The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1894-06-29

tuition, growth is the essential condition
of preservation from decay.
And now glancing back over the years
that have gone, what have been the
results in character, In power, in culture
and in the exertion of beneficial inf1u-
ence?
Obviously role of alumni upon which
appear President and nine senators of
the United States. Speaker of the
House, 25 members of Congress, many
Governors, foreign ministers, and mem
bers of State legislatures, attests marked
adaptation 10 participation in political
affairs and the consequent acquisition
of prominence in that direction in re-
spect of which it may be added that
there has recently been nothing to in
dictate any diminution.
But we need not dwell on that. The
record is one of excellent and progress
i've teaching; of wise and faithful train
ing; of
SUCCESSFUL AND HONORABLE RE-
SUITS.
With President and corps of teachers,
young. vigorous, in grasp of the accumu.
lated treasures of the learning and ex-
perience of the past and in touch with
the spirit of the time; with boards act
ing in harmony, and numbering in their
membership now, as always, men emf
nent in letters and in the exercise of
public functions, and devoted to the
cause of higher education; with needed
endowments gradually being bestowed
as the usefulness of the college becomes
more widely recognized, and the spiri t
de corps of its alumni becomes
more and more awakened; we look for
ward IN confidence that much as she may
fairly claim to have already accom-
plished, the future of our alma mater
will be still more useful and beneficial
and crowned with still greater renown.
Bnt the duties and response bilties rest
ing upon the college as it advances into
it's second century have increased in
Importance with the increasing gravity
of the questions which unexampled pro-
gress in it's first has necessarily evolved.
The men who signed the declaration
and framed the federal constitution re-
garded equality and the rights to life.
liberty and the pursuit of happiness as
attainable not through violent and cas-
ual forces. but by the effective power of
law exerted through definite scheme
of government so ordered as to best Sc
cure that sober second thought, whose
operation renders popular government
possible.
And by written constitutions, national
and State, the people themselves set
the sudden impulses of mere majorities.
and made the protection of life and
liberty, the sacredness of contract
and the stability of private property
the basis OF the State
Perhaps the most striking incident in
Gov. Bowdoin's career WAS the suppress
ion in 1856 of tine armed outbreak against
constituted authority in Massachusetts,
which sprang from the discomfort engen,
dered BIZ the miseries succeeding the
close of the revolution.
In 1894 Washington in the second term
of his presidency moved at the head of
the troops called out to put down resis-
lance TO the enforcement of the laws of
the United States.
The approval of these eXertions of gov
ernmental power thus early in our his
tory indicated the popular consciousness
that government is
NOT A THING THAT GOES BY IT
and that grievances must be redressed
by the pursuit of orderly methods, and
not through the overthrow Of all au-
shcrity.
Closely coincident with the year of our
foundation the industrial movement be-
gan which has led to such marvellous re-
increase of production by the application
of machinery; in the development of
the means of lOcomotion and iDtercom-
municatIon. Physical science was in its
infancy, and steam and electricity were
waiting to be summoned to the service
of mankind.
Stupendous as the achievements in
these directions have been since then.
we are admonished that science trem hles
on the borders of discoveries to which
these are as nothing. Nevertheless, the
flower in the crannied wall holds the
secret of what it is, root ana all, and
all in all" and the religious instinct, I'M
depressed by science or reason, triumphs
over the infidelity with which the CEN
fury began, and answers the question of
Plato with the Masters life.
But the world is not to be made over
on the instant, and the problems of
modern civilization cannot be solved by
revolution.
With the enormous multiplication of
population and wealth, that civilization
has assumed new political and social as
poets. Capital combines, labor organizes
and the demand is made that all cor
porate power shall be exercised, and that
all the insurumentalties of intercourse,
ali the operations of production and con
sumption, shall be not simply regulated,
but conducted by the State.
Thus the liberty of the individual and
the cultivation OF the virutes essential
to real progress, the principles which lie
at the base of popular government.
ARE INSIDIOUSLY THREATENED,
and the old question again energies as
between reliance on private energy on