USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Dedham > Proceedings at the celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of the town of Dedham, Massachusetts, September 21, 1886 > Part 7
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The admirable address we listened to this morning, abounding in fact and rich in suggestion, comes down to
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us with the testimony of very truth, stripped of all doubt and uncertainty, and presented before us as the fact of life; and we never tire in this Commonwealth of this old, old story of the beginning of our towns. How grati- fying, indeed, it must have been to the eloquent speaker this morning to see with what care and attention and respectful hearing every utterance of his was listened to ! It seemed as if this story had never before been told, as if he alone had it within his power to acquaint us with this marvellous fact; and yet it has been written and restated and rehearsed time after time, not only here but everywhere, in all the old towns and settlements of Massachusetts and New England. It is the same tale over again, more wonderful than ever before cach time in its repetition ; and as the years come and go, and men pass on and off the stage, they love to look with in- creasing interest and yearning to the times that were wrought out in so much tribulation and trial.
There is no grander sight than a collection of our own people. Massachusetts presents no better spectacle than the concourse of her free-thinking, broad-minded, clean- handed, and pure-hearted men, women, and children in our various communities ; and this assemblage could nowhere else be so possible as it is in our own beloved New England. That is the secret of her power. In that, so long as it be maintained, shall we find that element of strength which shall enable us not only to enjoy but sa- credly to perpetuate the great institutions of the past. Look at any such gathering of our people, consider the power that is bound up in one town of our Commonwealth, and you will find the secret that underlies the strength of the American republic. The little drop among millions that fall in the shower sheds only a sparkle, but in the sun- light it carries within its bosom all the richness of color; its companions, as they fall, may combine with it to make
-
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a greater expanse of beauty, but each one in itself is entire and glorious. And so the little town in New England, clad in all her panoply of power, exemplifies in the greatest and grandest and completest degree the true democracy of America. Bring these little towns together one after an- other; make up a State, and out of the States a nation, so that you will illumine the whole heavens for the en- lightenment of the world, for the glorification of men and the uplifting of those in other lands that are oppressed, - and you have but the testimony of what began in the little settlement in one town.
It is undoubtedly true, in the language of the senti- ment that the President has read to you to-day, that Massachusetts has in times past had good executive magistrates in her highest positions. There is no doubt of that in the minds of all her people, and no one more than the present speaker delights to accord that high praise and commendation. And why is it? You will point in your recollection to some who seem to have excelled all the rest; you will find here and there one that in your judgment outstrips those that preceded or those that followed him. But look over the illustrious group, and tell me why it was that those men so sig- nalized their control of power. Great, were they? Yes. Patriots indeed? Yes. And loyal and true men? Most certainly. But that is not all. No; you might take that greatness alone and plant it on some distant island of the sea, and it would there go unsought and unused. No, rather it would be unknown if it were there. But here in this old State of Massachusetts the citizen is always greater than the Governor; the power is back of the man who for a short time only holds the great elements that guard the interests of the State. For a time he ex- ercises that control which is put in his hands for the safety of all; and sometimes it may be he is delighted
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with his prominence, and thinks he sways the destiny of the State. But it is only a brief assumption on his part; correction soon follows; and if he reads history and keeps up with current events, in the very near future he finds that while he thought when in office there could be nobody else as great and grand as he, others came after that seemed to him almost to outstrip him, -and it is because the people push to the front the man that is wanted and demanded, the one required for the emer- gency. Possibly men may have thought for a little while, before 1860, that the age of great governors was gone by ; that if any time of great peril came upon us, no man would be able to take the burdens of the hour. But John A. Andrew was equal to any time; it was a crisis that placed him upon the platform of power and authority, and it was a crisis to which he was abundantly equal. So long as the men that we trust with our affairs in public are more devoted to liberty and to the safety of the people than they are to themselves and their own eleva- tion or continuance in power, we shall have men in our first places that are to be trusted and in the future to be honored. So long as they, like the men of the past, are found sober and firm in Christian virtue and truth, - in what makes for the substantial security of home and church and town and State, - so long it will lie in the mouth of no one to say that Massachusetts has not honored the true men in her high places; and I put it to you, ladies and gentlemen, that if the time shall ever come that Massachu- setts shall be ashamed of her rulers, it will be because her people fail to do their own duty. It should not be for- gotten to-day that when this town was granted its act of incorporation, Sir Harry Vane was Governor of Massachu- setts, being then but twenty-five years of age, less than a year in America, scholarly, bright, accomplished, Christian, carnest, liberty-loving, uncompromising, full of blood and
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spirit, and devoted to the freedom of all men. What he attempted to establish at that time was not secured in success, as we know, because defeat before the people fol- lowed; and though he returned early to his home country and there later in life met his death in sacrifice to the principle that he had lived for, yet we to-day, rejoicing in our entire liberty, allowing to all men the right to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences, recognizing any and all sects of faith for the free adoption of every man and woman, - we cannot but turn back with gratitude and pride to the record of Harry Vane in 1636, when he stood up even before the majority in Massachu- setts, and declared that he would live for the rights of the people to civil and religious liberty.
