Resolved, That this meeting would therefore respectfully and earnestly ask for immediate and favorable official action upon the Report of the Commissioners, and that the chairman and secretaries are hereby authorized and requested to communicate a copy of these resolutions, properly authenticated, to his Honor the Mayor, and to each branch of the City Council.
Resolved, That a committee of one hundred be appointed by the Chair, to represent this meeting before the city government, and to secure the desired action by it without loss of time.
The Chairman. Gentlemen, you have heard the resolutions, which evidently meet with your unanimous approbation. You will now be addressed in behalf of those resolutions by one who needs no introduction from me, Mr. Richard H. Dana, Jun. [Prolonged applause.]
SPEECH OF MR. RICHARD H. DANA, JUN.
Fellow-Citizens,—I thank you from the bottom of my heart for this very kind welcome I have received at your hands to-night on coming upon the platform. I assure you, gentlemen, if I felt at liberty to waste the precious hours of this evening upon any thing relating to myself, I could say much more than I do to thank you for your great kindness.
But, gentlemen, we are met here on public business. You have heard what we are asked to do. We are asked to petition the city government, and send a committee of force to the city government (not as if the government were at all reluctant, but that they may know the feeling of the people of Boston), and ask the city government to go to work at once, and see that Boston has, as soon as possible, these necessities for her honor, her health, and her beauty. [Applause.]
In thinking of this subject, Mr. President and gentlemen, it occurred to me that it was a very singular fact, and not altogether to the credit of human nature, that great numbers of persons cannot live together without extreme inconvenience. Now, Robinson Crusoe, when he lived on the Island of Juan Fernandez alone, was not troubled with any question of public parks, or drainage, or health. Things took care of themselves. But when you get two or three or four hundred thousand Robinson Crusoes in a few square miles, you find the whole state of things is reversed, that you require all the patience, all the science, a large part of the money, and a large part of the industry, of the population, that you may live at all, and on any terms. The lower parts of our nature, the animal parts, tend to produce certain results which the intellectual parts are expected to meet and control. If they do not that, men become savages; if they do, they are enlightened.
Now, in this great and enlightened city of Boston, the pride of us all, the "Athens of America," as we all know we are [laughter], and, as our friend Dr. Holmes there has told us, the "Hub of the Universe" [laughter], it would hardly be respectful to say that one of the questions before us was, Which of those two roads we were going to take,—whether we were going to let the intellectual and moral parts have the upper hand, or whether we were going to sink beneath the material part. And yet, gentlemen, that is a good deal the question that is before us to-night.
Why, look at the progress which is inevitably made where you get great numbers of human beings together. You must have drainage, you must look to the health of the population, and then you must look to their recreation and their amusements (for they will have them); and, if they are not good and creditable and honorable, they will not cease to exist, but they will come before us in the most shameful and unwholesome form. We used to be told, gentlemen, that Boston had natural parks all about her, and she did not need any artificial parks. Well, now, I am not in favor of any artificial parks. All I ask is, that the beauty of the environs of Boston may be preserved. [Applause.]
We are on the defensive. We are defending the wholesomeness and the beauty of our beloved city against this encroachment of population. Why, the time was—Mr. Ropes will tell you when the time was—when the Back Bay was a beautiful sheet of water, filled at high tide, carrying the healthful air through the whole city. But then the necessity of population called for its filling up, and it is now piled in upon, and we have there now what Dr. Clarke called "a natural cesspool."