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o E. A T I o :n 
 
 DEHVERKD BEFORE THE 
 
 jitj ^iiH:;©il iii |itl|ei| if li|tii| 
 
 JULY 4, 1884, 
 
 HARVEY N. SHEPAED. 
 
 BOSTON : 
 PRINTED BY ORDER OF THE CITY COUNCIL. 
 
 MDCCCLXXXIV. 
 

 *ROCKWELLiii 
 
 CHURCHI LL-* 
 BOSTON.' 
 
CITY OF BOSTON 
 
 In Board of Aldermen, August 18, 1884. 
 Ordered, That the thanks of the City Council be 
 expressed to Harvey N. Shepard for the eloquent and 
 interesting oration delivered by him July Fourth, the 
 one hundred and eighth anniversary of American Inde- 
 pendence, and that he be requested to furnish a copy 
 for publication. 
 
 Passed. Sent down for concurrence. 
 
 C. V. WPIITTEN, Chairman. 
 
 In Common Council, September 11, 1884. 
 
 Concurred. 
 
 JOHN H. LEE, President. 
 
 Approved, September 13, 1884. 
 
 A. P. MARTIN, Mayor. 
 
 A true copy. Attest : 
 
 FREDERICK E. GOODRICH, City Clerh. 
 
ORATION. 
 
 The Fourth of July has been a day peeiiHar 
 and sacred to the American people for more 
 than a hundred years, and, at least, one hundred 
 thousand orators have celebrated it, with views 
 and ideas of every description, and that elo- 
 quence which a great occasion always inspires 
 in a sincere and patriotic soul. Therefore, when 
 asked by His Honor the Mayor to take this 
 part in the One Hundred and Eighth Anniversary 
 of our Independence, I felt it to be useless to 
 strive for new and profound notions concerning 
 the causes of the Revolution, or to seek by fervid 
 rhetoric to give an old subject a new brightness 
 and attractiveness. May I ask, then, the favor 
 of your attention to a brief consideration of the 
 effect which our proclamation of the great prin- 
 ciples of the Declaration of Independence had 
 upon the political rights and powers of peoples 
 in other lands, and indirectly upon the material 
 and social condition of mankind? 
 
6 • ORATION. 
 
 That immortal scroll, to the reading of which 
 we have just listened, declaring "these truths to be 
 self-evident: 1. That all men are created equal; 
 2. That they are endowed by their Creator with 
 certain inalienable rights; 3. That among these 
 are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," — 
 possesses a vital and enduring strength which has 
 wrought many and vast changes for the welfare of 
 man. It is the first true assertion by a whole nation 
 of the only real foundation of civil government. It 
 is the first blow at governments based upon divine 
 right and conquest, and it proclaims to the world 
 the inalienable sovereignty of the people. A new 
 society, without the traditions, the bonds, and the 
 customs of the Old World, without bishops, Avithout 
 nobles, and without kings, was born in a day. It is 
 a new era in the histor}^ of mankind. It swept 
 away all the rubbish of accumulated centuries, the 
 absolute authority of monarch and priest, the hard 
 rule of class and caste, and the servitude of ignorant 
 and superstitious submission; and it founded a new 
 nation, without I'eligious tests and without religious 
 establishments, without hereditary privileges and 
 without born rulers, upon the coasts of a virgin con- 
 tinent, stretching from the pines of Maine, three 
 thousand miles, to the golden sands of California, 
 where men may plant, test, and solve all social and 
 
JULY 4, 18 84. ' 7 
 
 political problems. Some would belittle the Decla- 
 ration of Independence because it deals so largely 
 with abstractions. Why, this is its crowning glory. 
 By this it proved the rectitude of its intention and 
 invited the considerate judgment of mankind. Ab- 
 stractions ! — the noblest sentiments and the bravest 
 convictions are abstractions. Right, truth, justice, 
 liberty, and freedom, all are abstractions. The 
 Divinity, which pervades the universe and controls 
 sun, moon, stars, and even comets, in their stupen- 
 dous revolutions, and which stirs within the soul of 
 a man, is an abstraction. 'No ! no ! its glory will not 
 fade, and it cannot be obscured. It has endured for 
 a hundred years, and shines to-day as clearly and 
 brilliantly, — a beacon to which all the people of the 
 earth may turn their eyes as an abiding light and a 
 saving guide. 
 
