Remarks of President-General Gargan.
Members and guests of the American-Irish Historical Society:
To-day we commemorate the deeds of those heroic men who on April 19, 1775, on the green at Lexington, won a fame as imperishable as the men who fought at Marathon or Thermopylæ. Well might Sam Adams exclaim, “What a glorious morning for America is this.” As a distinguished foreigner has well said, “It is their sacrificed blood in which is written the preface of the nation’s history.”
At Lexington was the opening scene of a revolution destined to change the character of human governments and the condition of the human race. Yet I sometimes incline to the opinion, as I read the utterances of men who in our day are called statesmen, and some of the newspapers, that the age of patriotism has gone; that an age of selfish materialists, economists, and calculators has succeeded. Let us hope there is still a saving remnant in this republic which will rekindle the love and patriotism which actuated the men who established our government.
Do some of the people really understand the meaning of patriotism? Many seem to imagine it means blind obedience to any administration which may be insidiously laboring to destroy our institutions. But I have an abiding faith in the people of this country when they fully appreciate a threatened danger. I believe with Burke “that the people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.”
Are some of us laboring under the delusion that we are called upon to govern the world, that we are to set forth with a few small Bibles and a large supply of arms to force what we call our civilization on an unwilling people in another hemisphere, while thoughtful men are staggered at the problems of government confronting us on the North American continent?
Shall we not profit by the lessons of history and recall what this day means? It was the beginning of a movement against an empire which aspired to govern the world. Yet those men on Lexington common initiated a revolution which wrested from the diadem of Great Britain the fairest jewel in her crown. May we not indulge to-day somewhat in retrospection and examine the causes which led to our revolt?
The British parliament had passed the stamp act, the tea tax and the Boston port bill, yet those did not cause war; the real cause of the battle of Lexington was the reconstruction act of 1774. Prior to this act the councilors had been chosen by the people through their representatives. By the new law the king was to appoint them, to hold office during his pleasure. The superior judges were to hold at the will of the king and to be dependent on his will for the amount and payment of their salaries; the inferior judges were to be removable by the royal governor at his discretion, he himself holding at the king’s will.
The deepest reaching provision of the acts was aimed at the town-meetings. They were prohibited, except the annual meeting to elect officers, but no other meetings could be held without the written permission of the royal governor. These acts of parliament sought to change self-government into government by the king, and to substitute for home rule, absolute rule at Westminster and St. James’s palace.
Then came the military act, and in February, 1775, parliament declared Massachusetts in rebellion. The instructions of Lord Dartmouth, the secretary of state for the colonies, to General Gage, the royal governor, ran like this: “Sovereignty of the king over the colonies requires a full and absolute submission.” What a striking similarity that has to some recent dispatches we have heard since we acquired distant possessions.
General Gage’s call for 20,000 men, the assembling of 5,000 troops at Boston, and the authority given to General Gage to fire on the people, made war inevitable. We see again how history repeats itself.
The people in spite of royal mandates continued to hold their own town-meetings, organized county meetings, and made a provincial congress. The convention at Middlesex “Resolved, if in support of our rights we are called to encounter death we are yet undaunted, sensible that he can never die too soon who lays down his life in support of the laws and liberties of his country.” Lexington wrote to Boston, “We trust in God that should the state of affairs require it, we shall be ready to sacrifice our estates and everything dear in life, yea, and life itself, in support of the common cause.”
Nobly did the men of Lexington fulfil that pledge. Shall we in our day forget what these men did and dared? Are we so saturated with the spirit of commercialism, are we so wedded to the worship of the golden calf, that justice and humanity have no place in our modern code?
Let us remember we shall be tried at the bar of history as have been other nations; as our opportunities have been greater, so are our responsibilities. We cannot escape our liabilities; it is for us to so act in the present that this experiment of a free government, founded upon manhood suffrage, shall not fail.