ORATION DELIVERED BEFORE THE CITY COUNCIL AND CITIZENS BOSTON ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTEENTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE JULY 4, 1893 HENRY W. x PUTNAM, ESQ. BOSTON PRINTED BY ORDER OF THE CITY COUNCIL 1893 CITY OF BOSTON. IN BOARD OF ALDERMEN, July 5, 1893. RESOLVED, That the thanks of the City Council be ex- pressed to HENRY W. PUTNAM, Esq., for the patriotic and eloquent Oration delivered by him before the city authorities on the Fourth of July, in commemoration of the One Hundred and Seventeenth Anniversary of American Independence ; and that he be requested to furnish a copy thereof for publication. Adopted unanimously. Sent down for concurrence. JOHN H. LEE, Chairman. IN COMMON COUNCIL, September 21, 1893. Concurred unanimously, by a rising vote. DAVID F. BARRY, President. Approved September 27, 1893. N. MATTHEWS, JR., Mayor. A true copy. Attest : J. M. GALVIN, City Clerk. THE MISSION OF OUR PEOPLE. ME. MAYOR AND FELLOW-CITIZENS: The time-honored celebration of Independence Day by publicly reading the immortal declaration in the city of Faneuil Hall and the Old State House, of the Old South and the Boston Mas- sacre, of Bunker Hill and Dorchester Heights, and on this spot but a step from where the Liberty Tree stood, has a significance which similar observances cannot have elsewhere, even in Philadelphia. For it was in our dear old rebellious town that the fires of liberty were kindled and kept aglow until the bolt was forged and welded and driven home. Others elsewhere may equally appreciate the historical importance of the great event and of the prin- ciples then proclaimed, and be equally grateful for its beneficent results to posterity; but every Boston man carries the old Revolutionary spirit in his blood in his daily walks through our storied streets. It is his daily bread, his personal and domestic aifair. A single spark, (} ORATION. and the old flame blazes up in a moment with all its early glow and fervor. Thus may it ever be! Times and popular habits may change, and do indeed change rapidly; but so long as constitutional freedom reigns in the land may the glorious, familiar story be rehearsed to the hurrying generations on this anniversary in the old historic town of Sam Adams and the Sons of Liberty! If we turn from the external side of our Fourth of July celebrations, from the scream of the eagle, the waving of the flag, the ringing of the bells, and that most exquisitely native New England feature, which we have ever with us, the Chinese cracker and the , Roman fire- work, we find even within quite recent times a great change in the attitude of thougtful people towards the day and towards the event it commemorates. As that event is looked at through the lengthening vista of the years, and especially through the medium of national con- vulsions like the War of the Rebellion, its importance, indeed, does not diminish, but our historical perspective is enlarged and we see things more in their true proportions. It used to seem as if the world began with our nat- ional independence, and as if the American JULY 4, 1893. 7 Republic sprang full-grown and perfect from the front of Jove by a creative fiat; the millennium had come all at once; there had been no before, and there would be no serious hereafter to reckon with. It is true, our national tone of confidence and glorification was pitched a little high and shrill, as if we had some misgiving, a lurking distrust that all was not well; and it was not until the gigantic struggle with slavery had been successfully met that the key was lowered and we adopted the soberer tone that goes with mature life and with the conscious- ness of the dangers that beset the path of nations and of our ability under God to over- come them. In this frame of mind, and looking back into the stored wisdom of the past for guiding principles to deal thoughtfully with the throng- ing questions of the present, our point of view has changed. We see more clearly than before that the principles and deeds of 1776 form but one link in a long chain of historic events which have made us what we are. Our mere political independence of Great Britain is, in this view, a trifling matter compared with the common interests of law, trade, language, polit- ical principles and habits, race sympathy and 3 ORATION. mission, in which the branches of the English- speaking races are united and mutually depend- ent. How much more closely inter-dependent, for instance, are we with England to-day, though politically separate, than were our colo- nial fathers, even before so much as the first sign of serious discord with the mother-country had appeared on the horizon! As we glance back over the majestic current of English his- tory and English law, rising in the dim distance of Roman institutions and Teutonic customs, and follow it down through the times of the great lawgivers and epoch-making rulers, of Alfred, William of Normandy, and Edward I., of Elizabeth, Cromwell, and William III., of Magna Charta, the foundation of the House of Commons, the petitions of right, the struggle over ship- money, the Puritan Commowealth, how fatuous seems the attempt of a dull and obstinate old Hanoverian tyrant to tax the colonists in defiance of the ancient English principles of right and against the convictions and protests of the great Englishmen of his own time, the Chathams, the Foxes, the Burkes! As the centuries move on, will this effort of a narrow-minded, alien, and absolutist king, sitting upon the throne of Alfred, a monarch who knew less of the funda- JULY 4, 1893. 9 mental Anglo-Saxon principles of law and gov- ernment than any tapster in his realm, create so much as a ripple on that great human stream of unity and progress which the English-speak- ing races are pouring out in the United States, Canada, the Maritime Provinces, Australia, wherever in the broad world the American or the British flag is carried ? Our fathers were but own brothers of the blood to the barons that vindicated the personal liberty of the sub- ject at Runnymede; to the knights that fought with de Montfort at Evesham, and sealed for- ever with their blood and his the right of the humblest burgher and tradesman in a land of privilege to sit in Parliament and vote on the taxes he was to pay; to the Commoners who fought Charles Stuart to the block ere he should govern and tax by the royal prerogative alone. More far-reaching, indeed, in its im- mediate results was their work than that of their elder brothers in freedom, for it founded a new polity on a virgin soil where the latent forces of democracy in the world should take root and grow beyond the dream of the states- man or the philosopher; but all these great deeds were essentially equals, that of our fathers merely primus inter pares. The independent 10 ORATION. federal republic is but the sumptuous frame in which our own noble canvas is set; the strong lines, the glowing colors, the splendid figures, the stirring and dramatic