I vxx 
 
 
 PROCEEDINGS 
 
 AT 
 
 PLYMOUTH, DECEMBER 21, 1895 
 
 ON THE 
 
 . 
 
 275th ANNIVERSARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS 
 
 
 PLYMOUTH: 
 
 Avery & Doten, Printers. 
 1896. 
 
library 
 
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THE 
 
 PROCEEDINGS 
 
 AT THE 
 
 CELEBRATION 
 
 BY THE 
 
 PILGRIM SOCIETY, 
 
 Plymouth, December 21, 1895", 
 
 OF THE 
 
 275th ANNIVERSARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS. 
 
 PLYMOUTH: 
 
 Avery & Doten, Printers. 
 1896. 
 

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 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2017 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates 
 
 https://archive.org/details/proceedingsatcel00pilg_0 
 
OFFICERS OF THE PILGRIM SOCIETY. 
 
 President. 
 
 Arthur Lord, Plymouth. 
 
 Vice Presidents. 
 
 William M. Evarts, New York ; William G. Russell, Boston ; 
 Wm. W. Crapo, New Bedford; Justin Winsor, Cambridge. 
 
 Secretary. 
 
 William S. Danforth, Plymouth. 
 Treasurer. 
 
 Charles B. Stoddard, Plymouth. 
 Trustees. 
 
 Charles G. Davis, Samuel H. Doten, Charles C. Doten, Ben- 
 jamin M. Watson, Alpheus K. Harmon, James B. Brewster, 
 William r i . Davis, William P. Stoddard, Daniel E. Damon, 
 Edgar D. Hill, William Hedge, Thomas B. Drew, James D. 
 Thurber, Edward E. Hobart, William S. Morrissey, Charles S. 
 Davis, Plymouth ; George P. Hayward, Boston ; Winslow Warren, 
 Dedham; George A. Tewksbury, Concord; Arthur Lincoln, John 
 D. Long, Alfred S. Hersey, Hingham ; William Savery, Carver ; 
 Benjamin W. Harris, East Bridgewater ; George Sampson, Bos- 
 ton ; Hosea Kingman, Bridgewater ; Roland Mather, Hartford ; 
 Stephen Salisbury, Worcester; William A. Thomas, Horation 
 Adams, Kingston ; Joseph E. Beals,. Middleboro. 
 
COMMITTEES OF THE CELEBRATION. 
 
 * 
 
 Committee of Arrangements. 
 Arthur Lord, William T. Davis, 
 
 James D. Thurber, William S. Danforth, 
 
 Charles C. Doten, Charles B. Stoddard, 
 
 Gideon F. Holmes. 
 
 Reception Committee. 
 
 James B. Brewster, 
 William H. Drew, 
 Edward B. Hayden, 
 Charles S. Davis, 
 
 John J. Russell, 
 Horatio Adams, 
 
 Daniel E. Damon, 
 'Thomas D. Shumway, 
 
 Edward B. Atwood, 
 Horace P. Bailey, 
 Jason W. Mixter, 
 Nathaniel Morton, 
 Frederick L. Churchill, 
 Joseph E. Beals, 
 William S. Morissey, 
 Alonzo Warren. 
 
 Chief Marshal. 
 William P. Stoddard. 
 
 Winslow B. Standish, 
 
 Charles E. Bradford, 
 Herbert C. Howland, 
 James Mullins, 
 Thomas Jackson, 
 Warren N. Pierce, 
 Isaac M. Jackson, 
 Myles Standish, 
 
 Aids. 
 
 William Hedge. 
 
 Marshals. 
 
 Isaac S. Brewstef, 
 Thomas Alden, Jr., 
 John W. Churchill, 
 John T. Stoddard, 
 Charles E. Barnes, 
 Edward E. Hobart, 
 Henry H. Fowler. 
 
5 
 
 Committee on the Ball. 
 
 Edgar D. Hill, 
 James Spooner, 
 Alfred S. Burbank 
 A. E. Lewis, 
 
 Charles A. Strong, 
 Henry J. W. Drew 
 W. C. Butler, 
 
 E. A. Dunton, 
 
 EXERCISES IN THE ARMORY. 
 
 Overture. 
 
 By the Plymouth Band. 
 
 Anthem. 
 
 By the Plymouth Musical Club. 
 
 Prayer. 
 
 By the Rev. Charles P. Lombard, Pastor of the First Church. 
 
 Ode. 
 
 “ Sons of Renowned Sires,” written by John Davis, for the 
 celebration in 1792. Sung by the Plymouth Musical Club. 
 
6 
 
 POEM, 
 
 By Richard Henry Stoddard. 
 
 AT PLYMOUTH. 
 
 The Muse whose task it is to pen 
 
 In her great Book the deeds of men, 
 Pens only what she sees, 
 
 Nor scans too closely these. 
 
 For, whether good or bad to her, 
 
 Time is their sole interpreter, 
 
 And slow the hands thnt trace 
 The verdicts of the Race ! 
 
 When he, the adventurous Genoese, 
 
 Put boldly forth on chartless seas, 
 
 He sought the shortest way 
 To India and Cathay. 
 
 Day after day the waves went by ; 
 
 Suns rose and set ; stars shone on high 
 ’Till what seemed land-winds fanned 
 His sails, but from what land 
 
 He knew not ; for a Hand unknown 
 
 Had steered more wisely than his own. 
 And when his sails were furled 
 ’Twas in a new-found World ! 
 
 The Muse of History, when she penned 
 
 This deed of his, saw not the end, 
 
 Or, roused with noble rage, 
 
 She would have torn the page ; 
 
RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 (H THE 
 
 UNIVEPSlly of ILLINOIS 
 
7 
 
 ■So many followed on his track, 
 
 And fetched the spoil of empires back ; 
 Plundered their temples, — graves, 
 
 And made their peoples slaves. 
 
 Not to discover what might be 
 Beyond the waste of western Sea, 
 
 (No wish the wealth to find 
 Of Ormuz and of Ind,) 
 
 But lesser things, the common things 
 Which anger priests, and baffle kings, 
 
 Who, arrogant, try to bind 
 The forces of mankind ; 
 
 These, and no more — what could be less? 
 Directed the stern Righteousness 
 That sought a shelter here, 
 
 And makes its memory dear! 
 
 Above all other lands on earth. 
 
 They loved the Land that gave them birth ; 
 Its se^-girt coasts, its downs, 
 
 Its hamlets and its towns ; 
 
 The green fields where their children played ; 
 The churchyards where their sires were laid ! 
 God’s Acres, sown, indeed, 
 
 With more than royal seed! 
 
 They loved their England, what was best 
 In her they loved, but not the rest ; 
 
8 
 
 Her State that made her great,. 
 
 But not her Church in State ! 
 
 For this she hated them ; for she 
 Defender of the Faith would be, 
 
 If not with faggot-fires 
 Such as consumed their sires, 
 
 With heavy penalties and fines, 
 
 With scurrile jests and ribald lines, 
 
 And all the loud, coarse lies 
 In town and country cries ! 
 
 What did they want, whom high and low 
 Despised and persecuted so? 
 
 Little, when understood. — 
 
 They wanted to be good ; 
 
 To worship God in their own way ; 
 
 To read their Bibles, and to pray 
 And save their souls ! Poor men — 
 
 But poorer England then ! 
 
 Little for little things like these 
 The Muse of History cares ; she sees 
 And pens more splendid things : 
 
 The courts and camps of kings ; 
 
 Great hosts of men on battle fields ; 
 
 The crash of spears on brazen shields 
 Sacked cities, wrapt in flame, 
 
 And deeds without a name ! 
 
9 
 
 Not war, but peace our fathers sought ; 
 
 For peace and not for war they fought — 
 
 The weak against the strong ; 
 
 Such battles must be long ! 
 
 Nought save themselves their vessel bore- 
 To this inhospitable shore. 
 
 And they were less than nought 
 Incurious History thought. 
 
 She erred. For in their train, unseen, 
 
 There was a shape of dauntless mien — 
 
 The Manhood potent then 
 In those determined men ! 
 
 The might of English hearts and hands,. 
 
 To fell old forests, till new lands ; 
 
 Prepared alike to pray, 
 
 And, when need was, to slay ! 
 
 They did the work they had to do ; 
 
 They builded better than they knew : 
 
 So must the few whom Fate 
 Selects to found a State ! 
 
 They founded theirs with psalms and prayers ; 
 What sounder State could be than theirs — 
 
 The first since time began 
 Of faith in God and Man ! 
 
 Ode. 
 
 “The Landing of the Pilgrims,” written by Mrs. Felicia' 
 Hemans, sung by Myron W. Whitney. 
 
10 
 
 ORATION, 
 
 By Hon. George F. Hoar. 
 
 Surely that people is happy to whom the noblest story in 
 history has come down through father and mother by the un- 
 broken tradition of their own firesides. If there be one thing 
 more than another for which we have to thank God on this 
 anniversary, it is that the tale we have to tell is a familiar 
 household story. The thoughts which are appropriate to the 
 day are commonplaces. Every generation since the Pilgrim 
 landed here has held his memory dear. The light of later 
 days, that has dispelled the intellectual darkness of his time, 
 gives new lustre and added nobility to his simple and rever- 
 end figure. 
 
 So far as honor can be paid by the utterance of the lips, 
 or by the tender affection of the heart, his descendants have 
 never failed in what is due to the Pilgrim. The faults of 
 other founders of States have not been forgotten. They have 
 been kept alive in human memory, not only by the jealous 
 criticism of men of other blood, but by the severe judgment 
 of history. The founder of Rome, the Norman Conqueror of 
 England, the Spaniard in the South, the Cavalier of James- 
 town, the settler of the far West — even the Puritan of Mass- 
 achusetts — is known in history quite as much by his faults, 
 or by his crimes, as by his virtues. Puritan and Cavalier, 
 Royalist and Roundhead may be terms of honor or terms of 
 reproach. But the word Pilgrim is everywhere a word of 
 tenderest association. There is no blot on the memory of the 
 Pilgrim of Plymouth. No word of reproach is uttered when 
 lie is mentioned. The fame of the passenger of the May- 
 
11 
 
 flower is as pure and fragrant as its little namesake, sweetest 
 of the flowers of spring. He is the stateliest figure in all 
 history. He passes before us like some holy shade seen in 
 the Paradiso in the vision of Dante. 
 
 Certainly you have not failed in due honor to the Pilgrim’s 
 memory. You have given him, in every generation, of your 
 best. No incense, no pageant, no annual procession, no statue 
 — though Phidias were the sculptor — no temple — though the 
 dome were rounded by the hand of Angelo — can equal as a 
 votive offering the imperishable oration of Webster. It is the 
 one best offering which could be laid on the Pilgrim’s shrine. 
 That majestic eloquence, if not equaled, has been worthily fol- 
 lowed by the consummate grace of Everett, the more than 
 oriental imagination of Choate, the stately dignity of Winthrop. 
 Here, too, has stood Sumner — Sumner of the white soul — 
 to lay his wreath on the Pilgrims’ altar in right of a martyr 
 spirit, lofty and undaunted as their own. You may well be- 
 lieve that if a competition with these masters were expected 
 today, I might — as might any living man — shrink from the 
 comparison. But it is not from human, it is not from living 
 lips that you are expecting the lesson of this occasion. You 
 are here to listen to the voices of the dead ; to meditate anew 
 the eternal truths on which your fathers founded the State. 
 This imperial people, if it is to bear rule over a continent, 
 must listen to the voice of which David spake with dying lips : — 
 “The Rock spake to me.” 
 
 You are here to hearken to the voice of the Rock. 
 
 The most precious earthly reward of a well-spent life is the 
 gratitude and love of children. Surely the Pilgrim has had 
 that. But he looked to no earthly reward, however precious. 
 
12 
 
 “They knew they were Pilgrims, and looked not much on 
 those things, but lifted up their eyes to Heaven, their dearest 
 country, and so quieted their spirits.” 
 
 How few of them there were. Eighteen men came ashore on 
 the 21st of December. But forty-one names are signed to the 
 compact. Of these not more than twenty survived the first winter. 
 Surely the parable of the mustard seed, than which, as Edward 
 Everett said, “the burning pen of inspiration, ranging Heaven 
 and Earth for a similitude, can find nothing more appropriate or 
 expressive to which to liken the Kingdom of God,” is repeated 
 again. “ Whereunto shall we liken it, or with what comparison 
 shall we compare it?” 
 
 “It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown 
 in the earth, is less than all the seeds that be in the earth. 
 
 “But when it is sown it groweth up, and becometh greater 
 than all herbs, and shooteth out great branches ; so that the 
 fowls of the air may lodge under the shadow of it.” 
 
 Though the heavens be rolled up as a scroll, this story is 
 worthy to be written upon the scroll. Though the elements 
 shall melt with fervent heat, this pure and holy flame shall 
 shine brightly over the new heavens and the new earth. It 
 is no story of what other countries have deemed great. There 
 is no royal escutcheon, no noble coat armor, no knightly shield. 
 But they bore the whole armor of God, their loins girt about 
 with truth, having the breastplate of righteousness ; their feet 
 shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace ; taking the 
 shield of faith, and the helmet of salvation, and the sword of 
 the spirit, which is the word of God. 
 
 Let no man fancy that because they were few in number, 
 these men were insignificant. You know the history of heroism 
 better than that. It is Leonidas with his three hundred, and 
 
13 
 
 not Xerxes with his ships by thousands, and men in nations, 
 that has given the inspiration to mankind for two thousand 
 years. There fell of the English side, at Agincourt, but twenty- 
 nine persons — 
 
 Edward, the duke of York, the earl of Suffolk, 
 
 Sir Richard Ketley, Davy Gam, esquire; 
 
 None else of name; and of all other men, 
 
 But five and twenty. 
 
 But somehow Davy Gam, esquire, has hovered over the 
 English lines on a hundred fields of victory, from Cressy to 
 Quebec, from Quebec to Waterloo. “Cest ton jours le meme 
 chose,” said Napoleon when he yielded himself prisoner. 
 That spirit came ashore at Plymouth. It crossed the ocean 
 to abide. It takes no account of numbers and needs no num- 
 bers for its victories. 
 
 O God, Thy arm was here, 
 
 And not to us, bnt to Thy arm alone, 
 
 Ascribe we all. Take it, God, 
 
 For it is only Thine. 
 
 Miles Standish, whom an accomplished descendant well calls 
 the Greatheart of the Pilgrims, with his little army of four- 
 teen men, inspired with this spirit, was a power mightier than 
 all the hosts of Xerxes. They fought for a stake more pre- 
 cious than that of Marathon or Waterloo, as Christian freedom 
 is of higher value than Grecian civilization, or than the em- 
 pire of Europe. The court was of a dignity that no Areopagus 
 could equal. The little Senate consisted of but nine men. 
 But it was making laws under the first written Republican 
 -constitution, which held in itself the fate of all others. 
 
