Frostburg mining journal. [volume] (Frostburg, Md.) 1871-1913, 1892-01-09

better qualified to transact goodly share of
that business than our friends, Messrs, krIse
and Porter?
Some day, too, not far off the mineral
treasures still buried in the Valley of Vir-
ginia will be exhumed and smcltcd, and
miners lamps and furnace fires will light the
night from Shenandoah to Bristol.
As the nearest ocean outlet, and with
harbor deep and broad enough to float the
worlds marine, that will he a great day for
Norfolk.
But as Virginan born, and proud of the
Old Dominions history and traditions, | am
glad our young friends have become my
brethren by adoption. And though | have
been long absent from the tresde and roof
tree of the good old mother, | know she will
extend the welcome of hearth and home to
these as to all who are worthy of such high
consideration.
Mr.. Chairman, cannot resist the tempta-
ton to remind our friends that they are
planting the seeds of fortune in historic
ground There is an infants cradle in Boston
SAID to have rocked the first child born in
New England, but within few miles of
Norfolk is the cradle of individual liberty
itself At Jamestown the struggle began in
1917; oil Plymouth rock l3 years later. At
jamestown the colonists were compelled to
fight Indians and a tyrannical government
on Plymouth rock the Puritans worst foe
was the Indians. At jamestown the
colOnists were forced TO resist laws made by
the Crown and House of BurgeSSes, but on
Plymouth Rock no effort was wasted on
legislation-the laws of God answering all
purposes until the Puritans got time to make
better ones.
And so the parallel went on until
Nathaniel Bacon, the first commander of the
first American army, drove Lord Berkeley
from the governors chair and then made
the House of Burgesses declare that flight is
abdication !"
Up to this time It had never been known
that abandonment of office for any cause
necessarily created a vacancy. In England
this notion was rated treason and the colony
was punished accordingly. Yet in less than
~ wears, when the people of England got
tired of James the Second, they chased him
off the throne and in spite of the sacred
doctrine of hereditary succession, and the
immemorial dogma of the divine right of
kings, Parliament declared that "the realm
was kingless-that flight was abdication."
Not only did the mother country adopt
this shrewd preteXt of her rebellious daughter
to unite a Gordian knot, but she learned from
her far more valuable lesson. In 1924 she
rejected Virginia's petition-the
first Bill of Rights ever written--that "taxes
shall not be levied without the consent of the
people" Yet only four years later Parla-
ment laid down the same nltmatunt to
Charles the First and wrung from him an
assent
Moreover, I wish to remind our Young
friends that Virginia, their future home, was
Petition of Right and show the English
people how they might institute revolution,
but she was the first to announce to the
world that tyranny would not be borne by
in America And she has
that proclamation in the first
and most illustrious Coat of Arms adopted
OH this contincnt-the figure Of tyranny pros
trate under the heel of liberty
In this connection it is not little singular
that exactly 100 years after the first Virginian
was hung for treason by Berkeley the
Declaration of Independence was written by
another heroic Virginian. and that exactly
100 years after the last Nirginian was hung
at Yorktown for the same offense, Lord
CORVALLIS surrendered on the same spot the
greatest British army ever on this continent
to man at once the greatest of all Nirginians,
and the greatest of all Americans.
| might go farther and tell you that the
Virginia plan" was adopted as the model of
the Constitution of the United States under
which we live, and that un Ter those of her
sons who have been Presidents all our most
valuable public domain has been acquired.
might show you how with wonderful un-
selfshness she coded to the general govern
ment the richest portion OF all that vast
territory which now makes up Ohio, In
diana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin,
1.-The most muniticent heritage bequeathed to
any people since God gave the fruitful land
of Canaan to the children of Israel -
But the daughter colony's lessons to the
mother country were of far richer worth
than any cession of domain. The acknowl-
edgment of colonial independence carried
with it a change of policy which softened the
rule of the crown to all the provinces of the
under the English flag which is not fieer on
account of Virgnia's aggressive and con
tnuous assertion Of popular rights.
will stop here. In tins sketch desire only
to impress upon our young friends the duty of
that they are settling within
that degree of longitude which circumscribes
the birthplace of constitutional liberty, the
graves of its first martyrs, and the scene of
its final triumph. Indeed, i'll entering their
new home | might almost enjoin them with
the purport of that incident in the land of
where from the burning bush the
voice OF Almighty God arrested the attention
of the wondering prophet, sayng-"Put off
thy shoes from off thy feet for the place
thou standest is holy groundn'
And yet, sir, when they are there, i'm
mersad in business or basking in the radiance
of the sunlit smiles of NirSinia's lovely
daughters, | would not have them forget
home, dear old home! Especially, sir, do
| plead for "The Girl ! Left Behind Me-
away up yonder on the mountain heights in
Frostburg.
Now, Mr.. Chairman, | trust that each of
our friends like the rill that springs from the
side, vii! broaden as the river
when it approaches the sea. trust the same
gravity which bears our mountain streams in
rrou,in n unlume % the hnSun nf Old Ncenn