language of this sort: “This Nation is lost. Corruption and the influence of the Crown have led us into bondage, and a Standing Army has riveted our chains. To America only can we look for salvation.‘Tis America only can save England. Unite and persevere. You must prevailyou must triumph.”

Quincy was careful not to betray names, in a letter which might be intercepted before it reached its destination. But we know the men with whom he had been brought into association by Franklin and other friends, -
men like Shelburne and Hartley and Powniall and Priestley and Brand Hollis and Sir George Saville, to say nothing of Burke and Chatham. The language was not lost upon us. We did unite and persevere. We did prevail and triumph. And it is hardly too much to say that we did “save England.” We saved her from herself; -saved her from being the successful instrument of overthrowing the rights of Englishmen;- saved her “from the poisoned chalice which would have been commended to her own lips; ” - saved her from “the bloody instructions which would have returned to plague the inventor.”

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23 Not only was it true, as Lord Macaulay said in one of his brilliant Essays, that “England was never so rich, so great, so formidable to foreign princes, so absolutely mistress of the seas, as since the alienation of her American Colonies,” but it is not less true that England came out of that contest with new and larger views of Liberty; with a broader and deeper sense of what was due to human rights; and with an experience of incalculable value to her in the management of the vast Colonial System which remained, or was in store, for her. A vast and gigantic Colonial System, beyond doubt, it has proved to be! She was just entering, a hundred years ago, on that wonderful career of conquest in the East, which was to compensate her,- if it were a compensation,- for her impending losses inll the West. Her gallant Cornwallis was soon to receive the jewelled sword of Tippoo Saib at Bangalore, in exchange for that which he was now destined to surrender to Washington at Yorktown. It is certainly not among the least striking coincidences of our Centennial Year, that at the very moment when we are celebrating the event which stripped Great Britain of thirteen Colonies and three millions of subjects, now grown into thirty-eight States and more than forty millions of people, - she is welcoming the return of her amiable and genial Prince from a royal progress through the wide-spread regions of” Ormus and of Ind,” bringing back, to lay at the foot of the British throne, the homage of nine principal Provinces and a hundred and forty-eight feudatory States, and of not less than two hundred and forty millions of people, from Ceylon to the Himalayas, and affording ample justification for the Queen’s new title of Empress of India! Among all the parallelisms of modern history, there are few more striking and impressive than this. The American Colonies never quarrelled or cavilled about the titles of their Sovereign. If, as has been said, ” they went to war about a preamble,” it was not about the preamble of the royal name. It was the Imperial power, the more than Imperial pretensions and usurpations, which drove them to rebellion. The Declaration was, in its own terms, a personal and most stringent arraignment of the King. It could have been nothing else. George III. was to us the sole responsible instru

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24 ment of oppression. Parliament had, indeed, sustained him; but the Colonies had never admitted the authority of a Parliament in which they had no representation. There is no passage in Mr. Jefferson’s paper more carefully or more felicitously worded, than that in which he says of the Sovereign, that “he has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitutions and unacknowledged by our laws, -giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation.” A slip of “the masterly pen” on this point might have cost us our consistency; but that pen was on its guard, and this is the only allusion to Lords or Commons.

We could recognize no one but the Monarch. We could contend with nothing less than Royalty. We could separate ourselves only fromn the Crown.

English precedents had abundantly taught us that kings were not beyond the reach of arraignment and indictment; and arraignment and indictment were then our only means of justifying our cause to ourselves and to the world.

Yes; harsh, severe, stinging, scolding, - I had almost said,- as that long series of allegations and accusations may sound, and certainly does sound, as we read it or listen to it, in cold blood, a century after the issues are all happily settled, it was a temperate and a dignified utterance under the circumstances of the case, and breathed quite enough of moderation to be relished or accepted by those who were bearing the brunt of so terrible a struggle for life and liberty and all that was dear to them, as that which those issues involved. Nor in all that bitter indictment is there a single count which does not refer to, and rest upon, some violation of the rights of Englishmen, or some violation of the rights of humanity. We stand by the Declaration to-day, and always, and disavow nothing of its reasoning or its rhetoric. And, after all, Jefferson was not a whit more severe on the King than Chatham had been on the King’s Ministers six months before, when he told them to their faces: “,The whole of your political conduct has been one continued series of weakness, temerity, despotism, ignorance, futility, negligence, blundering, and the most notorious servility, incapacity, and corruption.”

Nor was William Pitt, the younger, much more measured in his language, at a later period of our struggle,

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25 when he declared: “These Ministers will destroy the empire they were called upon to save, before the indignation of a great and suffering people can fall upon their heads in the punishment which they deserve. I affirm the war to have been a most accursed, wicked, barbarous, cruel, unnatural, unjust, and diabolical war.’ I need not say, Fellow Citizens, that we are here to indulge in no reproaches upon Old England to-day, as we look back from the lofty height of a Century of Independence on the course of events which severed us from her dominions. We are by no means in the mood to re-open the adjudications of Ghent or of Geneva; nor can we allow the ties of old traditions to be seriously jarred, on such an occasion as this, by any recent failUres of extraditions, however vexatious or provoking. But, certainly, resentments on either side, for any thing said or done during our Revolutionary period, - after such a lapse of time, would dishonor the hearts which cherished them, and the tongues which uttered them. Who wonders that George the Third would not let such Colonies as ours go without a struggle? They were the brightest jewels of his crown. Who wonders that he shrunk from the responsibility of such a dismemberment of his empire, and that his brain reeled at the very thought of it? It would have been a poor compliment to us, had he not considered us worth holding at any and every cost. We should hardly have forgiven him, had he not desired to retain us. Nor can we altogether wonder, that with the views of kingly prerogative which belonged to that period, and in which he was educated, he should have preferred the policy of coercion. to that of conciliation, and should have insisted on sending over troops to subdue us. Our old Mother Country has had, indeed, a peculiar destiny, and in many respects a glorious one. Not alone with her drumbeat, as Webster so grandly said, has she encircled the earth. N ot alone with her martial airs has she kept company with the hours. She ha s car ried civilization and Christianity wherever she has carried her flag.

She has carried her noble tongue, with all its incomparable treasures of literature and science and religion, around the globe; and, with our aid, -for she will con 4

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26 fess that we are doing our full part in this line of extension,it is fast becoming the most pervading speech of civilized man. We thank God at this hour, and at every hour, that “Chathamn’s language is our mother tongue,” and that we have an inherited and an indisputable share in the glory of so many of the great names by which that language has been illustrated and adorned. But she has done more than all this. She has planted the great institutions and principles of civil freedom in every latitude where she could find a foot-hold. From her, our Revolutionary Fathers learned to understand and value them, and from her they inherited the spirit to defend them. Not ill vain had her brave barons extorted Magna Charta from King John. Not in vain had her Simon de Mvntfort summoned the knights and burgesses, and laid the foundations of a Parliament and a House of Commons. Not in vain had her noble Sir John Eliot died, as the martyr of free speech, in the Tower. Not in vain had her heroic Hampden resisted ship-money, and died on the battlefield. Not in vain for us, certainly, the great examples and the great warnings of Cromwell and the Commonwealth, or those sadder ones of Sidney and Russell, or that later and more glorious one still of William of Orange. The grand lessons of her own history, forgotten, overlooked, or resolutely disregarded, it may be, on her own side of the Atlantic, in the days we are commemorating, were the very inspiration of her Colonies on this side; and under that inspiration they contended and conquered. And though she may sometimes be almost tempted to take sadly upon her lips the words of the old prophet, -” I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me,” - she has long ago learned that such a rebellion as ours was really in her own interest, and for her own ultimate welfare; begun, continued, and ended, as it was, in vindication of the liberties of Englishmen. I cannot forget how justly and eloquently my friend, Dr. Ellis, a few months ago, in this same hall, gave expression to the respect which is so widely entertained on this side of the Atlantic for the Sovereign Lady who has now graced the British