 The influence of the Revolution spread rapidly 
 the great length of the ^N^ew World, snapped asun- 
 der the bonds of subjection to Europe, proclaimed 
 the Monroe doctrine, and summoned into independent 
 existence the republics of Spanish America. ]!^or 
 does its influence fail now. The great seminal prin- 
 ciples of the Declaration work alike in the indepen- 
 dence of the Dominion of Canada, the saving of 
 Mexico from French imperialism, the liberal Consti- 
 tution of Brazil, the upheaval of Cuba, and the 
 
8 O H A T I O N . 
 
 growth of the people's power on the Pacific coast 
 of South America. The whole continent is the har- 
 vest-ground of American ideas and of American 
 pi-inciples. Our capital and our enterprise have 
 built a railroad to the city of Mexico, and upon that 
 lofty plateau gold and silver are mined, and cotton 
 is handled, with noi'thern machinery; while I'umbling 
 volcanoes and dazzling mountain-peaks are traversed 
 by new settlers, and the brilliant rays of the tropical 
 sun flash upon the factories and growing industries 
 of our own people. The reciprocity treaty will 
 sti-engthen the ties and bind us together more firmly 
 by the profits and benefits of commerce and trade, 
 and teach us to seek for like relations with Canada 
 and Cuba, with Peru and Chili and the valley of 
 La Platn, until the time shall come, in no far futui'e, 
 when the same civilization, the same political privi- 
 leges, and the same forms of government, through- 
 out the length and breadth of Xorth and South 
 America, will control three hundred millions of 
 people, bounded only by the gleaming icebergs 
 of the poles and the restless waves of the great 
 oceans. 
 
 The influence of the American Revolution 
 crossed the Atlantic, to kindle the most intense 
 enthusiasm in every part of Europe. Franklin 
 was hailed by France with boundless delight. 
 
JULY 4, 18 8 4. 9 
 
 The time had come when the evils of desj^ot- 
 ism and the enormous wrongs of class legislation 
 were seen clearly, and men would endure them no 
 longer. A fierce fever stirred their blood, and it 
 was quickened into fury by innumerable pamphlets, 
 which were hawked about the streets, and by the 
 ominous words of impassioned orators, addressed to 
 groups of starving men. Paris burst into uncon- 
 trollable excitement: the shop doors were bolted 
 and the shutters barred ; forty thousand men sprang 
 to arms in a day; the Bastile was stormed, and 
 the grim fortress of tyranny fell in the dust, as the 
 walls of Jericho before the trumpets of Israel. 
 The States-General, in angry haste, abolished the 
 separate orders of noble and clergy; and, during 
 the passing hours of a single night, struck to the 
 ground the whole fabric of feudal privileges. When 
 we recall the savage cruelties inflicted upon the 
 people through centuries of evil power, — the flesh 
 torn from their limbs by heated irons, and the 
 wounds filled with molten lead; their limbs broken 
 with iron bars and the mangled remains exposed to 
 the heat of the sun and the sting of venomous 
 insects; when we recall the arrogance of the nobles, 
 and their wanton disregard of the lives and posses- 
 sions of the poor; and when we remember that the 
 men and women of France were familiar with these 
 
10 ORATION. 
 
 horrors from cai'liest childhood; — we cease to won- 
 der that, hi their uprising to avenge the wrongs 
 which had made bitter their hves, tliey, too, were 
 guilty of savage atrocities; that they paraded heads 
 on pikes, plucked quivering hearts from the breasts 
 of hving men, made bitter their wine by human 
 flesh, and sent a million men, women, and children, 
 to the keen axe of the scaffold, until the nation grew 
 weary of the hori-id work, — the bronzed grenadiers, 
 whose devotion the pyramids of Egypt and the deso- 
 late passes of the Alps had strengthened, hailed 
 j^apoleon as First Consul, and the suffrages of the 
 nation invested him with the absolute powers of a 
 Koman Caesar. Then it was believed that the Revo- 
 lution was over. So it was said, too, when Louis 
 XVIII. unfurled the white flag of the Bourbons; 
 when Louis Philippe came to heal its wounds; and 
 after him Louis I^apoleon, on a like errand. But 
 despotism heals no wounds and solves no prob- 
 lems, and the yawning gulf of 1789 would not close. 
 Throughout all these years, and under all these 
 changes, the immortal principles of our Declaration 
 of Independence, often smitten by the sword of the 
 soldier, crushed by the sceptre of an emperor, and 
 trampled in the dust by the hoofs of the Cossack 
 horse, rose strengthened anew from the embrace of 
 mother-earth, until their accumulated vigor swept 
 
JULY4,18 8 4. 11 
 
 away the last vestige of a throne, and reestablished 
 the repubUc. 
 