groups, the historic back- ground, in which the picture of the growth of liberty is drawn, are the same and incomparable in them all. It cannot be wholly the bias in the blood which pronounces this stately march of the race to universal freedom and almost boundless empire, to be the foremost movement in human history and one whose possibilities are hardly hinted at by what we see already achieved about us in the world to-day. But while this grand thought is at once the comfort and the inspiration of the English-speak- ing millions and of their adopted fellow-citizens, and above all, ours, who stand in the van of the great march, and while it might well form the sole theme of a Fourth of July oration, still the growth of empire has brought with it the perplexities, the dangers of empire; and in these latter days, when we gather on formal occasions, we are more apt to take counsel to- gether on the problems of the present than merely to glory in the achievements of the past or in the millennium that is coming. Those problems loom up dark and numerous enough, JULY 4, 1893. 11 a noisome brood. A shifting and dishonest currency, offering a fraction in payment where the whole is honestly earned, and threatening our whole financial system with dishonor and disaster; the strongly-entrenched perversion of government taxation from the raising of neces- sary revenue to the emolument of the favored few at the expense of the consuming many; a pen- sion-list swollen to uncounted and ever-growing millions of money, making peace more expen- sive and more demoralizing than war and con- verting the nation's roll of honor into a sordid list of grabbers at the government's money- bags; paternalism, and its twin sister and hand- maiden socialism, sapping the energy and self- reliance of the people, turning government into an end itself instead of a means, threatening the fundamental personal freedom of the indi- vidual, and even the right of private property; labor and capital arrayed in armed camps and unceasing war against each other, each seem- ingly bent on the other's ruin; accumulations of corporate wealth seeking by every astute and hidden device to extort from the toiling and preoccupied masses an exorbitant return upon a fictitious capital; great cities sinking in the mire of corruption as they grow larger and 12 ORATION. more heterogeneous in their population; the terrible frequency and impunity of homicidal crime and the defiant misuse of the pardoning power in favor of red-handed murderers of the officers of the law; alien races, seemingly al- most incapable of assimilation with our political or social systems, seeking in unlimited numbers the untrammelled and irresponsible enjoyment of both; and the line could be stretched out to the crack of doom. Here is enough, and to spare, to rejoice the hearts of all the Jeremiahs and Cassandras of the country and of the world, and to keep them busy the rest of their natural lives. But the patriotic American is happily neither a Jeremiah nor a Cassandra. There is no place among us for the mere croaker or the mere prophet of ill; he is a man without a country and is left severely alone or shown courteously to the door, and asked to take his peculiar note elsewhere. If he insists upon staying he must register and take out a proper certificate so that he can be identified by the police on pain of being " deported " to his na- tive land, if the latter can be found. The American citizen, although constitutionally confident and optimistic to a fault, thinks and acts more on the problems of his country and JULY 4, 1893. 13 of his time than the individual citizen of any state has ever done before. The genius of his institutions requires this of him; if they are to fulfil their entire mission his participation in public affairs has got to become even more general, more active, and more effective. For one, I am convinced that, in a thousand differ- ent and often inconspicuous ways, it is constantly becoming so in the formation and enforcement of public opinion. Not the least gratifying sign of the times in this connection is the fact that the observance of Independence Day has be- come more thoughtful than formerly and more concerned with the practical questions of the present than with the glories of the past or with mere noise and parade. Let us briefly look at one or two of our current problems for a few moments. Prominent among the articles of indictment against old King George inserted by our fathers in the Declaration of Independence which our eloquent young friend has just read, is this : " For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world." It is a part of the bitter irony of history that the fabric which they carefuly and toilfully, with tears and blood, built upon this foundation-stone has by force of circum- 14 ORATION. stances become a more effective barrier to " our trade with all parts of the world " than all the Navigation Acts which Stuarts and Hanoverians had for a hundred years loaded upon the backs of the patient colonists. Within a century the country whose founders recognized the free in- terchange of commodities with foreign nations as one of the fundamental blessings which civil- ized man should fight for rather than go without it, came to be the foremost representa- tive in the civilized world of the opposite idea that foreign trade is a natural evil to be avoided altogether or reduced to its lowest terms. The little group of colonies strung along the Atlantic seaboard, with a jealous mother-country over-sea in front, and hostile French and Indians in the backwoods behind, was broad, catholic, cosmo- politan, far-sighted; the great imperial Republic, stretching from sea to sea, powerful and re- spected at home and abroad, with nothing to fear from anybody, at peace with all the world, teaming with an active and intelligent popula- tion and with the unbounded resources of a continent, is narrow, exclusive, provincial, afraid of the healthy competition of the world in trade; shuts its ports as tight as it can, as if forsooth it could sell its own surplus products JULY 4, 1893. 15 without buying those of the rest of the world. By what strange jugglery of historic forces has a powerful nation voluntarily and deliberately laid upon its own neck a yoke which the proud monarchy of England could not maintain upon the necks of the feeble and straggling colonists, and driven from the sea its own ships which the Crown with the whole Royal l!