know but little of the details of his private life for the first forty years or more; but even the reverence of posterity has not succeeded in wholly veiling from view the undoubted fact that he was by nature vehement, impulsive, headstrong, impatient, passionate,-a man in whose blood the fiery coursers might easily have run riot, and strewed their way with havoc. By far the greater honor is due to him who so held them under bit, rein and curb that masterly self-control under intensest provocation became his foremost characteristic,-that disappointment, delay, defeat, even treachery, so seldom disturbed his equanimity, spread a cloud over his brow, or drew from him a resentful or bitter word.

We admire, also, in him the even poise with which he bore his high command in war and in the counsels of the nation. In mien, manner, speech, intercourse, he was never beneath, and never above his place. Dignity without haughtiness, firmness without obstinacy, condescension without stooping, gentleness without suppleness, affability without undue familiarity, were blended in him as in hardly any other historical personage. No one who could claim his ear was repelled; yet to no one did he let himself down. He sought and received advice, gave its full weight and worth to honest dissent, yet never for a moment resigned the leader's staff. The more thoroughly we study the history of the war, the more manifest is it that on this one man more than on all beside depended its successful end. Congress lacked equally power and promptness; the State legislatures were dilatory and often niggardly in provision for their troops; exposure and privation brought portions of the army to the very brink of revolt and secession; cabals were raised in behalf of generals of more brilliant parts and more boastful pretensions; success repeatedly hovered over his banner only to betray him in the issue; yet in every emergency he was none the less the tower of strength, or rather the guiding pillar of the nation by day and night, in cloud and fire. Heart and hope never once forsook him, and his elastic courage sustained failing hearts and rekindled flickering hope.

His judgment of men, his keen insight into character, has also its prominent place among the sources of his power. In Arnold, indeed, and to some degree in Gates, he was deceived; but of the many in whom he reposed confidence it is hard to add to the list of those who betrayed his trust. He recognized instantly the signal merit of Greene, and employed him constantly in the most arduous and responsible service. Putnam, and the other brave and devoted, but untrained generals whom he found here on his arrival, lost nothing in his regard by their rusticity of garb and mien. Pickering, than whom the annals of our State bear the name of no more ardent patriot or more honorable man, was successively his secretary, commissary general and quartermaster, and held in his presidency, at one time or another, the chief place in almost every department of the public service. In Hamilton's very boyhood he discovered the man, who eclipsed his own military fame by repairing the nation's shattered credit and establishing her financial safety and efficiency. He understood every man's capacity, and knew how to utilize it to the utmost. Rarest gift of all, he knew what he could not do, and what others could do better than himself; and he in no respect appears greater than in committing to the most secure and efficient agency the several portions of his military and civil responsibility, in accepting whatever service might redound to the public good, and in the unstinted recognition of such service.

Time fails me, and so it would were my minutes hours, to complete the picture. Nor is there need; for lives there an American who owns not his

primacy, in war, in peace, in command, in service, in uncorrupt integrity, in generous self-devotion, in loyalty to freedom, his country and his God? Among the dead, the heroes and statesmen of all times and lands, his mighty shade rises preeminent,-his name the watchword of liberty, right and law, revered wherever freedom is sought or cherished, the tyrant's rebuke, the demagogue's shame, the patriot's synonyme for untarnished fame and unfading glory.

This season of commemoration has its voices, not only of gratitude and gladness, but equally of admonition, it may be, of reproach. Our nation owes its existence, its constitution, its early union, stability, progress and prosperity, under the Divine Providence, to the great, wise and good men who built our ship of state, and stood at its helm in the straits and among the shoals and quicksands through which it sailed into the open sea. Where are now our Washingtons, Adamses, Hamiltons, Jays, Pickerings,-the men whom a sovereign's ransom could not bribe, or a people's adulation beguile, or the lure of ambition dazzle and pervert? Nature cannot have grown niggardly of her noble births, God of his best gifts. But where are they? Unset jewels, for the most part, and incapable of finding a setting under our present political régime. Of what avail is it that we heap honors on the illustrious fathers of our republic, if we are at no pains to seek for their succession, heirs of their talents and their virtues? Yet, were Washington now living, the very man of whose praise we are never weary, does any one suppose it possible for him to be chosen to the chief magistracy? Would he answer the questions, make the compromises, give the pledges, without which no national convention would nominate him? Could he creep through the tortuous mole-paths, through which men now crawl into place and grovel into power? Would he mortgage, expressly or tacitly, the vast patronage of Government for the price of his election?