 In the upheaval of Europe, which characterized 
 the closing years of the last century, the Italians 
 hoped for the union of their race in a liberal and 
 prosperous commonwealth, which should be worthy 
 of the glories of their past, when the eternal city 
 gave the law to the world and the free cities of 
 the middle ages maintained the manufactures, the 
 commerce, the literature, and the art, of Europe. 
 But the Congress of Vienna restored the old 
 despotisms and arrested the regeneration of Italy. 
 Her patriot leaders died on the scaffold or pined 
 in exile, and her people cowered under the bayonets 
 of foreign armies. The secret societies, however, 
 kept alive the fires of libei'ty, which burst forth in 
 1848, when all Italy rushed to arms; when Mazzini 
 and Garibaldi hastened home, and the eager stu^ 
 dents of Pisa, the gray-haired seamen of Genoa, 
 and the citizens of Rome, enlisted beneath their 
 banner. Alas for their cause! The overwhelming 
 armies of Austria 'swept through the valley of the 
 Po, trampled out the flickering embers of resist- 
 ance, and reimposed the petty despots and paltry 
 domains of little dukes and dependent princes. 
 Italy had measured swords with her oppressors, 
 and was beaten to the ground. Yet, even then. 
 
12 ORATION. 
 
 when all seemed lost, the man was come who 
 wonld lead to an early and splendid triumph. 
 Count Cavour did not Vive to see, in the flesh, 
 the completion of his work; but who can doubt 
 that, in the bright light of that June morning, 
 when he lay in his palace at Turin, upon a bed of 
 fever and pain, the dying statesman saw, by faith, 
 the brilliant dawn of the day, upon which we 
 have been permitted to look, when Italy stood 
 before the world a free and united peoj^le? 
 
 Time fails me to pass in review the experiences 
 of other lands, which, in the last century have 
 been and yet are convulsed by the revolutionary 
 spirit; how the heroism of the Greeks, enkindled 
 by our example and sustained by our sympathy, 
 wrested the glories of Olympus and the plains of 
 Boeotia, the isthmus of Corinth and the hills of 
 Peloponnese, the Acropolis of Athens and the 
 rock-girt islands of the sea, from the Turks' op- 
 pressive and degrading sway; how it roused un- 
 hapi^y Poland to an unequal contest; led Prussia 
 to establish representative government; and Austria 
 to answer increasing agitation with annual parlia- 
 ments. Western Europe, to-day, is free and self- 
 governing. One hundred and eighty millions of 
 people, no longer vassals, choose their own govern- 
 ments and dictate their policy. In Russia alone 
 
JULY 4, 1884. 13 
 
 are popular rights denied; though the open and 
 frank report of the Grand Duke Yladimir and 
 his colleagues upon the commission recently ap- 
 pointed by the Czar to look into the causes of 
 military nihilism, that favoritism and corruption 
 taint the army, encourages the hope that the 
 government really is contemplating some reforms, 
 and, if begun with the army, we cannot doubt they 
 will extend also to amend a corrupt and rapacious 
 civil administration, and the day break of a peace- 
 ful and orderly revolution, when Russia, too, will 
 take a part in that mighty progress of the people, 
 which the Declaration of our Independence began. 
 To these United States, and especially to this 
 grand old Commonwealth, ~ is the world indebted 
 for the first establishment of common schools, 
 and the instruction of all children at public ex- 
 pense. It is hard to realize now how large a por- 
 tion of the people, even in civilized countries, con- 
 tinued in the grossest ignorance before our brilliant 
 exaniple • compelled the attention of other powers. 
 At the beginning of this century forty per cent, 
 of the men, and more than one-half of the women, 
 in Great Britain could not sign the marriage reg- 
 ister. There were only 3,363 schools, public and 
 private, in all England. The first parliamentary 
 grant for common schools was but £30,000, and 
 
14 ORATION. 
 
 even this modest sum was given by a close vote 
 of 275 to 273. Xow Great Britain expends upon 
 primary schools alone more than $30,000,000 a 
 year, and compels the attendance of every child in 
 the kingdom. In France thirt}^ per cent, of the 
 people are unable to read or write, though the 
 republic spends oO,000,000 francs annually upon 
 public instruction, and has begun in good earnest 
 to educate all the children. In Italy one half of 
 the young men who come up for military service 
 cannot read and write. The evil, however, daily 
 grows less, and both government and people real- 
 ize that free institutions need for stability and 
 success the general education of the masses. In 
 Germany one person in every six attends the 
 elementary schools, and the principle of compul- 
 soiy education is universal. Even in Russia and 
 Japan the voice of the Yankee school-master is 
 heard. The children of the peasant on the vast 
 steppes of the Czar learn to read and to write, 
 and the hoary empire of Japan wakes from the 
 sleep of centuries to establish the common-school 
 system of Xew England. 
 