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27 throne for nearly forty years. No passage of his admirable Oration elicited a warmer response from the multitudes who listened to him. flow much of the growth and grandeur of Great Britain is associated with the names of illustrious women! Even those of us who have no fancy for female suffrage might often be well nigh tempted to take refuge, firom the incompetencies and intrigues and corruptions of men, under the presidency of the purer and gentler sex. What would English history be without the names of Elizabeth and Anne! What would it be without the name of Victoria,- of whom it has recently been written, “that, by a long course of loyal acquiescence in the declared wishes of her people, she has brought about what is nothing less than a great Revolution, - all the more beneficent because it has been gradual and silent!” Ever honored be her name, and that of her lamented consort! “Ever beloved and loving may her rule be; And when old Time shall lead her to her end, Goodness and she fill up one monument!” The Declaration is adopted and promulgated; but we may not forget how long and how serious a reluctance there had been to take the irrevocable step. As late as September, 1774, Washington had publicly declared his belief that Independence “was wished by no thinking man.” As late as the 6th of March, 1775, in his memorable Oration in the Old South, with all the associations of “the Boston Massacre” fresh in his heart, Warren had declared that “Independence was not our aim.” As late as July, 1775, the letter of the Continental Congress to the Lord Mayor and Corporation of London had said: “North America, my Lord, wishes most ardently for a lasting connection with Great Britain, on terms of just and equal liberty;” and a simultaneous humble petition to the King, signred by every member of the Congress, reiterated the same assurance. And as late as the 25th of August, 1775, Jefferson himself, in a letter to the John Randolph of that day, speaking of those who ” still wish for reunion with their parent country,” says most emphatically, ” I am one of those; and would rather be in dependence on Great Britain, properly limited, than on any nation on earth, or

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28 than on no nation.” Not all the blood of LexingTton, and Concord, and Bunker Hill, crying from the ground long before these words were written, had extinguished the wish for reconciliation and reunion even in the heart of the very author of the Declaration. Tell me not, tell me not, that there was any thing of equivocation, any thing of hypocrisy, in these and a hundred other similar expressions which might be cited. The truest human hearts are full of such inconsistency and hypocrisy as that. The dearest fiiends, the tenderest relatives, are never more overflowing and outpouring, nor ever more sincere, in feelings and expressions of devotion and love, than when called to contemplate some terrible impending necessity of final separation and divorce. The ties between us and Old England could not be sundered without sadness, and sadness on both sides of the ocean. Franklin, albeit his eyes were “unused to the melting mood,”

is recorded to have wept as he left England, in view of the inevitable result of which he was coming home to be a witness and an instrument; and I have heard from the poet Rogers’s own lips, what many of you may have read in his Table-Talk, how deeply he was impressed, as a boy, by his father’s putting on a mourning suit, when he heard of the first shedding of American blood. Nor could it, in the nature of things, have been only their warm and undoubted attachment to England, which made so many of the men of 1776 reluctant to the last to cross the Rubicon. They saw clearly before them, they could not help seeing, the full proportions, the tremendous odds, of the contest into which the Colonies must be plunged by such a step. Think you, that no apprehensions and anxieties weighed heavily on the minds and hearts of those far-seeing men? Think you, that as their names were called on the day we commemorate, beginning with Josiah Bartlett, of New I{ampshire, - or as, one by one, they approached the Secretary’s desk on the following 2d of August, to write their names on that now hallowed parchment,- they did not realize the full responsibility, and the full, risk to their country and to themselves, which such a vote and such a signature involved? They sat, indeed, with closed doors; and it is only from traditions or caves-droppings, or

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29 from the casual expressions of diaries or letters, that we catch glimpses of what was done, or gleanings of what was said. But how full of import are some of those glimpses and gleanings! “Will you sign?” said Hancock to Charles Carroll, who, as we have seen, had not been present on the 4th of July. “Most willingly,” was the reply. ” There goes two millions with a dash of the pen,” says one of those standing by; while another remarks, ” Oh, Carroll, you will get off, there are so many Charles Carrolls.” And then we may see him stepping back to the desk, and putting that addition -” of Carrollton “- to his name, which will designate him for ever, and be a prouder title of nobility than those in the peerage of Great Britain, which were afterwards adorned by his accomplished and fascinate ing granddaughters. “We must stand by each other-we must hang together,“is presently heard front some one of the signers; with the instant reply, ” Yes, we must hlang together, or we shall assuredly hang separately.” And, on this suggestion, the portly and humorous Benj. Harrison, whom we have seen forcing Hancock into the Chair, may be heard bantering our spare and slender Elbridge Gerry, - levity provoking levity, - and telling him with grim: merriment that, when that hanging scene arrives, he shall have the advantage:-” It will be all over with me in a moment, but you will be kicking in the air half an hour after I am gone!” These are among the ” asides” of the drama, but, I need not say, they nore than make up in significance, for all they may seem to lack in dignity. The excellent William Ellery of Rhode Island, whose name was afterwards borne by his graniidson, our revered Channing, often spoke, we are told, of the scene of the signing, and spoke of it as an event which many regarded with awe, perhaps with uncertainty, but none with fear. “I was determined,” he used to say, ” to see how all looked, as they signed what might be their death warrant. I placed myself beside the Secretary, Charles Thompson, and eyed each closely as he affixed his name to the document. Undaunted resolution was displayed in every countenance.” “- “

You inquire,” wrote John Adams to -William Pluner,

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30 “whether everv member of Congress did, on the 4th of July, 1776, in fact, cordially approve of the Declaration of Independence. They who were then members all signed it, and, as I could not see their hearts, it would be hard for me to say that they did not approve it; but, as far as I could penetrate the intricate internal foldings of their souls, I then believed, and have not since altered my opinion, that there were several who signed with regret, and several others with many doubts and much lukewarmness.

