The Portland daily press., 1892-06-30

4 When the settlement of Massachusetts,
and New England began there came to
these shores not only adventurers and
men eager for gain, but there came also
very many who sought freedom of wor-
ship and rest from persecution. The
story is familiar, so familiar that it needs
no repetition. The Spaniard had come
for gold, the Hollander had come for
commerce, the Frenchman had come for
vineyard and farm land, the Pilgrim and
the Puritan came for liberty and God
Thus We're added to the movements of
discovery and settlement the tremendous
forces of conscience and progress. Ia
That first century of the English occu-
patton of the continent, being the second
century after the discovery of the new
world, was the period in which the citi-
zenship of our Republic was created and
established. Whether he came to Vir-
ginia or New England the Briton brought
all the rights of personal manhood that
had been written with strong hands and
stout hearts into the text of Magma
Charta. But while he brought the right
of the Commons he did not bring the
burden of an inherited and traditional
aristocracy. No kingly court ever cursed
this soil; no noble stayed long after he
came and few mobiles came at all. From
the beginning all that was freest and best
in English custom and English law had
full course and a fair field here.
!. Thus was laid on the Atlantic coast,
from Plymouth Bay to Georgia the first
and deepest and surest
Foundation of Free State.
The full, free citizenship of the free man.
This condition of free citizenship having
been secured, the free man, who is the
essential unit of the free State, being
here, the building of the free State began.
The colonies held charters from the
crown, and local legislatures were a
necessity, The wide ocean that rolled
between the mother country and the set
tiers; the slow sailing ships and infre-
quent communication compelled these
colonies almost from the beginning to as
sumo and exercise most of the functions
of independent State. AS the settle
ments grew in power they grew in self
reliance, and when the third century of
the European occupation of the CONT
nent opened the process of State building
was in full progress. Each decade the
chartered colony became more and more
the governing commonwealth. When
atlast the crown began its assertion of
inherited prerogative the colonies made
answer that Englishmen could not be
taxed without representation, and that
no Parliament could levy any impost
upon citizen or colonist who had NO vote
in the choice of that Parliament and no
voice in it's councils. When that third
century drew toward its closing the full
bodied State had come, fitted and ready
for independent life.
As the first period may be called that
OF discovery; as the second that of the
creation of American citizenship; as the
third that of State building. so the fourth
has been that of the creation and estab-
lishment of the nation.
When the colonies had been firmly
rooted and were growing, they found in
terests and necessities that were common
to each and ALL Then there came need
for mutual defense in the Indian wars.
Then there came commercial agreements.
The individual citizens had developed
the free States, and now the free States
develope the Nation. The compact in
the cabin of the Mayfower, and the meet
ings of the first colonial assemblies had
in them the seeds and the germs Of the
Declaration in 1876 and of the Federal
Constitution of 1889. When the freedom
of the citizen and the local self govern
ment of the colony were assailed, by
stern necessity came protest, remon-
STRANGE, resistance, and at last war.
Seven Years of Struggle,
and then national independence was
assured. ass. = Il s,ag Es3
Two theories were, however, inter
woven in the colonial leagues; inter-
woven in the union for mutual resist
ance against the crown; interviewer in
the subsequent eonfederacy, and inter
woven in the resulting Federal Constitu-
ton. These were the forces of State
and National authority-the centrifugal
and centripetal forces of government
Men had been trained to love the colo
MES, and then by inheritance to love the
State. The sense of local freedom and
the jealousy of central authority alike
combined to make the citizen of the
State distrustful of new and untried
national government. On the other
hand men saw and felt that in union
alone was strength, and that no govern
ment could endure without the power to
enforce its own DEGREES and compel obedi-
ence to its own rightful commands. Be-
tween these theories there had to be
compromise, OF there could have been
no agreement. The Federal Constitu-
ton was such a compromise, and out of
that compromise grew the largest and
best scheme of popular free government
that the world has yet seen tried upon a
large and comprehensive scale. Our
fathers began with complete recognition
of the absolute and inalienable rights of
man as man. On this they built. Next
they recognized the existence, the wis
dom, the necessity of local State govern
ments, that should be fully and finally
trusted with all concerns. Then they
evolved the large conception that as the
State grew from the people to do their
will and protect their rights, and secure
their prosperity in local affairs, so the
nation grew from these same people to
do their will and protect their rights and
secure their welfare in national and con-
tinental affairs. This theory of dual gov
ernments is peculiar to us, and it has re-
suited in what has been so happily
phrased as ''the indissoluble Union of in
destructible States.''
The Constitution was adopted. On the
Both of April, 1889, ON Wall street, in
New York, where his statue still stands,
George Washington took his oath of of
gee as. the first President of the United
States, The experiment was launched,
and the judgment of mankind was in
voked upon
This Great Effort for Free Government