 At the date of the Revolution the lot of the 
 people, in all countries except our own, was severe 
 and hard, far more so than we can i-eadily com- 
 prehend. The French farmer, in beggarly aj)- 
 
J U L Y 4 , 1 8 8 4 . 15 
 
 parel, worked his farm with a wooden plough, 
 and lived in a mean house, wretchedly furnished, 
 his children and his cattle the shades of famine. 
 The tax-gatherer took five-eighths of the produce 
 of his farm; wild boars and herds of deer, the 
 king's sjiort, trampled down his corn, and the 
 game laws forbade him to hoe and to weed lest 
 he should disturb the young partridges. He 
 pressed his grapes in the lord's press, he ground 
 his corn in the lord's mill, and baked his bread 
 in the lord's oven. 
 
 The condition in Great Britain was nearly as 
 bad. The people and the government were at 
 cross-purposes; the government seeing only danger 
 and sedition in the agitation for popular rights, 
 and the people looking upon the government as a 
 power high above them, and regardless of their in- 
 terests. The poor were wretchedly and absolutely 
 poor, so that, to eke out the scanty earnings of the 
 men, their vives, in the colliery districts, crawled, 
 like dogs, upon their hands and feet, dragging, by 
 a chain fastened to the waist, little wagons of coals 
 from deep pits; and in the manufacturing districts 
 little boys and girls, six to eight years of age, 
 stunted, pallid, and starved, worked thirteen to 
 fifteen hours a day in the factories. 'No combination 
 could give the workingman shorter hours and 
 
16 ORATION. 
 
 higher wages, as the statutes made it a conspiracy. 
 The statutes also prohibited the importation of 
 cattle, living- or dead, on any terms; restricted the 
 importation of grain; taxed the windows of his 
 house; and taxed his mug of beer so heavily as to 
 drive him to deadly stimulants. The statutes 
 hanged him if he cut down a young tree, or shot 
 at a rabbit, or wrote a threatening letter. Little 
 communities lived apart by themselves, following 
 their own customs, cherishing their own preju- 
 dices, and treating every stranger as an enemy. 
 With the Reform Bill of 1832 began a great 
 change, followed by the expansion of the franchise 
 and the adoption of the secret ballot. The in- 
 fluence of American ideas upon political forms 
 in the United Kingdom shows notably in the 
 use of the caucus among the liberals; and, lately, 
 in a very able and scholarly address by Lord 
 Rosebery, in the House of Lords, upon the 
 modification of that august and venerable body, 
 so as to introduce more practical and intellectual 
 ability, and make it an influential branch of Par- 
 liament, and wherein, after a careful consideration 
 of many legislatures, he awards the palm to the 
 American Senate as best representing the intelli- 
 gent conservatism of a great people. The ten- 
 dency of the times is toward some change in 
 
JULY4,1884. 17 
 
 this direction which will put representative men 
 in place of, or along-side, hereditary peers. Once 
 a few great ftimilies controlled the destinies of 
 the nation. JSTow the common people are in pos- 
 session, and the transfer of power is complete. 
 Wars no longer can take their earnings and their 
 lives without their consent, nor taxes their property, 
 nor unjust laws their persons ; and I doubt not that 
 in their hands, by the authority of the ballot, and the 
 authority of the ballot only, the land question of 
 Great Britain and the just complaints of Ireland 
 will find a fair, right, and true solution. 
 