Having the right to demand the best service, shall the people seek it? Do the people of the town of Dedham insist upon it always? Are they sometimes lax in the per- formance of their duties as citizens? If some foreign potentate should issue a proclamation declaring that on and after the first day of October next no man in the town of Dedham should have the right to cast his vote or to attend the town-meeting, every man would be as valiant and as ready for the sacrifice as the grand old heroes of the past were; every man would stand at the corner of the streets with his musket, ready to meet the power that sought to put in force that infamous proclamation. And yet there are men in the town of Dedham who sloth- fully lay down their privileges every year and let them go into the dust, as if they were not worth the sacrifices of the past or the enjoyment of the present. You heard about the grand old men this forenoon, - how they sacrificed, how they stood; how they marched, not only in Dedham, but over into Lexington, in order to meet the enemy. Do you read in the annals of Dedham in 1886 of all the men shouldering the ballot when the time comes, and marching
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to that strife? Are there any in the old records who are recorded as having been so busy in the cornfield that they could not go home to attend to the affairs of the town or the church? Perchance there may be men that go to Boston and find occupation in counting-rooms ; possibly lawyers that have clients in court; possibly min- isters who have the idea that the whole matter of politics is too vile and foul for them to touch, - possibly there are many people who think that somehow or other the assem- blage of the freemen of America in our own time, clad in the rights of citizenship by the power that secures us all, that that union and concourse is not honorable and good for them. I tell you such people as that would not have had enough in them to have made a decent Puritan. That kind of people stayed across the water, and never came here; or, if they did, they took the first ship back. Why, Dedham has fifteen hundred voters upon her voting-list; fifteen hundred men that have the right to vote, - and I say more, that had the duty to vote, that have not any right to be excused except for insuperable reasons; and only seven hundred and sixty-one out of that whole number voted at the last election. Shame on us to come up here to-day and sit down with unblushing faces, and listen to the glory of the past and the greatness of our ancestors and the sacrifices they made and. of the stuff that was in them, - and we weak, puny, insignificant, out of compari- son ! Perhaps this is the way that the Commonwealth should not talk; perhaps the Governor ought to rise here and deliver some highflown oration. But this is the only time, at a two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, that I can possibly have the opportunity to free my mind and soul.
Oh, no! some men after they have heard a splendid ex- altation of the idea of the Massachusetts town-meeting, what a grand theatre it is for the operations of freemen, say, " Oh, yes," as they walk along the street and button up
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their coats for fear of contamination, -" Oh, yes, that would do in times past, when they had good town-meetings!" Ah! if there are in that seven hundred and fifty men who stayed away from the polls in Dedham any who think that affairs ought to be better than they are, any believing that in the town there are fellow-citizens that do not appreciate to the full their rights and their duties, there is abundant call for them to go in and stimulate, elevate, encourage, and strengthen. You think the citadel of power is in dan- ger? You think that the enemies of good government are storming our strong places at the present time? Well, then, the business for you is to rush into the breach, and to stay there until security is assured.
I hear from time to time a good deal said about how this republic of ours and how our State is to go to ruin; that it is to go down through the path of luxury, it may be; that it will go down through some contest between labor and cap- ital; that it will go down to destruction in one or another of many different ways. But I tell you no such thing. If it goes down at all, it will go down over men that have become corpses before there was any struggle at all; if it goes down, it will be because our people will talk of the greatness of the town system, will extol the record of the past, will boast of their Puritan ancestry, and will elevate themselves in the estimation of the world, but will not do one single thing if it interrupts their leisure, or go one step aside from their course or their pleasures, to keep in power the principles that the grand old Puritans established.
When I stood before the humble monument on the Green at Lexington; when in my boyhood I read the record of that inscription for the first time; when I saw the old house in which the heroes lived, and out of which some of them went for the last time on that eventful morning, and talked with the men that survived that onset, - I received an impulse into my very nature that
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has made me ever stand for the exercise of that power which under the blessing of God our patriotic fathers made possible for this generation.
Ladies and gentlemen, I have far exceeded any reason- able limit of time that could be set me ; but my only excuse shall be that I can by no possibility be with you all again two hundred and fifty years hence. So, for this time and this occasion only, I bid you in behalf of our mother-State the most cordial greeting, the best wishes for the future, - that you shall have all these privileges that you have a right to ask for and that you are fit to enjoy, because you show your purpose to use them. If we do that, if you in this town will take hold of that responsibility and work out that result, the coming historian two hundred and fifty years hence will not be compelled to stop his recital as he approaches the year 1886, but will go on with his glowing periods of power and influence, telling what his ancestors -we of this day - did to secure and perpetuate America's liberty and greatness ; and he will recite all that, and present our great future, as the abundant fruition of the still more glorious past.
