I am confident that we have as a nation passed the period "" for war was a necesFirst of all we should

when the maxim "in peace prepare sary condition of our public life. never indulge the thought of acquiring territory by aggressive means. Not that an honorable extension of the territory of the Union would be unwise under all circumstances, but a war for the enlargement of our dominion would be an unjust war in the very nature of the case.

Our position and influence in the affairs of the world for all purposes consistent with the rights of other nations depend no longer upon the exhibition of military force either upon the sea or upon the land.

We are separated by vast oceans from the great powers of the world; our trade is so valuable that neither England, France, nor Germany can forego its advantages for a single month; and our resources in men and in money are so ample that we may rely confidently upon the forbearance of those rulers from whom we may not be able even to command respect.

In this aspect of the future of the republic I do not accept the opinion that a wise public policy requires us to enter upon the construction of a seagoing navy in competition with the great nations of Europe that exist only under the constant menace of war. Better will it be for us to employ our resources in the construction of small, fast-sailing steamships to be employed in the transportation of the mails to and from all the principal ports of Central and South America and the eastern parts of Asia, thus opening new avenues through which the enterprise and business of the country may have free course.

The time has passed when the fate or the fortunes of nations were dependent upon naval battles lost or won. For

the future a war on the ocean is a war on commerce, and for such a war the heavily armored vessels of great navies are worthless utterly. Let science and skill furnish such protection to our sea coast cities as science and skill can command, but let us abandon the thought of constructing great navies at a cost of tens of millions on tens of millions for anticipated war on the open sea or as aids to the conquest of foreign lands. Let republican America, warned and instructed by the lesson which downtrodden Europe teaches, enter upon its second century with the purpose of demonstrating the truth that a government in which the people rule may be at once peaceful, powerful, and just.

EVARTS

WILLIAM MAXWELL EVARTS, a noted American lawyer, was born

in Boston February 6, 1818, and educated at Yale University. He studied law at the Harvard law school, was admitted to the bar of New York in 1841, and began practice in New York city. He soon became known as one of the most learned men in his profession, being often consulted by other lawyers in perplexing cases, and was district attorney in New York city, 1849-53. He took an active interest in political affairs and was one of the earliest members of the Republican party. He was the chief counsel for President Johnson in the impeachment trial of the latter, and from July, 1868, to March, 1869, was attorney-general of the United States. In 1872 Evarts was counsel for the United States in the Geneva arbitration tribunal respecting the Alabama claims, and in 1875 was senior counsel for Henry Ward Beecher in the famous Tilton-Beecher suit. He appeared for the Republican party before the Electoral Commission in 1877, and served as secretary of state during the administration of President Hayes. From 1885 to 1891 he was a United States senator. He was noted as a brilliant speaker on social occasions and an eloquent orator on more formal ones. Among his most noted orations are his eulogy on Chief Justice Chase in 1873, the Centennial oration in Philadelphia (1876), and speeches on the unveiling of statues of Seward and Webster in New York city. He died February 28, 1901.

WHAT THE AGE OWES TO AMERICA

FROM CENTENNIAL ORATION DELIVERED AT PHILADELPHIA,

JULY 4, 1876

"ELLOW CITIZENS,―The event which to-day we commemorate supplies its own reflections and enthusiasms

FE

The

and brings its own plaudits. They do not at all hang on the voice of the speaker nor do they greatly depend upon the contracts and associations of the place. Declaration of American Independence was when it occurred a capital transaction in human affairs; as such it has kept its place in history; as such it will maintain itself while human interest in human institutions shall endure. The scene and the actors for their profound impression upon the

world at the time and ever since have owed nothing to dramatic effects, nothing to epical exaggerations.

To the eye there was nothing wonderful, or vast, or splendid, or pathetic in the movement or the display. Imagination or art can give no sensible grace or decoration to the persons, the place, or the performance which made up the business of that day. The worth and the force that belong to the agents and the action rest wholly on the wisdom, the courage, and the faith that formed and executed the great design, and the potency and permanence of its operation upon the affairs of the world, which, as foreseen and legitimate consequences, followed.

The dignity of the act is the deliberate, circumspect, open, and serene performance by these men in the clear light of day, and by a concurrent purpose of a civic duty, which embraced the greatest hazards to themselves and to all the people from whom they held this disputed discretion, but which to their sober judgments promised benefits to that people and their posterity from generation to generation exceeding these hazards and commensurate with its own fit

ness.

The question of their conduct is to be measured by the actual weight and pressure of the manifold considerations which surrounded the subject before them and by the abundant evidence that they comprehended their vastness and variety. By a voluntary and responsible choice they willed to do what was done and what without their will would not have been done.

Thus estimated, the illustrious act covers all who participated in it with its own renown and makes them forever conspicuous among men, as it is forever famous among events. And thus the signers of the Declaration of our Independence

"wrote their names where all nations should behold them and all time should not efface them." It was "in the course of human events" intrusted to them to determine whether the fulness of time had come when a nation should be born in a day. They declared the independence of a new nation in the sense in which men declare emancipation or declare war; the Declaration created what was declared.

Famous always among men are the founders of States, and fortunate above all others in such fame are these, our fathers, whose combined wisdom and courage began the great structure of our national existence, and laid sure the foundations of liberty and justice on which it rests. Fortunate, first, in the clearness of their title and in the world's acceptance of their rightful claim. Fortunate, next, in the enduring magnitude of the State they founded and the beneficence of its protection of the vast interests of human life and happiness, which have here had their home. Fortunate, again, in the admiring imitation of their work, which the institutions of the most powerful and most advanced nations more and more exhibit; and, last of all, fortunate in the full demonstration of our later time, that their work is adequate to withstand the most disastrous storms of human fortunes, and survives unwrecked, unshaken, and unharmed.

This day has now been celebrated by a great people at each recurrence of its anniversary for a hundred years, with every form of ostentatious joy, with every demonstration of respect and gratitude for the ancestral virtue which gave it its glory, and with the firmest faith that growing time should neither obscure its lustre nor reduce the ardor, nor discredit the sincerity of its observance. A reverent spirit has explored the lives of the men who took part in the great transaction; has unfolded their characters and exhibited to an ad