 With the establishment of free institutions and 
 popular government in America, and their subse- 
 quent adoption in Europe, came a vast and unparal- 
 leled improvement in the material and social condi- 
 tion of the people. Men, called to play a part in 
 public affairs, and to discuss and decide public ques- 
 tions, were quickened in thought and mind, in sym- 
 pathy and feeling, in invention and discovery. The 
 progress of the century in all avenues is brilliant 
 beyond comparison. A hundred years ago the 
 human hand did all the work which was done, and 
 did it badly, ^ow the planing-machine and the 
 steam-hammer, our servants, work with a swiftness 
 and precision infinitely superior to human work. 
 The distafi" and the spindle, the same rude contriv- 
 
18 ORATION. 
 
 aiices which spun the yarn to make the pnrple hnen 
 of Solomon and the flaunting scarfs of Homeric 
 heroes, gave way, only in the closing quarter of the 
 last century, to the spinning-wheel, as it in turn has 
 given wa}^ to the spinning-frame driven by steam or 
 water. Eli Whitney, a ^ew England mechanic, 
 and Sir Richard Arkwright, raised the cotton in- 
 dustry to a sudden and marvellous greatness. The 
 American sewing-machine, with a capacity of three 
 thousand stitches a minute, has taken the place of 
 the needle, with modei'ate hours and reasonable 
 wages in place of the night-watches and a miserable 
 pittance. The farmer used to scratch the ground 
 with a plough such as was used in Yii'gil's time, and 
 went forth to sow equipped as were the Jews in 
 Palestine nineteen centuries ago, and cut the ri- 
 pened grain with the ancient reaping-hook. Now, 
 Yankee ploughs let the spring rains and the sum- 
 mer sun deep into the soil; sowing, reaping, and 
 threshing may be done by steam; and on the same 
 land crops have increased by forty-five per cent., 
 and cattle and sheep have doubled in weight. 
 
 It was in 1807 that a steamer, devised by Fulton, 
 passed up the Hudson river from 'New York to 
 Albany. In 1838 the first steamship crossed the 
 Atlantic, and then came the final triumph of George 
 Stephenson to propel carriages by steam upon 
 
JULY 4, 1884. 19 
 
 land. Commercial intercom-se was emancipated 
 from restraint, and, as men began to travel, 
 hostile pecnliarities and false prejudices began to 
 disappear. Better and cheaper post facilities fol- 
 lowed, so that now two cents will carry a letter 
 to every part of the United States and of Canada, 
 five cents to every part of Europe, to Egypt, 
 India, China, Japan, and the great island of Aus- 
 tralia, and an international postal card will make 
 the circuit of the globe. The lightning flashes 
 messages beneath the ocean and across continents, 
 and by the telephone men unseen can converse as 
 if in each other's presence. Men are interested in 
 all the concei*ns of the world, and its daily history 
 is given to us at our breakfost-tables. The Lon- 
 don Times gave only one-third of a column to 
 the description of the battle of Waterloo, whereas 
 to-day the best talent and scholarship, the ablest 
 management, and the most daring enterprise, are 
 enlisted to meet our ci'aving for news. The daily 
 newspaper justifies the old saying that "the pen 
 is mightier than the sword." The Czar of Russia, 
 the Parliament of England, and the armies of Ger- 
 many are but as fleeting shadows before the might 
 of public opinion, expressed and quickened by the 
 newspapers, as they fall in myriad numbei's into 
 the thoughts and feelings of men. 
 
20 ORATION. 
 
 Fifty years ago the iDrush of the painter preserved 
 the appearance of a few distinguished persons. To- 
 day the sun prints a perfect likeness of our faces, 
 homes, and dress ; and it is not too much to expect 
 that in the future not only men may look upon the 
 faces of their ancestors, but also listen to their 
 voices, stored up for an indefinite period, and 
 given off at the pleasure of the operator. Man 
 knows far more of his own body, the purposes 
 of its organs, the remedies for their pains, and 
 how to prolong his life. Intermittent fevers no 
 more slay their tens of thousands, and small-pox 
 is nearly abolished by vaccination. The use of 
 chloroform saves us from the anguish of surgi- 
 cal operations, and amputation itself is no longer 
 so largely practised. Contorted limbs are made 
 straight, the blind are made to see, the dumb to 
 speak, and the deaf to hear. iSTowhere has the 
 empire of man more notably widened than in the 
 increased knowledge of himself. 
 
 This enlarged command over the secrets of nature 
 and the necessaries of life not only has given in- 
 creased comfort to the masses of the people, but 
 an improved social condition as well. Men work 
 fewer hours, and for higher wages; women need 
 not and cannot toil in mines and collieries, and the 
 children are educated at the public expense. Great 
 
JULY 4, 1884. 21 
 
 charities relieve the suffering, raise the ftillen, nurse 
 the sick, rescue little children from disease and 
 vice and cruelty, find work for discharged 
 criminals, and lead repentant drunkards back to 
 sobriety. The Christian missions are the work 
 of this century. Heretofore they were deemed 
 visionary and useless. To-day the teachers of 
 the gospel are heard in every land, — among the 
 mountains of the Himalayas; along the western 
 shores of Africa; amid the toiling millions of 
 China; among the snows of Greenland; and under 
 the fierce heat of the tropics, — everywhere gener- 
 ously and nobly engaged in the gigantic work 
 of driving out heathenism and replacing it by 
 Christianity. 
 
