of a region, settled gradually down into a common possession, and, in the slow process of years, an amalgamation of stocks, more or less complete, took place. In America, with the Anglo-Saxon, and especially those of the New England type, this was not the case. Unlike the Frenchman at the north, or the Spaniard at the south, the Anglo-Saxon showed no disposition to ally himself with the aborigines,—he evinced no faculty of dealing with inferior races, as they are called, except through a process of extermination. Here in Massachusetts this was so from the outset. Nearly every one here has read Longfellow's poem, "The Courtship of Miles Standish," and calls to mind the short, sharp conflict between the Plymouth captain and the Indian chief, Pecksuot, and how those God-fearing Pilgrims ruthlessly put to death by stabbing and hanging a sufficient number of the already plague-stricken and dying aborigines. That episode occurred in April, 1623, only a little more than two years after the landing we to-night celebrate, and was, so far as New England is concerned, the beginning of a series of wars which did not end until the Indian ceased to be an element in our civilization. When John Robinson, the revered pastor of the Plymouth church, received tidings at Leyden of that killing near Plymouth,—for Robinson never got across the Atlantic,—he wrote: "Oh, how happy a thing had it been, if you had converted some before you had killed any! There is cause to fear that, by occasion, especially of provocation, there may be wanting that tenderness of the life of man (made after God's image) which is meet. It is also a thing more glorious in men's eyes, than pleasing in God's or convenient for Christians, to be a terror to poor, barbarous people." This all has a very familiar sound. It is the refrain of nearly three centuries; but, as an historical fact, it is undeniable that, from 1623 down to the year now ending, the American Anglo-Saxon has in his dealings with what are known as the "inferior races" lacked "that tenderness of the life of man which is meet," and he has made himself "a terror to poor, barbarous people." How we of Massachusetts carried ourselves towards the aborigines here, the fearful record of the Pequot war remains everlastingly to tell. How the country at large has carried itself in turn towards Indian, African, and Asiatic is matter of history. And yet it is equally matter of history that this carriage, term it what you will,—unchristian, brutal, exterminating,—has been the salvation of the race. It has saved the Anglo-Saxon stock from being a nation of half-breeds,—miscegenates, to coin a word expressive of an idea. The Canadian half-breed, the Mexican, the mulatto, say what men may, are not virile or enduring races; and that the Anglo-Saxon is none of these, and is essentially virile and enduring, is due to the fact that the less developed races perished before him. Nature is undeniably often brutal in its methods.

Again, and on the other hand, the Anglo-Saxon when he came to America left behind him, so far as he himself was concerned, feudalism and all things pertaining to caste, including what was then known in England, and is still known in Germany, as Divine Right. When he at last enunciated his political faith he put in the forefront of his declaration as "self-evident truths," the principles "that all men are created equal;" that they are endowed with "certain inalienable rights," among them "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;" and that governments derived "their just powers from the consent of the governed." Now what was meant here by the phrase "all men are created equal?" We know they are not. They are not created equal in physical or mental endowment; nor are they created with equal opportunity. The world bristles with inequalities, natural and artificial. This is so; and yet the declaration is none the less true;—true when made; true now; true for all future time. The reference was to the inequalities which always had marked, then did, and still do, mark, the political life of the Old World,—to Caste, Divine Right, Privilege. It declared that all men were created equal before the law, as before the Lord;[1] and that, whether European, American, Asiatic, or African, they were endowed with an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And to this truth, as he saw it, Lincoln referred in those memorable words I have already cited bearing on our national crime in long forgetfulness of our own immutable principles. The fundamental, primal principle was indeed more clearly voiced by Lincoln than it has been voiced before, or since, in declaring again, and elsewhere that to our nation, dedicated "to the proposition that all men are created equal," has by Providence been assigned the momentous task of "testing whether any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure," and "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

The next cardinal principle in our policy as a race—that instinctive policy I have already referred to as divergent from Old World methods and ideals—was most dearly enunciated by Washington in his Farewell Address, that "the great rule for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible;" that it was "unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of [Old World] policies, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities. Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course.... Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies."

Accepting this as firm ground from which to act, we afterwards put forth what is known as the Monroe Doctrine. Having announced that our purpose was, in homely language, to mind our own business, we warned the outer world that we did not propose to permit by that outer world any interference in what did not concern it. America was our field,—a field amply large for our development. It was therefore declared that, while we had never taken any part, nor did it comport with our policy to do so, in the wars of European politics, with the movements in this hemisphere we are, of necessity, more intimately connected. "We owe it, therefore, to candor to declare that we should consider any attempt [on the part of European powers] to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety."

On these principles of government and of foreign policy we have as a people now acted for more than seventy years. They have been exemplified and developed in various directions, and resulted in details—commercial, economic, and ethnic—which have given rise to political issues, long and hotly contested, but which, in their result from the purely historical point of view, do not admit of dispute. Commercially, we have adopted what is known as a system protective both of our industries and our labor. Economically, we have carefully eschewed large and costly armaments, and expensive governmental methods. Ethnically, we have avowed our desire to have as little contact as possible with less developed races, lamenting the presence of the African, and severely excluding the Asiatic. These facts, whether we as individuals and citizens wholly approve—or do not approve at all—of the course pursued and the results reached, admit of no dispute. Neither can it be denied that our attitude, whether it in all respects commanded the respect of foreign nations, or failed to command it, was accepted, and has prevailed. Striking illustrations of this at once suggest themselves.

In one respect