^avy could not do before? By what series of steps, each no doubt a logical and necessary one at the time when it was taken, have we been led to re- verse completely the maxim of the founders, and, ourselves, by our own act, unaided and alone, almost to " cut off our trade with all parts of the world"? This is no occasion for discussing any strictly political or partisan topic. On the question of protection and free trade, the people of the country are divided into two great opposing camps of opinion, equally honest, equally intelli- gent, equally patriotic, about equal in numbers, all of them true Americans; as an economic question on which political parties divide and contend, we cannot, and we would not, discuss it on our national day. But if we detect a national tendency or trend of thought toward a cardinal principle of the founders, a veering of 16 ORATION. the ship of state back towards a course from which eddies and counter-currents, misleading lights and darkness and the tempest of war, had turned her, we may note it as we pass. If there be a single trait of the Anglo-Saxon race more characteristic of it than its passionate love of freedom and its mission as a lawgiver and founder of states, that trait is its genius for commerce, its passion for the romance of the sea, its love of the trackless ocean as the path- way for the exchange of commodities between the nations of the world. It is almost as cer- tain that an English-speaking nation will not give up, except temporarily and in obedience to some overruling necessity of the moment, its unrestrained freedom of trade, as it is that it will not surrender the principles of Magna Charta, the Bill of Rights, and the Habeas Corpus. The history of foreign commerce has been the history of discovery, of the advance of civiliza- tion, of the expanding brotherhood and progress of mankind. A manner of raising the means for carrying on goverment cannot permanently pre- vail which has for one of its chief objects the extinction or discredit of that very branch of human activity which has done most to discover new lands and found new states, and for the JULY 4, 1893. 17 prosecution of which, with the blessings it brings in its train, human governments are largely or- ganized and carried on. It would almost pass human belief that a shrewd and inventive, as well as free, people should long adhere to a manner of raising their national revenue which is not only adverse to " trade with all parts of the world," but whose aim and tendency are artificially to enhance the price of foreign arti- cles or similar ones produced here so as to make them cost more to ourselves than they otherwise would. Is, then, the high-tariff system, which has for its object primarily not revenue but protection against foreign products, being now maintained by its advocates as a finality, to be defended as a cardinal principle and to be fought for as an article of faith ; or is their advocacy of it merely from that conservative instinct which seeks to avert all sudden and revolutionary change and which ensures thorough discussion and gradual adaptation of vested interests to new conditions before any change is made ? It seems to me that the latter is the case, and that two instances, one from the philosophical side, and one, very recent, from the peculiarly practical side, have a strong tendency to prove 18 ORATION. that it is. By the former I mean our second martyred chief magistrate, who is enshrined in the hearts of his countrymen as well as im- pressed upon their minds as no other deceased statesman of our time is except our first martyr in the Presidency. It is well known that Presi- dent Garfield, himself the titular as well as the intellectual leader, at the time, of the party of high protection, said that all modifications of the tariff should be made with a view to ultimate free trade, and that every step taken should lead in that direction. My second instance is that of a prominent business man, a representa- tive American in energy, thrift, enterprise, and success in the accumulation of wealth, and a peculiarly typical beneficiary of the high pro- tective system. In a recent interesting Utopian paper upon the proposed reunion of all the English-speaking nations of the globe under one government, Mr. Andrew Carnegie dwells upon the free trade which would practically result from such a confederation as one of the chief attractions of his plan, and says that such man- ufacturing interests throughout our land as he represents in his own person would welcome the change. I quote his words: "I do not shut my eyes to the fact that reunion, bringing free en- JULY 4, 1893. 19 trance of British products, would cause serious disturbance to many manufacturing interests near the Atlantic coast which have been built up under the protective system. But, sensitive as the American is said to be to the influence of the dollar, there is a chord in his nature the patriotic which is much more sensitive still. Judging from my knowledge of the American manufacturers there are few who would not gladly make the necessary pecuniary sacrifices to bring about a reunion of the old home and the new. There would be some opposition of course from those pecuniarily interested, but this would be silenced by the chorus of approval from the people in general. No private interests, or interests of a class, or of a section of what would then be our common country, would or should be allowed to obstruct a consummation so devoutly to be wished." That is nobly spoken, and like a patriotic American. It is true that Mr. Carnegie proposes political reunion with England and her world- wide dependencies as a condition of establishing free trade, and puts his proposition in the form of a concession to sentiment. But can the pe- cuniary sacrifice which he and the other spe- cially favored beneficiaries of protection would be 20 ORATION. willing to make for mere sentiment be, even temporarily, a very serious one? It certainly is the general impression that those for whom he professes to speak are not, as a class, prone to give up large material advantages for sentiment alone. Xor is it to be supposed for a moment that as patriotic American citizens Mr. Carnegie and his friends seriously think that the great triumphant Republic is to gain much politically either in knowledge, principles, or practice, by reunion with the monarchy, or that our patriotic sentiment could then be of a higher order than the one we now have for the stars and stripes, or command higher sacrifices. The work of the fathers, cemented and developed by the sons during the century, puts us far in the van of the modern world as the builders of states, and makes us stand towards the rest of the world as teachers rather than learners, as leaders rather than followers. Surely no higher patriotism can be imagined than our love for our Union, nor one for which greater sacrifices should be made. 'Noj neither patriotic sentiment, nor the political advantage to us of the proposed confederation, can account for the willingness to accept un- restricted trade or be the real ground for it; these can be little more than the convenient JULY 4, 1893. 