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We sometimes hear the cry, "Not men, but measures." But if there be any one lesson taught us by our early history, it is that men, not measures, created, saved, exalted our nation. Corrupt men vitiate, mean men debase, dishonest men pervert, incompetent men neutralize the best measures, such measures be even possible, except as originated, directed, actualized by the best men. Our rowers have now brought us into waters where there are no soundings. It is impossible to know, in the absence of a definite standard of value, whether our national wealth is increasing or declining,— whether we are on the ninth wave of towering prosperity, or on the verge of general bankruptcy. It is an ominous fact that an immense proportion of individual wealth is public debt. Never was there so much need as now of the profoundest wisdom and an integrity beyond bribe, to crystallize our chaos, to disentangle the complexities of our situation, to disenthrall our industries from legislation which protects by cramping and crippling, to retrench the spoils of office, enormous when not exceeding legal limits, unmeasured beyond them, and through the entire hierarchy of place and trust to establish honesty and competency, not partizan zeal and efficiency, as the essential qualifications.

There is a sad and disheartening element in the pomp and splendor, the lofty panegyric and fervent eulogy of these centennial celebrations. It was once said in keen reproach by him who spake as never man spake, "Ye built the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous." It is, in general, not the age which makes history that writes it,-not the age which builds monuments that merits them. It is in looking back to a past better than the present that men say, "There were giants in those days."

Reverence and gratitude for a worthy ancestry characterize, indeed, not unworthy descendants; praise and adulation of ancestors beyond reason or measure denote a degenerate posterity. Our fathers have done little for us, if their equals do not now fill their places. Unless their lineage be undebased, their heritage is of little value.

Fellow-citizens, let us praise our fathers by becoming more worthy of them. Let this season of commemoration be a revival-season of public and civic virtue. Let the blessed memories which we rejoice to keep ever green be enwreathed afresh with high resolve and earnest endeavor to transmit the liberty so dearly purchased to centuries yet to come. When another centennial rolls round, let there be names identified with this, our country's second birth-time, that shall find fit place in the chaplet of honor which our children will weave. Some such names will be there,-Lincoln, Andrew, the heroes of our civil conflict, the men whose prudent counsels and diplomatic skill in that crisis warded off worse perils than those of armed rebellion. Let these be reënforced by yet other names that shall be written indelibly on the pillars of our reconstructed Union. Fellow-citizens, heirs of renowned fathers, look to it that in your hands their trust be fulfilled, that the travail of their soul have the only recompense they sought.

AN ORATION

ON THE ONE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE MEETING OF THE FIRST CONTINENTAL CONGRESS

IN PHILADELPHIA, SEPT. 5, 1774.'

By the Hon. HENRY ARMITT BROWN, of Philadelphia.

W

E have come here to-day in obedience to that natural impulse which bids a people do honor to its past. We have assembled to commemorate a great event, one of the most famous in our history. In the midst of prosperity and profound peace, in the presence of the honorable and honored Vice-President of the United States, of the chosen rulers of the people, of the members of the present and other Congresses,-the successors of the statesmen of 1774,-of the representatives of the learned professions, and of every department of human enterprise and industry and skill, we have gathered beneath this roof to celebrate, with reverent and appropriate services, the one hundredth anniversary of the meeting of the First Continental Congress.

It is a great privilege to be here, and we have to thank the Carpenters" Company for it. The Carpenters' Company of Philadelphia has always been a patriotic body. In the months which preceded the Revolution it freely offered its hall for the meetings of the people; and besides the high honor of having entertained the Congress of 1774, it can point to its having sheltered the Committees of Safety and the Provincial Committee for a long time beneath this roof. The Carpenters' Company of Philadelphia is a very ancient body. It came into existence when George the First was king, when Benjamin Franklin was a printer's lad, and Samuel Johnson was a boy at school. It was founded fifty years before an American Congress met, and it is now half as old again as American independence. And more than this, it is a very honorable body. Its members have been counted

In explanation of the fact that Mr. Brown's oration appears in this connection, out of its true chronological order, it is proper to state that, owing to our limited space, it was at first the intention of the committee on publication to confine this issue of the REGISTER to centennial orations delivered in New-England; but, after these had been printed, it was deemed best to enlarge the number still further and include the admirable oration of Mr. Brown. EDITOR.

2"The Carpenters' Company of the city and county of Philadelphia" was founded in the year 1724, and has continued to the present moment in activity and vigor. It is made up entirely of Master Carpenters, who, at the time of their election, have been actively engaged in business, and numbers now 90 members.