 I wish to speak of the men who landed on Plymouth Rock 
 on the day whose anniversary we celebrate ; — of what they 
 
14 
 
 were, what they brought witli them, of the republic they found- 
 ed, what they left to their posterity that now remains, and 
 what is hereafter to abide. Other contributions, whether for 
 good or evil, to that composite life and character which we 
 call America, will not lack due consideration elsewhere. Some 
 of them were made in the very beginning, at Jamestown, at 
 Salem, at New York, at Baltimore, under the spreading elm 
 at Philadelphia. Others are of later time. Some of them 
 have come in our own time, from Ireland, from England, from 
 Germany, from Canada, and from that Northern hive whose 
 swarm first brought the honey of freedom to the island of 
 our ancestors. They have not lacked, and will never lack, 
 due honor. But it is to this one alone that this day belongs. 
 The topic may perhaps seem narrow and local. It may be 
 said of the Pilgrim quality what your admirable chronicler, 
 Mr. Russell, says of the Mayflower: “A pleasing fiction ob- 
 tains with some good people hereabouts, viz., That this little 
 flower is peculiar to this section of the country.” But to 
 me, looking forward as best I can into the future and see- 
 ing how they have already leavened this nation of ours, the 
 subject seems sometimes as large and broad as if I were to 
 undertake to speak of the consequences of the creation of 
 Adam and Eve. 
 
 The commonwealths which were united in 1692 and became 
 the Province of Massachusetts Bay are still blended in the 
 popular conception. Their founders are supposed to have 
 the same general characteristics, and are known to the rest 
 of the world by the common title of New England Puritans. 
 I suppose this belief prevails even in New England, except as 
 to a small circle of scholars and the descendants of the Pil- 
 grims who still dwell in the Old Colony, and who have studied 
 
15 
 
 personally the history of their ancestors. Many of our histor- 
 ians have treated the two with little distinction, except that 
 the suffering of the Pilgrim, the dangerous and romantic voy- 
 age of the Mayflower, the story of the landing in December 
 and the hardship of the first winter have made, of course, a series 
 of pictures of their own. Even Mr. Webster, after narrating as 
 could have been done by no other chronicler who ever lived, 
 these picturesque incidents, proceeds in his oration of 1820 ta 
 discuss the principles which lay at the foundation of the Puritan 
 State, and which were, in the main, common to both commim- 
 ties. 
 
 Yet the dwellers of Plymouth know well the difference between 
 the Pilgrim that landed here and the Puritan that settled in 
 Salem and Boston. The difference was as great as woyld have 
 been if the members of the established church had been driven 
 into exile, and one colony founded by Jeremy Taylor or George 
 Herbert, and one founded by Bancroft or Laud. If the anti- 
 slavery men of our later day had shaken the dust off their feet 
 against the Constitution and the Union, and gone to some unoc- 
 cupied island in some remote and barbarous archipelago, the 
 difference would scarcely have been greater between a colony 
 founded by Waldo Emerson or Samuel May, and one founded by 
 Garrison or Parker Pillsbury or Stephen Foster, than that be- 
 tween the men of Plymouth and the men of Salem. Both were 
 Englishmen. Both were, as they understood it, Calvinists. Both 
 desired freedom. They had the tie of a common feeling, of a 
 common persecution, of a common faith, and of a common hope. 
 I wish I could add, descendant as I am of the Massachusetts 
 Puritans in every line of descent that I can trace since the time 
 when the name was first heard, the tie of a common and equal 
 charity. 
 
16 
 
 The compact on board the Mayflower was the beginning of a 
 ’State. Another State was begun at Salem by the company who 
 ‘Came over with Endicott. There were marked resemblances in 
 the quality of these two communities, as would be expected from 
 the similarity of their origin. There were likewise marked differ- 
 ences, as would be expected from the individual character of the 
 men who most largely influenced them. There were doubtless 
 men in the Puritan state penetrated by the Pilgrim’s spirit. John 
 Winthrop himself, the foremost single figure in the Massachusetts 
 •colony, would have been in all respects a loving companion to 
 Bradford, and a loving disciple to Robinson. But it must, I 
 think, be admitted that while Bradford was an example and 
 representative of the prevalent spirit of Plymouth — a spirit that 
 finds its expression in the teaching of Robinson — Winthrop was 
 a restraint and a repression of the intolerance of the Massachu- 
 setts colony. 
 
 Nathaniel Ward, of Ipswich, author of the Body of Liberties, 
 which, though it was never printed till within the memory of 
 some of us, served, practically, as Constitution and Bill of Rights 
 to Massachusetts until 1684, if not until 1780, says in the Simple 
 Cobbler of Agawam: “It is said men ought to have liberty of 
 conscience, and that it is persecution to debar them from it. I 
 can rather stand amazed than reply to this. It is an astonishment 
 to think that the brains of men should be parboiled in such im- 
 pious ignorance. No practical sin is so sinful as some error of 
 judgment ; no man so accursed with indelible infamy and dedo- 
 lent impenitency as authors of heresies.” 
 
 Now compare this with the farewell counsel of John Robinson, 
 reported by Winslow : “ We are, ere long, to part asunder, and 
 the Lord knoweth whether ever he should live to see our face 
 again. But whether the Lord had appointed it or not, he charged 
 
17 
 
 us before God and His blessed angels, to follow him no further 
 than he followed Christ ; and if God should reveal anything to us 
 by any other instrument of His, to be as ready to receive it as we 
 were to receive any truth by his ministry ; for he was very confi- 
 dent the Lord had more truth and light yet to break forth out of 
 His Holy Word.” 
 
 This is the Pilgrim’s declaration and, if we do not read the 
 world’s history amiss, the world’s declaration of religious inde- 
 pendence. Let it stand forever by the side of the immortal 
 opening sentences of the Declaration at Philadelphia . They are 
 twin stars, ever shining in the great constellation of the Northern 
 sky, pointing to that eternal Polar star of truth which hath no 
 fellow in the firmament. 
 
 There were beautiful and pure souls in the Puritan State, 
 for whose translation into the blessed society of the immor- 
 tals there seemed nothing of a gross mortality to be pruned 
 away. Winthrop is still our foremost example of a Christian 
 ruler, till the coming of Washington. The second John Win- 
 throp was a worthy son of such a father. The claim of his 
 accomplished descendant that no purer or nobler or lovelier 
 character can be found in the history of Connecticut, whether 
 among Governors or among governed, than that of the younger 
 Winthrop, may safely be enlarged to include any State that ever 
 existed. The Winthrops were Christian gentlemen, fit for the 
 championship of Bradford and Brewster, and there can be no 
 higher praise. There were, as you know, evil men in the 
 company of Pilgrims. But still, the character of the Pilgrim 
 finds its perfect portraiture in Bradford’s exquisite phrase — 
 “God’s free people;” while the word Puritan calls up to the 
 imagination a sterner, harsher, earthlier image. Blackstone 
 said, “I came from England to escape the Lord Bishops; 
 
 2 
 
18 
 
 and I cannot join with you because I would not be under 
 the Lord Brethren.” The Puritan brought with him to Salem 
 much of the spirit which had driven him from England. His 
 experience had been an experience of persecutions. What 
 Milton calls the “fury of the Bishops” was still raging. Se- 
 verity applied to men of English blood begets severity and 
 defiance. 
 
 “What wonder if in noble heat, 
 
 Those men thine arms withstood, 
 
 Retaught the lessons thou hadst taught, 
 
 And in thy spirit with thee fought, 
 
 Who were of English blood.” 
 
 There was a yearning for Christian unity both by Puritan and 
 Pilgrim. The leaders of both Colonies were English gentlemen. 
 They were attached by many tender ties to the Church of 
 England. The farewell letter to the Massachusetts Company, 
 which Mr. Winthrop thinks was written by his ancestor, is a 
 cry of the heart. The love for that dear Mother, the Church 
 of England, “from whence we rise, ever acknowledging that 
 such hope and part as we have obtained in the common salva- 
 tion, we have received in her bosom and sucked it from her 
 breasts,” was stirring in the bosom of John Robinson also. 
 Doubtless if the persecution had ceased, the division would 
 have ceased. Edward Winslow says, “The foundation of 
 our New England plantations was not Schisme, division or 
 separation, but upon love, peace and holiness; yea, such love 
 and mutual care of the Church of Leyden, for the spreading 
 of the Gospel, the welfare of each other and their prosperities 
 to succeeding generations, as is seldom found on earth.” 
 
 The Puritan had a capacity for an honest, hearty hatred, of 
 which I find no trace in Pilgrim literature. Indeed a personal 
 
19 
 
 devil must have been a great comfort to our Massachusetts 
 ancestors, as furnishing an object which they could hate with 
 all their might, without violation of Christian principles. 
 
 The experience of the Pilgrim at Leyden had been an ex- 
 perience of peace. There was much in Holland to shock the 
 strictness of our Fathers. They viewed, undoubtedly with 
 great disfavor, the thought that they or their children should 
 be blended with either the political or the religious life of Hol- 
 land. But they were received at Leyden with an abundant 
 welcome and hospitality. Among the most valuable lessons 
 which trained them for the founding of their State, are the 
 lessons learned under Holland. The softening and liberalizing 
 influence of those eleven years on Robinson himself is clearly 
 to be discerned. 
 
 Massachusetts united Church and State in the beginning, 
 admitting none but freemen to be Church members. Church 
 and State were always separate in Plymouth. There was 
 never any “ soul liberty ’* advocated or vindicated by Roger 
 Williams that did not exist at Plymouth. Certainly, he did 
 not leave Plymouth on compulsion. “ That great and pious 
 soul, Mr. Winslow,” he says, “melted and kindly visited me, 
 and put a purse of gold into the hand3 of my wife for our 
 supply.” 
 
 There is no danger that we shall ever forget what the children 
 of the Puritans have to say in reply. They had to preserve 
 their State from danger within and without, from foe spiritual 
 and from foe temporal. The little company, with the Atlantic 
 on one hand, their only wall of defence against the hatred of 
 King and Prelate, and the forest, home of the savage and the 
 wild beast on the other ; it was like a forlorn hope, it was like 
 a forlorn hope of an army on a night march, to which even an 
 
20 
 
 uncautious whisper might be ruin. We do not forget, too, 
 that the Puritan’s intolerance and superstition were, with the 
 single exception of his brother at Plymouth, the intolerance and 
 superstition of all mankind, nor do we forget that he was among 
 the first of all mankind to cast them off. Puritanism is a character, 
 •a force, and not a creed. Let others, if they like, trace their line- 
 age to Norman Pirate or to Robber Baron. The children of the 
 Puritan are not ashamed of him. The Puritan as a distinct, vital 
 and predominant power, lived less than a century in England. 
 ■He appeared early in the reign of Elizabeth, who came to the 
 throne in 1558, and departed at the restoration of Charles II, 
 in 1660. But in that brief time he was the preserver, aye, 
 he was the creator of English freedom. By the confession of 
 the historians who most dislike him, it is due to him that there 
 is an English Constitution. He created the modern House of 
 'Commons. That House, when he took his seat in it, was the 
 ffeeble and timid instrument or despotism. When he left it, it was 
 what it has ever since been, the strongest, freest, most venerable 
 legislative body the world had ever seen. When he took his 
 seat in it, it was little more than the register of the King’s 
 command. When he left it, it was the main depository of the 
 national dignity and the national will. King and Minister and 
 Prelate, who stood in his way, he brought to the bar and to 
 the block. In that brief but crowded century he made the 
 name of Englishman the highest title of honor upon the earth. 
 A great historian has said, “ The dread of his invincible army 
 was on all the inhabitants of the Island.” He placed the 
 name of Johu Milton high on the illustrious roll of the great 
 poets of the world, and the name of Oliver Cromwell highest 
 on the roll of English sovereigns. The historian might have 
 added that the dread of this invincible leader was on all the 
 
21 
 
 inhabitants of Europe. Puritanism crossed the sea with Win- 
 throp. It planted Massachusetts and Connecticut. It fought 
 the war of the Revolution. The spirit of English Puritanism 
 was transformed into the spirit of American liberty. The 
 saviour of the English Constitution was the creator of the- 
 Constitutions of America, and, in a later day, was their saviour 
 also. It put down the Rebellion. It abolished slavery. It 
 kept the National faith. In spite of the other elements — 
 Scandinavian, German, Italian, Celt, that are blending with' our 
 national life, under our free hospitality, it was never, in my 
 judgment, more powerful than at this hour. 
 
 The children of the Puritan are willing to accept any challenge 
 to a discussion of his character and his title to the respect of 
 mankind, from any antagonist, east or west, north or south, at 
 home or abroad, from prelate or from conventicle, from church- 
 man or from infidel, from foreigner or from degenerate offspring. 
 There are some modern revilers of the Massachusetts Puritans,, 
 who have sprung from Puritan loins. I should like to ask them 
 what they make of the single fact of the founding of Harvard 
 College. But one of the highest titles of Plymouth to honor is 
 the fact, that, as the two communities became blended, the spirit 
 of the Puritan was subdued and softened by the spirit of the 
 Pilgrim. 
 
 I am not unmindful that there is one high authority for an 
 opinion which, if accepted, would deprive John Robinson of his 
 highest glory and would even rob the event we celebrate of much 
 of its splendor. Dr. Dexter, the historian, the champion, the 
 lover of New England Congregationalism, thinks that John 
 Robinson was speaking of Church government only, and did not 
 mean to say that there was lo be expected from the word of God 
 any further light on the essentials of Christian doctrine or of 
 saving faith. 
 