The measure had been on the carpet for months, and obstinately opposed from day to day. Majorities were constantly against it. For many days the majority depended upon Mr. Hewes of North Carolina. While a member one day was speaking, and reading documents from all the Colonies to prove that the public opinion, the general sense of all, was in favor of the measure, when he came to North Carolina, and produced letters and public proceedings which demonstrated that the majority of that Colony were in favor of it, Mr. Hewes, who had hitherto constantly voted against it, started suddenly upright, and lifting up both his hands to Heaven, as if he had been in a trance, cried out,‘It is done, and I will abide by it.’ I would give more for a perfect painting of the terror and horror upon the faces of the old majority, at that critical moment, than for the best piece of Raphael.” There is quite enough in these traditions and hearsays, in these glimpses and gleanings, to show us that the supporters and signers of the Declaration were not blind to the responsibilities and hazards in which they were involving themselves and the country. There is quite enough, certainly, in these and other indications, to give color and credit to what I so well remnember hearing the late Mr. Justice Story say, half a century ago, that, as the result of all his conversations with the great men of the Revolutionary Period,- and especially with his illustrious and venerated chief on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, John Marshall, - he was convinced that a majority of the Continental Congress was opposed to the Declaration, and that it was carried through by the patient, persistent, and overwhelming efforts and arguments of the minority. Two of those arguments, as Mr. Jefferson has left them on

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31 record, were enough for that occasion, or certainly are enough for this. One of the two was, ” That the people wait for us to lead the way; that they are ill favor of the measure, though the instructions given by some of their representatives are not.” And most true, indeed, it was, my friends, at that day, as it often has been since that day, that the people were ahead of their so-called leaders. The minds of the masses were made up. They had no doubts or misgivings. They demanded that Independence should be recognized and proclaimed. John Adams knew how to keep up with them. Sam. Adams had kept his finger on their pulse from the beginning, and had “marked time ” for every one of their advancing steps. Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee and Thomas Jefferson, and some other ardent and noble spirits, were by no means behind them. But not a few of the leaders were, in fact, only followers. “The people waited for them to lead the way.” Independence was the resolve and the act of the American people, and the American people gladly received, and enthusiastically ratified, and heroically sustained the Declaration, until Independence was no longer a question either at home or abroad. Yes, our Great Charter, as we fondly call it, though with something, it must be confessed, of poetic or patriotic license, was no temporizing concession, wrung by menaces from reluctant Monarchs; but was the spontaneous and imperative dictate of a Nation resolved to be free! The other of those two arguments was even more conclusive and more clinching. It was, ” That the question was not whether by a Declaration of Independence we should make ourselves what we are not, but whether we should declare a fact which already exists.” “A fact which already exists!” Mr. Mayor and Fellow Citizens, there is no more interesting historical truth to us of Boston than this. Our hearts are all at Philadelphia to-day, as I have already said, rejoicing in all that is there said and done in honor of the men who made this day immortal, and hailing it, with our fellow-countrymnen, from ocean to ocean, and from the lakes to the gulf, as our National Birthday. And nobly has Philadelphia met the requisitions, and more than fulfilled the expecta

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32 tions, of the occasion; furnishing a fete and a pageant of which the whole Nation is proud. Yet we are not called on to forget, - we could not be pardoned, indeed, for not remembering, -that, while the Declaration was boldly and grandly made in that hallowed Pennsylvania Hall, Independence had already been won, - and won here in Massachusetts. It was said by solme one of the old patriots,- John Adanms, I believe, - that “the Revolution was effected before the war commenced;” and Jefferson is now our authority for the assertion that ” Independence existed before it was declared.” They both well knew what they were talking about. Congresses in Carpenters’ Hall, and Congresses in the old Pennsylvania State House, did grand things and were composed of grand men, and we render to their memories all the homage and all the glory which they so richly earned. But here in Boston, the capital of Massachusetts, and the principal town of British North America at that day, the question had already been brought to an issue, and already been irrevocably decided. Here the manifest destiny of the Colonies had been recognized and accepted. It was upon us, as all the world knows, that the blows of British oppression fell first and fell heaviest,- fell like a storm of hail-stones and coals of fire; and where they fell, and as soon as they fell, they were resisted, and successfully resisted. Why, away back in 1761, when George the Third had been but a year on his throne, and when the printer’s ink on the pages of our Harvard ” Pietas et Gratulatio ” was hardly dry; when the Seven Years’

War was still unfinished, in which New England had done her full share of the fighting, and reaped her full share of the glory, and when the British flag, by the help of her men and money, was just floating in triumph over the whole American continent, -a mad resolution had been adopted to reconstruct-Oh, word of ill-omen!  the whole Colonial system, and to bring America into closer conformity and subjection to the laws of the Mother Country. A Revenue is to be collected here. A Standing Army is to be established here. The Navigation Act and Acts of Trade are to be enforced and executed here. And all without any representation on our part. - The first practical step iri this direction is taken.

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33 A custom-house officer, named Cockle, applies to the Superior Court at Salem for a writ of assistance. That cockle-shell exploded like dynamite!

The Court postpones the case, aind orders its argumnent in Boston. And then and there,- in 1761, in our Old Town House; afterwards known as the Old State House, - alas, alas, that it is thought necessary to talk about removing or even reconstructing it!- James Otis, as John Adams himself tells us, “breathed into this nation the breath of life.” “Then and there,” he adds, and he spoke of what he witnessed and heard, ” then and there the child Independence was born. In fifteen years, i.e., in 1776, hlie grew up to manhood, and declared himself free.” The next year finds the same great scholar and orator exposing himself to the cry of “treason”

in denouncing the idea of taxation without representation, and forthwith vindicating himself in a masterly pamphlet which excited the admiration and sympathy of the whole people. Another year brings the first instalment of the scheme for raising a revenue in the Colonies,- in the shape of declaratory resolves; and Otis meets it plumply and boldly, in Faneuil Hall, -at that moment freshly rebuilt and reopened, - with the counter declaration that “every British subject in America is, of common right, by act of Parliament, and by the laws of God and Nature, entitled to all the essential privileges of Britons.” And now George Grenville has devised and proposed the Stamp Act. And, before it is even known that the Bill had passed, Samuel Adams is heard reading, in that same Faneuil Hall, at the May meeting of 1764, those memorable instructions from Boston to her representatives: “There is no room for delay. If taxes are laid upon us in any shape without our having a legal representation where they are laid, are we not reduced from the character of free subjects to the miserable state of tributary slaves?.. We claim British righlts, not by charter only: we are born to them. Use your endeavors that the weight of the other North American Colonies may be added to that of this Province, that by united application all may happily obtain redress.” Redress and Union -and union as 5

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34 the means, and the only means of redress -had thus early become the doctrine of our Boston leaders; and James Otis follows out that doctrine, without a moment’s delay, in another brilliant plea for the rights of the Colonies. The next year finds the pen of John Adams in motion, in a powerful communication to the public journals, setting forth distinctly, that “there seems to be a direct and formal design on foot in Great Britain to enslave all America ” and adding most ominously those emphatic words: ” Be it remembered, Liberty must be defended at all hazards!” And, I need not say, it was remembered; and Liberty was defended, at all hazards, here, upon our own soil. Ten long years, however, are still to-elapse before the wager of battle is to be fully joined. The stirring events which crowded those years, and which have been so vividly depicted by Sparks and Bancroft and Frothingham, - to name no others, -are too familiar for repetition or reference. Virginia, through the clarion voice of Patrick Henry, nobly sustained by her House of Burgesses, leads off in the grand remonstrance. Massachusetts, through the trumpet tones of James Otis, rouses the whole Continent by a demand for a General Congress. South Carolina, through the influence of Christopher Gadsden, responds first to the demand. “Deep calleth unto deep.” In October, 1765, delegates, regularly or irregularly chosen, from nine Colonies, are in consultation at New York; and from South Carolina comes the watch-word of assured success: “There ought to be no New England man, no New Yorker, known on the Continent; but all of us Americans.” Meantime, the people are everywhere inflamed and maddened by the attempt to enforce the Stamp Act.