21 pretexts, put forward for consistency's sake, to make easier the transition from a system whose beneficiaries themselves feel that the change must come before long, and will in the end be to the advantage of all. "When that change comes, whether sooner or later, in this decade, or the next, or the following, when the perplexing problem of raising a nation's necessary revenue is reconciled with the great principle of unham- pered trade, when our sails again whiten every sea and our flag is seen in every port, and all the good things which the bounty of God and the skill and industry of man can produce throughout the earth are poured into our laps without hostile barrier to exclude or artificial enhancement of price, then will be grandly real- ized the dream of the signers of the great Dec- laration for " trade with all parts of the world " and the blessings that will follow in its path. Turn with me, for a moment, to another im- portant problem of the day, the government of cities. Hardly anything would, I think, have surprised the founders of the Republic more than to be told that within a century America would become a by-word throughout the civilized world for monstrous and even grotesque misgovern- ment of large cities. It is true that they had 22 ORATION. no large cities themselves and had little idea of the enormous immigration of foreigners, unac- quainted with the principles or practice of self- government, which was to pour in upon us like a Hood and settle down to urban life in our midst- but if they had, they would probably not have expressed a doubt, any more than they actually did, as to the entire ability of the people to grapple promptly with the problem as it arose and solve it out of hand. It was taken for granted, as an axiom, that local gov- ernment would take care of itself as a matter oi course; that it was only necessary to erect the colonies into States and to unite the States in a strong and well-adjusted federal bond, and the whole work of government was done. Many of the Revolutionary statesmen were profoundly distrust- ful of the permanent success of the Union; all had misgivings and forebodings lest the levelling de- mocracy of the masses or the strong hand of the usurper might ere long bring the work of their lives to naught; some went to their graves, even many years after the adoption of the Con- stitution, with the thought weighing upon their souls that the Union might not long survive the war of factions and of party passion. But did one of them even dream that, though the JULY 4, 1893. 23 splendid apex of the pyramid, soaring to the clouds, should stand the shock of storms and the wear of time and grow only firmer and more lustrous under both, that the broad, solid base would corrode and rot and the Avhole structure be undermined and weakened where it was through t to be unassailably strong? They fore- saw nearly all the dangers that in fact have from time to time beset the federal Union, and many which have not arisen at all, but it seems hardly to have occurred to them that trouble could arise at the very homes and hearth- stones of the people, where the citizen was close at hand and personally present to watch and control the course of affairs. Representative rule on a large scale, at a distant capital, under a dual system of government, and with a pop- ulation scattered over an immense territory, was indeed an experiment about which they might have grave and anxious doubts; but local rule by the people at their own doors, had not centuries of experience shown that honest, effi- cient, and economical home-rule in local affairs was the one unvarying, unquestioned achievement of the race? Could the time ever come when the ablest and most thoughtful men in the com- munity would lack either the public spirit, the 24 ORATION. ability, or the proper machinery of government to make themselves felt effectively in controlling the administration of local affairs, and would sur- render it to men seeking only their own personal advantage at the expense of the general good? This question, which our fathers had not to deal with, now confronts us as a problem of vast import; for nothing in the future is surer than the continued growth in number and population of our large cities, and far the greater number of points at which government touches the pocket or the person of the citizen must always be in the matters of municipal, rather than of state or national, administration. The success of state and national government, too, is inevitably at stake, in the long run, on the success of municipal government, for if the trunk is girdled at the base it cannot be long before the tree with its blossoms, its fruit, and its gracious shade will fall. Already we have seen in some parts of our country the corrupt political machinery of great cities controlling and debauching the administration of States, and in one case at least reaching out defiantly, and not without prospect of success, to seize the Presi- dency itself. If we fail in local self-government the whole experiment of democracy ultimately JULY 4, 1893. 25 fails. We may turn at times to the State for purification and relief in local administration, but it is obvious that such resort can be only tem- porary and transient. The fountain can rise no higher than its source, and if local sources are polluted it can only be a short time before the main stream becomes helplessly impure. The State, as the creator of corporations, furnishes the legal machinery and modifies it from time to time as needed, but it can, in the long run, do no more, and in any healthy condition of public affairs the administration of local affairs must be by local authorities responsible to a local constituency which jealously watches and sternly enforces that responsibility. Thus, and not otherwise, can our whole political system be kept sound at the core ; and so long as the core is sound and so long only will the tree flourish. Only very sparingly, upon the simplest possible lines, in accordance with the fundamental principles of home-rule, and when the need of change is clear, should the inter- vention of the State be exercised or invoked in altering city charters ; otherwise popular confi- dence is shaken, our self-reliance is weakened, popular indifference follows, new, complicated, and unfamiliar machinery furnishes designing 26 ORATION. men their opportunity, and then the worm is at the root, and the blight must spread upward. When we have adapted our city governments in principle and in general form to that of our confessedly successful national government, a single responsible executive elected by the people, and a large and independent legislative as broadly representative of the whole people as it is practicable to make it, set over against each, other with carefully distinguished separate functions assigned to each, and have arranged the administrative machinery in the simplest way under the executive head, the State has done all it can, except in the perfection and modi- fication of details, to help us. The rest lies with the people themselves in their several localities, and the thorough and constant educa- tion of the people in the art of strictly local self-government is the national, as well as local, work before us ; for it is forever and unalter- ably the theory and the corner-stone of republi- can government that we are governed from below upward, and that all our government, like charity, begins at home. It is worse than folly, it is suicide, to play the pessimist and say that the problem of mak- ing cities govern themselves well is hopeless. JULY*, 1893. 