22 
 
 Every student of the great things of American history, every 
 son, every lover of the Pilgrim, must cherish the memory of 
 Henry M. Dexter. The occasion should not pass without a word 
 of honor for his name. What we know of the life of the Fathers 
 at Leyden, and what we know of their origin in England, is due 
 to him, I am not sure but more than to all other investigators put 
 together. It is not surprising that this born champion and com- 
 batant should have refused to concede, even to the authority of 
 John Robinson, that the faith to which he was born and bred did 
 not contain, as expressed in its venerable formulae, the whole 
 counsel of God. The learned doctor says, “I conceive it to be 
 quite impossible for any candid person to read carefully Robin- 
 son’s defence of the doctrine propounded by the Synod at Dort, 
 without reaching the conclusion that the Leyden Pastor was in 
 entire agreement with the Synod, not merely in the articles of 
 faith which it has formulated, but in that animus of infallibility 
 and inexposure to essential future modification, in which it held 
 them.” I have read the volume carefully and with so much of 
 candor as God has vouchsafed to me. While, undoubtedly, it 
 affirms and most vigorously defends that Calvinistic faith which 
 the writer, and the men of his congregation, held, and which the 
 Fathers brought with them to Plymouth, the faith which has 
 wrought for so many ages such wonders for humanity, a faith 
 which has been held dear by so many martyrs of liberty, and so 
 many of the great builders, in the old times, and in the new, who 
 have builded States in Christian liberty and law, the faith of the 
 founders of Republics in Switzerland, in Holland, in England, in 
 New England, yet I can find in that great argument no animus of 
 infallibility, and no claim that the light which is to break forth 
 from the word hereafter may not illuminate them also, and that it 
 will not penetrate the great temple of Christian doctriue instead 
 
23 
 
 of being stayed in the porches and approaches. The preface to 
 the defence of the Synod at Dort itself to my apprehension, states 
 as clearly, if not as eloquently or tersely, the doctrine of the fare- 
 well address. Speaking of the substance of faith and the very 
 essence of salvation, he rebukes his antagonists for thinking that 
 they have seen the whole of God’s truth. “It is true we ought 
 not,” he says, “to look on our things alone, as if we alone had 
 knowledge, and conscience, and zeal, and souls to save: ‘but 
 every man also on the things of others,’ though in some things 
 differing from them, as having these things, as well as we : and 
 therewith considering, that many eyes see more than one, and 
 that specially having, as so many spectacles, the advantages of 
 knowledge of tongues, and arts, with daily travail in the scripture, 
 which in us are wanting. And thus serving God, in all modesty 
 of mind, and being sincere in the truth in love, * we shall be much 
 titter, both to help others, and to be helped by them in the things 
 agreeable thereunto.” 
 
 In these words John Robinson sounds the keynote of his 
 distinctively theological treatise, which he put to press in 1624, 
 four years after the departure of the Pilgrims and only a year 
 before his death. He was speaking not of Church government or 
 ritual or form, or ceremonial, but of predestination, of election, 
 of the law of conscience, of the fall of Adam and God’s fore- 
 knowledge and truthfulness, of original sin, of baptism, of the 
 covenant with Abraham and of a new and better covenant, of the 
 five points of Calvinism, of the Declaration of the Synod, a 
 declaration made by men who differed essentially, in ritual and 
 church government, from him and from each other. And it is of 
 these that he declares that we are not to look, not to think on our 
 things alone, as if we alone had knowledge, but every man also of 
 things of others, as having eyes to see as well as we, and ad- 
 
24 
 
 vantages of knowledge of tongues and arts, with daily travail in 
 the scripture, “which in us are wanting,” and calls upon his 
 people “ to serve God in all modesty of mind, and so to be fitter 
 •both to help others and to be helped by them.” 
 
 Dr. Dexter well says, “We have too much judged the Puritans, 
 and too much allowed the world to judge them, in the light of our 
 generation instead of the light of their own ; forgetting and help- 
 ing others to forget out of what a horror of thick darkness they 
 were scarcely more than commencing to emerge.” It is the glory 
 of John Robinson that he was conscious of the darkness of his 
 time, for, “saith he,” as Winslow reports, “ it is not possible the 
 Christian world can come so lately out of such thick anti-Christian, 
 darkness, and that full perfection of knowledge should break 
 forth at once.” 
 
 The sublime utterance of John Robinson would become not 
 only tame but petty and ludicrous and ridiculous, if we were 
 to add to it any phraseology which would limit its meaning, in 
 accordance with Dr. Dexter’s suggestion. 
 
 John Robinson would have dreaded nothing more than to have 
 led any weak brother astray. If he could but have seen in that 
 prophetic vision into which his soul was lifted and wrapt in the 
 mingled agony and joy of the day of parting at Delft Haven, how 
 countless generations dwelling in and ruling a continent larger 
 than Europe would hearken to the lofty music of that utterance, 
 how they would rejoice in it as itself the auroral light of the new 
 day that was to break forth from the word of God, he would, if 
 Dr. Dexter be right, have hastened to add : 
 
 “Mistake me not, my brethren dearly beloved. This re- 
 lateth only to the fashion of vestments ; to the posture of the 
 body in prayer ; to the authority of elders, and the virtue 
 conveyed by the imposition of hands. The horror of thick 
 
25 
 
 darkness, through which the world hath passed, and is yetr 
 passing, still giveth light enough for everything beside. In 
 all essential things, the whole counsel of God, though unknown 
 to Abraham and the Fathers, to Moses and the Prophets, tO' 
 all mankind before the Saviour’s coming, and to the vast ma- 
 jority of mankind ever since, is fully known to me and to the 
 Synod at Dort. No modesty of mind leadeth me to think I 
 can be helped by others, or that the advantages of knowledge 
 of tongues and arts, with daily travail in the scripture, which 
 in us are wanting, availeth aught in these things.” 
 
 It is no rash conjecture that the first spirit whose pure 
 companionship our excellent Dexter would have sought in the 
 realm where he has gone, was the spirit of John Robinson. 
 He would have already learned his mistake before their meeting. 
 As Beatrice said to Dante of Saint Gregory : — 
 
 “Wherefore, as soon as he unclosed his eyes, 
 
 Within this heaven, he at himself did smile.” 
 
 Dr. Thomas Fuller, whose wit has prevented his getting the- 
 credit due to his profound wisdom, was born in 1608, within a 
 mile of Robert Browne and not far from the cradle of the Pilgrims 
 at Scrooby and Austerfield. He was a clear eyed and not un- 
 sympathetic observer. He says of the Pilgrims in his Church 
 History : 
 
 “They laid down two grand ground- works on which tlieir 
 following fabric is to be erected : 
 
 “First. Only to take what was held forth in God’s word,- 
 leaving nothing to Church practice or human prudence, as but 
 the iron legs and clay toes of that statue whose whole hand 
 and body ought to be pure gold ; 
 
 “Second. Because one day teacheth another, they will not 
 
26 
 
 Hoe tied on Tuesday morning to maintain their tenets of Monday 
 night, if a new discovery intervene.” 
 
 Holland, as the researches of recent writers have shown, ex- 
 ercised a large influence on civil and religious liberity in England. 
 The traces of this influence appear in the Puritan commonwealth. 
 All the Protestant Reformers in Europe who rejected Episcopal 
 authority constituted one brotherhood, and had a large influ- 
 ence on each other. All of them regarded Holland as their 
 champion and defender. But the Pilgrims of Plymouth bore 
 to Holland a relation borne by no other. She had been for 
 twelve years their sanctuary, their home, their school, their 
 university. 
 
 Governor Bradford says, “They resolved to goe into the 
 low countries where there was freedom of religion for all men.” 
 The Pilgrim brought from Holland an experience of freedom, 
 civil and religious, then unknown elsewhere on the face of the 
 earth. Schiller says, “Every injury inflicted by a tyrant gave 
 a right of citizenship in Holland. 
 
 The church of the Pilgrim had its direct connection with 
 Christ. There was no human link between. If He were 
 not its rock, it had no foundation. If He were not Its 
 Father, it had no paternity. If He were not its support, it 
 Iiad no strength. If He were not its root, it was not planted 
 in the soil. The church planted at Scrooby and Austerfield, 
 rooted at Leyden, transplanted to Plymouth, was a band of 
 •Christians independent of any earthly power, as direct an 
 emanation from the spirit of Christ as the church first formed 
 at Antioch. There were but two places on earth at that day 
 where such a church could abide. One was Holland ; and the 
 other the unbroken wilderness of America. Robinson’s de- 
 finition of a church is this: “A company consisting though 
 
27 
 
 of but two or three, separated from the world, whether un- 
 christian or anti-christian, gathered unto the name of Christ 
 by a covenant made to work in all ways of God known to 
 them, is a church, and so hath the whole power of Christ.” 
 
 I do not know that there is any discussion of the principles 
 of civil liberty in Pilgrim literature. They make no complaint 
 of merely political oppression. Their enemy was the hierarchy. 
 Their tyrant was the law which enforced conformity. But 
 they were ready for self-government. During the first twelve 
 years they exercised all those functions of government which 
 are now performed in towns, counties and commonwealths. 
 
 The Pilgrim had seen in Holland the best example ever seen 
 in his time, or before, of municipal Republican government. 
 The compact signed on board the Mayflower was the necessary 
 and natural result of what he had learned in the Low Countries. 
 The compact begins with a declaration that they “are the loyal 
 subjects of our dread Sovereign, Lord King James, by the 
 Grace of God, of Great Britain and France and Ireland — King, 
 defender of the faith,” etc., and that they have undertaken 
 their voyage for the glory of God and the advancement of the 
 Christian faith, and honor of their King and country. And 
 yet the present necessity led them to make what has been called 
 the original social compact, in the form of as pure a Republic 
 as was ever known on earth before or since. Indeed the doctrine 
 on which the Revolution was fought afterward, of absolute in- 
 dependence of the British Parliament, is clearly implied from 
 their original constitution. In De Rassiere’s exceedingly spirited 
 letter describing Plymouth, in the 7th year after the landing, 
 is the whole statement of the contention of our Revolutionary 
 fathers in one pregnant sentence, “Whereby they have their 
 freedom without rendering an account to anyone, only if the 
 
28 
 
 King should choose to send a Governor-General, they would 
 be obliged to acknowledge him as Sovereign Chief.” On the 
 other hand, the Puritans of Massachusetts were impelled to 
 their emigration largely by the thirst for political freedom. 
 They dreaded schism. Yet they were speedily compelled to 
 sever the tie with the established Church, that Mother to whom 
 Winthrop and Higginson had uttered their despairing and lov- 
 ing cry. When religious liberty set her foot on the rock at 
 Plymouth, her inseparable sister, political freedom, came with 
 her. And when political liberty landed at Salem, there could 
 be no real separation. The other sister instantly followed. 
 
 The Puritan, it is true, was a religious enthusiast. But it 
 is also true that his history belongs to the political and not to 
 the religious history of the race. His work was the defence 
 of civil liberty, the framing of constitutions and statutes, re- 
 sistance to tyrants, diplomacy, conquest, the stern conflict and 
 the stern triumph of battle. The founders of Massachusetts, 
 and the men with whom they took counsel and agreed, were 
 busy, sagacious, influential, and active politicians, intent on 
 political reforms in England and on carrying out their princi- 
 ples in both countries. 
 
 The influence of the Pilgrim is a spiritual influence. His 
 soul thirsted for God, for the living God. Civil liberty came 
 to him as an incident. 
 
 Mr. Webster says that although many of them were Repub- 
 licans in principle, we have no evidence that our New England 
 ancestors would have emigrated merely from their dislike of 
 the political system of Europe. “ They fled not so much from 
 English Government as from the hierarchy and the laws which 
 enforced conformity to its establishment.” He adds that tol- 
 eration was a virtue beyond the conception of Queen Elizabeth, 
 
29 
 
 and beyond her age and that of her succesor. Both these 
 statements are doubtless true. But the PilgrimFathers brought 
 with them the desire for absolute civil and religious liberty for 
 themselves, and they brought with them an absolute purpose 
 to conform to the will of God as declared in the scriptures and 
 as interpreted by the individual conscience. Especially they 
 brought with them the Golden Rule. The logical consequence 
 of these two principles, taken together, must be inevitably the 
 establishment of a perfect civil and religious liberty. 
 
 The Pilgrim had none of the Puritan’s harshness, intolerance 
 or religious bigotry. He was like him in the absolute submis- 
 sion of his own will to the will of the Creator, both in per- 
 sonal conduct and the conduct of the State, and in deeming this 
 world as of little account but in its relation to another. 
 
 The Pilgrim had the Puritan’s faith in a personal immortality 
 and in a living God. Like the Puritan, he demanded absolute 
 obedience to the voice of conscience in the soul. 
 
 He was like the Puritan in believing in a future life where 
 just men were to enjoy immortality with those whom they had 
 loved here : 
 
 He was like the Puritan in that he was comforted and sup- 
 ported by that belief in every sorrow and suffering which he 
 encountered : 
 
 He was like the Puritan also in believing in the coming of 
 •God’s Kingdom in this world, and that the State he had builded 
 was to abide and to grow, a community dwelling together in the 
 practice of virtue, in the worship of God, in the pursuit of 
 truth. 
 
 There was no church membership, as in Massachusetts, re- 
 quired in Plymouth for political franchise. They had no 
 thought of Republicanism for themselves till the compact. But 
 
30 
 
 they learned to think of Republican government, without being 
 startled, from their brethren who had been at Geneva, and 
 chiefly from their own sojourn in Holland. 
 
 The Pilgrims had seen in Holland the oldest and best system 
 of common schools in Europe. Indeed their answer to the 
 charges sent from London in 1622 gives ample evidence that 
 from the very beginning they deemed universal education a 
 necessary of life. 
 
 They had seen in Holland the constant reading of the Bible 
 in all households. There had been twenty-four editions of the 
 New Testament and fifteen of the Bible printed in the vernac- 
 ular before they left Leyden. 
 
 They had lived under the shadow of the foremost university 
 in Europe, which had set them an example of a large liberality, 
 to which Oxford was a stranger till nearly 250 years afterward. 
 
 They had seen, and Brewster had wielded, the strength of 
 that irresistible engine, a free press. 
 
 They had seen the practical working of that equal division 
 of inheritance among all the children, of which Mr. Webster 
 said here, u Republican government must inevitably be the 
 result.” 
 
 They had learned in Holland the importance and convenience 
 of a public registration of deeds. 
 
 They had seen the security to individual freedom of a writ- 
 ten ballot. 
 
 All these things America owes to the Pilgrim of Plymouth, 
 and the Pilgrim of Plymouth owes them to Holland. 
 
 There landed on Plymouth Rock on the 21st day of Decem- 
 ber, 1621: 
 
 A State, free-born and full grown, exercising all local, mu- 
 nicipal and national functions through the voice of the whole 
 people, in simple Democratic majesty ; 
 
31 
 
 Ready, as its bounds grew and its individual communities- 
 multiplied, for the mechanism of a perfect representative gov- 
 ernment ; 
 
 An independent church, having a direct connection with 
 Christ, as did the church in the beginning, without human link 
 or mediation ; 
 
 A people mild both in government and private conduct, tol- 
 erant, peaceful, affectionate, lovers of home, of kindred and 
 friends, apt for social delights, fond of sound learning and the 
 refinements of domestic life, without the greed of gain or the 
 lust of conquest ; 
 
 But possessing a rare public spirit, and the high courage and; 
 aptness for command and for success which belong to the 
 English race ; 
 
 Made up of gentlemen and gentlewomen to whom refinement, 
 education, learning, and a noble behavior were necessities of 
 their nature : 
 
 Accustomed to toil, privation and hardship ; 
 
 Who had seen the operation of a written ballot ; 
 
 And of a public registration of deeds ; 
 
 And an equal distribution of inheritance among the children. 
 