 The Delaration of Independence is also the procla- 
 mation of liberty to captive slaves over the world. 
 In the original draft it charged upon the King of 
 Great Britain* as the greatest grievance that he 
 " waged cruel war against human nature itself, 
 violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in 
 the persons of a distant people who never offended 
 him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in 
 another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death on 
 their transportation thither." In 1794 we set the 
 example of abolishing the slave-trade, which was 
 followed in England a dozen years later, and in 1833 
 
22 ORATION. 
 
 by the abolition of slavery itself throughout the 
 colonies. It inspired also the noblest and the most 
 beneficent act ever taken by the will of one man, the 
 emancipation of forty-three million serfs by the aut(j- 
 crat of all the Russias. The great law proclaimed at 
 the beginning of our history has been fully carried out 
 at last in our own country. To-day no man stands 
 beneath the stars and stripes who is n6t his own 
 master, and who in the eye of the law is not an equal 
 of every other man. In the light of the greater 
 events, which have changed the face of civihzation, 
 and which sprang from those memorable w^ords, 
 the noblest in the whole Declaration, and unfor- 
 tunately dropped irom the final draft, we revere the 
 memory of Thomas Jefferson, their world-wide 
 famous author, as the apostle of liberty, and among 
 the greatest benefactors of mankind. 
 
 After this rapid review of the great results inspired 
 by our proclamation of freedom in 1776, the fall of 
 despotism and the establishment of liberty in the 
 most influential nations of the world, the inquiry 
 naturally presents itself, What is left for us to do? 
 Much, very much. The issues of history for a 
 century past have been political mainly. Inspired 
 by our example the peoples of the civihzed world 
 have taken the control of the governments into their 
 own hands. Many abuses yet remain and many 
 
J U L Y 4 , 1 8 8 4 . 23 
 
 wrongs still go unredressed; bat the mighty forces 
 which were set in motion one hundred and eight 
 years ago by oui- Declaration of Independence will, 
 sooner or later, in Heaven's own time, overthrow 
 every political ban-ier in the path of hnman progress. 
 The questions of the next half-century at least will be 
 social: the relations of labor and capital, corpora- 
 tions and the limitations of corporate powers and 
 wealth; the wages, hours of labor, and homes of those 
 who toil with their hands; cooperation; the appro- 
 priation of land; and, not by any means the least, 
 taxation and revenue. 
 
 A great change has taken place from the simple 
 conditions of our early days, — a change marvellous 
 and magnificent in most aspects, uncertain and dis- 
 quieting in others. Then there were no enormous 
 fortunes and no extreme poverty; no immense and 
 populous cities, but scattered communities struggling 
 for modest prosperity ; no vast corporations lining 
 the banks of our rivers with factories, pouring forth 
 from our mines rivers of gold and silver and copper 
 and iron and coal, controlling the means of trans- 
 portaticm and fixing its price, and by combination 
 regulating and restricting production and the sale 
 of products ; and no palace of the overgrown million- 
 naire by the side of the hopeless poor struggling for 
 the merest subsistence. Then as-riculture and trade 
 
24 ORATION. 
 
 were the pursuits of the colonies, and hfe was simple 
 with men nearly equal as to property and comfort, 
 and class distinctions angered no man. ^ow immense 
 fortunes are no longer rare, and desperate poverty 
 is only too common. A fierce hunt after wealth 
 enters every pursuit of life, and threatens to unsettle 
 the integrity of the government as well as of society. 
 While very many rich men, and especially in this 
 vicinity, by their magnificent donations to our col- 
 leges, our museums, and our charities, are worthy 
 the fairest wreath, in that they leave men better and 
 happier than they found them; there are others, 
 and it is a growing class, who use their superior 
 advantages with merciless selfishness to plunder their 
 unfortunate victims, and by vulgar display and un- 
 scrupulous profligacy endanger morals and invite the 
 wretched to strip them of their riches. On tlie one 
 hand are colossal combinations of capital and tre- 
 mendous railroad and telegraph corporations, and on 
 the other hand are trades-unions, with concerted 
 strikes, and anti-monopoly movements, with a 
 strength growing daily from a spreading dis- 
 content and distemper. 
 