27 The highest intelligence, the best education, the most enlightened public spirit, the most active and thoughtful philanthropy, the highest busi- ness capacity and executive ability, are all of them concentrated in cities, as well as the worst ignorance, folly, and vice. Nowhere can a sound public opinion form and organize so easily, spread so quickly, and act so effectively through the press and otherwise as in our cities, and nowhere are reform movements of all kinds so often and so successfully inaugurated. "We are certainly familiar enough with this in Bos- ton. Have we not recently seen our own city government put upon the statute book, and keep there, a pioneer enactment in this Com- monwealth, if not in the country, which strikes at the very heart of the spoils system by for- bidding the participation of municipal officers in the machinery of political parties, a reform which must soon be adopted for all other cities and towns? And is it not at this moment a sub- ject for patriotic pride that our city, under the lead of its chief magistrate, and our Common- wealth by the action of its Legislature, have just struck a telling and significant blow at that corporate encroachment upon the fair rights of the people, which is one of the worst and sub- 28 ORATION. tlest dangers of the time, as of yore our fathers struck at the Stamp Act and the Tea Tax? If the powers of evil are concentrated and organ- ized in cities as nowhere else, so also are the powers of good, and nowhere can the battle be- tween the two be fought out to so great advan- tage ; for the battlefield is at our very doors and all can reach it and act upon it, in one way or another, at the minimum of trouble and expense. Our cities, as centres of the highest education and intelligence, should become our very best models of good government instead of the reverse ; their misgovernment, where it has not been already corrected, can be only a tem- porary and transition state, destined to pass grad- ually away as we face and grapple with the conditions of the problem. But how shall it be done? How shall the ignorance and inertia of the great mass of the people in regard to municipal government be overcome, and the seemingly irresistible enginery erected by sinister forces to turn local govern- ment largely to their own personal account be destroyed or counteracted? How shall fraud, jobbery, and waste be prevented, and the people everywhere get a full and honest return for every dollar they pay in taxes? Let us disa- JULY 4, 1893. 29 buse ourselves of all illusion or fatuity on this subject. There is and can be no simple and com- fortable answer to these questions; no patent device for attaining our end; no short cut to the goal we aim at. Nothing but a long, patient, intelligent struggle will accomplish that end, or maintain it after it is reached. The fight must go on forever as our cities grow; we can do little more, by legislation and polit- ical organization, than forge better weapons, establish better discipline in the ranks, and main- tain better outposts to prevent surprise and dis- aster; it remains for us still to make every citizen a good soldier. When we have done all that we can to get simple and effective munic- ipal machinery that shall respond as quickly and fully as may be to public opinion; when we have developed the forces and means of expression of that public opinion to their utmost; when we have done our best to get good men into office and to keep them there, and to keep bad men out; when we have purified the ballot and emancipated the civil service from the spoils- man, we have done much, and we must keep on doing it; but we have not touched the root of the matter nor applied, scientifically, either the necessary diagnosis or the final remedy. 30 ORATION. It is a part of the inevitable logic of popular government that when it fails conspicuously at any point the disease must be one in the people as a whole. In the particular matter of local govern- ment it is obvious that our borders have so far filled up already to say nothing of the future that we can no longer run for luck, nor go by rule of thumb, nor trust wholly to the inspiration of the moment, or to the spasmodic or periodic uprisings of good men against misrule, or even to the educational influence upon municipal representa- tives and officers of public responsibility itself and of a free and vigilant public press. The foundations must be laid broad and deep, if reform is to be thorough and permanent and city government is to approach our ideal. The process can be no other than the slow, modest, painstaking, unsensational one of systematic school education. In a democracy, the boy's mind must, at the plastic age, be supplied with the rudiments of that science and art of government which he as a responsible sovereign is shortly to apply and practise, and above all, the correct point of view towards government must be indelibly impressed upon his mind and heart. Something is already done in the public schools in this line, chiefly with reference to the Con- JULY 4, 1893. 31 stitution of the United States and of the State; but if a boy may well learn something about the duties and functions of the President, the members of the Cabinet, and the Senators and members of Congress, shall he be taught nothing about those of town-meetings and selectmen, ol county commissioners and surveyors of highways, of the mayor, the departments, and the city coun- cil of his own city? Shall he learn about the secretaries of State, War, and the ^sTavy, the treaty-making power, and the appointment and duties of foreign ministers and counsels and the justices of the Supreme Court, and not about the great departments which protect his young life from violence, fire, disease, and accident, make his home, and the streets, parks, and playgrounds safe and attractive for him, and maintain the schools that educate him? Which of the two touches him nearest and most directly? Which will first confront him when he is a voter, and is responsible for the wise and in- telligent discharge of the duties of a citizen, and which is his young mind capable of under- standing most easily and studying to the best advantage? Which really, and for all practical purposes, has most to do with his life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? If taught with 32 ORATION. as little theory and with as much practical description as possible, which will be the most interesting to the boy? Why, in a few years, should not the very best of men for nearly every grade of municipal representative and employee be sought and found specially equipped for most of their work in the graduates of our schools? 