We hold this annual celebration to remind
ourselves of all the good done in this process of time,--of how it was
done, and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it; and
we go from these meetings in better humour with ourselves,--we feel more
attached the one to the other, and more firmly bound to the country we
inhabit. In every way we are better men, in the age and race and country
in which we live, for these celebrations. But after we have done all
this, we have not yet reached the whole. There is something else
connected with it. We have, besides these men--descended by blood from
our ancestors--among us, perhaps half our people who are not descendants
at all of these men; they are men who have come from Europe,--German,
Irish, French, and Scandinavian,--men that have come from Europe
themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here,
finding themselves our equal in all things. If they look back through
this history, to trace their connection with those days by blood, they
find they have none: they cannot carry themselves back into that
glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us; but
when they look through that old Declaration of Independence, they find
that those old men say that "we hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal," and then they feel that that moral
sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that
it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a
right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of
the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration; and so they are.
Pages:
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192