Everywhere that attempt is resisted. Everywhere it is resolved that it shall never be executed. It is at length repealed, and a momentary lull succeeds. But the repeal is accompanied by more declaratory resolutions of the power of Parliament to tax the Colonies” in all cases whatsoever;” and then follows that train of abuses and usurpations which Jefferson’s immortal paper charges uponl the King, and which the King himself unquestionably ordered. “It was to no purpose,” said Lord North in 1774, “
making objections,

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for the King would have it so.” “The King,” said he, “1 meant to try the question with America.” And it is well added, by the narrator of the anecdote, “Boston seems to have been the place fixed upon to try the question.” Yes, at Boston, the bolts of Royal indignation are to be aimed and winged. She has been foremost in destroying the Stamps, in defying the Soldiers, in drowning the Tea. Letters, too, have reached the government, like those which Rehum the Chancellor and Shimshai the Scribe wrote to King Artaxerxes about Jerusalem, calling this “a rebellious city, and hurtful unto Kings and Provinces, and that they have moved sedition within the same of old time, and would not pay toll, tribute, and custom; ” and warning His Majesty that, unless it was subdued and crushed, “he would have no portion on this side the River.” In vain did our eloquent young Quincy pour forth his burning words of remonstrance. The Port of Boston is closed, and her people are to be starved into compliance. Well did Boston say of herself, in Town Meeting, that “She had been stationed by Providence in the front rank of the conflict.” Grandly has our eloquent historian, Bancroft, said of her, in a sentence which sums up the whole matter” like the last embattelling of a Roman legion “: - “The King set himself and his Ministry and his Parliament and all Great Britain to subdue to his will one stubborn little towns on the sterile coast of the Massachusetts Bay. The odds against it were fearful’; but it showed a life inextinguishable, and had been chosen to guard over the liberties of mankind!” Generously and nobly did the other Colonies come to our aid, and the cause of Boston was everywhere acknowledged to be “the cause of all.”

But we may not forget how peculiarly it was ” the cause of Boston,” and that here, on our own Massachusetts soil, the practical question of Independence was first tried and virtually settled. The brave Colonel Pickering at Salem Bridge, the heroic minute men at Lexington and Concord Bridge, the gallant Colonel Prescott at Bunker Hill, did their part in hastening that settlement and bringing it to a crisis; and when the Continental Army was at length brought to our rescue, and the glorious Washington, after holding the British forces at bay for nine months, had fairly driven them from the 35

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36 town,- though more than three months were still to intervene before the Declaration was to be made, -it could truly and justly be said that it was only ” the declaration of a fact which already exists.” Indeed, Massachusetts had practically administered “a government independent of the King” from the 19th of July, 1775; while on the very first day of May, 1776, her General Court had passed a solemn Act, to erase forthwith the name of the King, and the year of his reign, from all civil commissions, writs, and precepts; and to substitute therefor “the Year of the Christian Era, and the name of the Government and People of the Massachusetts Bay in New England.” Other Colonies may have empowered or instructed their delegates in Congress, earlier than this Colony, to act on the subject.

But this was action itself, - positive, decisive, conclusive action. The Declaration was made in Philadelphia; but the Independence which was declared can date back nowhere, for its first existence as a fact, earlier than to Massachusetts. Upon her the lot fell ” to try the question; ” and, with the aid of Washington and the Continental Army, it was tried, and tried triumphantly, upon her soil. Certainly, if Faneuil Hall was the Cradle of Liberty, our Old State House was the Cradle of Independence, and our Old South the Nursery of Liberty and Independence both; and if these sacred edifices, all or any of them, are indeed destined to disappear, let us see to it that some corner of their sites, at least, be consecrated to monuments which shall tell their story, in legible lettering, to our children and our childrenr’s children for ever! Thanks be to God, that, in His good providence, the trial of this great question fell primarily upon a Colony and a people peculiarly fitted to meet it; - whose whole condition and training had prepared them for it, and whose whole history had pointed to it. Why, quaint old John Evelyn, in his delicious Diary, tells us, under date of May, 1671, that the great anxiety of the Council for Plantations, of which he had just been made a member, was ” to know the condition of New England,” which appeared ” to be very independent as to their regard to Old England or His

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37 Majesty,” and ” almost upon the very brink of renouncing any dependence on the Crown!” “I have always laughed,” said Jolhn Adams, in a letter to Benjamin Rush, in 1807, “at the affectation of representing American Independence as a novel idea, as a modern discovery, as a late invention.

The idea of it as a possible thing, as a probable event, as a necessary and unavoidable measure, in case Great Britain should assume an unconstitutional authority over us, has been familiar to Americans from the first settlement of the country, and was as well understood by Governor Winthrop, in 1675, as by Governor Samuel Adams, when he told you that Independence had been the first wish of his heart for seven years.” “

The principles and feelings which produced the Revolution,” said he again, in his second letter to Tudor, in 1818, ” ought to be traced back for two hundred years, and sought in the history of the country from the first plantations in America.” The first emigrants, he maintains, were the true authors of our Independence, and the men of the Revolutionary period, himself among them, were only’ the awakeneis and revivers of the original fundamental principle of Colonizationi.” And the accomplished historian of New England, Dr. Palfrey, follows up the idea, and says more precisely: “

He who well weighs the facts which have been presented in connection with the principal emigratioln to Massachusetts, and other related facts which will offer themselves to notice as we proceed, may find himself conducted to the conclusion that when Winthrop and his associates (in 1629) prepared to convey across the water a Charter from the King, which, they hoped, would in their beginnings afford them some protection both from himself and, through him, from the Powers of Continental Europe, they had conceived a project no less important than that of laying on this side of the Atlantic the foundations of a Nation of Puritan Englishmen,-
foundations to be built upon as future circumstances should decide or allow.” Indeed, that transfer of their Charter and of their “whole government” to New England, on their own responsibility, was an act closely approaching to a Declaration of Independence, and clearly foreshadowing it. And when, only a few

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38 years afterwards, we find the magistrates and deputies resisting a demand for the surrender of the Charter, studiously and systematically “
avoiding and protractilng, ” all questions on the sub)ject, and “hastening their fortifications” meantime; and when we hear even the ministers of the Colony openly declaring that, “if a General Governor were sent over here, we ought not to accept him, but to defend our lawful possessions, if we were able,”-we recognize a spirit and a purpose which cannot be mistaken.

