The Massachusetts Society of the Sons of the Revolution celebrated, as is its custom, the anniversary of the birth of freedom in America. On this occasion Senator Hoar delivered the following address:—

I deem it a high honor to be the guest of the Sons of the Revolution on this our great Massachusetts anniversary. In the beginning, when your society was first established, I shared a little the doubt whether it were wise to create an order or brotherhood, even for this patriotic purpose, in which all American citizens could not have a part. But I am satisfied that it is all right. Every one of the great races that are blended in our national life has its own glorious traditions which it delights to cherish. The Englishman and the Irishman and the Scotchman and the Frenchman and the German and the Scandinavian each has something to tell of what his fathers did for humanity and freedom in the days that are past. He is no worse but all the better American, as he feels that in making up their account of debt and credit with the republic he and his race have had much to give as well as much to receive. So the sons of New England, the sons of Massachusetts, the sons of Middlesex, the sons of Lexington and Concord have an honest right to gather on the 19th of April, as the years go round, to revive the tender memories of what their fathers suffered, and the glorious memories of what their fathers achieved.

It is an important purpose of your society, as I understand it, to gather and preserve the history of the revolutionary time, especially the local tradition and material which otherwise would be in great danger of being lost. But, more important than this, you mean to keep alive the spirit of the revolutionary time, which I am sometimes tempted to think—although I do not in the least yield to that temptation—is in still greater danger of being lost. The greatest of all conservative forces in a republic is a great history. The War of the Revolution was no vulgar contest for empire or for glory. It was not even a contest for liberty alone. Our fathers fought for two things:

1. To secure the blessing of liberty for themselves and for their children, and,

2. That they might found on earth a government on righteousness and on the law of God.

Captain Charles Miles, one of the Concord captains, told Dr. Ripley afterward that he went to the bridge on the morning of the 19th of April, 1775, with the same sense of responsibility to God with which he went to church. That has ever been the spirit of the American soldier, from Concord to Santiago. It is for this, and not for glory or for empire, that the New England soldier has been ready to consecrate his life.

"I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send? Then said I, Here am I. Send me."

It is this which has given to our fathers of the Revolution their peculiar glory, and which has given to the republic they founded its power, its supreme and unequaled power, among the nations of the world. It is this which separates them from the cheap, vulgar, commonplace soldiers and warriors of mankind. You would think from some recent utterances that some people were of the opinion that if the American soldier is to be respected in the world hereafter he must be half a savage and half a beast, fighting to impose his dominion upon unwilling peoples and subject races, and that in that way only the sons of the Pilgrims and the men of the Revolution are to become a world power. Why, my friends, there have been empires enough, and wars enough, and conquests enough, and heroes enough. Some of them are left, and some of them are, thank God, dead as Julius Cœsar. The unerring judgment of history, the unerring instinct of mankind gives them their true place sooner or later. The men or the nations who fight for freedom and justice, who fight for the great doctrine of the opening sentences of our Declaration of Independence, are the men and the nations that live in the grateful memory of mankind, and not the men or the nations who fight for dominion or empire. The garlands with which Leonidas and his three hundred dressed their brows are as unfaded and as fragrant to-day as on the morning of Thermoplœ. But who cares to-day for Alexander the Great, or who knows to-day the names of his generals?

The last time I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Taylor was in 1896, at the great banquet given to Mr. Collins by our consuls abroad. It was an occasion not likely to be forgotten by anybody who had a part in it. Every man who was present was proud to be a representative of the great republic. He felt that he had over him a flag honored everywhere, by land and by sea, representing everywhere, not only the power and the glory of seventy-five million of Americans, but representing also the hope of humanity the world over. Nobody thought then of doubting that we were a world power, or thought of his country as isolated and hemmed in and hampered in her continental home. The whole tone and thought of that meeting, without dissenting voice, without a break in its harmony was that the mission of the United States was moral, and not a mission of force; that our country stood among the nations of the world as the great peacemaker and the great peacekeeper; that wherever that flag floated, it floated to represent peace on earth and good will to men. We should as soon have thought three years ago of asking the Saviour of mankind to come down from the Mount and take service under a Roman centurion, to go into the employ of Tiberius, in order not to be isolated, as to have asked the American people to descend from its lofty height to engage in the diplomatic quarrels of Europe, or the scuffles for empire in Asia.

Mr. President, I, for one, do not believe that the temper and character of the American people have changed in a twelvemonth. I believe that the principles of the Constitution and the principles of the Declaration, the doctrine on which the Revolution was fought and won, are still dear to the heart of the American people. The Sons of the Revolution and the sons of the Sons of the Revolution will gather on the 19th of April for many a year to come, and, we hope, until time shall be no more, true to the spirit of the fathers who dared to found a great nation upon the moral law and the indestructible rights of human nature. If it shall ever be otherwise, their lips will speak the shame of the living, while they honor the memory of the dead.