'Why should not they have the honor- able ambition as well as the conscious ability to do good municipal service however humble, and why should not the intelligent watchfulness of the great body of the voters over public servants be immeasurably increased by the same means? This strong leaven would soon pervade the whole body politic and improvement would be steady. To take an extreme, perhaps a fan- ciful, case, the boys who were in the schools of New York when the Tweed regime was ex- posed and overthrown, and even those that were born during the next two or three years are now voters. If they and all that have been in those schools had been systematically in- structed in the principles and some of the details of municipal government, impressed with its importance for the well-being of human society, and taught the duty of a voter, would not the prospects of that corruption-ridden city JULY 4, 1893. 33 be, by this time, much less dark than they now are? And in what other way are they likely ever to become materially and permanently brighter? We have reached the point where the public school and the private school and the institution of higher learning must everywhere take in hand vigorously and systematically the education of the future voter in the duties of citizenship in a free self-governing Republic, and at the very head of the list, because hitherto almost wholly neglected, because easiest for youth to understand, and because most vital and funda- mental, I would put the duty of the voter and of the local officer to his city or town. Until we raise the rudiments of municipal government to that dignity we are rejecting the stone which should be the head of the corner and on which the whole fabric must eventually rest; while from the educational point of view we are, in the instruction of our youth, putting aside in this connection the concrete, the practical, the close at hand, the easily comprehensible, and teaching only the abstract, the theoretic, the remote, and to the young mind largely the un- intelligible. The public school, especially, should, with its other duties, be the kindergarten of the 34 ORATION. young citizen, and its object-lessons should be taken from the home, the street, the playground, the public works and buildings, and the school itself. But we should add to that, what I have already alluded to as still more important, instruction, or rather influence, as to the point of view from which the youth should look at the city or town in which he is shortly to assume the responsible duty of citizenship. We should inculcate the fundamental idea of citizen- ship, and of public office as a trust as sacred and inviolable as that between man and man or boy and boy. We should use every means to build up in the youth of our cities a sentiment which, for lack of a better name, I will call municipal patriotism or loyalty. The imagina- tion must be touched and appealed to, and the city of his home should be idealized and per- sonified to him, as his country already is, so that he shall not go out into life with the idea that the government of his city is an impersonal foreign corporation, naturally oppressive and hos- tile to his interests; which it is nobody's busi- ness to serve and protect; and which is fair game for everybody to get what he can out of. He should be made to feel, when an ingenuous, JULY 4, 1893. 35 impressionable boy at school, that the city is his parent to whom he owes a filial and a loyal service as he does to the flag of his country; that to wrong her or let anybody else do so is as despicable as to rob his sister, or brother, or neighbor; that it is a proud and honorable duty to render her the slightest faithful service. Let the germs of civic pride be planted in the re- sponsive young; let every patriotic chord of history, of legend, of personal deeds, of civic, military, and literary tradition, be touched and played upon; let historic spots with great or memorable associations be visited and their story told, retold, and explained, until an honorable local pride and ambition springs up that shall inspire and elevate the character of the growing citizen. There is certainly no municipality in the land where this homely but important part of a civic training could be so well inaugurated or so fruitfully carried out as in our own historic city, and with the youth that yearly swarm by thousands into her hospitable schools; but there is hardly a city or town in the land where it cannot now be done, not one where it cannot be done soon in these fast-moving days. The grave difficulties thrown around the problem of municipal government, and, indirectly, of all 36 ORATION. government, by our inpouring foreign population lead me to say a word about the question of immigration before I sit down. If foreign trade and local self-rule are two of the most marked natural characteristics of our race, hardly less so is our almost unlimited capacity for the absorp- tion and assimilation of other races and the transformation of them into our own general type. Proud of our apparent mission to furnish a free asylum to the unfortunate and oppressed, and a fair field to the enterprising, of all races and climes, and conscious of the strength and elasticity of our institutions and of our social order, we seem almost blind to the dangers at- tending unrestricted immigration from across the Atlantic, while we exaggerate those from the direction of the Pacific. No thoughtful man would probably deny that a far greater strain has been put upon our institutions by the An- archists of Chicago, the Mafia of New Orleans, and the Tammany of New York, than by a few thousand harmless, peaceable Chinese laborers scattered over the land. As between the indus- trious and thrifty Mongolian laundry-man and the hoodlums of whatever race extraction who stone him because he is less afraid of work, and less extortionate in his charge for it, than JULY 4, 1893. 37 they themselves are, who can hesitate in his choice? Cheap labor, if of good quality and accompanied with thrift, decency, and good citi- zenship, is like cheap goods, an unmixed boon, both moral and material, which should be en- couraged and invited by every civilized nation. Yet all other foreign elements come to us almost without let or hindrance and seem likely to con- tinue to do so, while we work ourselves into a panic about the Chinese, erect barriers against their coming, and even propose forcibly to deport those that are here. I would not be understood as belittling the possible dangers of extensive Chinese immigra- tion; on the contrary, I have a very strong feeling of sympathy with our fellow-citizens of the Pacific slope. "We live in a glass house that makes it unsafe for us to throw many stones at them. They may well ask us when we are going to level our Chinese tariff-wall erected against harmless necessary coats, blankets, and cotton cloths, coal, iron, wool, and salt be- fore we open the flood-gates of Mongolian im- migration upon their defenceless heads. We must remember that they stand in the vanguard, upon the very picket-line, of the great