.^.N 
 
 V/i 
 
 K-.* 
 
 
 im jfsi 
 
 ■\s>i o^ 
 
Glass 
 
 Book 
 
QTalTfornia 
 
Nostra Tuebimur Ips 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED AT LOS ANGELES, CAL, JULY 3, 1897 
 BY 
 
 HOLDRIDGE O^^COLLINS, 
 
 President of the California Society Sons of the Revolution 
 AT THE 
 
 Contmcmoiratitic Celebration 
 
 OF 
 
 CALIFORNIA'S FIRST FOURTH OF JULY 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen : 
 
 Macaulay says that "a people which takes no pride in the 
 noble achievements of remote ancestors, will never achieve any- 
 thing worthy to be remembered with pride by remote descend- 
 ants," and Edmund Burke in one of his famous orations has a 
 similar idea in declaring that " those who do not treasure up the 
 memory of their ancestors, do not deserve to be remembered by 
 their posterity." 
 
 The Society of Sons of the Revolution, existing in nearly 
 every State and Territory of our country, with an earnest and 
 zealous membership of about 6000 gentlemen, has, as one of its 
 principal objects, the perpetuation of the records of those whose 
 sacrifices of blood and treasure, wrested from the most powerful 
 
•■4 
 
 nation of the earth, an empire, whose natal day as an independent 
 sovereignty we celebrate this evening. 
 
 Our Society has been charged with being only a didactic ex- 
 position of sentimental ideas ; that its dominating principles are 
 pride of ancestry and class exclusiveness ; that its most important 
 work is devoted to the establishing of a genealogical descent 
 through four or five generations of American progenitors, that we 
 may say we are not as this publican whose father came to us in 
 the steerage. 
 
 How far from the truth are these statements, every member of 
 the order knows; and it is my pleasure to tell you something of 
 the practical work already accomplished, and the objects sought 
 by the Sons of the Revolution. 
 
 Within the last twenty years more light has been thrown upon 
 the actors of our great struggle for independence than during 
 the previous century, and we now are able to look at them as 
 the}' were, men who combined with their heroic fortitude all of 
 the passions and frailties of humanity. 
 
 We have been accustomed to look upon them with such rever- 
 ence that we have ceased to regard them as human, like our- 
 selves, but we have placed them upon a pedestal for worship, as 
 being but a little lower than the gods. 
 
 Washington himself, whose biographers, Sparks and Irving, 
 found it too dangerous to show in all the phases of this character, 
 is known to have had the passions, frailties and amiable weak- 
 nesses of the soldier as well as the civilian. 
 
 The exhibition at times of his ungoverned rage appalled his 
 associates, and the army and Congress never for a moment were 
 permitted to lose sight of the fact that in him was the aristocrat 
 in whom was found to an unusual degree the pride of birth and 
 of social environment 
 
 With this grave reserve of the exclusive gentleman, was a for- 
 bearance for unintended faults, a kindly consideration for all, and 
 a heart very vulnerable to the softer feelings of our nature. 
 
 We know the charming story of how he fell thrall to the love- 
 liness of the beautiful widow, and we ma}^ now almost hear him 
 asking himself, in the words of a late writer — "Is it love I feel 
 for this young goddess with yellow hair and light blue eyes, with 
 her moist ripe lips so richly framed for happy love and laughter ?' ' 
 
Shall it be that the heart of the American people will ever 
 cease to thrill with the memory of this happy union of ardent 
 passion and accordant tastes ? 
 
 That Washington, the man, was loved for those touches of 
 nature which make the whole world kin, is exemplified in the 
 person of your fellow citizen, George Washington Peachy, whom 
 I am proud to present to you this evening as a member of our 
 Society, the son of a private soldier, who endured all the hard- 
 ships of Valley Forge and participated in the Battles of Princeton, 
 Monmouth and Yorktown. 
 
 Mr. Peachy received his name in the veneration engendered in 
 his father's heart through personal contact with that great chief 
 whom he loved as a man while obeying him as a general. 
 
 The late discoveries among the musty National and State 
 archives, through the instrumentality of the patriotic hereditary 
 societies of Colonial Wars, Colonial Dames, the Cincinnati, and 
 the Sons and Daughters of the Revolution, have shown, with 
 startling certainty, that most of the vital questions discussed at 
 the present day, pertaining to the government and management 
 of the domestic and foreign affairs of the Nation, were anxiously 
 considered when its foundation stones were laid. 
 
 Some of the purposes of the establishment of the Society of 
 Sons of the Revolution, as enunciated in our constitution, are the 
 perpetuation of the " memory of the services of their ancestors 
 and of the times in which they lived, and to inspire the members 
 of the Society with the patriotic spirit of their forefathers." 
 
 They have passed away, but their principles survive. Their 
 fight was not for freedom only, but for justice as well, and their 
 descendants, the Sons of the Revolution, not unmindful that they 
 were unable to accomplish all for which they strove, have taken 
 up as part of their work some of the most serious questions which 
 engaged their attention, and which, from time to time, during 
 the last century, like Banquo's ghost, have risen to confront us, 
 which will not down and which must be met. 
 