 This little State existed for seventy-two years. It enacted the 
 mildest code of laws on the face of the earth. There were but 
 eight capital offences in Plymouth. There were thirty-one in 
 England at the end of the reign of Elizabeth. Sir James Mack- 
 intosh held in his hand a list of two hundred and twenty-three- 
 when he addressed the House of Commons at the beginning 
 of the present century. They established trial by jury. They 
 treated the Indians with justice and good faith, setting an exam- 
 ple which Vattel, the foremost writer on the law of nations, com- 
 mends to mankind. Their good sense kept them free from the 
 
32 
 
 ^witchcraft delusions. They were not unprepared for a spirited 
 self-defence, as witness Miles Standish’s answer to the challenge 
 of the Narragansett, and his stern summary justice at Wey- 
 mouth. They held no foot of land not fairly obtained by 
 honest purchase. No witch was ever hung there. In their 
 earlier days their tolerance was an example to Roger Wiliams 
 himself. He has left on record his gratitude for the generous 
 friendship of Winslow. Gov. Bradford’s courtesy entertained 
 the Catholic Priest, who was his guest, with a fish dinner on 
 Friday. If, like Roger Williams himself, they failed some- 
 what, as in the case of the Quakers, in the practical application 
 of a principle for which the world was not ready, their practice 
 and their principles soon came to be in accord. When we re- 
 member that some of our Baptist friends wanted the term 
 “damnable heretics” to include Unitarians and to have them 
 banished, that within a year from the beginning of the Revo- 
 lution New York shut out Catholic priests from her limits under 
 the penalty of death, and that in Maryland it was a capital 
 crime to be a Unitarian as late as 1770, you will hardly care 
 to join in severe condemnation of the Fathers of Plymouth. 
 And when at last, in 1692, Plymouth was blended with Massa- 
 chusetts, the days of bigotry and intolerance and superstition, 
 as a controlling force in Massachusetts, were over,. 
 
 The past is not secure unless it be followed by a worthy future. 
 The Pilgrim will fail unless his posterity be fit to keep his fame. 
 Has the experience of two hundred and seventy-five years strength- 
 ened or weakened the influence of the Pilgrim’s character, or the 
 power in human history of the faith, the principles, and the insti- 
 tutions which he brought with him when he landed upon the rock ? 
 Do they vindicate their authority in personal conduct, and the 
 conduct of States? Are they stronger or weaker now than then? 
 
33 
 
 How far have we kept the faith of the Fathers? Are we to trans- 
 mit it unimpaired to our children? What have we of rational hope 
 that our children will transmit it in turn unimpaired to their heirs? 
 It is well, I think, that at no infrequent periods this account 
 should be taken. 
 
 Are the devout religious faith, obedience to the voice of con- 
 science in the soul as a guide to the individual and the State, civil 
 liberty, civil government, liberty in religion, the quality of the 
 English race, and the free institutions brought by the Fathers 
 from England and Holland and established here, blended and in 
 harmony in the character of a great people, living and strong 
 to-day as they were in the first generation? Do we leave them 
 unimpaired to our children? Are they to abide? 
 
 One thing we must not fail to observe. It is quite clear that 
 when we consider the elements I have imperfectly described, 
 which gave the Pilgrim State its distinctive character, that no 
 one of them could be spared, if that distinctive character is to be 
 maintained. Probably as bright examples of each could be found 
 elsewhere. It is the fact that these shining qualities were united 
 and blended in the Pilgrim that gives him his distinction. 
 
 The Pilgrim was possessed by an intense religious faith, and for 
 it he was ready to encounter suffering and death. But there are 
 plenty of examples in history of a religious faith as intense, to 
 which its votaries have been ready to make as absolute a sur- 
 render of self, which the Pilgrim would have accounted as a 
 gross superstition. Gerald, the assassin of William the Silent, 
 was as sure he was doing the will of God as was his victim. 
 TTe met his death and the terrible torture which preceded 
 it with a courage as undaunted as that of any hero in history. 
 He fortified himself for his crime by reading the Bible, 
 by fasting and prayer, and then, full of religious exaltation, 
 
 3 
 
34 
 
 dreaming of angels and of Paradise, he departed for Delft, and 
 completed his duty as a good Catholic and faithful subject. 
 When his judges questioned him, when they condemned him 
 to have his hand enclosed in a tube, seared with a red hot iron, 
 to have his arms and legs and thighs torn to pieces with burn- 
 ing pincers, his heart to be torn out and thrown into his face, his 
 head to be dissevered from his trunk and placed on a pike, hi& 
 body to be cut into four pieces, and every piece to be hung on 
 a gibbet over one of the principal gates of the city, he showed 
 no sign of terror, no sorrow, or surprise. Fixing his dauntless 
 eye on his judges, he repeated with steady voice his customary 
 words, ‘ ‘ Ecce homo ! ’ ’ 
 
 The Moslem, the Indian, the Hindoo meet torture and death 
 with a courage as dauntless as that of the Pilgrim. 
 
 The subjection of the individual will to the law of duty,, 
 whether in personal conduct or the conduct of states, is as ma- 
 nifest in the Spartan as in the Puritan, and has had many ex- 
 amples since the day when the epitaph of the 300 was inscrib- 
 ed at Thermopylae : 
 
 Stranger! tell it to Lacedaemon, 
 
 That we lie here in obedience to her laws. 
 
 The love of freedom appears and has burned brightly in the 
 bosoms of men of all races and of all ages. We have no right 
 to make a claim for the Pilgrim which we cannot allow to the 
 Athenian or the Swiss, or the Swede, or the Scotsman. The 
 Dutch, or the Swedish, or the Scotch characteristics differ 
 widely from those of the men who settled Plymouth. 
 
 The institutions which the Pilgrim brought from Holland, he 
 left in Holland. 
 
 The institutions he brought from Englaud, he left in England. 
 
35 
 
 The English aptness for command and habit of success, in- 
 domitable courage, unconquerable perseverance belonged to this 
 race before the movement for religious freedom, and exist in 
 the English race to-day wherever it is found. 
 
 The English language and literature are possessions shared 
 by the whole English-speaking race. 
 
 To ask, therefore, whether the Pilgrim character is to abide, 
 is to ask whether the great qualities we have ascribed to the 
 Pilgrim are to remain blended, united, living, though perhaps 
 softened, in the lapse of years. 
 
 I suppose we must admit it to be true that with men of 
 thoughtful, instructed, conscientious natures, the authority of 
 the statement of religious faith that satisfied the Pilgrim, has 
 been shaken in recent times chiefly by two causes : 
 
 1st. The researches of modern science have occasioned disbe- 
 lief in the scripture narrative of the creation, and in the mirac- 
 ulous suspension of natural laws which the scripture records, 
 and on which the claim of Christianity was largely rested in 
 earlier days. 
 
 2d. The modern knowledge of the physical frame of man 
 seems to establish the existence of physical causes for what our 
 Fathers were wont to consider purely spiritual manifestations, 
 and so to make it seem more likely that the soul depends for 
 its own existence and capacity for action upon the continued 
 existence of the body. 
 
 The religious faith of mankind, declared in different periods, 
 always makes use of the framework, the setting, the imagery, 
 the illustration, which is furnished by the accepted scientific 
 knowledge of the time when it is uttered. Certainly to this the 
 teaching of our Bible, both in the Old Testament and in the 
 New, is no exception. These beliefs, taught from very impel*- 
 
36 
 
 feet scientific information, seem to be inseparably and inextri- 
 cably blended with the moral and religions truths which they 
 have been used to illustrate, and to render conceivable. At 
 every forward step of science, as she makes some new revela- 
 tion to her students, she seems to overthrow the religion of 
 which she has been the handmaid. So every great discoverer 
 in science, from Galileo to Darwin, from the discovery of grav- 
 itation and the slow geologic processes of the planting of the 
 coal and the formation of the rocks to the discovery of the 
 evolution and kindred of all animate nature, appears to the 
 teacher of the accepted religion of the time as a skeptic if not 
 as an infidel. No astonishment could exceed that of John Rob- 
 inson if he could hear the scientific illustrations by which the 
 most conservative and orthodox of his Calvinist successors un- 
 dertake to^make plain the counsel of God to a congregation of 
 most obedient and docile disciples to-day. So every period of 
 scientific progress seems to a superficial observer to be a 
 period of religious and spiritual retrogression. 
 
 Does the faith that supported the Pilgrims, the faith in a 
 personal immortality, in a conscious and benevolent Creator of 
 the world who watches its affairs with a personal intelligence, 
 and directs them with a loving purpose, as a father guideth his 
 children, abide unimpaired as an influenee in the government 
 of States and of personal conduct to-day ? This is the theme of 
 all themes, the question of all questions. It cannot be passed by 
 on any solemn public occasion which is devoted to the memory 
 of the Pilgrims. I think, speaking for myself, that when the 
 new law which science has shown to us becomes clear, not only 
 to the genius which has first perceived it, but to the common 
 apprehension of mankind, the eternal verities of a conscious 
 .and benevolent ^preator, and a personal, human immortality re- 
 
37 
 
 appear clearer and stronger. Even the skepticism of modem 
 thought will at least agree to this, that the faith in righteous- 
 ness, the willingness of mankind to obey a law higher than 
 their own desire, grows stronger from age to age. It was never 
 stronger than to-day. The belief in what has been called the 
 power in this world that makes for righteousness is stronger 
 than ever, even in the minds of men who reject a miraculous 
 or a religious sanction of its commands. The faith in miracles 
 may have abated. The miracle may have been consigned to 
 a place among the lower and grosser arguments which enforce 
 obedience to the divine behest of duty. It is at best but milk 
 for babes. But the faith drawn from the history of the con- 
 stant law which prevails in the ordinary government of the 
 universe has more than taken its place. 
 
 The scientific inquirer makes his inquiry from a love of truth; 
 and the lover of truth will never be other than an obeyer of 
 duty. 
 
 Science traces the imperceptible steps by which inorganic 
 matter reaches life, sensation, consciousness, will, conscience. 
 She tells us, if we understand her, that in uncounted, perhaps 
 unimaginable ages the atoms of dead dust have stirred and 
 quickened into vegetable life. The vegetable has become con- 
 scious of an animal nature. The animal acquires human intel- 
 ligence. But the voice of duty was full and clear in the morn- 
 ing of creation. The voice which Adam disobeyed, to which 
 Abel and Abraham listened, to which the Prophets and Pilgrims 
 gave their lives, was heard in fullest strength when the human 
 intelligence first became conscious of itself. Ever it overcomes 
 and masters all the forces which science discovers or compre- 
 hends. 
 
 Groping science lays bare the cells and brings under its mi- 
 
38 
 
 croscope the minute powder in whose gray globules are held in 
 store all thoughts and memories. But the will, lord of thought, 
 summoning memory from its cell with sovereign power, still 
 dwells in its cloud, mysterious, unapproachable, inaccessible. 
 
 Science from age to age tells us more and more of the phy- 
 sical instrument by which the mind — the will — enforces its 
 commands. It lays bare the mechanism, the secret spring by 
 which the physical frame is set in motion. But it has added 
 nothing to our knowledge of the mind itself, of the spiritual 
 being which is conscious of itself, which in its sublime freedom 
 chooses for itself the law which it will obey, and even when it 
 pays its homage to its Creator, or to His mandate of duty, pays 
 only a free and voluntary homage. 
 
 If any man doubt that the faith in justice and righteousness, 
 and their power as a practical force in the government of the 
 world is increasing from age to age, whatever may be the sanc- 
 tion, let him read the lives of the men who for the past gen- 
 eration have been chosen by Great Britain for the government 
 of her 250 million subjects in the East. An almost unlimited 
 power, gained without scruple, used for generations as a pro- 
 vision for the children of her upper classes, has become stead- 
 ily and surely an example of moderation, humanity and justice. 
 There can be found few finer examples of the character of the 
 great race from which we are so proud to be descended, than 
 Lord Lawrence, or Lord Mayo, or Sir James Stephen. 
 
 The u Sahibs do not understand or like us,” said the Indian 
 scholar to Mr. Monier Williams. “ But they try to be just 
 and do not fear the face of man.” 
 
 The belief in miracles may have diminished in strength. But 
 religious faith is only a sanction of the moral law. The belief 
 in a prevalence of that law as a controlling force in the world 
 
39 
 
 •has not abated. It abides. The sanction of God’s law by 
 miracles has given place to a sanction by His constant and 
 •eternal providence. 
 
 There is doubtless to-day great impatience of ecclestiasical 
 authority, of creeds — the devices by which men seek to narrow 
 and limit the infinite truth of God, or to thrust their weak and 
 fallible power between the soul and its Creator. But the faith 
 that there came to this world nineteen hundred years ago, a 
 majestic Being, divinely commissioned, announcing a perfect 
 rule, and Himself a perfect example, for human conduct, was 
 never so powerful as at this moment. 
 
 Is the principle of self-government in civil liberty as strong 
 to-day with us as with the Fathers at Plymouth? John Cotton 
 wrote to Lord Say in 1636 : 
 
 “ Democracy I do not conceive that ever God did ordain as 
 a fit government, either in Church or Commonwealth. If the 
 people be Governors, who shall be governed?” 
 
 John Cotton’s question is almost the greatest question of all 
 history and all destiny. The American answer to it is that if 
 the people be the governors, the people shall be the governed. 
 The human will voluntarily and in freedom subjecting itself to 
 a law higher than its own desire, is the sublimest thing in the 
 universe, except its Creator. We have forty-five sovereign States 
 united in an imperial Republic, each one of which has written 
 in its constitution that those things which are forbidden by the 
 moral law and the law of justice shall not be enacted in the 
 government of the State by any human authority or accom- 
 plished by any human desire. They have created a mechanism 
 perfect as the lot of humanity will admit for securing this 
 restraint. Every generation has had and will have its own 
 temptations, and has committed and will commit its own of- 
 
40 
 
 fences. But you will all agree with me that not only the love 
 of liberty, but the strength of these constitutional restraints 
 on the present desires of an impatient people grows stronger 
 from generation to generation and from age to age. I think 
 our generation understands better than it was ever understood 
 before that there is something far more than the love of free- 
 dom, something far higher than freedom itself, essential to a 
 great State or to a great soul. Freedom is but the removal 
 of obstacles. Freedom may be for the savage as for the 
 Christian, for the hyena as for the dove. When the fetter 
 has been stricken from the limbs, when the caged or chained 
 eagle soars into the sky, the time has come for labor, for dis- 
 cipline, for obedience. The freest people must submit to the- 
 severest and most strenuous sense of obligation, if it would 
 lift itself to its own ideals. It must listen to a voice of high- 
 er authority than its own. The voice of the people is not the- 
 voice of God. That sentiment is alike false and impious. 
 
