The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1898-03-20

y >
of the Sons of the American Revolution.
sat at their annuel banquet in this city
The most notable feature of the oc-
casiOn was the address of the President
of the Society, Honorable Chauncey NJ.
Dcpew. who took occasion to make refer
ence to Spain and her methods of Co
lOnial Government Mr.. Depew's adj
dress was opened by reference to modern
criticism of ancestral trees upon Ameri-
can soil, and with q defence of the hon
est pride which he felt should be main
tanned by every American whose an
cestOrs for generations had not only
escaped being hung, or jailed, or MEM
bership 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 qualification in
the consciousness that four of his an
cestOrs were soldiers in the Army of the
Revolution. and expressed his commiser-
alton for those who had some, too early
to enjoy the possibilities and the future
oof New York, when the whole island Of
Manhattan could have been bought for
said:
I'm 1882 two boys were born, who
were destined to influence beyond any
other men of their period and almost
of any period, the history Of the world
and the happiness of the human race.
One had all the advantages and the
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 a believ-
er in the autOcratic authority of the
middle ages. He believed in the divine
rights of kings. and in the concentration
of all power in the throne. He never
UNDERSTOOD the people, nor could he
comprehend that they had any rights
in the administration of gOvernmet. He
was Tory of the Tories, and Bourbon
of the Bourbons. His great aility and
high character only gave him a larger
place, and opportunity for the encroach-
ment of his ideas, and the misleading
air of freedom in the fields and the
forests of the New World. On the
farm, ut the hustings, in the Legislature,
in politics and in war, he mingled with
the people. He early learned their in
telligence and capacity for self govern
ment. The lesson of civil and religious
liberty was taught him by example and
precept until, far beyond his years or
his contemporaries he knew the mean
ing of liberty and law In the ordering
of the great events of the period of
Lord North, the most hide bound of
become the most danger
Gus of revOlutiOnists, while Washington,
the leader Of the Revolution, became the
of conservatism. Lord
North, by endorsing the edicts of arbi-
trary power. created a revolt which lost
to the British Crown the greater part
of its colonial possessions and inaugur-
ated 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 coun-
try the masses of his cOuntrymen whom
he so distrusted and despitsed. Wash
ingtOn guided a revolt against authority,
government and law so wisely, so con-
and with such fairness
that upon the ruins of the government
which he destroyed. and of the laws
which he detied, he built a republic with
the rights of life, of liberty, of happi-
ness and of property SO embedded in its
that the institutions of the
United States alone of all the nations of
Christendom have survived the shock
of the social and political evolutiOns Of
the nineteenth.
After one hundred years Lord North
is remembered only because his ashes
fertilize free institutions. After one
hundred years Washington is reverenced
government the world has ever known,
and as the foremost man in all the ele-
ments Of patriotism, herOism and state
craft of his own time and of every age.
Lord North. deserted by his king, his
party and his friends, passed his declin-
ing years lamenting, not his loss of
sight which was the misfortune of his
Did age, but his blindness in not seeing
the tendencies of the time and the ris-
ng spirit of English and American lib |
erty. Washington passed his declining
years possessing the love and the graft |
tude of his country and the admiration |
IF the world.
There was another young man, con-
temporary with Washington and Lord
North, who had so thoroughly imbibed |
he teachings and the spirit of Chatham
md Burke and Fox, that he remained
)ut OF power during the whole Of the
Revolutionary War because he believed
he Americans were right. His first act
m coming into power on the fall of the
of Lord North was to recognize
he independence of the United States,
md make the Jay treaty of alliance be-
.ween the two cOuntries-that great
realty of peace and arbitration between
these two English speaking peoples,
The spirit of which grows
stronger and more benefcent year
~ year, and never was so strong
IS it is to-day. This statesman was the
Sarl of Shelburne. He had the greatest
Election and friendship for Benjamin
the closest relations with
ohm jay and a reverential admiration
dmiration for George Washington. At
is request Washington sat for a full |
ength portrait of himself Five yeats
go that portrait appeared for sale ole
:, o,y,;,,op IN f1a 0olIarv .nR Ato~,,,..- IN,