 The relations between man and man are no longer 
 simple, but complex; with new antagonisms, pre- 
 senting problems which seem to defy the maxims 
 of political economy, which cannot be solved by 
 
JULY4,1884. 25 
 
 mischievoQS demagogism, nor by selfish resistance 
 to all redress, and which are not only troublesome, 
 and even dangerous already, but threatening to 
 become a terrible foe as we approach the day 
 when all our virgin soil shall have passed into 
 private ownership, and the poor be confronted with 
 the same difficulties which block their development 
 in older countries. The day may be far remote; 
 and yet our methods of production, our accumula- 
 tions of wealth, our increasing poj^ulation, rapidly 
 making the wilderness no longer a wilderness, and 
 already crowded and cramped in some States, and 
 our growing inequalities, — all move in this di- 
 rection, as was foretold, prophetically, by Alexander 
 Hamilton, a century ago. Already there have been 
 the riots of Illinois and Pittsburg, and the sand- 
 lots' control of San Francisco. Already men com- 
 plain that the rich grow richer day by day and the 
 poor poorer. John Stuart Mill says: "Hitherto it 
 is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet 
 made have lightened the day's toil of any human 
 being." We may not agree to this. The facts we 
 have heretofore considered, in my opinion, disprove 
 it. Yet, were it possible for us to go back one hun- 
 dred years, and theii look forward to the inven- 
 tions and discoveries of the century, we should 
 expect, with confidence, a far higher condition of 
 
26 ORATION. 
 
 the masses than Ave find at present. When immense 
 engines do more work than all the men then on 
 earth could have wrought; when a machine turns 
 out shoes by the case, and cotton is made into cloth 
 faster than a hundred strong men could have made 
 it then; and when a vast farm of many thousand 
 square miles is cultivated as easily as were a few 
 acres then; we should expect that not even the 
 very poorest would suffer for the necessities, at least, 
 of life. Can we go, however, even on this bright 
 holiday, two thousand feet from this building, and 
 not find any who are in want of shoes and bread? 
 Is it not true that the larger and richer the city, 
 there, also, is the most abject jDoverty? In London, 
 Prof. Huxley says, there are people more wretched 
 and degraded than he ever met in his travels among 
 barbarians, or found in his studies of savage life. 
 In London, with accumulated wealth to buy an 
 empire, little children beg, steal, starve, and die, 
 within sight of the dome of St. Paul's and the vaults 
 of the Bank of England. 
 
 "Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers! 
 
 Ere the sorrow comes with years? 
 They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, 
 
 And that cannot stop their tears. 
 The young lambs are bleating in the meadows, 
 
 The young birds are chirping in the nest, 
 The young fawns are playing with the shadows. 
 
 The young flowers are blowing toward the west; 
 
JULY 4, 1884. 27 
 
 But the young, young children, O my brothers! 
 
 They are weeping bitterly : 
 They are weeping in the playtime of the others, 
 
 In the country of the free." 
 
 These things ought not to be in this nineteenth 
 centiiiy, and in a Democracy they are of far more 
 than ordinary significance. Unless some solution 
 of the problem be found, and some remedy for 
 the disease, no man can set bounds to the upheaval 
 and change they will make. There is no relief in 
 the specious schemes of the demagogue. Such a 
 man, who would stimulate class-hatred, and, to 
 catch votes, advocate theories which he does not 
 believe, is the accursed enemy of mankind. The 
 delusive phantoms of French and German com- 
 munism are like the false lights which flit across 
 the swamp or the mirage of the desert or dreams 
 of babbling brooks to the shipwrecked sailor, and 
 they leave their poor victims more wretched than 
 before. ^N^either does the brilliant theory of Henry 
 George, to abolish private property in land, find 
 favor in this country, where the number of owners 
 is so large. ISTor do the red flag and the dynamite 
 of the nihilist frighten us, nor make us think that 
 the millennium will come if we will burn all the 
 factories, blow up all the public buildings, and 
 abolish marriage, religion, and the wliole existing 
 
