WASHINGTON'S INAUGURATION

BY CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

We celebrate to-day the centenary of our nationality. One hundred years ago the United States began their existence. The powers of the government were assumed by the people of the Republic, and they began to be 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 first place among the nations of the world, the asylum of the opprest, the home of the free.

We stand to-day upon the dividing line between the first

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and second century of constitutional government. There are no clouds overhead, and no convulsions under our feet. We reverently return thanks to the Almighty God for the past, and with confident and with hopeful promise march upon sure ground toward the future. The simple facts of these hundred years paralyze the imagination, and we contemplate the vast accumulations of the century with awe and pride. Our population has grown from four to sixtyfive millions. Its center moving westward five hundred miles since 1789, is eloquent with the founding of cities and the birth of States. New settlements, clearing the forests and subduing the prairies, and adding four millions to the few thousands of farms which were the support of Washington's Republic, create one of the great granaries of the world, and open exhaustless reservoirs of national wealth.

The infant industries, which the first act of our administration sought to encourage, now give remunerative employment to more people than inhabited the Republic at the beginning of Washington's presidency. The grand total of their annual output of seven thousand millions of dollars in value places the United States first among the manufacturing countries of the earth. One-half of all the railroads, and one-quarter of all the telegraph lines of the world within our borders, testify to the volume, variety, and value of an internal commerce which makes these States, if need be, independent and self-supporting. These hundred years of development under favorable political conditions, have brought the sum of our national wealth to a figure which is past the results of a thousand years for the mother land, herself otherwise the richest of modern empires.

During this generation a civil war of unequaled magnitude caused the expenditure and loss of eight thousand millions of dollars, and killed six hundred thousand and permanently disabled over a million young men; and yet the impetuous progress of the North, and the marvelous industrial development of the new and free South, have obliterated the evidences of destruction and made the war

a memory, and have stimulated production until our annual surplus nearly equals that of England, France, and Germany, combined. The teeming millions of Asia till the patient soil and work the shuttle and loom as their fathers have done for ages; modern Europe has felt the influence and received the benefit of the incalculable multiplication of force by inventive genius since the Napoleonic wars; and yet, only two hundred and sixty-nine years after the little band of Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, our people, numbering less than one-fifteenth of the inhabitants of the globe, do one-third of its mining, one-fourth of its manufacturing, one-fifth of its agriculture, and own onesixth of its wealth.

No crisis has been too perilous for its powers, no evolution too rapid for its adaptation, and no expansion beyond its easy grasp and administration. It has assimilated diverse nationalities with warring traditions, customs, conditions and languages imbued them with its spirit and won their passionate loyalty and love.

The flower of the youth of the nations of Continental Europe are conscripted from productive industries and drilling in camps. Vast armies stand in battle array along the frontiers, and a Kaiser's whim or a minister's mistake may precipitate the most destructive war of modern times.

But for us no army exhausts our resources nor consumes our youth. Our navy must needs increase in order that the protecting flag may follow the expanding commerce which is to successfully compete in all the markets of the world. The sun of our destiny is still rising, and its rays illumine vast territories as yet unoccupied and undeveloped, and which are to be the happy homes of millions of people.

The spirit of Washington fills the executive office. Presidents may not rise to the full measure of his greatness, but they must not fall below his standard of public duty and obligation. His life and character, conscientiously studied and thoroughly understood by coming generations, will be for them a liberal education for private life and public station, for citizenship and patriotism, for love and

devotion to Union and liberty. With their inspiring past and splendid present, the people of these United States, heirs of a hundred years, marvelously rich in all which adds to the glory and greatness of a nation, with an abiding trust in the stability and elasticity of their Constitution, and an abounding faith in themselves, hail the coming century with hope and joy.

THE UNVEILING OF THE STATUE OF RUFUS CHOATE

BY JOSEPH H. CHOATE

I deem it a very great honor to have been invited by the Suffolk Bar Association to take part on this occasion in honor of him who still stands as one of the most brilliant ornaments of the American Bar in its annals of two centuries. Bearing his name and lineage, and owing to him, as I do, more than to any other man or men-to his example and inspiration, to his sympathy and helping hand-whatever success has attended my own professional efforts, I could not refuse the invitation to come here to-day to the dedication of this statue, which shall stand for centuries to come, and convey to the generations who knew him not some idea of the figure and the features of Rufus Choate. Neither bronze nor marble can do him justice. Not Rembrandt himself could reproduce the man as we knew and loved him for until he lay upon his death-bed he was all action, the "noble, divine, godlike action" of the oratorand the still life of art could never represent him as he was. It is forty years since he strode these ancient streets with his majestic step-forty years since the marvelous music of his voice was heard by the living ear-and those of us who, as students and youthful disciples, followed his footsteps, and listened to his eloquence, and almost worshiped his presence, whose ideal and idol he was, are already many years older than he lived to be; but there must be a few still living, and present here to-day, who