 The principles of the American constitutions pervade the en- 
 tire continent. As the child who goes out, poor and obscure 
 from his birthplace to seek his fortune, comes back again suc- 
 cessful and honored and strong to enrich the parental dwelling, 
 so the principles of civil liberty in constitutional restraints- 
 which have possessed the American continent from Hudson's Bay 
 to Cape Horn, have crossed the Atlantic again to possess the 
 countries of their origin. England is almost a Republic in 
 everything but name. France, after two failures, has become 
 a permanent member of the family of free states, while in 
 Southern and Oriental seas where the adventurous ships of our 
 Fathers, long after the American constitution was framed, found 
 nothing but barbarism and savagery, the great Australasian 
 Commonwealths are rising in splendor and in glory to take, at 
 
41 
 
 no distant day, a place perhaps foremost in the family of self- 
 governing nations. There is to-day no monarchy on American 
 soil, unless we except the loose hanging power still retained 
 by her Majesty, Queen Victoria, over the British possessions on 
 the north. 
 
 If there be one thing more than another which is the settled 
 purpose of intelligent and educated men and women who are* 
 are to be, and ought to be the governing forces in all Christ- 
 ian nations, it is that the relation of man to his Creator shall 
 be a question for the individual soul, and shall not be used as 
 an instrument by any human power or authority. Our Fathers 
 dreaded the power of the Catholic Church. But I think we are 
 quite apt to forget that the “fury of the Bishops” from which 
 Milton says they fled, was the fury of Protestant Bishops. 
 Religious intolerance was the error and crime of past ages, uni- 
 versal but with few exceptions, and belonged to all churches alike. 
 The witchcraft delusion prevailed in Protestant England and 
 in Puritan Massachusetts, as well as among the Catholic nations 
 of the continent. Protestant counsellors governed the monarch by 
 whose orders the body of Oliver Cromwell was disinterred from, 
 its resting-place in Westminster Abbey, and the head — nobler 
 and more august than any in the long line of English sover- 
 eigns since the day of Alfred — was exposed to public indig- 
 nity on Temple Bar. To-day Catholic France is as tolerant as 
 Protestant Massachusetts. Catholic Italy has thrown off the 
 temporal power of the Papacy. There has been no nobler 
 tribute in recent years to the memory of the Pilgrim, and to 
 civil and religious freedom than that uttered in Plymouth ten 
 years ago by a Catholic poet. I know of no more eloquent 
 and stirring statement anywhere of a lofty American patriotism 
 than that by Father Conaty, an Irish Catholic priest, in my 
 
42 
 
 own city of Worcester, when the portrait of our Irish hero, 
 Sergeant Plunkett, was hung on the walls of Mechanics’ Hall. 
 
 In Massachusetts alone at least fifty-six per cent, of her people 
 are of foreign parentage. Probably thirty per cent, of her people 
 are of the Catholic faith. They came here, most of them, 
 driven by an extreme poverty from homes where for centuries 
 they had been the victims of an almost intolerable oppression. 
 They have grave faults, which it is not part of a true friend- 
 ship or a true respect to attempt to hide or to gloss over. But 
 I hold it one of the most remarkable and one of the most en- 
 couraging facts in our history that this great stream which has 
 poured into our State within the memory of living men who 
 are not yet old, has changed so little the character of Massa- 
 chusetts and has had, on the whole, so favorable an influence 
 upon her history and causes so little reasonable apprehension 
 for the future. Massachusetts has educated the foreigner. She 
 is making an American of him. She is surely, and not very 
 slowly, when we consider the great periods that constitute the 
 life of a State, impressing upon him what is best of the Pil- 
 grim and the Puritan quality and the Pilgrim and the Puritan 
 conception of a State. I look with an unquestioning hope upon 
 the future of Massachusetts. Nothing can stay her in her 
 great career, unless evil and low ambition shall stir up strife 
 where there should be peace, hatred where there should be 
 sympathy, and the conflict of religious sect and creed where 
 there should be nothing but common Christian faith and com- 
 mon Christian love. 
 
 There is a story of an Irish traveller who touched his hat to 
 the statue of Jupiter in Rome. He said in explanation that 
 he was afraid the old fellow might come into power again. 
 The old Giants, Pope and Pagan, had become harmless in their 
 
43 
 
 caverns so long ago as the time when Bunyan’s Pilgrim passed 
 by on his way to the holy city. They are no more dangerous 
 now. Timorous and Mistrust, Mr. Ready-to-halt and Mr. 
 Feeble-mind, may turn pale and their knees may tremble with 
 dread of these ancient spectres. They may hide themselves in 
 caverns of their own to take counsel for mutual protection. 
 They cannot frighten the American people. Still less will the 
 sons of the Pilgrims be disturbed. We do not meet tyranny 
 or bigotry or despotism or priestcraft with weapons like their own. 
 We have learned other lessons from the Pilgrim Fathers. 
 Leave liberty to encounter despotism. Leave freedom to deal 
 with slavery. Leave tolerance to meet intolerance. Set the 
 eagle to deal with the bat. Let in upon the marsh and upon 
 the swamp the pure air and the fresh breeze. Open the win- 
 dows into the cold dungeon and dark cellar and let in the sun's 
 light and the sun’s warmth. 
 
 The Pilgrims were Englishmen. Their children are, in the 
 essentials of national character, Englishmen still. We have a 
 great admixture of other races. But it is an admixture chief- 
 ly from those Northern races of which England herself was 
 composed. In spite of past conflicts and present rivalry Eng- 
 land is the nation closest to us in affection and sympathy. 
 The English language is ours. English literature is perhaps 
 more familiar to the bulk of our people than to Englishmen 
 themselves. The English Bible is still our standard of speech, 
 our inspiration, our rule of faith and practice. We look to 
 English authority in the administration of our system of law 
 and equity. English aptness for command, habit of success, 
 indomitable courage, unconquerable perseverance have been, 
 are, and are to remain the American quality. The men of 
 other blood who come here acquire and are penetrated with the 
 
44 
 
 English, or perhaps without boasting or vanity we may say,, 
 the American spirit. The great bulk of our people are of En- 
 glish blood. But by the spirit, which has its own pedigree, its 
 own ancestry, its own law of descent and of inheritance, we 
 are English even more than by any tie of physical kinship. It 
 is of this pedigree of the spirit, governed by forces of which 
 science has as yet given us no account, that we are taking ac- 
 count to-day. It is by virtue of its laws that John Winthrop 
 counts George Washington among his posterity. James Otis 
 transmits his quality to Charles Sumner. Emerson may well 
 be reckoned the spiritual child of Bradford ; Charming the spirit- 
 ual child of John Robinson ; and Miles Standish the progenitor 
 of Grant. The great-hearted Hebrew prophet has many a de- 
 scendant among the great-hearted Puritans. In this genealogy 
 the men of Thermopylae are no aliens to the men of Bunker 
 Hill. When the boy who went out from a New England dwel- 
 ling to meet death at Gettysburg or Antietam with no motive 
 but the love of country and the sense of duty, shall meet, 
 where he is gone, the men who fought the livelong day with 
 Wellington or obeyed Nelson’s immortal signal, he shall 
 “ Claim kindred there, and have the claim allowed.” 
 
 What I said just now was written more than ten days # ago. 
 Let it stand. Let it stand. It is well that these two great 
 nations should know something of each other that they do not 
 get from their metropolitan press, whether in London or in New 
 York. Each of them should know that if it enter into a quar- 
 rel with the other it is to be a contest with that people on the 
 face of the earth which is most like to itself. The quarrel 
 
 * During those ten days, the note of Mr. Olney, Secretary of State, to Lord 
 Salisbury, and the message of President Cleveland to Congress on the Venezue- 
 lan question had been published. 
 
45 
 
 will be maintained on both sides until Anglo-Saxon, until 
 English, until American endurance is exhausted. For that 
 reason, if for no other, such a conflict should never begin. 
 
 This whole thing is very simple. We cannot permit any 
 weak power on this continent to be despoiled of its territory, 
 or to be crowded out of its rights, by any strong power any- 
 where. England would not permit us to do that to Belgium 
 or to Denmark. On the other hand, we have no title to in- 
 terfere with the established boundaries of English territory, 
 whether we like them or do not like them. All between those 
 two limits is subject for discussion and arbitration : subject for 
 that international arbitration which a delegation of English 
 members of Parliament came to Boston a few years ago to im- 
 press upon us, saying that in their desire for its establishment 
 they represented the opinions of a large majority of the English 
 House of Commons. 
 
 The settlement of pending differences upon these principles 
 will be compelled by the business men and the religious senti- 
 ment of these two nations, influences always irresistible when 
 they are united and when they are brought to bear upon large 
 matters of national and international import. 
 
 But you have not gathered here for philosophical, or political, 
 or historical disquisition. This day is for the expression of 
 filial love. The thoughts which are never strangers to the 
 bosoms of the sons and daughters of the Pilgrims are to be 
 stimulated and intensified under the operation of that mysteri- 
 ous law by which, in a large assembly, or when a whole people 
 unite in a common observance, the emotion in each individual 
 heart is increased and multiplied by the emotion of every other. 
 This is a larger Thanksgiving Day. To-day the children of 
 the Pilgrims, wherever on the continent or on the face of the 
 
46 
 
 earth they dwell, are thinking of their Fathers. They are 
 thinking of the holy men, of the sweet and comely matrons, of 
 the brave youths and beautiful maidens to whom this coast and 
 these forest glades were familiar in the infancy of Plymouth. 
 Their hearts are full of the lofty tragedy and lofty triumph. 
 We think of the death of Carver, of Dorothy Bradford, of the 
 sweet Rose Standish, as if they had happened in our own house- 
 holds ; as if our Mothers had told us the story of some other 
 children who had died under our father’s roof before we could 
 remember. It is as real as if it happened yesterday. It shall 
 be as real as if it happened yesterday until time shall be no 
 more. What presence looks over the Bay to-day more living 
 than the warrior figure of Miles Standish? What household 
 memory is dearer to us than that of John Carver, of whom it 
 has been so well said: “The column of smoke from the vol- 
 ley fired at his grave was his only monument.” 
 
 There is no tragedy in all fiction, not the death of Hector, 
 not the sorrow of CEdipus, not the guilt of Macbeth, not the 
 wounded heart of Lear, like this true and simple story. The 
 Atlantic between these men and women and their homes in 
 beautiful England, the horrors of the stormy passage, the land- 
 ing in December, the terrible suffering of the first winter, but 
 six or seven men able to tend the sick or bury the dead, when 
 the spring came seven times as many graves as dwellings, 
 strong men staggering at their work at noonday by reason of 
 fainting for want of food, the challenge of the savage, the 
 howling of the wild beast, and yet there is nothing in it of 
 sorrow, nothing in it except lofty triumph. The Pilgrims had 
 no regrets. There is no gloom in their annals. The tragedies 
 of history, after all, are its richest blessings and most precious 
 memories. We mourn for those whom the fate of war has 
 
47 
 
 bereaved of their kindred, or whose life has been made a burden 
 by the loss of health or limb. Yet would the mother have her 
 son back again at the price of having the brave deed undone? 
 Would the widow clasp her husband’s form again, if she could 
 buy him back at the price of striking his name from the list of 
 heroes? Does the crippled and wounded veteran wish he had 
 staid at home, if in that way he could get back his health or 
 his limb? 
 
 Bradford’s history is a brave and cheerful story. Think, 
 too, of this story of the founding of a great nation with no 
 fable in it. The Pilgrims were followed by a generation in- 
 capable of boasting, and quite otherwise occupied. One hun- 
 dred and fifty years passed before anybody celebrated anything 
 they had done. There is the loving tribute of friendship. But 
 the praise was for God. 
 
 There is surely, as I said in the beginning, no statelier or 
 loftier presence in human history than the Pilgrims of Plymouth. 
 What belongs to a high behavior, to a simple, severe but deli- 
 cate taste in dress, in architecture, in house-furnishing, in the 
 decoration and adornment of daily life, they discerned with un- 
 erring taste. The satire of Hudibras, the caricature of Hogarth, 
 the scorn of the courtier, the pride of the ruffling gallant, have 
 exhausted themselves to ridicule the figure of the Fathers of 
 New England, and their contemporaries who sat in council with 
 Cromwell or marched to victory under his banner. But these 
 scoffers have had their day. The dress of the cavalier has 
 now been remitted to the butler or the footman. The fashion- 
 able lovelocks ornament the head of the fiddler or the buffoon. 
 But the dress of the Puritan is now the dress of all gentlemen 
 in Europe. The architects of our dwellings are studying the 
 
 secret of his simple and noble architecture. The serious dig- 
 
48 
 
 laity of demeanor which marked the intercourse of Bradford 
 and Brewster is a pattern for the imitation of any Ambassador, 
 though he represent seventy million freemen at whatever court, 
 or before ' whatever Sovereign he may stand. Can you find 
 anywhere a finer type of a noble and accomplished gentleman 
 than William Bradford? You may search Europe for his peer. 
 Into what stately eloquence he rises when he speaks of the 
 higher things of the spirit, and the grave concerns of the Com- 
 monwealth. What an accomplished scholar he was. Look at 
 his handwriting, a matter by which you can oftimes discern the 
 gentleman as you can in the step, or tone of the voice, or 
 carriage of the person, or glance of the eye. When Bradford, 
 and Brewster, and Carver, and Robinson, and Miles Standish, 
 and Richard Warren, and Edward Winslow, and Samuel Fuller, 
 were taking council together in Leyden, they could have set a 
 pattern of stately dignity to any society on earth. Brewster 
 had a library of three hundred and seventy-five volumes. His 
 principal estate consisted of sixty-four volumes in the learned 
 languages. What noble and lofty and exquisite sentences are 
 found in the writings of Robinson. The passage in one of his 
 letters to the little exiled flock from whom he was separated, — 
 “In a battle it is not looked for but that divers should die,” 
 is in the highest strain of Paul. “God forbid that I should 
 need to exhort you to peace, which is the bond of perfection, 
 
 and by which all good is tied together, and without which it is 
 
 scattered. Have peace unto God first, by faith in his promise 
 good conscience kept in all things, and oft renewed by repent- 
 ance ; and so one with another for His sake who is, though 
 three, one ; and for Christ’s sake, who is one, and as you are 
 
 called by one spirit to one hope.” Is not this the very spirit 
 
 of John the Beloved Disciple? Is not this the very spirit of 
 
Grace, Mercy and Peace? I do not find the battle and the 
 march and the gaudium certaminis anywhere in our Pilgrim. 
 His longing was ever for peace. 
 