The PRESIDENT then read the following toast : -
" The City of Boston ! Distinguished not more for its literary, educational, and scientific institutions, than for the honor, integrity, and magnificent generosity of its inhabitants."
I have the very great pleasure and distinguished honor of introducing to you the Honorable HUGHI O'BRIEN, Mayor of the city of Boston.
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ADDRESS OF HON. HUGH O'BRIEN.
Mr. PRESIDENT, AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, - After listening to the very eloquent speech of His Excellency the Governor, I have no hesitation in saying, and I know that you will indorse every word I say, that he is a worthy successor of the distinguished men who have hitherto filled the executive chair of the State.
The city of Boston greets the town of Dedham on her two hundred and fiftieth anniversary. Four hundred thou- sand people, your neighbors, rejoice in your prosperity and the happy auspices under which you celebrate this memo- rial. What a remarkable history is that of the nation of which you are a part! Two hundred and fifty years ago this country a wilderness, now a nation of sixty millions inhabitants ! What marvellous growth! what astonishing prosperity! The city of Boston, your neighbor, is fast enlarging her limits; her boundaries now reach the Ded- ham line. Who knows what may take place in the next two hundred and fifty years? The city of Boston, the great metropolis of New England, two hundred and fifty years hence, with five millions or six millions of inhabitants, the great city of the North, may then include Dedham within its limits.
You refer in your sentiment, Mr. President, to the city of Boston as promoting and establishing literary, educational, and scientific institutions. Boston is a large, prosperous, and wealthy city ; during the past fifty years her population has increased seven-fold, her valuation twelve-fold. Fifty years ago the entire valuation of the city was about sixty million dollars; now it is upward of seven hundred million dollars. Our citizens feel that liberal expendi- ture for educational purposes is a good investment. In our public schools we have from sixty-five thousand to
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seventy thousand scholars, and we expend every year about two million dollars for schoolhouses and school main- tenance, - an average of thirty dollars for each pupil. We consider this an investment that brings about good re- sults. It seems a large expenditure when we consider that it costs thirty dollars a year for each scholar; but it gives our boys and girls a good start in life, and plants a foun- dation for good citizenship. We do not stop here; with schools of technology and our public library, we place in the hands of our children the means of perfecting them- selves in any branch of learning. Next to our public schools, the public library is the great educator of our people; it contains a wealth of literature and science and practical knowledge that tempts the ambition of the young and old, and is a source of pleasure to all classes of readers. The best facilities should be extended to young men desirous of perfecting themselves in any branch of knowledge, and Boston has always felt it to be her duty to extend these facilities. If by a liberal pol- icy we produce a man in our day and generation so pre-eminent in any branch of knowledge that he will be considered a public benefactor, it will more than repay us for the expense.
The city of Boston has grown and prospered in part on account of her institutions of learning, for which her ex- penditures are so liberal, but more particularly on account of the energy and business integrity of her citizens. We have no mineral wealth, no agricultural wealth, but we have energy and push; and with intelligence and educa- tional advantages we stand to-day second only to the great city of New York. As for our benevolence and generosity, we have only to point to what has been done during the past two weeks for the distressed city of Charleston. Upward of sixty-six thousand dollars of voluntary subscriptions have already been received, and
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the fund will probably reach one hundred thousand dollars.
I conclude with the hope that Boston and Dedham may long continue good neighbors; and that at some time in the distant future Boston may have incorporated the smaller community within her boundaries.
The PRESIDENT: I have now this toast to pro- pose : -
" The Fathers of New England ! Surrendering with reluctance a proud and exclusive individuality in the interest of the common defence and the general welfare, these plain and sober but brave masters of a commanding common-sense constructed a frame of civil government unsurpassed in strength and endurance."
I have the high honor of inviting Dr. GEORGE E. ELLIS, President of the Massachusetts Historical Society, to respond to this toast.
ADDRESS OF DR. GEORGE E. ELLIS.