 Our Society literature, our public addres.ses and our individual 
 efforts, have been for years, and aie at the present time, addressed 
 to the subjects of 
 
 I. 
 
 The taxation of church property. 
 
II. 
 
 An educational qualification for the electoral franchise; and 
 
 III. 
 Foreign immigration. 
 
 One of our members, a clergyman ot the Episcopal Church, in 
 an address delivered before the Ohio Societ}*, said : 
 
 " It is a notorious \-iolation of the principles of our forefathers 
 when subsidies are granted and taxes exempted in the interest of 
 corporations at the expense of those who have no representation 
 therein. In the City of Baltimore the taxable property amounts 
 to $209,000,000, while the property exempted is valued at 
 $215,000,000. The rate of taxation is doubled in the interest of 
 private corporations, in which the people as such, have no voice 
 or representation. In the State of Xew York a religious corpora- 
 tion, receives from the State by exemption from taxation $600,- 
 000 a 3'ear. 
 
 Benjamin Franklin said, ' when a religion is good, it will sup- 
 port itself ; and when God does not take care ot it, it is a prettj- 
 good sign that He does not want it.' 
 
 The times call for readjustment of the matter. Corporations 
 whose members have any self-respect should demand it. It is a 
 revolutionary principle and is a legitimate subject for considera- 
 tion by all who are engaged in the perfection of those principles 
 for which George Washington gave his means, his might and the 
 bestj'ears of his life." 
 
 This e%-il prevails to an alarming extent throughout most of 
 the United States, and the untold millons of dollars held and con- 
 trolled by religious corporations, exempt from all taxation, are a 
 menace to our public prosperity, our domestic peace and to the 
 integrity- of the verj' principles of those religious bodies which 
 have secured such exemption by Constitutional provisions or 
 Legislative enactments. 
 
 No one in this audience vnll take issue with the proposition, 
 urged by the Sons of the Revolution, that the ballot should 
 be permitted to him or her onh* who knows how to cast it with 
 intelligence. 
 
I make no distinction in this regard between the sexes. Per- 
 sonally I am a believer in female suffrage. The woman of prop- 
 erty and intelligence, whose annual taxes are a paft of the 
 revenue of the State, should be permitted a voice in the gov- 
 ernment which she helps to maintain. In denying her a vote 
 we are false to the principles for which our ancestors fought— No 
 taxation without representation. 
 
 An educational standard, as well as perhaps a property qualifica- 
 tion, should be required from every citizen before he be permitted 
 a voice in the government for the whole. 
 
 The subject of unrestricted foreign immigration is one which 
 since the time of Washington has given food for the most anxious 
 thought to our most profound statesmen. 
 
 " The first riots in which an intense desire to use firearms and 
 kill was shown, were in 1S44, which were begun by foreign- 
 ers firing into a meeting of native Americans. From this we 
 have gone steadily on, until we now have more rioting, bloodshed 
 and murder in a single year, or even in six months, than can be 
 found in a hundred years of our previous history, and in almost 
 every instance it can be traced to the alien element in our pop- 
 ulation." 
 
 Upon the subject of immigration Washington wrote : 
 "My opinion with respect to immigration is that, except of 
 useful mechanics and some particular descriptions of men or 
 professions, there is no need of encouragement. While the pol- 
 icy or advantage of its taking place in a body (I mean the settling 
 of them in a body) may be much questioned. 
 
 "It is not the policy of this country to employ aliens where 
 it can well be avoided either in the civil or military walks of 
 life." 
 
 Thomas Jefferson, for the most part, in opposition to the 
 policy of W^ashington wrote as follows, in referring to immi- 
 grants to our shores : 
 
 ' ' They will bring with them the principles of the government 
 they leave, imbibed in their early youth, or if able to throw them 
 off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, pass- 
 ing as is usual from one extreme to another. It would be a 
 miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate lib- 
 erty. Their principles, with their language, they will transmit 
 
to their children. In proportion to their members they will share 
 with us the legislation. They will inspire into it their spirit, 
 warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, inco- 
 herent, distracted mass. If they come of themselves they are en- 
 titled to all the rights of citizenship, but I doubt the expediency 
 of inviting them by extraordinary encouragements. I mean 
 not these doubts should be extended to the importation of use- 
 ful artificers." 
 
 You will note the agreement with Washington's statement, 
 " that except of useful mechanics and some particular de- 
 scriptions of men or professions there is no need of encourage- 
 ment." 
 
 ' ' These Fathers of the Republic were entirely opposed to 
 promiscuous, wholesale immigration. The importation of 
 paupers, vagrants and criminals, together with hundreds of 
 thousands of men and women capable of onl3' cheap manual labor, 
 was altogether foreign to their thoughts ; or, if they contemplated 
 it at all, it was only to revolt from it." 
 