 Leyden street in Plymouth, with its cluster of seven humble 
 dwellings, witnessed a high behavior to which there could not 
 be found a parallel in any court in Europe. There was no 
 employment so homely or so menial that it could debase the 
 simple dignity of these men, a dignity born of daily spiritual 
 communion with heavenly contemplations, of constant medita- 
 ting on the things which concern eternal life, and the things 
 which concern the foundation of empire. It was like an 
 encampment of a company of crusaders on their journey to 
 the Holy City, where every companion was a prince or a 
 noble. DeRassiere describes the little procession as it 
 marched to worship God on Sunday morning summoned by the 
 beat of the drum. Was there ever a statelier ceremonial at an 
 emperor’s coronation? There can be no better touchstone of 
 the genuineness and sincerity of a lofty religious faith than its 
 creation of a lofty behavior, such as comports with daily med- 
 itation and conversation on celestial and eternal interests. 
 
 This is the one story to which for us, or for our children, 
 nothing in human annals may be cited for parallel or compari- 
 son, save the story of Bethlehem. There is none other told 
 in Heaven or among men like the story of the Pilgrim. Upon 
 this rock is founded our house. Let the rains descend, and 
 the floods come, and the winds blow and beat upon that house, 
 it shall not fall. The saying of our prophet — our Daniel — is 
 fulfilled. The sons of the Pilgrim have crossed the Missis- 
 sippi and possess the shores of the Pacific. The tree our 
 Fathers set covered at first a little space by the seaside. It 
 has planted its banyan branches in the ground. It has spread 
 4 
 
50 
 
 along the lakes. It has girdled the Gulf. It has spanned the 
 Mississippi. It has covered the prairie and the plain. The 
 sweep of its lofty arches rises over the Rocky Mountains, and 
 the Cascades, and the Nevadas. Its hardy growth shelters the 
 frozen region of the far Northwest. Its boughs hang over the 
 Pacific. And in good time — in good time — it will send its 
 roots beneath the waves and receive under its vast canopy the 
 islands of the sea. 
 
 “Branching so broad and long, that in the ground 
 The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow 
 About the mother tree, a pillared shade 
 High overarched, and echoing walks bet ween .’ 7 
 
 Wherever the son of the Pilgrim goes, he will carry with him 
 what the Pilgrim brought from Leyden — the love of liberty, 
 reverence for law, trust in God — a living God — belief in a 
 personal immortality, the voice of conscience in the soul, a 
 heart open to the new truth which ever breaketh from the 
 bosom of the Word. His inherited instinct for the building of 
 States will be as sure as that of the bee for building her cell 
 or the eagle his nest. 
 
 The gentle spirit of Bradford, the stern courage of Standish,. 
 the lofty faith of Brewster, mellowed and broadened as the 
 centuries come and go, shall be his. It may be that the Power 
 that was with his Fathers will not doom him to the severe 
 discipline and the stern trial that was theirs. We may hope 
 for him the blessings of existence to which Webster summoned 
 him — of “life in pleasant lands, in verdant fields, and under 
 healthful skies. He may hope for the enjoyment of the great 
 inheritance we transmit to him, the blessings of good govern- 
 ment and religious liberty, the treasures of science, the delights 
 of learning, the transcendent sweets of domestic life,” shared 
 
51 
 
 with kindred and parents and children. But he must enjoy 
 and hold these things as ready to part with them at the 
 summons of Him who bestowed them. They are never to be 
 bought or to be held at the sacrifice of freedom of truth, or 
 of duty. 
 
 Whatever temptation come to him, let the memory of the 
 men who landed here rise in his soul, to be his shield and safety. 
 
 Wherever in coming centuries men govern themselves in 
 freedom, let him still be found foremost, taking the honest and 
 the brave part. 
 
 If cowardice dissuade him from the peril and sacrifice, with- 
 out which nothing can be gained in the great crises of Na- 
 tional life, let him answer : I am of the blood of them who 
 crossed the ocean in the Mayflower and encountered the wil- 
 derness and the savage in the winter of 1620. 
 
 If luxury and ease come with their seductive whisper, he 
 will reply : I am descended from the little company of whom 
 more than half died before spring, and of whom none went 
 back to England. 
 
 Bigotry and superstition will in vain utter their hoarse and 
 discordant counsel to him who is of God’s free people. 
 
 Let him never forget his ancestry. 
 
 In his halls is hung 
 
 Armory of the invincible Knights of old. 
 
 In everything he is sprung 
 
 Of earth’s first blood, hath titles manifold. 
 
 If the hearts of other men fail them, he will still turn for 
 inspiration to the rock where Alden landed, to the walls 
 where Brewster preached, to the hill where Bradford lies 
 buried. 
 
52 
 
 Let this day forevermore be devoted to filial affection. Let 
 it be given to the utterance of children’s love. The beautiful 
 shadows of the Pilgrim Father and the Pilgrim Mother hover 
 over us now. In that spiritual presence it cannot be that our 
 hearts shall be cold or that our thoughts should be unworthy 
 of our high lineage. Let every return of the Pilgrim anniver- 
 sary witness a new consecration of his children to the Pil- 
 grim’s cause in the Pilgrim’s spirit. If it shall be our fortune 
 to enjoy the blessings of civilization, of order, of refinement, 
 of happy homes, of wealth, of letters, of art, of the transcen- 
 dent sweets of domestic life, of safety, of good fame, of 
 honor, let us enjoy them, grateful to the God who has given 
 them and to the ancestors whom he vouchsafed to make His 
 instruments to win them. Not unto us ; not unto us, but unto 
 Him and to them be the praise. But if we are called on in His 
 Providence to give up all these, let us remember that it is not 
 for these things that human life on this earth is given. Let 
 us still remember the Pilgrim’s life and the Pilgrim’s lesson. 
 Above all, Liberty ! Above all, Faith ! Above all, Duty ! 
 
 Ode. 
 
 “The Pilgrim Fathers, Where are They?” Written by Rev. 
 John Pierpont for the celebration in 1824 ; sung by the 
 Plymouth Musical Club. 
 
 Benediction. 
 
 By Rev. Ernest W. Shurtleff, Pastor of the Church of the 
 
 Pilgrimage. 
 
MYRON W. WHITNEY. 
 
THE DINNER. 
 
 Upon the conclusion of the public exercises in the 
 Armory, the invited guests, with the Trustees and Offi- 
 cers of the Pilgrim Society, the Chief Marshal and his 
 Aids, and the Committees in charge of the celebra- 
 tion, dined together at the Samoset House. The 
 tables were spread in the large dining-room of the 
 hotel. Arrangements had been made for one hundred 
 persons, and every seat was occupied. 
 
 Rev. E. H. Capen, D. D., President of Tufts’ College, 
 asked the blessing. 
 
 Before the after-dinner speaking began, Senator Hoar 
 was obliged to leave in order to take a train, and, as 
 he rose to go, the President of the Society asked the 
 gentlemen present to rise and join in the following 
 toast, to which Mr. Hoar briefly responded : 
 
 The President : — Mr. Hoar is obliged to retire now 
 in order to take the 3:30 train, and, before he goes, I 
 desire to express to him jour grateful acknowledgments for 
 the great oration which he has delivered this morning, and 
 to ask you to join in the toast: “Our best wishes for 
 health and a long life of usefulness and honor to Senator 
 Hoar.” 
 
 The literary exercises began about half-past three 
 o’clock, and the President spoke as follows: 
 
 It is a grateful privilege to extend to you all a cordial 
 greeting, and, in behalf of the Pilgrim Society, to welcome 
 to Plymouth the orator and the poet of the day, who have con- 
 
54 
 
 tributed so much to make the occasion ever memorable, 
 and the invited guests, who, by their presence, have lent 
 an added dignity and importance to the exercises of the 
 day. 
 
 Three quarters of a century ago the Pilgrim Society was 
 organized by certain citizens of Plymouth for the purpose, 
 as expressed in its charter, of erecting a monument to per- 
 petuate the memory of the virtues, the enterprise, and un- 
 paralleled sufferings of their ancestors who first settled in 
 that ancient town, and for the erection of a building for its 
 meetings. The desire and ambition of its founders has been 
 realized, and even more. Upon the hill above us stands the 
 National Monument to the Forefathers, erected by the gen- 
 erous contributions of a grateful people from the Atlantic 
 to the Pacific, its summit crowned with the majestic figure 
 of Faith, mute, yet eloquent of the lofty spirit which in- 
 spired the Pilgrims, and its four corners marked with the 
 statues of Freedom and Education, Morality and Law, typi- 
 fying and illustrating those cardinal principles upon which 
 rested the infant colony, and upon which aloue the great 
 states and greater nation which it founded can securely rest. 
 In its hall, no longer devoted to the meetings of the So- 
 ciety only, are tenderly preserved and carefully cherished the 
 precious relics and mementoes of many a member of the 
 Plymouth company. 
 
 Still other opportunities await it, and other duties lie before 
 it. The Pilgrim Society must ever “ keep their memory 
 green.” From time to time, on these recurring anniver- 
 saries of the departure and the landing, the story of the 
 Pilgrims will be told, and their virtues, their enterprise, and 
 heir unparalleled sufferings be perpetuated. Here have come 
 
55 
 
 the statesman and historian, Webster and Everett, Winthrop 
 and Hoar — last only in order of time — to tell, with match- 
 less eloquence, the Pilgrim story. Here, too, have come the 
 poets, Pierpoint and Holmes, O’Reilley and Stoddard, 
 to pay to the memory of the Pilgrims the graceful 
 tribute of their glowing verse. To what place could 
 we summon more fitly than here the poet and the historian? 
 For here, in spite of the changes which the years have 
 brought, above the rumble of the witches’ train in its 
 streets, and the hum of busy machinery in its factories, still 
 speak the voices of the past. Here ever lingers a peculiar 
 interest and an indescribable charm. Sometimes in the stillness 
 of a summer’s noon, sometimes beneath the cold moonlight 
 of a silent December night we seem to hear the echoes of 
 bygone years. To citizen and visitor, alike mindful of its 
 past, his ear attuned to its messages, his mind impressed 
 with these associations, as he passes down the streets which 
 the Pilgrim feet once pressed, beneath the shade of stately 
 trees to each familiar spot there seems to come the cries 
 of the children, the sound of the weeping of the women, 
 the echoes of the prayers of the fathers, and, rising above 
 them all, the triumphant strain of praise and thanksgiving, 
 as through doubt and fear the Pilgrim clearly saw that His 
 arm, which so smote and afflicted them, was also raised to 
 sustain and preserve. 
 
 As you gathered to-day in the great building which stands 
 upon the lot, and near the site, where probably once stood 
 the home of William Brewster, behind it the town brook 
 flowing to the sea, still fed by the sweet springs of fresh 
 running water which gladdened the hearts of the Pilgrims, 
 fronting upon the ancient street leading from their hill of 
 
56 
 
 graves to the sea, perchance in imagination you saw the de- 
 vout and benignant presence of the great elder ; the martial 
 figure of Standish ; the wise and gracious bearing of Brad- 
 ford, the historian and governor ; the courtly form of Wins- 
 low, whose face alone of the Pilgrim company is preserved 
 to us in the portrait which hangs in the hall ; the sturdy 
 manhood of Howland, of Allerton and Hopkins, and the 
 rest, whose names, wreathed in living green, were upon its 
 walls. You saw again the faces of the Pilgrims, now 
 thoughtful with the cares and responsibilities of the present r 
 now for a moment pale in the presence of the difficulties 
 which confront and the dangers which surround them, now 
 aglow with the light and promise of the coming years. Are 
 not among the uses of a celebration like this that the 
 young men shall see visions and the old men dream 
 dreams. From the Rock of Plymouth, across river and 
 . prairie, and beyond the mountains, the lesson and the story 
 of the 21st of December will ever go. It will be told in 
 prosperous cities ; it will be repeated in simple homes upon 
 quiet hillsides. In these happy days of peace and prosperity,, 
 as well as in times of war and adversity, it is well to recall 
 the story of the Pilgrim’s life and labors, of his toils and his 
 triumphs, of his sufferings and his virtues, of the independ- 
 ence of thought and toleration of expression which character- 
 ized him ; of the consummate wisdom and sagacity which drew 
 the compact and framed the early laws so admirably adapted 
 to the needs of the infant colony ; and, above all, of the sub- 
 lime faith which sustained him in every peril and lifted him 
 above every doubt, and alone could make him free. And 
 where, other than here, shall that story be cold? 
 
57 
 
 I trust, gentlemen, that the happy remembrance of this day 
 will long remain with yon, and that its recollections will ever 
 be gratefully cherished. There is one monument of the Pil- 
 grims, more enduring than granite or bronze, which time can 
 never efface. It lies in the hearts of a grateful people. 
 That monument is the history and the traditions, the memories 
 and the associations which cluster about the Rock and linger 
 always around the ancient Town of Plymouth. 
 
 Yea, when the flowing bulkwarks, 
 
 Which guard this holy strand, 
 
 Are sunk beneath the trampling surge 
 In beds of sparkling sand, 
 
 When in the waste of waters 
 Our hoary rock shall stand, 
 
 Be this its latest legend: 
 
 Here was the Pilgrims’ land. 
 
 The President then announced the following toast : 
 
 The Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It now unites the 
 Colony of Plymouth and the Colony of Massachusetts Bay. 
 May it long maintain, in the future, as in the past, those great 
 principles common to both — Freedom and Education, Morality 
 and Law ! 
 
 I have the pleasure of introducing the Lieutenant Governor,- 
 Hon. Roger Wolcott, to respond. 
 
 Mr. Wolcott spoke as follows : 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Pilgrim Society: 
 
 It is with entire sincerity that I say, in the absence of His 
 Excellency the Governor, that I esteem it a peculiar privilege 
 that it has fallen to my lot to represent the Commonwealth 
 upon this occasion. 
 
58 
 
 It is an interesting thought that on this day the sons of 
 New England have come together in all the great cities of our 
 broad land — those that look forth upon the Atlantic, those 
 that guard the Great Lakes and* the valley of the Mississippi, 
 and even where California bathes her feet in the waters of the 
 Pacific — to kindle anew memories of their distant home, and 
 to listen once more to the tale which has made the name of 
 Plymouth one of the words most deeply freighted with tender 
 and loftly significance in our language. To all of these meet- 
 ings — kindred in thought and purpose with our own — we send 
 our word of greeting to-day, but we feel that we are favored 
 beyond them, for it is our good fortune alone to stand beneath 
 the brooding genius of the spot. Here landed, and here labor- 
 ed and prayed those men and women whose high purpose and 
 heroic achievement we to-day commemorate ; on yonder hillside 
 they sleep, overlooking the rude rock, which by the .miracle of 
 their touch has become one of the symbols that for all time 
 have power to thrill the mind and heart of countless millions. 
 