Mr. PRESIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, - I have reason to believe that seven generations of my ancestry, in- cluding my parents, lie in the soil of this town. My library fire is kept cheerful by wood grown on the paternal acres here; and as I saw Mr. French with a load of excellent wood passing in your procession, I hoped that he might leave that at my house. From my earliest years I have been familiar with the names of localities which I suppose are known only to the residents of Dedham. Singular words they are, -"Cutham," "Tiot," "Clapboardtrees," " Purga- tory " (I hope that is a figurative expression), and "Fox- hill." My own habits and taste of reading have led me to interest myself very much in the characters and institutions of those who founded these country towns, the original
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Puritan stock of Massachusetts. The scenes all around us of thrift and prosperity, of beauty and neatness, -these delightful homes and tidy farms and autumn fields, -are all legacies, results, effects. They certify to us the toil, the self-sacrifice, the wisdom, the virtues, the thought for their posterity of those who first entered this wilderness. More safe, more sure to yield their steady returns, than the de- posits in all our banks and the investments in all bonds, are the hard labors and the simple virtues of ancestral gen- erations in securing varied and permanent advantages to those who succeeded them.
Many of you must have taken note of the usage which has steadily and rapidly advanced among us in New England in recent years in the preparation of most elaborate town histories, with extended genealogical tables of our New Eng- land families in all their ramifications. This usage, if not peculiar and confined to New England and to those who have adopted it from us, is strikingly characteristic of our own people, and is not known in any other part of Christen- dom, - certainly not to such a marked extent as regards common, social classes of plain people, comprehensive of the whole population. Nobles and gentry in foreign countries are concerned about pedigrees, even though the bar-sinister often obtrudes itself ; but our town histories give us long rolls of genealogies of people of an ordinary range, in nowise individually distinguished, - husbandmen, mechanics, arti- sans, -excellent but commonplace people, the staple crops of generations of floating humanity, matured and gathered in the annual harvestings. Hard work, domestic comfort, frugality, useful and blameless lives and neighborly satis- factions must have filled out their experience; the emer- gencies of peril or war have drawn out their energies and proved their nobleness and valor. Interspersed among the pages of these volumes we may mark occasionally a member of the Great and General Court; a physician self-
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taught, acquiring his skill at the cost of his patients; an ingenious and thrifty craftsman or manufacturer, with an occasional character of tragedy, as in this town, - hardly many of romance. A vast deal of capacity, pluck, and enterprise has smouldered in young persons in our quiet towns, and they have generally had to remove to wider spheres to exercise their latent abilities. Many of them are in the habit - and a blessed habit it is - of sending back to their early rural homes magnificent gifts and pub- lic libraries. These town histories - and I have looked over a vast number of them - are abundantly illustrated with the portraits of the heads and members of fami- lies. These counterfeit presentments, I am bound to say, are not generally prepossessing visages. They are not of classic, Grecian, or intellectual mould; their type is pecu- liar to New England, and not found in any other part of the globe. They even suggest some of Darwin's " missing links," stronger in feature and fibre than in the graces ; the faces are generally hard and resolute, indicating a contracted and careworn existence. Of course the por- traits of ministers of long and faithful pastorates are found in these volumes; these are varied in benignity and stern- ness, occasionally marked by stolidity, but very rarely by stupidity. Now, my friends, what is it that prompts the labor and expense, the hearty local appreciation of these volumes of town history? It is rather curiosity, I think, than admiration, rather interest than pride, in the descend- ants of the good sound stock from which they sprang; honest, laborious, self-governed, God-fearing men, and feminine, rather than male, women, - those who held and transmitted title-deeds of land, who cleared the forests and caught the falling waters and tamed the wilderness; opened highways, beautified the pastures and the mead- ows, built the schoolhouses and the meeting-house, and could account for all their paternal and filial relations in
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the records of their family Bibles as incidents of legal mat- rimony, which the Old World people cannot always do. These plain people, keenly set upon their own individual rights, sharp, but always ready and generous in serving the common weal, figure in our town histories.
Now, there is one suggestion of a most just and grateful character which not only warrants, but demands, our high- est appreciation of our Puritan ancestry. It is this: we are enjoying in full measure, in the heritage which they have left to us, the fruits of all their virtues, but are really in no whit harmed by the peculiar qualities in them which we cannot love and approve. Only what was good in them, in their principles and institutions, has left its effects for us. Their severities and limitations, after giving them a great deal of vexation, have all died with them; their superstitions and prejudices we have given up, if only to give place for others of our own. We find it very easy to rid ourselves of all their scruples and to antiquate their observances. Their Fast Day has become for us a sort of out-of-door thanksgiving festival; and if henceforth there should be a failure of mince-pies for Christmas, it will not be chargeable upon the Puritans, but upon the Prohibi- tionists who have laid an interdict upon some of the in- gredients of that savory viand. While thus we relieve ourselves from the yoke of our fathers, and are in nowise losers or sufferers by any incumbrance which they have left on their heritage, how is it with those principles and insti- tutions, those habits and usages of the fathers which we all commend and approve as the security of public virtue and happiness? It will be a serious subject for some future orator of a most impartial and generous mind to discuss, if he will do it candidly, as to what our New Eng- land would have been if left to the development of its own original indigenous stock by its own traditions and meth- ods, and what it is likely to be from the swarming into it
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