advance of European civilization westward towards the 38 ORATION. Orient. Across the broad, but ever-narrowing, Pacific, they gaze towards the restless, inscrut- able, uncounted millions of Asia, alien, even antipodal, to us in race, religion, and civiliza- tion. They stand face to face with the same eternal Eastern Question which for twenty-five centuries has confronted Europe. What the Persian hosts were to Greece, what the Cartha- ginian armies were to Rome, what the Moors were to Spain, what the Ottoman Empire was and is to Eastern Europe, that the Chinese are, or seem, to our friends in California. The resemblance may appear fanciful to us. We may feel that no sane man can see anything in the mild-mannered, industrious, law-abiding Chinese coming, even in large numbers, to our shores, at all like the armed hosts of Darius and Xerxes at ThermopylaB and Marathon, the Punic legions bringing the Roman State to the brink of ruin, the fierce Moslem hordes of Saracens and Turks over- running south-western and south-eastern Europe with fire and sword and thundering at the very gates of Vienna. But the resemblance is closer than we think. It has not been Avar, in itself, that has so long made the Eastern Question menac- ing for Europe. On the contrary, war has often been the instrument for spreading the highest JULY 4, 1893. 39 civilization. It was by war, and war alone, that Roman civilization was carried into Northern Europe, that Gorman civilization was carried into Britain, that English civilization was spread over our own continent, displacing the native inhabi- tants. Nor, on the other hand, does the fact that the Chinese immigration is so peaceful and quiet make it necessarily harmless. We should not forget that, in the fulness of time, the peaceful importation by some traders of a few shiploads of African slaves brought the Ameri- can Republic nearer to dissolution and ruin than the African phalanx of Hannibal the veterans of a hundred fights, under a leader fired by an intense and lofty patriotism, and himself the most brilliant and indomitable captain of the ages could bring the Republic of Rome. No; whether the Oriental comes with sword and spear or with flatiron and pick it is himself, his habits, his religion, and his social order that have ever been the stumbling-block, not the manner of his coming. An alien race in our midst, with us but not of us, is an inevitable peril to a government and to a social order in which all are to participate as sovereigns and as equals. In Europe, as with us, it has been the radical difference of race and civilization in each case 40 ORATION. which has made the danger, a danger in- stinctively felt rather than clearly reasoned out, but almost equally deep in each case. We must free our minds from cant in both directions on this question ; from the cant of the mere humanitarian and theorizer as well as from that of the demagogue of the sand-lots. We may overwhelm a petty Geary Act with our ridicule and contempt, as it richly deserves ; but let us not be led away in our philan- thropic zeal so far as to deny the right of government, when not precluded by its own treaties, to limit or forbid the immigration of aliens or their deportation after they have immi- grated. No more vital and fundamental principle underlies all government than this right, and no sounder or more salutary decision has ever been rendered by the Supreme Court of the United States than its recent vindication of our right as a nation to protect our borders from undesirable immigration and preserve from danger what we have already achieved in building up a government and a social order. It would be well for us if the whole pestilent and blood- stained horde of Anarchists, for instance, had never been allowed to enter the country, or if they should be deported now as public enemies JULY *, 1893. 41 with the recreant Governor of Illinois at their head. They are outlaws, and have no place in the American Commonwealth. The extent and manner in which such right shall be exercised will always be a delicate question, and the test must always be the purely practical one of expediency. The question must be, at any given moment, Have we so digested and assimi- lated what we have got that we can receive more without imperilling the results which it is the mission of the Anglo-Saxon race to accomplish? And in answering it we should take counsel exclusively neither of our over-confidence nor of our fears ; neither of our humane desire to give a home to all the sons of men and our com- mercial zeal to develop rapidly our material resources on the one hand, nor of mere prej- udice against foreign races on the other. Our destiny as a place of refuge and a home for mankind is indeed a noble one, and the right of asylum should never be denied to purely political refugees from other nations ; but we can be such a home only so long and so far as we preserve intact and secure those distinc- tive features which first irresistibly drew and still draw towards our hospitable shores the wan- dering footsteps of all the races of mankind. 42 ORATION. This question is peculiarly one to be con- sidered and acted upon, so far as may be, in the clear, cold light of reason unclouded by either sentiment, fear, or prejudice ; and such check should be unflinchingly applied to immi- gration as shall keep us always well within the danger-line. At the present moment it would seem that we have decidedly less restraint than is desirable upon immigration from Europe, and that greater caution is needed. "We have been too hospitable to the anarchist, the nihilist, the socialist, the dynamiter. We gamble with our birthright. We have probably erred in the opposite direction of too much restriction and exclusion with regard to the Chinese. But who shall say ? Is there not apparently a natural law in the movement of races almost as fixed and immutable as the law of the tides and the planets, which carries us westward and carries no Asiatic race eastward ? Can we help mingling a little Oriental fatalism with our reason, on this topic ? Is it not almost mani- fest destiny that the slumbering but volcanic millions of Asia shall not be allowed to move in our direction, but rather that our civilization, moving chiefly from our own shores, from Japan, from Australia, from India, shall in time pene- JULY 4-, 1893. 