The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-03-20
RELIC OF MIDDLE AGES
SPAIN BACK NUMBER IN THE AD-
VANCEMENT OF THE WORLD.
Speech by DIR. Depew, I'm Which He
Compares Records of Lord North and
Washington, and Refers to Spain.

| NEW YORK, March 19.-This is the an
| niversary of the downfall of Lord North S
| ministry, and tonight, marking the occa-
| sion the Empire State Society of the Sons
/ of the American Revolution sat at their
| annual banquet in this city. The most not
| able feature Of the occasion was the address
| of the president of the society, DR.. Chaun-
| cey M. Depew, who took occasion to make
reference to Spain and her methods Of CO.
lonial government. Mr.. Depew's address
| was opened by reference to modern criti-
| cism of ancestral trees upon American soil,
aid with a defense Of the honest pride
| which he felt should be maintained by ev-
| cry American whose ancestors for genera
| tions had not only escaped being hung, or
| jailed, or membership in any poorhouse, but
| who had, in their several periods, done their
| part as self-supporting citizens for their
| neighborhood, their colony. their State and
| their country. He expressed his own graft
| fcation in the consciousness that four OF
| his ancestors were soldiers in the army of
| the revolution, and expressed his commits
| Grafton for those who had come too early
| to enjoy the possibilities and the future or
| New York when the whole island of Man
haitian would have been bought for $24. Mr.
Depew then said:
destined to influence beyond any other men
of their period and almost of any period
the history of the world and the happiness
CT the human race. One had all the ad-
vantages that BIRTH rank, education and
position would give him in Great Britain,
and the other had the same opportunities
in the new world. One by education, habits
of mind and association embodieS the spirit
of the past, the other the awakened spirit
of the age. The one was Lord North, the
other George Washington. Lord North was
believer in the autocratic authority of
the middle ages. He believed in the divine
right Of kings and in the concentration of
all power in the throne. He never under
stood the people nor could he comprehend
that they had any rights in the admnistra-
ton of government. He was a Tory of the
Tories and Bourbon of the BourbonS. Ills
great ability and high character only gave
him larger place and opportunity for the
encroachment of his ideas and the mislead-
ing of his King. Washington breathed the
air of freedom in the fields and the forests
of the new world. On the farm, at the
huStings, in the Legislature, in politics and
in war he mingled with the people. lie
early learned their intelligence and capac-
ity for self-government The lesson of civil
and religious liberty was taught him by ex-
ample and precept until far beyond his
years or his contemporaries, he knew the
meaning of liberty and law. In the order
ing of the great events of the period OF
Lord North the most hide-bound conSerVa-
tiveS became the most dangerous of reVolu-
tionists, while Washington, the leader OF
the revolution, became the embodiment OF
conservatism. Lord North, by enforcing
the sedicts of arbitrary power, created re-
volt which lost to. the British crown the
greater part of its colonial possessions and
inaugurated the era of political expansion
and created the democracy which drove him
from power and ultimately elevated TO the
control of the destinieS of his country the
masses of his countrymen whom he so dlS-
trusted and despised. Washington guided
a revolt against authority, government ana
law so wisely, so conSerVatiVely and with
such fairness that upon the ruins or the
government which he DESTROYED and of the
laws which he defied he built republic
with the rights of life, of liberty, of happi-
ness and of property so Embedded IN It's
Constitution that the institutions of the
United States alone of all the nations or
Christendom have survived the shock of the
social and political evolutions OF the nine
teenth century.
After one hundred years Lord North is
remembered only because his ashes fertilize
free institutions. After one hundred years
Washington is reverenced as the FOUNDER OF
the most beneicent government the worio
has ever known and as the foremost man IN
all the elements of patriotism, herolsm ana
statecraft Of his own time ana ni OF On every Try
party and his friends, passed his declnlns
years lamenting, not his loss OF sight
which was the misfortune OF nus ola age
but his blindness in not seeing the tendenee
cies of the time and the rising spirit OF
English and American liberty. washington
passed. his. declining years possessing tn9
love and the gratitude OF ms country anu
the admiration of the world 1850,
''There was another young man, contem-
porary with Washington ana Lore Nort I'
who had so thoroughly imbibed the teach
ings and the spirit of Chatham and Burke
and Fox that he remained out or power
during the whole OF the reVolutii o y wre
right His first act on coming into power
on the fall of the Ministry of Lord North
was to recognize the independence of the
United States and make the Jay treaty OF
alliance between the two countrles-tnat
great treaty of peace and arbltratlon pc
tween these two English-speaking peoples,
the spirit of which grows stronger ana
more beneficent year by year. ana never
was so strong as 1T is to-day. rms states,
man was the Earl of Shelburne. He had
the greatest affection and friendship Tor
Benjamin Franklin, the closest reiations
with John Jay and reverentlai aanpa ,Ieef
Washington sat for full-length portray
of himself. Five years ago THAT PORTRAY
appeared for sale one m0Tnng IN tr pctre
dealer Before night it was the property or
another British statesman who has en-
greater one, who knows the United States
better than any other Englishman living
and whose friendship for, America ana
Americans is ever most cordlal ana Synpa,,
thetic. That statesman is the Liberia!
leader, Lord Rosebery. This portrait OF
Washington, the best of him l nave eyer yer
home of Rosebery, is really pictorial mon.
ument of the fall of the North Ministry. of
the recognition of American independence,
of the birth and marvellous growth from
the American revolution of liberal IDEAS IN
Great Britain and in Europe. 1t has also
it's lesson for to-day.
lone power alone in Europe sympathiZed
with Lord North and George III in their
attack upon the rights of the American
people, one power alone in Europe held off
till the last-until long after Great Britain
herself had acted-in the recognition OF the
independence Of the United States: That
power was Spain. She had at that time the
most magnificent of colonial empires, she
possessed nearly one-half and the most pro-
ductive half of the continent of North
America the whole of the Isthmus of
Darien, the whole of South America and
nearly all the islands Of the adjoining seas.
She feared that the example Of the Amerl-
can revolution would spread to her own
colonies Had she learned the lesson of the
American revolution she might still have
been an imperial power. That lesson of the
American revolution in colonial empire was
home rule and self-g government for the peo-
pie of the colonies and the working of their
own destimes according to the conditions
of the country in which they lived and the
surroundings This lesson cost Great Britain
the fairest of her possession, but by adopt
ing the policy which 1t taught her colonies
now encircle the globe. 1t was one of the
sights Of the century to see in the jubilee
procession last summer the representatives
of every continent and climate of the EARTH
of every race and religion, Loyalty following
the Queen as subject to her authority, in
an imperial sense and sovereign themselves
in their own home governments. Spain has
perSistently chung to the ideas of Lord
North, and worse than that. to the Roman
proconSular system, which recognized pros
porous colonies only as opportunities for the
rapacity of Imperial rulers. The spirit of