DELIVERED BY

Frisbee

GEORGE F. HOAR,

OF MASSACHUSETTS,

APRIL 7, 1888,

AT

THE CELEBRATION OF THE CENTENNIAL

OF THE

FOUNDING OF THE NORTHWEST

AT

MARIETTA, OHIO.

WASHINGTON, D. C. :

JUDD & DETWEILER, PRINTERS.

1888.

ORATION OF GEORGE F. HOAR.

There are doubtless many persons in this audience who have gathered here as to their Father's house. They salute their Mother on her birthday with the prayer and the confident hope that the life which now completes its first century may be immortal as liberty. If we were here only to do honor to Marietta-to celebrate the planting of this famous town, coeval with the Republic, seated by the beautiful river, her annals crowded with memories of illustrious soldiers and statesmen-this assemblage would be well justified and accounted for.

But there is far more than this in the occasion. The states which compose what was once the Northwest Territory may properly look upon this as their birthday rather than that on which they were admitted into the Union. The company who came to Marietta with Rufus Putnam April 7, 1788, came to found, not one state, but five, whose institutions they demanded should be settled before they started by an irrevocable compact. These five children, born of a great parentage and in a great time, are, as we count the life of nations, still in earliest youth. Yet they already contain within themselves all the resources of a great empire. Here is the stimulant climate of the temperate zone, where brain and body are at their best. Here will be a population of more than fifteen millions at the next census. Here is an area about equal to that of the Austrian Empire, and larger than that of any other country in Europe except Russia. Here is a wealth more than three times that of any country on this continent except the Republic of which they are a part-a wealth a thousand times that of Massachusetts, including Maine, a hundred years ago; one-third larger than that of Spain; equal to that of Holland and Belgium and

Denmark combined; equal now, I suppose, to that of Italy; already half as great as that of the vast Empire of Russia, with its population of more than a hundred millions, whose possessions cover a sixth part of the habitable globe. Below the earth are exhaustless stores of iron, and coal, and salt, and copper. Above, field, and farm, and forest, can easily feed and clothe and shelter the entire population of Europe, with her sixty empires, kingdoms, and republics.

The yearly product of the manufacture of these five states is estimated by the best authorities at from twelve to fifteen hundred millions of dollars. Everything needed for a perfect workshop in all the mechanic and manufacturing arts has nature fashioned and gathered here, within easy reach, as nowhere else on earth. These states had, in 1886, fortyone thousand eight hundred and ninety-three miles of railway; equal, within two hundred miles, to that of Great Britain and France combined; nearly three times that of Austria or Russia, and about twice that of Germany. While mighty rivers and mightier lakes already bear along their borders a commerce rivaling that of the ports of the Old World, to fair cities and prosperous towns, each one of which has its own wonderful and fascinating story. And above all this, and better than all this, man, the noblest growth this soil supplies, descended of a great race, from which he has inherited the love of liberty, the sense of duty, the instinct of honor, is here to relate and celebrate his century of stainless history. Whatever of these things nature has not given is to be traced directly to the institutions of civil and religious liberty the wisdom of your fathers established; above all, to the great Ordinance. As the great jurist and statesman of Ohio said more than fifty years ago: "The spirit of the Ordinance of 1787 pervades them all." Here was the first human government under which absolute civil and religious liberty has always prevailed. Here no witch was ever hanged or burned. No heretic was ever molested. Here no slave was ever born or dwelt. When older states or nations, where

the chains of human bondage have been broken, shall utter the proud boast, "With a great sum obtained I this freedom," each sister of this imperial group-Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin-may lift her queenly head with the yet prouder answer "But I was free-born."

They were destined, also, to determine the character and decide the fate of the great Republic of which they are a part, and, through that, of constitutional liberty on earth. In saying this I speak with careful consideration of the meaning of the words. I wish, above all things, on this occasion, to avoid extravagance. I hope that what is said here may bear the examination of students of history in this most skeptical and critical age, and may be recalled on this spot, without a blush, by those who shall come after us, for many. a future centennial.

There is no better instance than this of the effect of wellordered liberty on the fortune of a people. Nature is no respecter of persons in her bounty. The buried race who built yonder mound dwelt here for ages, under the same sky, on the bank of the same river, with the same climate and soil. We know not who they were. Their institutions and government, their arts and annals, have perished in a deeper oblivion than that which covers the builders of the Pyramids which moved Sir Thomas Browne to his sublimest utterance: "History sinketh beneath her cloud. The traveler, as he paceth amazedly through these deserts, asketh of her, Who builded them? and she mumbleth something, but what it is he heareth not." The Indian and the Frenchman dwelt here, but could not hold their place. The growth of city and town and country, the wealth of the soil and the mine, the commerce of lake and river, the happiness and virtue of the fireside, the culture of the college, the three million children at school, the statute book on whose page there is no shame, are due to the great and wise men who gave you, as your birthday gift, universal liberty, universal suffrage, equal rights, and inviolable faith.