43 trate the heart of Asia and transform even that stronghold of human conservatism, the birthplace and nursery of the races, into the form and figure of our modern life ? Nay more ; shall we not in our westward course take darkest Russia in reverse, and cause the glad light of freedom to penetrate the cruel fastnesses of Si- beria, and the advancing banners of democracy to enter even the gloomy fortress of Muscovite despotism? Who shall say what even another short century may bring forth, and can our destiny have been fulfilled in merely reaching the Pacific shores ? Our patriotism is bathed in a warmer light, our national pride is touched with a finer fire, in this Columbian year than at other times. The nations of the world are our guests ; their stately navies and ours ride tranquilly at anchor in our spacious harbors and salute each other in harmony and good- will ; we feel as never before the universal brotherhood of mankind. The Anglo-Saxon has indeed displaced the Spaniard in the leadership of that mighty west- ward movement of trade, conversion, and civil- ization, toAvard Asia Avhich the great Genoese navigator inaugurated and which has been for a time interrupted by his discovery of our inter- 44 ORATION. vening continent ; but the Spaniard, the Italian, the Frenchman, the German, all the races of mankind, are sharers with us in it and con- tributors to its completeness. Our present task is the peopling and transformation of this con- tinent ; but our final calling is to press ever onward and outward beyond the westward horizon. As we meet on this our natal day to take note of our bearings, of the rocks and shoals surrounding our course, the night of uncertainty sometimes seems starless. But it is always darkest just before the dawn ; and if we were asked to-day, with the difficulties before us which we have been considering together, what the special mission of our race, in the democ- ratizing of the world was likely in the near future to be, I think we might well say it was the emancipation of foreign trade ; the indefinite expansion and improvement of free local self- government, especially in large cities ; the friendly absorption and assimilation of other races into our own law-abiding image, tempered always by the stern censorship of common sense upon the question of immigration, and by a dash of superstition at the point where our youngest civilization touches the oldest in the world. JULY 4, 1893. 45 With this noble mission and its responsibilities always in mind, with a national type ever slowly changing, developing, and improving, yet ever the same in the essential points of character and institutions, adopting and retaining such traits of other races as will enrich, vary, and enliven our own Anglo-Saxon heritage without imperiling it, and no others, we may feel on each annual recurrence of this day forever the foremost one in our calendar that there is no limit to the worlds yet remaining for us to conquer or to the latent genius of our people for peacefully conquering them. A LIST BOSTON MUNICIPAL ORATORS, BY C. W. ERNST. BOSTON ORATORS. APPOINTED BY THE MUNICIPAL AUTHORITIES. For the Anniversary of the Boston M APPENDIX. 1841. Ct KTI>. <;I;OK<;K TICKNOR. "The True Uses of American Revolutionary History." ' 1842. MANN, HORACE. 9 1843. ADAMS, CHARLES FRANCIS. 1844. CHANDLER, PKLEG WHITMAN. " The Morals of Freedom." 1845. SUMNER, CHARLES. 10 "The True Grandeur of Nations." 1846. WEBSTER, FLETCHER. l.s-17. CAKV, THOMAS GREAVES. 1848. GILES, JOEL. " Practical Liberty." 1849. Giir.i'.Noi OH, WILLIAM WHITWELL. k " The Con- quering Republic." 1850. WHIFFLE, EDWIX PERCY." " Washington and the Principles of the Revolution." 1851. RUSSELL, CHARLES THEODORE. 1852. KING, THOMAS STARR. "The Organization of Liberty on the Western Continent." 12 1853. BlGELOW, TIMOTHY. 13 1854. STONE, ANDREW LEETE.* 1855. MINER, ALONZO AMES. 1856. PARKER, EDWARD GRIFFIN. " The Lesson of '70 to the Men of '56." 8 Delivered another oration in 1862. "There are five editions; .only one by the City. 10 Passed through three editions in Boston and one in London, and was answered in a pamphlet, Remarks upon an Oration delivered by Charles Sumner . . . , July 4th, IM.'i. By u Citizen of Boston. See Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumncr, by Edward L. Tierce, vol. ii, 337-384. 11 There IB a second edition. (Boston : Ticknor, Reed, and Fields. 1S50. 49 pp. 12.) nst published by the City in 1892. 13 This and a number of the succeeding orations, up to 1S61, contain the speeches, toasts, etc., of the City dinner usually given in Faueuil Hall ou the Fourth of July. APPENDIX. 53 1857. ALGER, WILLIAM ROUNSEVILLE. U " The Genius and Posture of America." 1858. HOLMES, JOHN SOMERS.* 1859. SUMNER, GEORGE. 15 1860. EVERETT, EDWARD. 1861. PARSONS, THEOPIIILUS. 1862. CURTIS, GEORGE TICKNOR. 1863. HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL. 16 1864. RUSSELL, THOMAS. 1865. MANNING, JACOB MERRILL. "Peace under Lib- erty." 1866. LOTHROP, SAMUEL KIRKLAND. 1867. HEPWORTH, GEORGE HUGHES. 1868. ELIOT, SAMUEL. " The Functions of a City." 1869. MORTON, ELLIS WESLEY. 1870. EVERETT, WILLIAM. 1871. SARGENT, HORACE BINNEY. 1872. ADAMS, CHARLES FRANCIS, JIN*. 1873. WARE, JOHN FOTHERGILL WATERHOUSE. 1874. FROTHINGHAM, RICHARD. 1875. CLARKE, JAMES FREEMAN. 14 Probably four editions were printed in 1857. (Boston: Office Boston Daily Bee. 60 pp.) Not until November 22, 1S64, was Mr. Alger asked by the City to furnish a copy for publication. He granted the request, and the first official edition (J. E. Farwell & Co., 1864. 53 pp.) was then issued. It lacks the interesting preface and appendix of the early editions. 15 There is another edition. (Boston : Ticknor & Fields, 1859. 69 pp.) A third (Boston: Rockwell & Churchill, 1882. 46pp.) omits the dinner at Faneuil Hall, the correspondence and events of the celebration. i There is a preliminary edition of twelve copies. (J. E. Farwell & Co., 1863. (7), 71 pp.) It is " the first draft of the author's address, turned into larger, legible type, for the sole purpose of rendering easier its public delivery." It was done by " the liberality of the City Authorities," and is, typographically, the handsomest of these orations. This re suited in the large-paper 75-page edition, printed from the same type as the 71-page edition, but modified by the author. It is printed "by order of the Common Council.' The regular edition is in 60 pp., octavo size. 5_j. APPENDIX. 1876. WINTHROP, ROBERT CHARLES. I7 1877. WARREN, WILLIAM WIRT. 1878. HEALY, JOSEPH. 1879. LODGE, HENRY CABOT. 1880. SMITH, ROBERT DICKSON."* 1881. WARREN, GEORGE WASHINGTON. " Our Repub- lic Liberty and Equality Founded on Law." 1882. LONG, JOHN DAVIS. 1883. CARPENTER, HENRY BERNARD. "American Char- acter and Influence." 1884. SHEPARD, HARVEY NEWTON. 1885. GARGAN, THOMAS JOHN. 1886. WILLIAMS, GEORGE FREDERICK. 1887. FITZGERALD, JOHN EDWARD. 1888. DILLAWAY, WILLIAM EDWARD LOVELL. 1889. SWIFT, JOHN LiNDSAY. 19 " The American Cit- izen." 1890. PILLSBURY, ALBERT ENOCH. '" Public Spirit." 1891. QUINCY, JosiAH. 20 "The Coming Peace." Lsy-2. MiKi-iiY, JOHN ROBERT. 1893. PI/TNAM, HENRY WARE. "The Mission of our People." 17 There is a large-paper edition of fifty copies printed from this type, and also an edition from the press of John Wilson & Son, 1876. 55 pp. 8. 18 On Samnel Adams, a statue of whom, by Miss Anne Whitney, had just been com pleted for the City. A photograph of the statue is added. 19 Contains a bibliography of Boston Fourth of July orations, from 1783 to 1889 inclusive, compiled by Lindsay Swift, of the Boston Public Library. * Reprinted by the American Peace Society. UCSB LIBRARY