 Madison, who favored immigration, strenuously insisted that 
 he referred only to the " worthy part of mankind," and in one of 
 his papers he uses these words : 
 
 " I am obliged at the same time to say that it is not 
 either the provision of our laws or the practice of the 
 government to give any encouragement to emigrants un- 
 less it be in cases where they may bring with them some 
 special addition to our stock of arts or articles of culture. ' ' 
 
 These are some of the underlying principles upon which the 
 structure. Sons of the Revolution, has been erected. They are the 
 shibboleth of our organization, and we believe them to be 
 the sentiments of the majority of the patriotic American cit- 
 izens. That there is an honest difference of opinion as to 
 these matters, no one can justly deny, and they will not cease 
 troubling us until they shall be settled by legal enactments. 
 
 We welcome to our membership, regardless of social position, 
 pecuniary responsibility, political creed or religious convictions, 
 any reputable citizen, eligible by descent, whether he be the la- 
 borer in the fields, the jurist upon the bench, or the highest exec- 
 utive of the land. 
 
 The agitation of many of the questions of the time, some of 
 
which strike deep against the foundation of those principles which 
 we believe to be the cause of our present National freedom aud 
 happiness, requires a watchfulness which we have sufficient con- 
 fidence to believe we can exercise. 
 
 We take no issue with Chancellor Kent when he says that "he 
 who serves his country well requires not ancestry to make him 
 noble," but we do believe that occasions present themselves at 
 the present day, as they did during the Revolution, when none 
 but Americans should be put on guard. 
 
 "The disease of the present day is superiority. There are 
 more saints than niches.' ' 
 
 There is too much truth in the remark that " we are all ticketed, 
 not according to what we have. A man ot energy in shirt sleeves 
 wins little or no recognition. This sort of estimate too frequently 
 rules in all governments. A minister sends a paltry medal to a 
 sailor who saves a dozen lives at the peril of his own, but he be- 
 stows the cross of honor on a deputy who sells him a vote. Woe 
 to the country thus constituted." 
 
 Is there not room and a work for such an organization as ours, 
 whose attention is devoted to the conservation of the hereditary 
 principles of this magnificent heritage, and whose greatest 
 pride is the fact, as stated by our General President, Hon. 
 John Lee Carroll, Governor of Maryland, in his last address, 
 that there has never "been a single individual man who has 
 ever been suspected of using or turning to his own personal 
 ends any advantage of his position or what he may obtain as a 
 member ot the Sons of the Revolution. 
 
 "It is well known that politics, religion, sectional feeling, 
 jealousies of all kinds, are absolutely excluded from our de- 
 liberations, and one strong feeling of brotherhood, fraternal 
 brotherhood, extends throughout the length and breadth of 
 the land." 
 
 We, particularly, are moved by that most tender of all State 
 papers, Washington's Farewell Address, and our pulses are 
 quickened when we read the calm loving words, " The name of 
 American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must 
 always exalt the just pride of patriotism, more than any appella- 
 tion derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of 
 difference you have the same religion, manners, habits and politi- 
 
cal principles. You have in a common cause fought and tri- 
 umphed together. The independence and liberty you possess 
 are the work of joint councils and joint efforts — of common 
 dangers, sufferings and successes." 
 Those who battled lor us have gone. 
 
 "The knights are dust, 
 And their good swords are rust. 
 Their souls are with the saints, we trust." 
 
 And the entire land won by them contains less than twenty of 
 their living children, but we, their heritors in the third and fourth 
 generation take up the work, with confidence in its eternal prin- 
 ciples of justice, with the courage of patriotism, and an assured 
 belief in our might to keep what they gave. 
 
 We honor them for their invincible courage, we glory in their 
 deeds, we reverence them for their fortitude, our hearts are filled 
 with an humble gratitude for the sacrifices made for us ; and 
 never, until time shall end, will the American heart cease to re- 
 spond to the memory of such an ancestry. 
 
 "On fame's eternal camping ground 
 Their silent tents are spread, 
 And glory guards with solemn round 
 The bivouac of the dead." 
 
July 4t}?, 1847 ^f 
 
 July 4tl7, 1897 
 
 The -f- 
 
 HISTORICAL SOCIETY 
 
 of SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. 
 
 ESCHSCHOLTZIA CHAPTER. 
 
 Daughters of the American Re-votution, 
 ,.,3.nd the.., 
 
 CALIFORNIA SOCIETY. 
 
 Sons of the Re'voluiion, 
 
 In-vite you to be present at a. 
 
 I GnpnperrpoFative 
 ©elebFatiopj. 
 
 of C^aliforQia'5 
 . pirst pourtl? of July 
 
 In the Halt of the FRIDAY SMORNING CLUB 
 €Nfi. 330/2 South Broad'way 
 
 AT 8 O'CLOCK P. M. 
 
 JULY 3rd. t897 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 i'il'lllilil'i IlliJi Jlijl lilljllll lljllljiii mwM 
 
 011712 635 3 S'