That spirit and that purpose were manifested and illustrated in a manner even more marked and unequivocal, -as the late venerable Josiah Quincy reminded the people of Boston, just half a century ago to-day,when under the lead of one who had come over in the ship with the Charter, and had lived to be the Nestor of New England, - Simon Bradstreet, -“a glorious Revolution was effected here ill Massachusetts thirty days before it was known that King William had just effected a similar glorious Revolution on the other side of the Atlantic.” New England, it’ seems, with characteristic and commendable despatch, had fairly got rid of Sir Edmond Andros, a month before she knew that Old England had got rid of his Master! But I do not forget that we must look further back than even the earliest settlement of the American Colonies for the primal Fiat of Independence. I do not forget that when Edmund Burke, in 1775, in alluding to the possibility of an American representation in Parliament, exclaimed so emphatically and eloquently,” Opposuit Natura - I cannot remove the eternal barriers of the creation,” he had really exhausted the whole argumenlt. No effective representation was possible. If it had been possible, England herself would have been aghast at it. The very idea of James Otis and Patrick Henry and the Adamses arguing the great questions of human rights and popular liberty on the floor of the House of Commons, and in the hearing of the common people of Great Britain, would have thrown the King and Lord North into convulsions of terror, and we should soon have heard them crying out, “These men that have turned the world upside down are come hither also.” One of their own Board of Trade (Soame Jenyns) well said, with as much truth as humor or sar

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39 casm, “I have lately seen so many specimens of the great powers of speech of which these American gentlemen are possessed, that I should be afraid the sudden importation of so much eloquence at once would endanger the safety of England. It will be much cheaper for us to pay their Army than their Orators.” But no effective representation was possible; and without it Taxation was Tyrainny, in spite of the great Dictionary dogmatist and his insolent pamphlet. Why, even in these days of OceanSteamers, reducing the passage across the Atlantic from forty or fifty or sixty days to ten, representation in Westminster Hall is not proposed for the colonies which England still holds on our continent; and it would be little better than a farce, if it were proposed and attempted.

The Dominion of Canada, as we all know, remains as she is, seeking neither independence nor annexation, only because her people prefer to be, and are proud of being, a part of the British empire; and because that empire has abandoned all military occupation or forcible restraint upon them, and has adopted a system involving no collision or contention. Canada is now doubly a monument of the greatness and wisdom of the immortal Chatham. His military policy conquered it for England; and his civil policy; “ruling from his urn,” and supplemented by that of his great son, holds it for England at this day; permitting it substantially to rule itself, through the agency of a Parliament of its own, with at this moment, as it happens, an able, intelligent, and accomplished Governor-General, whose name and blood were not without close affinities to those of that marvellous statesman and orator while he lived. It did not require the warning of our example to bring about such iresults. It is written in the eternal constitution of things that no large colonies, educated to a sense of their rights and capable of defending them, - no English or Anglo-Saxon colonies, certainly, - can be governed by a Power three thousand miles across an ocean, unless they are governed to their own satisfaction, and held as colonies with their own consent and free will. An Imperial military sway may be as elastic and farreaching as the magnetic wires, -it matters not whether three thousand or fifteen thousand miles, -over an uncivilized region ‘AL

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40 or an unenlightened race. But who is wild enough to conceive, as Burke said a hundred years ago, “that the natives of Hindostan and those of Virginia could be ordered in the same manner; or that the Cutchery Court and the grand jury at Salem could be regulated on a similar plan’? “I am convinced,” said Fox, in 1791, in the fresh light of the experience America had afforded him, “that the only method of retaining distant Colonies with advantage is to enable them to govern themselves.” Yes, from the hour when Columbus and his compeers discovered our continent, its ultimate political destiny was fixed. At the very gateway of the Pantheon of American Liberty and American Independence might well be seen a triple monument, like that to the old inventors of printing at Frankfort, including Columbus and Americus Vespucius and Cabot. They were the pioneers in the march to Independence. They were the precursors in the only progress of freedom which was to have no backward steps. Liberty had struggled long andl bravely in other ages and in other lands. It had made glorious mlanifestations of its power and promise in Athens and in Rome; in the mediaeval republics of Italy; on the plains of Germany; along the dykes of Holland; among the icy fastnesses of Switzerland; and, more securely and hopefully still, in the sea-girt isle of Old England. But it was the glory of those heroic old navigators to reveal a standing-place for it at last, where its lever could find a secure fulcrum, and rest safely until it had moved the world! The fulness of time had now come.

Under an impulse of religious conviction, the poor, persecuted Pilgrims launched out upon the stormy deep in a single, leaking, almost foundering bark; and in the very cabin of the “Mayflower” the first written compact of selfgovernment in the history of mankind is prepared and signed. Ten years afterwards the Massachusetts Company come over with their Charter, and administer it on the avowed principle that the whole government, civil and religious, is transferred. All the rest which is to follow until the 4th of July, 1776, is only matter of time and opportunity. Certainly, my friends, as we look back to-day through the long vista of the past, we perceive that it was no mere Declaration of men, which primarily brought

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- 41 about the Independence we celebrate. We cannot but reverently recognize the hand of that Almighty Maker of the World, who ” founded it upon the seas and established it upon the floods.” We cannot but feel the full force and felicity of those opening words, in which the Declaration speaks of our assuming among the powers of the earth, ” that separate and equal station to which the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitled us.” I spoke, Mr. Mayor, at the outset of this Oration, of “A Century of SelfGovernment Completed.” And so, in some sort, it is. The Declaration at Philadelphia was, in itself, both an assertion and an act of selfgovernment; and it had been preceded, or was immediately followed, by provisions for local selfgovernment in all the separate Colonies; -Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, conditionally, at least, having led the way. But we may not forget that six or seven years of hard fighting are still to intervene before our Independence is to be acknowledged by Great Britain; and six or seven years more before the full consummation will have been reached by the adoption of the Federal Constitution, and the organization of our National System under the august and transcendent Presidency of Washington. With that august and transcendent Presidency, dating, as it is pleasant to remember,- precisely a hundred years from the analogous accession of William of Orange to the throne of England, our history as an organized Nation fairly begins. When that Centennial Anniversary shall arrive, thirteen years hence, the time may have come for a full review of our National career and character, and for a complete computation or a just estimate of what a Century of Self-Governmnent has accomplished for ourselves and for mankind. I dared not attempt such a review to-day. This Anniversary has seemed to me to belong peculiarly, -I had almost said, sacredly, -to the men and the events which rendered the Fourth of July so memorable for ever; and I have willingly left myself little time for any thing else. God grant, that, when the 30th of April, 1889, shall dawn upon those of us who may 6

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42 live to see it, the thick clouds which now darken our political sky may have passed away; that wholesome and healing counsels may have prevailed throughout our land; that integrity and purity may be once more conspicuous in our high places; that an honest currency may have been reestablished, and prosperity restored to all branches of our domestic industry and our foreign commerce; and that some of those social problems which are perplexing and tormenting so many of our Southern States may have been safely and satisfactorily solved! For, indeed, Fellow Citizens, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact, that this great year of our Lord and of American Liberty has been ushered in by not a few discouraging and depressing circumstances. Appalling catastrophes, appalling crimes, have marked its course. Financial, political, moral, delinquencies and wrongs have swept over our land like an Arctic or an Antarctic wave, or both conjoined; until we have been almost ready to cry out in anguish to Heaven, “Thou hast multiplied the nation, but not increased the joy!” It will be an added stigma, in all time to come, on the corruption of the hour, and on all concerned in it, that it has cast so deep a shade over our Centennial Festival.. All this, however, we are persuaded, is temporary and exceptional, - the result, not of our institutions, but of disturbing causes; and as distinctly traceable to those causes, as the scoriae of a volcano, or the debris of a deluge. Had there been no long and demoralizing Civil War to account for such developments, we might indeed be alarmed for our future. As it is, our confidence in the Republic is unshaken. We are ready even to accept all that has occurred to overshadow our jubilee, as a seasonable warning against vain-glorious boastings; as a timely admonition that our institutions are not proof against licentiousness and profligacy, but that “eternal vigilance is still the price of liberty.” Already the reaction has commenced. Already the people are everywhere roused to the importance of something higher than mere partisan activity and zeal, and to a sense that something besides “big wars” may be required to “make ambition virtue.”’ Everywhere the idea is scouted that there are any

