"And for all time, the Stuart Dynasty itself remains impaled by the pen of the same master:
"'Then came those days never to be recalled without a blush—the days of servitude without loyalty, and sensuality without love, of dwarfish talents and gigantic vices, the paradise of cold hearts and narrow minds, the golden age of the coward, the bigot, and the slave. The principles of liberty were the scoff of every grinning courtier, and the anathema maranatha of every fawning dean. In every high place worship was paid to Charles and James—Belial and Moloch,—and England propitiated those obscene and cruel idols with the blood of her best and bravest children. Crime succeeded to crime and disgrace to disgrace, until the race, accursed of God and man, was a second time driven forth to wander on the face of the earth, and to be a byword and a shaking of the head to the nations.'
"It is our pleasing task to turn now from the dark annals of our English forebears to the stupendous events of which that we to-day celebrate in the historical forecast. With the passing years, a continuing tide of emigration was setting in from the Old to the New World. Additional settlements had sprung into being, and the Plantation in its distinctive sense had given way to the Colony, to be succeeded yet later by the State. The glory of Jamestown had measurably departed, and to Williamsburg, and yet later to the now splendid city upon the James, had been transferred the seat of Virginia authority. New England, despite natural obstacles and constant peril, was surely working out her large place in history. Puritan, Quaker, Dutchman, Cavalier, Scotch-Irish, and Huguenot —'building better than they knew'—had established permanent habitations from Plymouth Rock to Savannah. Brave men from the early fringe of settlements upon the Atlantic—regardless of obstacle and danger—had pushed their way westward, and laid the sure foundations of future commonwealths. From New Hampshire to Georgia, thirteen English-speaking colonies, with a population aggregating near two millions, had attained to a large measure of the dignity of distinctive States. Their allegiance, meanwhile, to the mother country had been unfaltering, and in her fierce struggle with France for the mastery of the continent, America had sealed her loyalty with the best blood of her sons.
"The successors to the first House of Burgesses had learned well the lessons gleaned from the scant pages of their earliest history. Attempts to tax the unrepresented colonies soon encountered concerted hostility. 'No taxation without representation' became the universal slogan. The words spoken in the British Parliament by Barre—worthy comrade of the gallant Wolfe on the Heights of Abraham—near a century and a half after the event we now celebrate, will quicken the pulse of all coming generations of American patriots. Said he:
"'Your oppressions planted them in America. They fled from your tyranny to a then uncultivated, unhospitable country where they exposed themselves to almost all the hardships to which human nature is liable, among others to the cruelties of a savage foe; they grew by your neglect of them. As soon as you began to care for them, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule them, to spy out their liberties, to misrepresent their actions and to prey upon them; men whose behavior on many occasions has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil within them; men promoted to the highest seats of justice, some who, to my knowledge, were glad, by going to a foreign country, to escape being brought to the bar of a court of justice in their own. The colonists have nobly taken up arms in your defence; have asserted a valor amid their constant and laborious industry for the defence of a country whose frontier was drenched in blood. And, believe me—remember, I warn you—the same spirit of freedom which actuated that people at first will accompany them still.'
"And how prophetic now seem the words of Burke in the same great debate:
"'There is America, which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners, yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world.'
"Standing at his hour almost within hailing distance of the spot that witnessed the surrender of Cornwallis and the termination of the War of the Revolution, it would be passing strange if we should fail to catch something of the inspiration of the impassioned words of Barre and of Burke, and their wondrous associations.
"It is said that in Venice there is sacredly preserved a letter written by Columbus a few hours before he sailed from Palos. With reverent expression of trust in God—humbly but with unfaltering faith—he spoke of his past voyage to 'that famous land.' His dream while a suppliant in the outer chambers of kings, and while keeping lonely vigil upon the deep, was the discovery of a new pathway to the Indies. Yet who can doubt that to his prophetic soul was even then fore-shadowed something of 'that famous land' with the warp and woof of whose history, tradition, and song his name and fame are linked for all time. Can it not truly be said of the members of the first House of Burgesses, as was said of Columbus and his compeers, 'They were pioneers in the march to independence—precursors in the only progress of freedom which was to have no backward steps?' They only 'opened the gates' and lo! there came in the builders of a new and mighty nation.
"Had it been given to the Virginia—the American—legislators whose memories we honor this day, 'to look into the seeds of time,' what mighty events, with the rolling years and centuries, would have passed before their visions. They would have seen the colony they had planted in the wilderness, day by day strengthening its cords, enlarging its borders, and with firm tread advancing steadily to recognized place among the nations. They would have beheld the savage foe—giving way before the inexorable advance of the hated 'pale face'—sadly retreating toward the ever-receding western verge of civilization. It would have been theirs to witness the symbols of French and Spanish authority disappear forever from mainland and island of the New World. Following the sun a thousand miles toward his setting, their eyes would have been gladdened by the great river flowing unvexed from northern lake to southern sea through a mighty realm that knew no allegiance other than to the government that here had its feeble beginning. They would—near a century and a half later than the meeting of the first House of Burgesses—have beheld their descendants listening in rapt attention to the impassioned denunciation by Patrick Henry of the tyranny of the royal successor of James the First; the thirteen colonies arming for the seven years' struggle with the most powerful of nations; the presentation, by a Virginian, in the wondrous assemblage at Philadelphia of the Declaration of Independence; under the matchless leadership of a Virginian yet more illustrious than Jefferson, the Colonial army, with decimated ranks and tattered standards, would have passed in review—all past suffering, sacrifice, humiliation, and defeat forgotten in the hour of splendid triumph. Yet later, and in the great convention over which Washington presided, and in which Madison was the chief factor, they would have witnessed the deathless principles of the historic Declaration crystallized into the Federal compact, which was destined forever to hold States and people in fraternal union. They would have seen a gallant people of the Old World—catching inspiration from the New—casting off the oppression of centuries and, through baptism of blood, fashioning a Republic upon that whose liberties they had so signally aided to establish. Yet later, and not France alone, but Mexico and States extending far to the southward, substituting for monarchical rule that of the people under written Constitutions modeled after that of the great American Republic. And yet more marvellous, in Great Britain the divine right of kings an exploded dogma; the royal successor to the Stuarts and George the Third only a ceremonial figurehead in government; the House of Lords in its death struggle; all real political power centred in the Commons, and England—though still under the guise of monarchy—essentially a republic.