 Plymouth is indeed fortunate in possessing these sacred me- 
 morials of a great past. It has been my privilege to attend 
 many interesting memorial services held to commemorate the 
 one-hundredth, or two-hundredth or two-hundred and fiftieth 
 anniverary of the founding of some town or institution ; but 
 to-day, for the first time on this continent, at least so far as 
 regards its English occupancy, we meet to celebrate an event 
 which took place two hundred and seventy-five years ago. We 
 have thus to-day entered on a new era ; we have taken one 
 step forward in our age as a people. I congratulate your So- 
 ciety on the complete success of the day’s exercises. The 
 oration and poem, to which we have this morning listened, will 
 take their place in equal companionship with the memorable 
 
 % 
 
59 
 
 addresses which have marked the completion of other quarters 
 of a century in the history of your favored town. 
 
 If we look back to the settlement of Plymouth, and allow 
 the imagination to conjure up some conception of what those 
 men and women endured, our first thought is one of profound 
 pathos. As we trace the perils of that voyage, the hardships 
 of that winter, when out of forty-eight adult men twenty-eight 
 died, and were secretly buried lest the knowledge of the ter- 
 rible reduction in their numbers might invite attack by the 
 surrounding Indians, the feeling uppermost in our heart is that 
 of pity. How could women and children endure that which 
 overcame the strength of manhood? And yet a truer view 
 would remind us that this feeling of pity should be hushed in 
 the swelling paean of victory. Our final judgment must regard 
 not what they endured, but what they achieved. And so we 
 may say of them what was said of Leonidas and his band of 
 heroes : 
 
 “ Of those who at Thermopylae were slain, 
 
 Glorious the doom, and beautiful the lot; 
 
 Their tomb an altar! Men from tears refrain, 
 
 Honor and praise, but mourn them not.” 
 
 It is then with a thrilling sense of admiration that well-nigh 
 passes into envy, that we recall the lives and deaths of those 
 men and women. 
 
 They were true idealists. “ Theie was never colony save 
 this,” says Lowell, u that went forth not to seek gold but 
 God.” They were not crowded out from the mother-country 
 by an over-teeming population, they were not led by thirst of 
 gold, by lust of conquest, or the mere hardihood of adventure 
 Not from such ignoble source came the impulse that drove 
 
60 
 
 them across that wintry sea. Their uplifted eyes had caught 
 the vision of a free state, a free church and a free school, 
 and where that vision led, they followed. With such guidance 
 how could they falter or turn back? They entered upon their 
 great enterprise not from sudden impulse or swayed by passing 
 emotion, but after long and sober deliberation ; and, having so 
 embarked, nothing but annihilation could defeat their purpose. 
 The Pilgrims were idealists, but not emotionalists. That calm 
 deliberation of thought which was their’s remains with their 
 descendants to-day. 
 
 That Commonwealth is happy that has within its borders 
 Plymouth Rock, a symbol of high, reasoning idealism, a sym- 
 bol of undaunted heroism, a symbol of willing self-sacrifice. I 
 would that Massachusetts might, in the person of all its citi- 
 zens, make humble pilgrimage to Plymouth, here to touch its 
 lips to the pure flame of heroism which has never been allow- 
 ed to die out in all these years. 
 
 In one of the few great novels of the world, the genius of 
 George Eliot has drawn a character the very antithesis of that 
 of the Pilgrim. You perhaps recall the beautiful and facile 
 Greek youth, Tito Melema, whose charm and grace won easily 
 the love of women and the favor of most men, whose talents 
 and attainments brought fortune and high station within his 
 grasp, but who, lacking some vigor of moral fibre, did always 
 the thing that seemed easiest rather than the thing that was 
 right ; and so the life that had opened with so fair a dawn 
 went down in the darkness of betrayal of friend, in faithless- 
 ness to love, in falsehood, dishonor and ignoble death. 
 
 The character of the Pilgrim was inspired by a spirit the 
 exact opposite of this. Not love of ease, nor the instinctive 
 shrinking from hardship and toil, but stern determination to 
 
61 
 
 attain an ideal worth striving for — such was its controlling 
 motive and aim. On this spirit rests the foundation of the 
 government of this Commonwealth, and it is still living and 
 active among her citizens after this lapse of two and three- 
 quarters centuries. It is because the Commonwealth values 
 this spirit as well-nigh the most precious characteristic of her 
 citizenship, and because she finds in Plymouth Rock the true 
 symbol of its high idealism, that she brings you to-day the 
 fullest expression of her reverential and grateful love of those 
 men and women whose painful steps have made sacred for all 
 time the soil of your historic town. 
 
 The President: — Above the flag of the Old Colony; above 
 even the white flag of Massachusetts float the stars and stripes, 
 the emblem of national supremacy, — the flag of the American 
 Union. I give you as the next toast : The United States 
 whose corner-stone is the Rock of Plymouth. 
 
 I have the pleasure of introducing its representative, the 
 Collector of the Port of Boston, Hon. Winslow Warren. 
 
 Mr. Warren said : 
 
 It is always pleasant for a Plymouth born man to return to 
 the home of his forefathers and to enjoy eloquent and poetic 
 tributes to their memory such as we have listened to to-day. The 
 grandeur and completeness of their work needs no stronger 
 testimony than is offered by the fact that though it has been 
 told in the burning words of Webster and Everett and Choate 
 and Winthrop, it is still new and still fascinates from the lips 
 of worthy successors. Its force is in the simple majesty of 
 the lives of these few plain men who, all unconscious of the 
 magnitude of their own undertaking, were great because they 
 lived up to high ideals. They had no preconceived theories of 
 
62 
 
 government, they were not at all concerned to prove the cor- 
 rectness of their own principles, but went straight ahead doing 
 what they found before them simply, plainly, and steadfastly, 
 trusting to God for results, and without care or concern for 
 the praise or blame of men. They were in dead earnest be- 
 cause they believed in the divine character of their mission. 
 The founding of an empire was not within their ken, and we 
 seek in vain for any evidence that they attached special im- 
 portance to their work in its influence upon the future. 
 
 There were educated men among them, like Bradford and 
 Brewster and Winslow, though for the most part they were 
 plain practical men of humble station — but all had had the 
 kind of education which comes from the dire experience of 
 persecution and they had withal the hard English common 
 sense which has shown itself the world over. If there is one 
 characteristic especially English, it is a sort of quiet stubbor- 
 ness joined to inborn executive capacity which carried these 
 men as it has others through great trials and enabled them ta 
 master problems which would have confounded stronger intel- 
 lects. The Anglo Saxon race is in its nature a dominant race,, 
 one which eyer grows stronger when combatting hard circum- 
 stances and adverse surroundings. We call it common sense, 
 but it is the most uncommon thing in history, for it involves- 
 an innate shrewdness and natural worldliness which must be 
 born in the men, for it never can be acquired. 
 
 It matters very little in this view whether as Englishmen 
 they transferred to this country institutions familiar to them in 
 their own homes, or whether their twelve years stay in Holland 
 gave them new ideas borrowed from the more liberal spirit of 
 that remarkable country — either proposition may have some 
 truth in it — but after all what they brought and planted here 
 
63 
 
 was stamped with their own clear impress and was original and 
 enduring because the immortal spirit of the men was in it. 
 
 It was not England or Holland which made the Plymouth of 
 1620 — it was indeed both combined, but more important than 
 either was the lofty untrammelled hearts of determined men, 
 who sought here something better than the old world could 
 furnish and left for later generations an example of clear 
 thinking and resolute acting. 
 
 As time has moved on and their story been more critically 
 studied, the differences between the Pilgrims and the Puritans* 
 have become more clearly recognized and the divergence is 
 largely in the spirit carried into the respective enterprises. 
 Though driven from their own country by even’ harsher per- 
 secution than the Puritans ever experienced, the Pilgrims never 
 allowed the more humane and gentle qualities of their nature- 
 to be wholly crushed nor were they wanting in a vein of un- 
 expected romance. Their relations with the Indians bear full 
 witness to this from the day of their landing and meeting with 
 Samoset through all their history. I need but recall that 
 famous Thanksgiving, in 1621, when they entertained so quaint- 
 ly and royally their ninety Indian guests — their long and 
 friendly intimacy with Massasoit, during which Winslow made 
 that pathetic and touching visit to the sick King, full of tender 
 kindness and comfort, and the faithfulness with which their 
 treaties were observed. A Plymouth audience knows full well 
 these stories and numerous other traditions of the early days. 
 If there had not been something of the picturesque, something 
 romantic in their nature — the names of Miles Standish and 
 Rose, his young wife — of Priscilla Mullens — of the genial 
 Winslow — the good old Dr. Fuller and the saintly Brewster, 
 
64 
 
 -would have been painted in more sombre colors than history 
 has given them. 
 
 The Pilgrims of Plymouth had become independent of the 
 English church and they had become independent also of much 
 of its narrowness and harshness and intolerance. It was not 
 in Plymouth that citizenship depended upon church membership 
 — here was the first great step towards universal suffrage in 
 the right which all freeholders had from the beginning, to take 
 part in the management of Colony affairs. They doubtless did 
 not reach the modern limit of toleration, but they were in ad- 
 vance of their age, and where they missed the full fruition, 
 ’twas not so much from narrowness of view or the want of a 
 charitable spirit as the natural influence of the dangers by 
 which so feeble a community was surrounded. With all their 
 shortcomings which we may freely admit, their administrative 
 acts and provisions breathed yet a spirit of remarkable freedom 
 and charity, and those parting words of John Robinson — the 
 most significant utterance of any man of his time — were the 
 key note of their temper and general policy so long as they 
 remained a separate Colony. 
 
 This quiet, unheralded landing at Plymouth — where in all 
 history will you match it? Where, before or since, have the 
 beginnings of a vast Nation been so unfolded in all their de- 
 tails to a world’s gaze and yet so simple, so utterly plain and 
 of so little seeming importance at the time? Less than three 
 centuries have erected a proud edifice of enlightened Republic- 
 anism upon the shoulders of these one hundred obscure men — 
 men who dreamed of no worlds to conquer and who sought in 
 a wilderness nothing but unmolested freedom to worship God 
 according to the dictates of their own conscience. Compare 
 
65 
 
 this with the grand expeditions that, with high sounding pro- 
 clamations and blare of trumpets, have so often set forth to 
 remodel continents, and returned in dismal failure and ruin. 
 This Church and State was founded on a rock — not the rock 
 we venerate, which their mortal feet have trod — but the Rock 
 of Ages in which they put their trust. 
 
 The lesson is for us, their descendants, to draw, if we wilj‘ 
 and it is one that this Nation, great and powerful as it is, 
 boastful of its strength as it is, may well take to heart — that 
 real success and permanence is in the character of its people 
 and how far in all its dealings, whether in matters of foreign 
 policy or national finance or other questions, it may deal justly 
 and righteously and discreetly in the same spirit with which 
 our Pilgrim Fathers met those questions which Providence com- 
 pelled them to settle here on Plymouth Rock. 
 
 The President: — I regret that the infirmities of the poet 
 of the day compelled him to decline our urgent invitation to 
 be present at this table. May I send him in your name our 
 grateful acknowledgment of the debt we owe him ; our hearty 
 assurances of respect and esteem ; we wish him now, and al- 
 ways, health, and happiness, and peace. 
 
 And now, gentlemen, we shall have the pleasure of hearing 
 from a citizen of the great West. He might fitly speak 
 for those 
 
 “ Whose fathers crossed the prairies 
 As of old your fathers crossed the sea, 
 
 To make the West, as they the East, 
 
 The homestead of the free.” 
 
 He was, however, for many years the United States Minis- 
 ter to the Netherlands, and there reverently traced the foot- 
 
 5 
 
66 
 
 steps of the Pilgrims in Holland. I have the honor of intro- 
 ducing Hon. Samuel R. Thayer of Minnesota. 
 
 Mr. Thayer said : 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Pilgrim Socieiy : 
 
 I am deeply thankful to the Pilgrim Society for the invita- 
 tion which brings me to this table. 
 
 The lateness of the season, to say nothing of other unfav- 
 oring conditions, would have rendered a journey of 2,000 miles 
 at this time impracticable, if not impossible, were it not that 
 I have long been possessed with an earnest desire to bring 
 myself into closer relationship with the men who are known to 
 be the best representatives of Puritan thought and feeling in 
 America. 
 
 True, it is, we find manifestations of this sentiment in the 
 institutions and laws of other Commonwealths, but it is in 
 New England alone, and chiefly in Massachusetts, that we look 
 for the fairest fruitage of those great ideas which dominate 
 the minds of the men who first planted the seeds of liberty on 
 American soil. 
 
 The topics which the occasion suggests have been so fully 
 and ably treated in the noble discourse to which we have 
 listened, and which will ever remain a cherished memory in my 
 life, as to admit of no further elaboration. I may, however, 
 be indulged in saying that my own reflections, doubtless stimu- 
 lated by generations of Puritan ancestry, have led me to ques- 
 tion the integrity of any movement having for its professed 
 object the renovation of society, which does not derive its in- 
 spiration directly or indirectly from Plymouth Rock. 
 
 Influenced somewhat by this sentiment it was my great 
 privilege while representing the government at the court of the 
 
67 
 
 Netherlands to gather up such memorials of the Pilgrims as I 
 could find in that country. It is unnecessary that I should in- 
 form this assemblage that those memorials are exceedingly 
 rare. Nevertheless it was a pleasure to show that, though 
 the Pilgrims and their descendants have long since vanished, 
 their memories are still cherished in the only country in Eu- 
 rope whose very soil has been for centuries dedicated to civil 
 and religious liberty. 
 
 Soon after the dedication of yonder memorial, I addressed a 
 communication to the Department of State, in which, after 
 briefly reciting the debt we owed to the inhabitants of the 
 Dutch Republic for the aid and encouragement which they 
 gave the Pilgrims during their twelve years’ sojourn in Hol- 
 land, without which their organization could never have been 
 perfected, I ventured to suggest the propriety of putting forth 
 an effort for the erection of a memorial at Delfthaven, which 
 should be a sort of answering monument to the one at 
 Plymouth, commemorative of the virtues of both people, and 
 as a means of bringing into closer unity two nations in whom 
 the love of liberty is a common inheritance. 
 
 The suggestion met the favor of the Secretary of State, 
 who at once referred the subject to the Governor of the Com- 
 monwealth, the Pilgrim Society, and various New England so- 
 cieties throughout the country, all of whom approved the pro- 
 ject by resolution, several of them appointing committees to 
 raise means for this purpose. Meanwhile, the government of 
 the Netherlands, through its Prime Minister, expressed its cor- 
 dial approval of the scheme, and promised its utmost support 
 in aid of its execution. 
 
 I shall not occupy your time at length in pointing out rea- 
 sons why this memorial should be erected. It is sufficient, for 
 
68 
 
 the present, to say that it is still a matter of consideration. 
 Monuments grow slowly, and the Delfthaven memorial is no 
 exception to this rule. Whether it will be built in the life- 
 time of any members of this company is purely a matter of 
 speculation. That it ultimately will be built I firmly believe, 
 for in this way only can we adequately express our devotion 
 to that principle in our national life which has been aptly de- 
 scribed as the greatest political and moral force of modern 
 times. 
 
