whom you leave, that the example of a nation exercising right and justice on earth by charity would be the mightiest propagandism of Christian religion.

Ye Patriots, loving your country's future, and anxious about her security, remember the admonitions of history-remember that the freedom, the power, and the prosperity in which your country glories, is no new apparition on earth; others also had it, and yet they are gone. The prudence with which your forefathers have founded this commonwealth, the courage with which you develop it, other nations also have shown, and still they are gone.

And ye ladies; ye fairest incarnation of the spirit of love, which vivifies the universe, remember my words. The heart of man is given into your tender hands. You mould it in its infancy. You imprint the lasting mark of character upon man's brow. You ennoble his youth; you soften the harshness of his manhood; you are the guardian angels of his hoary age. All your vocation is love, and your life is charity. The religion of charity wants your apostolate, and requires your aid. It is to you I appeal, and leave the sublime topic of my humble reflections to the meditations of your Christian hearts.

Copyright, Lee & Shepard. Reprinted with permission. By WENDELL PHILLIPS.

IT

T is a singular fact that the freer a nation becomes, the more utterly democratic the form of its institutions, this outside agitation, this pressure of public opinion to direct political action, becomes more and more necessary. The general judgment is that the freest possible government produces the freest possible men and women-the most individual, the least servile to the judgment of others. But a moment's reflection will show any man that this is an unreasonable expectation, and that, on the contrary, entire equality and freedom in political forms almost inevitably tend to make the individual subside into the mass, and lose his identity in the general whole. Suppose we stood in England to-night. There is the nobility, and here is the Church. There is the trading class, and here is the literary. A broad gulf separates the four; and provided a member of either can conciliate his own section, he can afford, in a very large measure, to despise the judgment of the other three. He has, to some extent, a refuge and a breakwater against the tyranny of what we call public opinion. But in a country like ours, of absolute democratic equality, public opinion is not only omnipotent, it is omnipresent. There is no refuge from its tyranny; there is no hiding from its reach; and the result is that, if you take the old Greek lantern, and go about to seek among a hundred, you will find not one single American who really has not, or who does not fancy at least that he has something to gain or lose in his ambition, his social life, or his business, from the good opinion

and the votes of those about him.

And the conse

mass of indi

quence is, that,-instead of being a viduals, each one fearlessly blurting out his own convictions, -as a nation, compared with other nations, we are a mass of cowards. More than any other people, we are afraid of each other.

If you were a caucus to-night, Democratic or Republican, and I were your orator, none of you could get beyond the necessary and timid limitations of party. You not only would not demand, you would not allow me to utter, one word of what you really thought, and what I thought. You would demand of me and my value as a caucus speaker would depend entirely on the adroitness and the vigilance with which I met the demand that I should not utter one single word which would compromise the vote of next week. That is politics; so with the press. Seemingly independent, and sometimes really so, the press can afford only to mount the cresting wave, not go beyond it. The editor might as well shoot his reader with a bullet as with a new idea. He must hit the exact line of the opinion of the day. I am not finding fault with him; I am only describing him. Some three years ago I took to one of the freest of the Boston journals a letter, and by appropriate consideration induced its editor to print it. And as we glanced along its contents, and came to the concluding statement, he said: "Couldn't you omit that?" I said, "No; I wrote it for that; it is the gist of the statement." "Well," said he, “it is true; there is not a boy in the streets that does not know it is true; but I wish you could omit it."

I insisted; and the next morning, fairly and justly, he printed the whole. Side by side he put an article

of his own, in which he said, "We copy in the next column an article from Mr. Phillips, and we only regret the absurd and unfounded statement with which he concludes it." He had kept his promise by printing the article; he saved his reputation by printing the comment. And that, again, is the inevitable, the essential limitation of the press in a republican community. Our institutions, floating unanchored on the shifting surface of popular opinion, cannot afford to hold back, or to draw forward, a hated question, and compel a reluctant public to look at it and to consider it. Hence, as you see at once, the moment a large issue, twenty years ahead of its age, presents itself to the consideration of an empire or of a republic, just in proportion to the freedom of its institutions is the necessity of a platform outside of the press, of politics, and of its Church, whereon stand men with no candidate to elect, with no plan to carry, with no reputation to stake, with no object but the truth, no purpose but to tear the question open and let the light through it. So much in explanation of a word infinitely hated,agitation and agitators,-but an element which the progress of modern government has developed more and more every day.

tions and After-Dinner Speeches." Copyright, The Cassell Publishing Company. Reprinted with permission. By CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.

WRality.

E celebrate to-day the Centenary of our NationOne hundred years ago the United States began their existence. The powers of the government were assumed by the people of the Republic, and they became the sole source of authority. The solemn ceremonial of the first inauguration, the reverent oath of Washington, the acclaim of the multitude greeting their President, marked the most unique event of modern times in the development of free institutions.

No man ever stood for so much to his country and to mankind as George Washington. Hamilton, Jefferson, and Adams, Madison, and Jay, each represented some of the elements which formed the Union: Washington embodied them all. They fell at times under popular disapproval, were burned in effigy, were stoned; but he with unerring judgment was always the leader of the people. Milton said of Cromwell, that "war made him great, peace greater." The superiority of Washington's character and genius was more conspicuous in the formation of our government and in putting it on indestructible foundations, than in leading armies to victory and conquering the independence of his country. He inspired the movement for the Republic, was the President and dominant spirit of the Convention which framed its Constitution, and its President for eight years, and guided its course until satisfied that moving safely along the broad highway of time, it would be surely ascending toward the