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43 immunities or impunities for bribery and corruption; and the scorn of the whole people is deservedly cast on any one detected in plucking our Eagle’s wings to feather his own nest. Everywhere there is a demand for integrity, for princi ple, for character, as the only safe qualifications for public em ployments, as well as for private trusts. Oh, let that demand be enforced and insisted on, as I h6pe and believe it will be, -
and we shall have nothing to fear for our freedom, and but little to regret in the temporary depression and mortification which have recalled us to a deeper sense of our dangers and our duties. Meantime, we may be more than content that no short-coinmings or failures of our own day can diminish the glories of. the past, or dim the brilliancy of successes achieved by our Fathers. We can look back upon our historv so far, and find in it enough to make us grateful; enough to make us hopeful; enough to make us proud of our institutions and of our country; enough to make us resolve never to despair of the Republic; enough to assure us that, could our Fathers look down on all which has been accomplished, they would feel that their toils and sacrifices had not been in vain; enough to convince other nations, and the world at large, that, in uniting so generously with us to decorate our grand Exposition, and celebrate our Centennial Birthday, they are swelling the triumphs of a People and a Power which have left no doubtful impress upon the hundred years of their Independent National existence. Those hundred years have been crowded, as we all know, with wonderful changes in all quarters of the globe. I would not disparage or depreciate the interest and importance of the great events and great reforms which have been witnessed during their progress, and especially near their end, in almost every country of the Old World. Nor would I presume to claim too confidently for the closing Century, that when the records of mankind are made up, in some far-distant future, it will be remembered and designated, peculiarly and preeminently, as The American Age. Yet it may well be’doubted, whether the dispassionate historian of after years will find that the influences of any other nation have been of fartlier reach and wider

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44 range, or of more efficiency for the welfare of the world, than those of our great Republic, since it had a name and a place on the earth. Other Ages have had their designations, local or personal or mythical,-

-historic or prehistoric; -Ages of stone or iron, of silver or gold; Ages of Kings or Queens, of Reformers or of Conquerors. That marvellous compound of almost every thing wise or foolish, noble or base, witty or ridiculous, sublime or profane, - Voltaire, - maintained that, in his day, no man of reflection or of taste could count more than four authentic Ages in the history of the world: 1. That of Philip and Alexander, with Pericles and Demosthenes, Aristotle and Plato, Apelles, Phidias and Praxiteles: 2. That of Caesar and Augustus, with -Lucretius and Cicero and Livy, Virgil and Horace, Varro and Vitruvius: 3. That of the Medici, with Michel Angelo and Raphael, Galileo and Danlte: 4. That which he was at the moment engaged in depicting, - the Age of Louis XIV, which, in his judgment, surpassed all the others! Our American Age could bear no comparison with Ages like these, - measured only by the brilliancy of historians and philosophers, of poets or painters. We need not, indeed, be ashamed of what has been done for Literature and Science and Art, during these hundred years, nor hesitate to point with pride to our own authors and artists, living and dead. But the day has gone by when Literature and the Fine Arts, or even Science and the Useful Arts, can characterize an Age. There are other and higher measures of comparison. And the very nation which counts Voltaire among its greatest celebrities, - the nation which aided us so generously in our Revolutionary struggle, and wliich is now rejoicing in its own successful establishment of republican institutions, - the land of the great and good Lafayette, -has taken the lead in pointing out the true grounds on which our American Age may challenge and claim a special recognition. An association of Frenchmen, under the lead of some of their most distinguished statesmen and scholars, - has proposed to erect, and is engaged inll erecting, as their contribution to our Centennial, a gigantic statue at the very throat of the harbor of our supreme commercial emporium, which shall

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45 symbolize the legend inscribed on its pedestal,- “Liberty enlightening the World!” That glorious legend presents the standard by which our Age is to be judged; and by which we may well be willing and proud to have it judged. All else ill our own career, certainly, is secondary. The growth and grandeur of our territorial dimensions; the multiplication of our States; the number and size and wealth of our cities; the marvellous increase of our population; the measureless extent of our railways and internal navigation; our overflowing granaries; our inexhaustible mines; our countless inventions and multitudinous industries, - all these may be remitted to the Census, and left for the students of statistics. The claim which our country presents, for giving no second or subordinate character to the Age which has just closed, rests only on what has been accomplished, at home and abroad, for elevating the condition of mankind; for advancing political and human freedom; for promoting the greatest good of the greatest number; for proving the capacity of man for selfgovernment; and for “enlightening the world” by the example of a rational, regulated, enduring, Constitutional Liberty. And who will dispute or question that claim? In what region of the earth ever so remote from us, in what corner of creation ever so far out of the range of our communication, does not some burden lightened, some bond loosened, some yoke lifted, some labor better remunerated, some new hope for despairing hearts, some new light or new liberty for the benighted or the oppressed, bear witness this day, and trace itself directly or indirectly back, to the impulse given to the world by the successful establishment and operation of Free Institutions on this American Continent! How many Colonies have been more wisely and humanely and liberally administered, under the warning of our Revolution! How many Churches have abated something of their old intolerance and bigotry, under the encouragement of our religious freedom! Who believes or imagines that Free Schools, a Free Press, the Elective Franchise, the Rights of Representation, the principles of Constitutional Government, would have made the notable progress they have made, had our example been want

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46 iig! Who believes or imagines that even the Rotten Boroughs of Old England would have disappeared so rapidly, had there been no American Representative Republic! And has there been a more effective influence on human welfare and human freedom, since the world began, than that which has resulted from the existence of a great land of Liberty in this Western hemisphere, of unbounded resources, with acres enough for a myriad of homes, and with a welcome for all who may fly to it from oppression, from every region beneath the sun? Let not our example be perverted or dishonored, by others or by ourselves. It was no wild breaking away from all authority, which we celebrate to-day. It was no mad revolt against every thing like government. No incendiary torch can be rightfully kindled at our flame. Doubtless, there had been excesses and violenices in many quarters of our land,-irrepressible outbreaks under unbearable provocations, -” irregular things, done in the confusion of mighty troubles.” Doubtless, our Boston mobs did not always move ” to the Dorian mood of flutes and soft recorders.” But in all our deliberative assemblies, in all our Town Meetings, in all our Provincial and Continental Congresses, there was a respect for the great principles of Law and Order; and the definition of true civil liberty, which had been so remarkably laid down by one of the founders of our Commonwealth, more than a century before, was, consciously or unconsciously, recognized, -“a Liberty for that only which is good, just, and honest.” The Declaration we commemorate expressly admitted and asserted that “governments long established should not be changed for light and transient callses.” It dictated no special forms of government for other people, and hardly for ourselves. It had no denunciations, or even disparagements, for monarchies or for empires, but eagerly contemplated, as we do at this hour, alliances anrid friendly relations with both. We have welcomed to our Jubilee, with peculiar interest and gratification, the representatives of the nations of Europe, - all then monarchical, - to whom we were so deeply indebted for sympathy and for assistance in our struggle for Independence. We have welcomed, too, the personal presence of an Emperor, from another

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47 quarter of our own hemisphere, of whose eager and enlightened interest in Education and Literature and Science we had learned so much from our lamented Agassiz, and have now witnessed so much for ourselves. Our Fathers were no propagandists of republican institutions in the abstract.

