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CITY OF BOSTON.

IN COMMON COUNCIL, July 6, 1871.

Ordered, That the thanks of the City Council are due, and they are hereby tendered, to GENERAL HORACE BINNEY SARGENT, for the very able and eloquent address delivered by him before the City Government and citizens of Boston, on the occasion of the ninety-fifth anniversary of the Declaration of American Independence; and that he be requested to furnish a copy of the address for publication by the City.

Sent up for concurrence.

MATTHIAS RICH, President.

Concurred.

IN BOARD OF ALDERMEN, July 10, 1871.

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ORATION.

THE earliest dawn to-day recalled those words of Milton's Agonistes,—

"The morning trumpets festival proclaimed

In each high street.”

This is the chief national festival, yet commemorated, as John Adams thought it should be for evermore, "by solemn acts of devotion to Almighty God," and with "pomp, parade, guns, bells, bonfires, nad illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other."

Ninety-five years of anxious triumph-the agony of glory-have passed away! Why is it that this excitable people, not fettered by too much reverence for the old, and eminently fond of new sensations, still watch, with unabated, hereditary enthusiasm, the rising of this day's sun? Why is it not dimmed to them by the distance of near a hundred annual journeys through illimitable space? Why do not the vast and near events, that the last decade has swept into our history, make us regard the Revolution as the day of small things?

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