28 ORATION. 
 
 order of things. Whether cooperation is the pana- 
 cea for social troubles and inadequate wages re- 
 mains to be seen. In England and France it has 
 made marvellous progress, and, when we remem- 
 ber that this work has been accomplished against 
 enormous prejudice, there is good reason to believe 
 that it will, in time, provide a way for a 
 better and more equal distribution of risks and 
 profits between capital and labor. We must recog- 
 nize that labor has its rights and just demands; 
 that it is not a mere machine, but flesh and blood, 
 and that it is not to be held on the same terms 
 as the turn of a shaft or the sti-oke of a hammer. 
 When the Austrian war broke out, a manufacturer 
 of cement, named Quitolf, at Stettin, became em- 
 barrassed, and would have fiiiled, had not his 
 five hundred workmen come forward to accept a 
 reduction of one-third in their wages, and to loan 
 him their accumulated savings, as a bridge to 
 better times. Had you visited his factories, you 
 would have found reading-rooms, libraries, a social 
 hall, and profit sharing between employer and 
 employes, and in these things you would have 
 discovered the reason of their generous devotion. 
 Paternal legislation, such as the schemes of Prince 
 Bismarck in Germany and his conception of the 
 State as a universal workshop, is degrading and 
 
JULY 4, 1884. 29 
 
 dangerous. Progress comes by the repeal of laws, 
 and not by enacting them; and the less the govern- 
 ment meddles with our affairs the more shall we 
 prosper. The great reforms are, almost invariably, 
 to remove some barrier which has been built in the 
 path of human development by legislation. Man 
 should depend upon himself, and not upon the 
 statute-book, if he would be strong, indejiendent, 
 and self-reliant. Let us encourage savings-banks 
 and loan associations, to protect thrift, and to 
 strengthen the securities against revolution by mul- 
 tiplying homes, acquired and owned by their occu- 
 pants. Let us controvert and stamp out the false 
 notion of any antagonism between capital and labor, 
 and teach that capital comes from, and is the most 
 efficient assistant of, labor; if capital is idle or 
 frightened, labor is without work and hungry ; that, 
 in fact, capital and labor suifer or prosper together. 
 Let the government be fair, just, and economical; 
 the public offices open to all men without distinc- 
 tion of party, as citizens of a common country ; 
 the jDublic laws favoring no one individual more 
 than another, fostering no monopolies, and obstruct- 
 ing no branch of trade; and the public expenditures 
 managed so frugally as not to lessen the present 
 very narrow margin in the wages of the working- 
 man above the high cost of living, and not to take 
 
30 ORATION. 
 
 one dollar more from the people generally than 
 the necessities of the government demand, whether 
 the money be paid as a direct tax upon our house- 
 hold furniture, or in the increased price of an im- 
 ported coat. 
 
 Such are some of the thoughts which come to 
 mind in the consideration of this social problem, 
 not as the whole solution by any means, but as 
 suggestions, since the final solution must be 
 left largely to the wisdom of the future. This 
 is the chosen country of all the countries of 
 the earth to give a true answer. Here are 
 the proper conditions, — a democracy, common 
 schools, a free press, and free speech; and here 
 is sufficient variety of occupation and industry 
 for comprehensive observation and analysis. One 
 hundred and eight years ago these United States 
 of America, then thirteen feeble colonies, on the 
 threshold of our national history, with a courage 
 and daring uni^aralleled and unprecedented, in re- 
 sistance to England, the overwhelming power of 
 which the Koman Empire in its strongest pride 
 never equalled, and in defiance of all the precepts 
 of European history, proclaimed the true princi- 
 ple of political powers and privileges, — that sov- 
 ereignty is inherent in the whole people, and that 
 all authority is their gift for their own benefit. 
 
JULY 4, 18S4. 31 
 
 and may be taken away at their own will and 
 pleasure. It is not too much to ask nor to ex- 
 pect that, at no distant day, these United States, 
 now thirty-eight great and glorious commonwealths, 
 a nation more wonderfully blessed than any other 
 people in history, unhampered by ancient customs 
 and traditions, and in possession of a most mag- 
 nificent field of action, fresh, vigorous, and strong, 
 chastened by trial and respected throughout the 
 world, shall proclaim the true principle of social 
 organization, the emancipation and elevation of 
 labor, and the freedom of all men, who are able 
 and willing to work, from pressing poverty and 
 absolute want. 
 
 " Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new : 
 That which they have done but earnest of the things tliat they shall do : 
 
 " For I dipt into the future, far as human eye can see. 
 Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be ; 
 
 " Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails. 
 Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales ; 
 
 " Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'd a ghastly dew 
 From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue ; 
 
 " Far along the world-wide whisper of the south wind rushing warm, 
 With the standards of the peoples plunging through the thunder-storm; 
 
 " Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle flags were furled 
 In the Parliament of man, the Fedei-ation of the world." 
 
RB 9.3. 
 
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