 A monument of this character, located in a foreign land, 
 would be an object lesson for all time, the influence of which 
 can only be measured by the duration of the Republic itself. 
 
 The President then said : 
 
 Our acknowledgements are due not only to the great orator 
 and the poet, but also to the great singer. I ask you to rise 
 and join with me in the toast : Health and prosperity to 
 Mr. Myron W. Whitney. 
 
 Mr. Whitney in response, sang finely The Three 
 Fishers. 
 
 The President then read the following letter : 
 
 Library of the Maine Historical Society, 
 
 Portland, Me., Dec. 19th, 1895. 
 
 To the Pilgrim Society: 
 
 The Pilgrim Society of Plymouth, Mass., celebrates on 
 Saturday, Dec. 21st, 1895, the two hundred and seventy-fifth 
 anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims. Organized to 
 commemorate the landing, and to venerate the memory of the 
 intrepid men who first set foot on Plymouth Rock, the Pil- 
 grim Society, for three-quarters of a century, has honored 
 itself, as well as the Forefathers, by the high character of 
 its public celebrations, and by its unwearied efforts to cul- 
 
69 
 
 tivate and perpetuate the Pilgrim spirit. On the eve of 
 this added commemorative occasion, the Maine Historical So- 
 ciety, holding in everlasting honor the stalwart virtues and 
 heroic deeds of the Pilgrims, sends its greetings to the 
 Pilgrim Society with the assurance of its fellowship in 
 maintaining and extending the principles which brought the 
 Pilgrims to these New England shores. 
 
 JAMES P. BAXTER, 
 
 President of the Maine Historical Society. 
 
 Dr. Burrage was delegated to bear these resolutions to 
 the Pilgrim Society and deliver them in behalf of the 
 Maine Historical Society. 
 
 The President : — The Essex Institute of Salem responds 
 to our invitation, not by letter, but by its representative in 
 person. That Institute has done a great service in preserv- 
 ing the history and traditions of the Puritan founders of Sa- 
 lem ; and I have the pleasure of introducing to you its rep- 
 resentative, Hon. Robert S. Rantoul. 
 
 In response to an invitation extended by the Pilgrim 
 Society to the Essex Institute, to take part in the 275th 
 anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, 
 Vice-President Rantoul and Mr. Francis H. Lee were 
 selected as delegates to represent this Society. 
 
 On being called upon to respond for the Institute, Mr. 
 Rantoul spoke substantially as follows : — 
 
 Let me thank you, Sir, that in the presence of this array of 
 older bodies, you have not omitted to extend a hand to the 
 Essex Institute. We are a young Society, — painfully young — 
 much younger than you, — not yet counting our first half cen- 
 tury of life, — but we are vigorous and sprightly and active 
 
70 
 
 and growing. We are doing good work and, like all promising 
 children, we like to be noticed. 
 
 One may well stand abashed, Mr. President, in the presence 
 of such a scene as this. When I recall the mighty voices to 
 which this spot has echoed — for what great orator has our' 
 continent produced who has not, first or last, planted his feet 
 and lifted up his voice on Plymouth Rock, — who has not 
 found here, first or last, the Mecca , of his ambition, — the 
 shrine of his patriotic and ancestral devotions, — when I listen, 
 amidst the rolling of these waters, for one more trumpet tone 
 from that matchless organ that is now silent but not forgotten 
 in the wave-washed tomb at Marshfield, — when I recall the 
 wonderful address made at the very outset of his career, stand- 
 ing on this very spot, invited by this very Society in the natal 
 year of its existence, when standing on the Rock of Plymouth, 
 in 1820, two centuries complete, he uttered here that terrible 
 denunciation of the barter in human flesh which goes ringing 
 down the ages, now that personal weaknesses and party asper- 
 ities have been long forgotten, — when I remember that unap- 
 proachable statement he made, of the interlocking, interacting 
 relations and functions of the two sovereignties under which 
 we Americans of to-day live and move and have our being, — 
 a statement made in December, 1843, before the New England 
 Society of the City of New York, and never to this hour im- 
 proved upon — it is hard to believe it can ever be improved 
 upon — I cannot but pause and hold my breath and utter a 
 silent prayer for one more diapason-note from that most mirac- 
 ulous organ. 
 
 But, Sir, you ask me for a word in behalf of the Essex 
 Institute which sends me here charged with its greetings and 
 good wishes. The relations of North and South Shore, — of 
 
71 
 
 Cape Cod and Cape Ann, have always been friendly and fra- 
 ternal as they always should be, — never more so than in this 
 present year of grace. We acknowledge with satisfaction, — 
 we take pleasure to-day in reminding you of the debt, — the 
 obligation incurred by the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 
 visit from your skilled and Godly practitioner, Deacon Fuller, 
 when Governor Endicott, bitterly bereft in the loss of his 
 courageous wife, found himself burdened with more than he 
 could bear in the raging epidemic of ship fever, which scourg- 
 ed us during his first winter. Says Nathaniel Morton, in his 
 Brief Relation or New England’s Memorial : “ This year sundry 
 ships came out of England ,* and arrived at Neumskak , (now 
 called Salem), where Mr. John Endicot had chief command; 
 and by infection that grew amongst the Passengers at Sea, it 
 spread also among them on shore, of which many died, some 
 of the Scurvy, and others of infectious Feavers. Mr. Endicot , 
 understanding that there was one at Plimouth that had skill in 
 such Diseases, sent thither for him ; at whose request he was 
 sent unto them. And afterwards, acquaintance and Christian 
 Love and Correspondency came on betwixt the Governour, and 
 the said Mr. Endicot; which was furthered by Congratulatory 
 Letters that passed betwixt each other ; one whereof, because 
 it shews the beginning of their Christian Fellowship, I shall 
 here insert.” 
 
 Now it is not my purpose to tax your patience with long^ 
 drawn recitals. This is the Pilgrim’s day and theirs is the 
 honor and the glory of it. They deserve it all. Nobody — 
 certainly no Massachusetts Bay Puritan, — would withhold a tittle 
 of the praise they are enjoying. But may it not be, in the 
 exuberance of joy, that the merits of old Governor Endicott 
 and his little band of rigid old Puritans may have been permit- 
 
72 
 
 ted for the moment to pass a little into the shade. Let ns 
 read this letter, if you will bear with me for a moment, slowly 
 and lovingly together. It is not long. It is Governor Endi- 
 cott’s letter to Governor Bradford in recognition of the great 
 kindness described by Morton in the passage I have read. It 
 will do us good to hear it. It will be worth the time if it do 
 no more than call to mind the lofty strain of courtesy, — the 
 stately dignity which prevailed amongst these old-time magnates. 
 But it will do more, unless language has lost its meaning, — 
 unless words possess no longer a current value as the coinage 
 of the heart. Let me read this letter of Governor Endicott’s, 
 and let us see if any better-conceived message of grateful ac- 
 knowledgment, official or personal, has ever passed between 
 these two communities before or since. 
 
 It may be true, — far be it from me to deny, that our fine old 
 Governor may have been a little hasty at times, with the em- 
 blem of popery in the King’s colors, for instance, — with the 
 Anabaptists and Quakers and other schismatics and heretics, — 
 somewhat rough and rigorous at times, in correcting some little 
 eccentricities in this neighborhood, in connection with your 
 May-pole proceedings and your too practical free trade views, 
 in dealing in fire-arms and fire-water with that red-skinned fra- 
 ternity, the Unimproved Order of Red Men. Allowing for all 
 this I wish you would listen kindly to the old Puritan’s letter, 
 and see if you have any doubt about its being written by a 
 gentleman. Here it is : 
 
 u To the worshipful and my right worthy friend, William 
 Bradford, Esqr., Governor of New Plymouth, these, — 
 
 Right Worthy Sir; 
 
 It is a thing not usual, that servants to one master and of 
 the same household should be strangers ; I assure you I desire 
 

 73 
 
 it not ; nay to speak more plainly, I cannot be so to you r- 
 God’s people are all marked with one and the same mark, and 
 sealed with one and the same seal, and have, for the main, 
 one and the same heart, guided by one and the same spirit of 
 truth ; and where this is there can be no discord, nay, here 
 must needs be sweet harmony ; and the same request (with 
 you) I make unto the Lord, that we may, as Christian brethren, 
 be united by an heavenly and unfeigned love, bending all our 
 hearts and forces in furthering a work beyond our strength 
 with reverence and fear, fastening our eyes always on Him that 
 only is able to direct and prosper all our ways. I acknow- 
 ledge myself much bound to you, for your kind love and^care r 
 in sending Mr. Fuller amongst us, and rejoice much that I am 
 by him satisfied, touching your judgments of the outward form 
 of God’s worship ; it is (as far as I can yet gather) no other 
 than is warranted by the evidence of truth, and the same which 
 I have professed and maintained, ever since the Lord in mercy 
 revealed himself unto me, being far differing from the common 
 report that hath been spread of you touching that particular 
 but God’s children must not look for less here below, and it is 
 the great mercy of God that he strengthens them to go through 
 with it. I shall not need at this time to be tedious unto you r 
 for, God willing, I purpose to see your face shortly : In the 
 mean time I humbly take my leave of you, committing you to 
 the Lord’s blessed protection, and rest, 
 
 Your assured loving friend and servant, 
 
 John Endecott. 
 
 Naumkeak , May 11, Anno 1629.” 
 
 So you see, gentlemen, that Dr. Fuller’s mission bore 
 double fruit ; he relieved the North Shore colonists of a 
 plethora of the vital fluid, but he also relieved the mind of 
 
74 
 
 Governor Endicott of some qualms about the heterodoxy of 
 his Plymouth neighbors. Perhaps this last was as great a 
 service as the other. Perhaps the deacon was no less wel- 
 come than the doctor, for our excellent Governor was no 
 
 bungler in the art of physic. He could administer law, 
 medicine, or theology upon occasion. He had brought with 
 him, as every navigator does on a voyage, a well-filled 
 
 medicine chest, with its recipes and bandages, and cata- 
 plasms and hand-books — books, says the inventory of the 
 estate, “both of physic and chyrurgery, with one saw 
 
 and six other instruments for a chyrurgeon.” But when 
 he found his outfit of science and materia medica unequal 
 to the exigency, he did what any sensible professional man 
 would have done — called in a consulting physician. If 
 there were time, I should like to read to you from the re- 
 port of the case made to Governor Bradford by that esti- 
 mable “chyrurgeon and physitian,” Deacon Samuel Fuller, 
 because it shows how blood-letting and catechising travelled 
 hand in hand, and it also shows a wholesome belief in a 
 personal devil prevailing in this section. If you have, by 
 any means, been led to regard the “ ould deluder, Satan,’ ' 
 as a perquisite of the Bay Colony, as a product or ap- 
 panage exclusively of the North Shore, I beg you to ob- 
 serve that your own saintly Dr. Fuller, in his letter, from 
 which I shall read a line, not only recognizes our old 
 friend, the father of mischief, at sight, but even regards 
 the North Shore potentate as a pretty fair match for the 
 beneficent powers of the universe. Here is one of Dr. 
 Fuller’s despatches to his home government, if you will al- 
 low me to read from it, showing that theological contention 
 at that time came as easy as blood-letting. He writes : 
 
75 
 
 * * * “I have been at Matapan, at the request of Mr. 
 
 Warham, and let some twenty of these people blood ; I had 
 conference with them ’til I was weary. Mr. Warham holds 
 that the visible church may consist of a mixed people, 
 godly, and openly ungodly ; upon which point we had all our 
 conference, to which, I trust, the Lord will give a bles- 
 sing. * * * We have some privy enemies in the bay, 
 
 but (blessed be God) more friends; # * * oppres- 
 sors there is not wanting, and Satan is busy ; but, if the 
 Lord be on our side, who can be against us? * * * 
 
 Captain Endecott (my dear friend, and a friend to us all ) 
 is a second Burrow. The Lord established him, and us all, 
 in every good way of truth 1 * * * 
 
 Yours in the Lord Christ, 
 
 Samuel Fuller. 
 
 Massachusetts, June 28, Anno 1630.” 
 
 I fear Governor Endicott was not able during his life- 
 time to make to Plymouth any return of a favor of this 
 magnitude, but he was only ten years in his grave when 
 King Philip’s war broke out ; when that dusky strategist and 
 statesman, the first expounder, as I take it, of the Mon- 
 roe doctrine on this continent, began swinging the toma- 
 hawk, without discrimination, over fighters and skulkers, 
 babes and mothers, patriarchs and preachers ; letting his 
 bludgeon fall, like the rains of Heaven, alike on the just and 
 on the unjust in this Plymouth colony. Blazing Medfield 
 was rolled up like a scroll, and pillage and massacre 
 seemed to wait on what was spared by fire. If ever a 
 struggling colony wanted help, Plymouth wanted help at 
 that hour. Providence had favored us at that hour with a 
 trusty champion in the person of Captain Joseph Gardner — 
 the “Fighting Joe” of the period — who buckled on his 
 
76 
 
 harness and mustered his musketeers and marched out at 
 the head of a gallant train-band from his home in Sa- 
 lem — that home not three doors off from the present quar- 
 ters of the Essex Institute, to do and die in effective bat- 
 tle for the safety of the Plymouth Colony, and there, in 
 Naragansett swamp, to render up a dearly valued life inside 
 the pallisado breastworks of the savage chieftain. I thank 
 you, sir, for the opportunity of a word ; and you, gentlemen, 
 my listeners, for your courtesy and patience in permitting 
 me to refresh your recollections on two events which should 
 forever bind together the destinies of Eastern Massachusetts. 
 
 The President : — The lateness of the hour warns me 
 that the exercises of the day must now be brought to a 
 close. The occasion has passed into history ; all that re- 
 mains for me to do, is to wish you a safe return to happy 
 homes. 
 
CORRECTION. 
 
 On page five it is stated that the ode 41 Sons of Re- 
 nowned Sires” was written for the celebration in 1792. 
 Historical writers give different dates. Russell says 1792 
 Thacher says in one edition of his History of Plymouth, 
 1793, and in another, 1794. The date has been definitely 
 fixed by a letter from Plymouth, dated December 23, 1794, 
 and published in The Federal Orrery, of December 25, 
 which, in speaking of the observance of the Pilgrim anni- 
 versary on the 22d, states that the ode was written for that 
 occasion, and was sung by Captain J. Thomas. It is 
 probable that the singer was John Thomas, of Kingston, 
 afterwards Colonel in the militia, and a son of General 
 John Thomas, of the Revolution. 
 

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