The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-05-27
GOVERNOR JOHNSON
 AT THE UNIVERSITY.

sity avenue the sidewalks were crowd ed and the campus was thronged with people anxious to get a sight of the man from Minnesota.
 Prior to the arrival of Governor Johnson the Society of Alumni held a business meeting which was full of in- terest. In his report President Robert Jemison, Jr., called attention to the plans for the Greater University and pointed out the fact that the work on the foundations of the engineering building and the geological-biological building had already begun.
 Governor Johnson Speaks.
 Governor Johnson read from manu- script, the subject of his oration be- ing Hand Marks of American Liber- tv.-'
 In describing land marks of Amer fcan liberty, he reverted to fifteen hum dred years before the discovery of America, because, he said. American liberty was cradled in the German will derness. Anglo-Saxon freedom had come down through the centuries to the popular assemblies which decide the issues of peace in the American gov ernment of today. Freedom Is no &C., cident, but the product of character on the one hand and of long centuries of toll. blood and sacrifice on the other. On freedoms battleaelds all engage
 
 parleying with the inevitable. Roman imperialism snuffed out. for a time the torch of liberty. but like an averaging Nemesis the countless hordes swept down from the Alps, from the Rhine and the Elbe upon the corruption and inherent weakness of the Roman Em- pire. And if you seek the original birthplace of those other institutions of American liberty--the Declaration of Independence, the Monroe doctrine. and the proclamation of emancipation --I will point you to Bethlehem which borders on the North Sea- he said.
 gress of the development of liberty during the first ten centuries of Eng fish history. giving due credit to those reforms which are of German and Scandinavian origin. From the period of the Norman conquest English his- tory was found 10 be 6 continuous struggle between a people accustomed to local self-govcrnment and a ruler imbued with the Roman idea of the strong imperial government without charter limitations or popular restraint. Magma Charta- the Petition of Right and the Bill of Rights constitute" the speaker said, ''the Old Testament of the American Constitution. Eighty years after Magma Charta came the Writ of Summons and the establishment of the Commons. The administration of Ed ward fixed the principle of mo taxa tioh without representation the rock upon which five centuries later stood the Americans of 1776. Three centuries later, Charles was compelled to grant the petition of right and when the King violated his compact arose oliver Cromwell with his agreement of the people and Lamberts instrument of government, and while these constitu- Great Britain. they eventually became the ground work of the colonial char ters and their basic ideas re-appear in American institutions. The habeas corpus act of 1879 is a landmark of human liberty. is today recognized in almost every written constitution on the globe and its violation one of the chief grounds for the indictment. of ation. The Bill of Rights establishes dependence as running back through English common law and Anglo-Saxo institutions twenty centuries and for ever disproves the latter day sophistry which holds that the American prin- ciples of 177S, are ephemeral sentiments without abiding character.
 Aspiration For Freedom.
 "The great fact which stands out sharp and clear throughout the history of European migration to America is a dominant and unversal aspiration for freedom. The Puritans brought with them not only a great purpose