Arizona weekly citizen., 1889-05-04
ORATION CHAUNCEY M. DEPER,
 l.. L. D.,
 AT THE Centennial of the Inauguration of George Washington, FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. Delivered from the Steps of the Treas my Building. New York.
 April 30. 1889.
FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE
 UNITED STATES.


 We celebrate today the Centenary of Our Nationality. One hundred years spo the United States began their exist ence. The powers of government were assumed by the People of the Republic and they became the sole source of authority. The solemn ceremonial of the first inauguration, the reverent oath or Washington, the acclaim of the multitude greeting their President, marked the most unique event of modern times m inc deyelopment of free institutions. The occasion was not an accident, but result. 1t was the elimination of the working out by mighty forces through many centuries of the problem of self government. It was not the triumph of . system, the application of a theory, or the reduction to practice or the abstrac- tions of philosophy. The time, the country. the heredity and environment the people, the folly of its enemies, and inc nob.e courage of its friends, gave to liberty after ages of defeat, of trlai, Ol eYneriment, of partial success and sub stantial gains, this immortal victory Henceforth it had a refuge and recruit ;no station. The oppressed found free homes in this favored land, and invisible armies marched from it by mail and telegraph, by speech and song, by pre- cent and example, to regenerate the world.
 Puritans in New England, Dutchmen in New York. Catholics in Maryland, Huguenots in South Carolina had felt fine fires of persecution and were welded to religious liberty They had been puri- fed in the furnace. and in high debate and on bloody battlefelds had learned to sacrifice all material interests and to neril thelr lives for human rights. The nrinciples of Constitutional Government had been impressed on them by hun dreds of years of struggle, and for each principle they could point to the grave of an ancestor whose death attested the ferocity of the fight and the value of the concession wrung from arbitrary power. They knew the limitations of authority, fhey could pledge their lives and for tunes to resist encroachments upon their rights. but it required the lesson of h. dian massacres, the invasion Of the armies of France from Canada, the tyranny of the British Crown, the seven years war of the Revolution, and the five years chaos of the Confederation to evolve the idea, upon which rest the power and permanency of the Republic, that liberty and union are one and ln- separable.
 The traditions and experience of the Colonists had made them alert to dis cover and quick to resist any peril to their liberties. Above all things, they feared and distrusted power. The town meeting and the Colonial Legislature gave them confidence in themselves, and courage to check the Royal Governors. Their interests, hopes and affections were in their several CommonWealths, and each blow by the British Ministry at their freedom, each attack upon thelr rights as Englishmen, weakened thelr love for the Mother-land and intensified their hostility to the Crown. But the same causes which broke down their allegiance to the Central Government increased their confidence in their re- spectiye colonies, and their faith in hb- erty was largely dependent upon the maintenance of the sovereignty of their several States. The farmers shot at Lexington echoed round the world, the spirit which it awakened from its slum- bers could do and dare and die, but it had not yet discovered the secret of the permanence and progress of free institutions. Patrick Henry thundred in the Virginia Convention, James Otis spoke with trumpet tongue and feryid eloquence for united action in Massachusetts, Hamilton, Jay and Clinton pledged New York to respond with men and money for the common cause. but their vision only saw league of independent colonies. The veil was not yet drawn from before the vista, of population and power, of empire and liberty, which would open with National Union.
 The Continental Congress partial ly grasped, but completely expressed, the central idea of American Republic. More fully than any other body which ever assembled did it represent the vic tories won from arbitrary power of human rights. In the New World it was the conservator of liberties secured through centuries of struggle in the Old. Among the delegates were the decendants of the men who had stood in that brilliant array upon the field of Runnymede, which wrestled from King John, Magma Charta, the great charter of liberty, to which Hallam in the 18th Century bears witness that all which had been obtained is little more than as confirmation or commentary" There were the grandchildren of the states men who had summoned Charles before Parliament and compelled his assent to the Petition of Rights, which transfer red power from the Crown to the Com mons, and gave representative govern ment to the English speaking race. And there were those who had sprung from the iron soldiers who had fought and charged with Cromwell at Naseby and Dunbar and Marston Moor. Among its members were Huguenots, whose fathers had followed the White Plume of Henry of Navarro, and in an age of bigotry, intolerance and delticatlon of absolutism. had secured the great edict of religious liberty from French des- potism: and who had become a people without a country, rather than surren- der their convictions and forswear their consciences. In this congress were those whose ancestors were the country of the Sea, who had survived the cruel LICE Ol OuC <14N oy oA4O OAOhCl ShC yOhC VI proud Philip of Spain, and who had two centuries before made a Declama- ton of Independence, and formed fed eral union which were models of freedom and strength.
 These men were not revolutionists, they were the heirs and the guardians of the priceless treasurers of mankind. The King and his ministers were the Revolutionists. They were reaction aries, seeking arbitrarily to turn back the hands upon the dial of time. A year of doubt and debate, the baptism of blood upon battle-felds, where soldiers from every colony fought, under com mon standard, and consolidated the Continental Army, gradually lifted the soul and understanding of this immortal Congress to the sublime declaration: "We, therefore the representatives of H1ns<ad of Anarioo in Ganaral