The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-12-29
TWO NOTABLE GATHERINGS
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 union. Webster saw that with it was identified the cause of civilization on this continent. He felt that to break it up would be the signal for anarchy, probably for civil war and a social wreck. Liberty and Union, one and inseparable," were words that embodied his deepest conviction. Hence he dealt With the slavery question in a spirit different from that of one who under rated the value of the Union, and in his forecast of the future caught no glimpse of civil war with its attendant horrors and possible ruin. Posterity will not doubt that the defender of the constitution and the Union, whatever his faults may have been, deserves the statue placed in his honor in front Of the State-house in Boston. History will adjudge him to have been an honest patriot, as we'll as a far-seeing states man.
 Bear with me while briefly revert to our New England history. The char acter of the Puritan founders of New England is a question warmly contest ed. Dr. Palfrey, a man of great liber- ality, without sympathy with Puritan theology, who gave practical proof of his love of freedom, is considered by many to have written in too apolo- getic vein. Certainly it is the fashion now to steer clear of any such imputa- tion. This may be said, that no man IS in state of mind to judge fairly the Puritan founders of Massachusetts and Connecticut, unless, in the first place, he recognize the distinction between settlement or colony in its infancy, and a full-hedged commonwealth. A colo ny stands midway between the family and the State. Nor is he then compe- tent to judge unless he bears in mind that uniformity in religious professions and practices in a political community had been one of the ruling ideas of men from the first Christianizing of the Teu- tonic tribes and nations, to say nothing of the feelings and precedents deeply rooted in remoter past. Besides the inherited theory as to the function of the State, the record of religious fac tions begotten of the Reformation, or occasioned by it, intensified in the fath- CTS of New England the dread of an- archy and social demoralization. Roger Williams was one of the few who, along with many cratic notions, caught sight of the modern idea of the State as llm- ited in its functions, and of the civil authority as holding no divine commits sion to repress religious error. Give him whatever credit is due to him for taking step in advance Of almost all his contemporaries But surely John Winthrop was as good a man as Roger Williams Ger tainly for no man did Williams cherish a deeper reverence and esteem. And, as the founder of a state, when all things are considered, Winthrop does not stand upon lower level than Will Hams. In such an office there Is required combination of qualities. Jefferson somewhere compares the character or the New Englanders to that of the Jews. Whatever grains of truth there are, or were, in this comparison, it IS not altogether reproach. Even Jacob, in the spirit of his dealings with Esau, may not be attractive; yet it has been truly said of Jacob that he was bet ter man to found a Commonwealth than Esau. There have been many Israelltes unlike Jacob, in being without guile.
 A single reflection shall bring these remarks to "a close. I want to say that I have been impressed anew with the dignity of the vocation of the historian and the historical teacher, as connected with the particular function to which we have attended. Surely 1t is high office to fulfil-that of rescuing from un- merited reproach the men of the past whose names have been clouded by defamation and who can utter no word in their own defense. It Is high of fice,. not less, to strip from the un- worthy the laurels which they have no right to wear. I had just written these sentences when there fell under my eve equivalent words from the pen of Tacitus In the midst of his account of the crimes of Tiberious he pauses to say: q hold it to be the chief function of history not to leave virtuous deeds un- recorded and to make the reproduction of posterity a terror to evil words and acts" The recollection of this great writer, of his dignity and power, is a warrant for saying that to historical scholars the world must look for the awards of a righteous judgment. The nearer they come to realizing the ideal of their calling, the more will they stand as the highest court of appeals that the limitations of our human life render possible.