Their own adoption of a republican form was, at the moment, almost as much a matter of chance as of choice, of necessity as of preference. The Thirteen Colonies had, happily, been too long accustomed to manage the.ir own affairs, and were too wisely jealous of each other, also, to admnit for an instant any idea of centralization; and without centralization a monarchy, or any other form of arbitrary government, was out of the question. Union was then, as it is now, the only safety for liberty; but it could be only a Constitutional Union, a limited and restricted Union, founded on compromises and mutual concessions; a Union recognizing a large measure of State rights,- resting not only on the division of powers among legislative and executive departments, but resting also on the distribution of powers between the States and the Nation, both deriving their original authority from the people, and exercising that authority for the people. This was the system contemplated by the Declaration of 1776. This was the system approximated to by the Confederation of 1778-81.

This was the system finally consummated by the Constitution of 1789. And under this system our great example of selfgovernment has been held up before the nations, fulfilling, so far as it has fulfilled it, that lofty mission which is recognized to-day, as “Liberty enlightening the World!”

Let me not speak of that example in any vain-glorious spirit. Let nme not seem to arrogate for my country any thing of superior wisdom or virtue.

Who will pretend that we have always made the most of our independence, or the best of our liberty? Who will maintain that we have always exhibited the brightest side of our institutions, or always entrusted their administration to the wisest or worthiest mnien? Who will deny that we have sometimes taught the world what to avoid, as well as what to imitate; and that the cause of freedom and reform has sometimes been discouraged and put back by our short-comings; or

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48 by our excesses? Our Light has been, at best, but a Revolving Light; warning by its darker intervals or its sombre shades, as well as cheering by its flashes of brilliancy, or by the clear lustre of its steadier shining. Yet, in spite of all its imperfections and irregularities, to no other earthly light have so many eyes been turned; from no other earthly illumination have so many hearts drawn hope and courage. It has breasted the tides of sectional and of party strife. It has stood the shock of foreign and of civil war. It will still hold on, erect and unextinguished, defying “the returning wave” of demoralization and corruption. Millions of young hearts, in all quarters of our land, are awaking at this moment to the responsibility which rests peculiarly upon them, for rendering its radiance purer and brighter and more constant. Millions of young hearts are resolving, at this hour, that it shall not be their fault if it do not stand for a century to come, as it has stood for a century past, a Beacon of Liberty to mankind! Their little flags of hope and promise are floating to-day from every cottage window along the roadside. With those young hearts it is safe. Meantime, we may all rejoice and take courage, as we remember of how great a drawback and obstruction our example has been disemnbarrassed and relieved within a few years past. Certainly, we cannot forget this day, in looking back over the century which is gone, how long that example was overshadowed, in the eyes of all men, by the existence of African Slavery in so considerable a portion of our country. Never, never, however,- it may be safely said,- was there a more tremendous, a more dreadful, problem submitted to a nation for solution, than that which this institution involved for the United States of America. Nor were we alone responsible for its existence. I do not speak of it in the way of apology for ourselves. Still less would I refer to it in the way of crimination or reproach towards others, abroad or at home. But the well-known paragraph on this subject, in the original draught of the Declaration, is quite too notable a reminiscence of the little desk before me, to be forgotten on such an occasion as this. That omitted clause, -which, as Mr. Jefferson tells us, “was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia,”

not without “tender

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49 ness,” too, as he adds, to some “Northern brethren, who, though they had very few slaves themselves, had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others,” - contained the direct allegation that the King had “prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce.” That memorable clause, omitted for prudential reasons only, has passed into history, and its truth can never be disputed. It recalls to us, and recalls to the world, the historical fact, - which we certainly have a special right to remember this day,- that not only had African Slavery found its portentous and pernicious way into our Colonies in their very earliest settlement, but that it had been fixed and fastened upon some of them by Royal vetoes, prohibiting the passage of laws to restrain its further introduction. It had thus not only entwined and entangled itself about the very roots of our choicest harvests, -until Slavery and Cotton at last seemed as inseparable as the tares and wheat of the sacred parable, -but it had enigrafted itself upon the very fabric of our government. We all know, the world knows, that our Independence could not have been achieved, our Union could not have been maintained, our Constitution could not have been established, without the adoption of those compromises which recognized its continued existence, and left it to the responsibility of the States of which it was the grievous inheritance. And from that day forward, the method of dealing with it, of disposing of it, and of extinguishing it, became more and more a problem full of terrible perplexity, and seemingly incapable of huinan solution. Oh, that it could have been solved at last by some process less deplorable and dreadful than Civil War! How unspeakably glorious it would have been for us This day, could the Great Emancipation have been concerted, arranged, and ultimately effected, without violence or bloodshed, as a simple and sublime act of philanthropy and justice! But it was not in the Divine economy that so huge an original wrong should be righted by any easy process. The decree seemed to have gone forth from the very registries of Heaven: “Cuncta prius tentanda, sed immedicabile vulnus Ense recidendum est.” 7 a

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50 The immedicable wound must be cut away by the sword! Again and again as that terrible war went on, we might almost hear voices crying out, in the words of the old prophet: ” O thou sword of the Lord, how long will it be ere thou be quiet? Put up thyself into thy scabbard; rest, and be still! “

But the answering voice seemed not less audible: ” How can it be quiet, seeing the Lord hath given it a charge?” And the war went on, - bravely fought on both sides, as we all know, - until, as one of its necessities, Slavery was abolished. It fell at last under that right of war to abolish it, which the late John Quincy Adams had been the first to announce in the way of warning, more than twenty years before, in my own hearing, on the floor of Congress, while I was,your Representative. I remember well the burst of indignation and derision with which that warning was received. No prediction of Cassandra was ever more scorned than his, and he did not live to witness its verification. But whoever else may have been more immediately and personally instrumental in the final result,the brave soldiers who fought the battles, or the gallant generals who led them, -
the devoted philanthropists, or the ardent statesmen, who, in season and out of season, labored for it,the Martyr-President who proclaimed it, -
the true story of Emancipation can never be fairly and fully told without the “old man eloquent,” who died beneath the roof of the Capitol nearly thirty years ago, being recognized as one of the leading figures of the narrative. But, thanks be to God, who overrules every thing for good, that great event, the greatest of our American Age,- great enough, alone and by itself, to give a name and a character to any Age,has been accomplished; and, by His blessing, we present our country to the world this day without a slave, white or black, upon its soil! Thanks be to God, not only that our beloved Union has been saved, but that it has been made both easier to save, and better worth saving, hereafter, by the final solution of a problem, before which all human wisdom had stood aghast and confounded for so many generations! Thanks be to God, and to Him be all the praise and the glory, we can read the great words of the Declaration, on this Centennial Anni

