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knows no better than I do. When he sends a document like the firing manual, he is very careful to say that it is a document difficult to procure, and he says it in a French that seems a little singular to one who remembers the French that Dreyfus writes in his letters. But, when he gives notes, he says nothing. So I infer that these notes are without interest and without importance.

Furthermore, the impossibilities were no less great for Dreyfus. For instance, it is impossible that a staff officer should speak of the firing manual in the way in which it is spoken of in the bordereau. They say the writer must have been an artilleryman. Well, that is not my opinion, for all the officers will tell you that there is not one of them who would refuse to lend his manual to an officer of infantry, especially if the request were made by a superior officer. General Mercier himself in an interview has declared that the documents have not the importance that is attributed to them; and it is true that they have not, for a firing manual that is new in April or in August is no longer new in November or December. The foreign military attachés see these things at the grand manoeuvres, and get all the information that they want.

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I desire to place myself, gentlemen, exclusively on the ground chosen by the Minister of War, and on that ground we find that in 1894, the charge against Dreyfus being about to fall to the ground for want of proof, a man who was not a dictator, but simply an ephemeral cabinet minister in a democracy where the law alone is sovereign, dared to take it upon himself to judge one of his officers and hand him over to a court-martial, not for trial, but for a veritable execution. We find that, since then, nothing has been left undone in order to cover up this illegality. We find that

men interested in deceiving themselves have heaped inexact declarations upon incomplete declarations. We find that all the power of the government has been employed in enveloping the affair in darkness, even compelling the members of the council of war, whatever their loyalty, to give to the trial which they conducted the appearance of a judicial farce.

Well, all this, gentlemen, was bound to fill sincere men with indignation, and the letter of M. Emile Zola was noth ing but the cry of the public conscience. He has rallied around him the grandest and most illustrious men in France. Do not be embarrassed, gentlemen, by the sophism with which they try to blind you, in telling you that the honor of the army is at stake. It is not at stake. It does not follow that the entire army is involved, because some have shown too much zeal and haste, and others too much credulity; because there has been a serious forgetfulness of right on the part of one, or of several. What is really of interest. to the French army, gentlemen, is that it should not be burdened in history by an irreparable iniquity.

Gentlemen of the jury, by your verdict of acquittal set an example of firmness. You feel unmistakably that this man is the honor of France. Zola struck, France herself strikes. And, in conclusion, I have but one word to say. Let your verdict signify several things: first, "Long live the army!" I, too, cry "Long live the army!" but also "Long live the Republic!" and "Long live France!" That is, gentlemen, "Long live the right! Long live eternal justice!"

GUILD

URTIS GUILD, JR., an American editor and politician, was born at Bos

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class of 1881. Besides acting as assistant to his father, the editor of the "Commercial Bulletin," he contributed occasional articles to the “North American Review" and other magazines. He took an active part as a volunteer public speaker on the Republican side, and in 1896 was delegateat-large from Massachusetts to the National Republican Convention. He was brigadier-general in the State militia at the outbreak of the Spanish War and was on Gen. Fitzhugh Lee's staff in Cuba. He was offered a colonial commission by the President, but declined.

MR

SUPREMACY AND ITS CONDITIONS

R. MAYOR, FELLOW CITIZENS,— The Com-` monwealth of Massachusetts is devoted by the legend beneath her shield to peace and to law and order. We meet to commemorate both a war and a breach

of the peace.

Carried beyond restraint by the attempt of a personally virtuous king to re-establish in both England and America the royal prerogative lost by the elder Charles, a mob of men and boys on a moonlight night in the early spring of 1770 assaulted a solitary British sentinel pacing his beat on King Street in the town of Boston. Goaded beyond endurance by shouts of "Lobsters," "Bloody-backs," and more lethal missiles, the sentinel and the nine comrades who rallied to his support fired one volley, and one volley only, on the swarming crowd.

At the trial which followed, John Adams and Josiah Quincy joined in the defence of the soldiers before a Boston (10914)

judge and jury. All the accused were acquitted of murder. Two only were convicted, and punished with what in those days was a light penalty for manslaughter. The circumstances viewed in themselves are not especially remarkable. Similar brawls occur in Berlin, in London, in Albany, in Chicago, without altering the course of history. Yet for over one hundred years, commencing with the oration of James Lovell on March 5, 1771, this deadly street fight, in what was then the largest town in America, has been commemorated by an annual address on American history, delivered under the auspices of the authorities, first of the town, then of the city of Boston.

In the Boston town meeting, on March 5, 1783, after the delivery of the annual oration on the Boston Massacre, it was moved that instead of its anniversary, the Fifth of March, that "The Anniversary of the Fourth Day of July, 1776, ... shall be constantly celebrated by the delivery of a public oration . . . in which the orator shall consider the feelings, manners, and principles which led to this great national event, as well as the important and happy effects, whether general or domestic, which have already, and will forever continue to flow from this auspicious epoch."

The first Fourth of July oration delivered in accordance with this motion, which was later adopted, was pronounced by Dr. John Warren, July 4, 1783. The honor of serving as the first orator of the nineteenth century was given to Charles, the gifted son of Robert Treat Paine, so soon afterward cut off in the very flower of promise. It is no small privilege to be permitted to stand in the first year of the twentieth century here in Faneuil Hall, where my kinsman stood a hundred years ago, and if I fail to carry out the noble purpose of the ancient custom may I at least say, as he wrote

to the Boston selectmen of his day, "I trust my imperfect performance will find an apology in the purity of my intentions."

Sismondi, in his introduction to his great history of the Italian Republics, sets forth at the outset that

"One of the most important conclusions to be drawn from the study of history is that government is the most effective cause of a people's character . . . that government preserves or annihilates in those submitted to it those qualities which originally are the common heritage of man."

If this be but another way of denying that mere race or natural surroundings are the moving cause of a nation's progress, what community has more reason to join in grateful memory of its inheritance than the city of Boston, than the Commonwealth of Massachusetts? The Boston Massacre may have been but a street mob, but with the removal of British soldiers from King street to Castle William there was removed also the principle that an English king had the right to quarter troops in an American city without the consent of its inhabitants. Not without reason was Massachusetts singled out from all the colonies for especial punishment. New York broke her agreement in regard to importations from the mother country, Rhode Island and New Hampshire broke theirs. Delaware and New York did not vote on the question of National Independence. South Carolina and Pennsylvania voted against it. Massachusetts stood first, as Virginia most certainly stood second, in enduring determination that neither bribes, concessions, nor privileges should secure from her citizens consent to be taxed by the voice of any government but one of their own choosing. That the colonies ever did unite is extraordinary. Up to the Revolution it had never been possible, even when

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