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51 versary, without reservation or evasion: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The legend on that new colossal Pharos, at Long Island, may now indeed be, “Liberty enlightening the World!” We come then, to-day, Fellow Citizens, with hearts full of gratitude to God and man, to pass down our country and its institutions, -
not wholly without scars and blemishes upon their front, -not without shadows on the past or clouds on the future,- but freed for ever from at least one great stain, and firmly rooted in the love and loyalty of a United People, -to the generations which are to succeed us. And what shall we say to those succeeding generations, as we commit the sacred trust to their keeping and guardianship? If I could hope, without presumption, that any humble counsels of mine, on this hallowed Anniversary, could be remembered beyond the hour of their utterance, and reach the ears of my countrymen in future days; if I could borrow “the masterly pen’” of Jefferson, and produce words which should partake of the immortality of those which he wrote on this little desk; if I could command the matchless tongue of John Adams, when he poured out appeals and arguments which moved men from their seats, and settled the destinies of a Nation; if I could catch but a single spark of those electric fires which Franklin wrested from the skies, and flash down a phrase, a word, a thought, along the magic chords which stretch across the ocean of the future,- what could I, what would I, say? I could not omit, certainly, to reiterate the solemn obligations which rest on every citizen of this Republic to cherish and enforce the great principles of our Colonial and Revolutionary Fathers,-
the principles of Liberty and Law, one and inseparable,- the principles of the Constitution and the Union. I could not omit to urge on every man to remember that selfgovernment politically can only be successful, if it be accompanied by selfgovernment personally; that there must be

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52 government somewhere; and that, if the people are indeed to be sovereigns, they must exercise their sovereignty over themselves individually, as well as over themselves in the aggregate, - regulating their own lives, resisting their own temptations, subduing their own passions, and voluntarily imposing upon themselves some measure of that restraint and discipline, which, under other systems, is supplied from the armories of arbitrary power, -the discipline of virtue, in the place of the discipline of slavery. I could not omit to caution them against the corrupting influences of intemperance, extravagance, and luxury. I could not omit to warn them against political intrigue, as well as against personal licentiousness; and to implore them to regard principle and character, rather than mere party allegiance, in the choice of men to rule over them. I could not omit to call upon them to foster and further the cause of universal Education; to give a liberal support to our Schools and Colleges; to promote the advancement of Science and of Art, in all their multiplied divisions and relations; and to encourage and sustain all those noble institutions of Charity, which, in our own land above all others, have given the crowning grace and glory to modern civilization. I could not refrain from pressing upon them a just and generous consideration for the interests and the rights of their fellow men everywhere, and an earnest effort to promote Peace and Good Will among the Nations of the earth. I could not refrain from reminding them of the shame, the unspeakable shame and ignominy, which would attach to those who should show themselves unable to uphold the glorious Fabric of SelfGovernment which had been founded for them at such a cost by their Fathers; -“

Videte, videte, ne, ut illis pulcherrimum fuit tantam vobis imperii gloriam relinquere, sic vobis turpissimum sit, illud quod accepistis, tueri et conservare non posse! ” And surely, most surely, I could not fail to invoke them to imitate and emulate the examples of virtue and purity and patriotism, which the great founders of our Colonies and of our Nation had so abundantly left them.

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53 But could I stop there? Could I hold out to them, as the results of a long life of observation and experience, nothing but the principles and examples of great men? Who and what are great men? “Woe to the country,”

said Metternich to our own Ticknor, forty years ago, “whose condition and institutions no longer produce great men to manage its affairs.” The wily Austrian applied his remark to England ‘at that day; but his woe - if it be a woe - would have a wider range in our time, and leave hardly any land unreached. Certainly we hear it now-a-days, at every turn, that never before has there been so striking a disproportion between supply and demand, as at this moment, the world over, in the commodity of great men.

But who, and what, are great men? “And now stand forth,” says an eminent Swiss historian, who had completed a survey of the whole history of mankind, at the very moment when, as he says, “a blaze of freedom is just bursting forth beyond the ocean,” “And now stand forth, ye gigantic forms, shades of the first Chieftains, and Sons of Gods, who glimmer among the rocky halls and mountain fortresses of the ancient world; and you, Conquerors of the world from Babylon and from Maced6nia; ye Dynasties of Cesars, of Huns, Arabs, Moguls, and Tartars; ye Commanders of the Faithful on the Tigris, and Commanders of the Faithful on the Tiber; you hoary Counsellors of Kings, and Peers of Sovereigns; Warriors on the car of triumph, covered with scars, and crowned with laurels; ye long rows of Consuls and Dictators, famed for your lofty minds, your unshaken constancy, your ungovernable spirit; -stand forth, and let us survey for a while your assembly, like a Council of the Gods! What were ye? The first among mortals? Seldom can you claim that title! The best of men? Still fewer of you have deserved such praise! Were ye the compellers, the instigators of the human race, the prime movers of all their works? Rather let us say that you were the instruments, that you were the wheels, by whose means the Invisible Being has conducted the incomprehensible fabric of universal government across the ocean of time!”

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54 Instruments and wheels of the Invisible Governor of the Universe! This is indeed all which the greatest of men ever have been, or ever can be. No flatteries of courtiers; no adulations of the multitude; no audacity of self-reliance; no intoxications of success; no evolutions or developments of science, - can make more or other of them. This is “the sea-mark of their utmost sail,” - the goal of their farthest run,- the very round and top of their highest soaring. Oh, if there could be, to-day, a deeper and more pervading impression of this great truth throughout our land, and a more prevailing conformity of our thoughts and words and acts to the lessons which it involves, - if we could lift ourselves to a loftier sense of our relations to the Invisible,- if, in surveying our past history, we could catch larger and more exalted views of our destinies and our responsibilities, -if we could realize that the want of good men may be a heavier woe to a land than any want of what the world calls great men, -
our Centennial Year would not only be signalized by splendid ceremonials and magnificent commemorations and gorgeous expositions, but it would go far towards fulfilling something of the grandeur of that “Acceptable Year”

which was announced by higher than human lips, and would be the auspicious promise and pledge of a glorious second century of Independence and Freedom for our country! For, if that second century of selfgovernment is to go on safely to its close, or is to go on safely and prosperously at all, there must be some renewal of that old spirit of subordination and obedience to Divine, as well as human, Laws, which has been our security in the past. There must be faith in something higher and better than ourselves. There must be a reverent acknowledgment of an Unseen, but All-seeing, Allcontrolling Ruler of the Universe. His Word, His Day, His House, His Worship, must be sacred to our children, as they have been to their fathers; and His blessing must never fail to be invoked upon our land and upon our liberties. The patriot voice, which cried fromn the balcony of yonder Old State House, when the Declaration had been originally proclaimed, “Stability and perpetuity to American Independence,” did not fail to add,

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55 “God save our American States.” I would prolong that ancestral prayer.

And the last phrase to pass my lips at this hour, and to take its chance for remembrance or oblivion in years to come, as the conclusion of this Centennial Oration, and the sum, and summing up, of all I can’say to the present or the future, shall be: -There is, there can be,.no Independence of God: In Him, as a Nation, no less than in Him, as individuals, “we live, and move, and have our being!” GOD SAVE OUR AMERICAN STATES I I

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