made the Commonwealth. They
understood its Government. They knew it was a part of themselves, their
own organization. They had not acquired the state of mind that enabled
them to stand aloof and regard government as something apart and
separate from the people. It would never have occurred to them that they
could not transact for themselves any other business just as well as
they could transact for themselves the business of government. They were
the men who had fought a war to limit the power of government and
enlarge the privileges of the individual.

It was the same spirit that made Massachusetts that made the Provident
Institution for Savings. What the men of that day wanted they made for
themselves. They would never have thought of asking Congress to keep
their money in the post-office. They did not want their commercial
privileges interfered with by having the Government buy and sell for
them. They had the self-reliance and the independence to prefer to do
those things for themselves. This is the spirit that founded
Massachusetts, the spirit that has seen your bank grow until it could
now probably purchase all there was of property in the Commonwealth when
it began its existence. I want to see that spirit still preeminent here.
I want to see a deeper realization on the part of the people that this
is their Commonwealth, their Government; that they control it, that they
pay its expenses, that it is, after all, only a part of themselves; that
any attempt to shift upon it their duties, their responsibilities, or
their support will in the end only delude, degrade, impoverish, and
enslave. Your institution points the only way, through self-control,
self-denial, and self-support, to self-government, to independence, to a
more generous liberty, and to a firmer establishment of individual
rights.

XI

ASSOCIATED INDUSTRIES DINNER, BOSTON

DECEMBER 15, 1916

During the past few years we have questioned the soundness of many
principles that had for a long time been taken for granted. We have
examined the foundations of our institutions of government. We have
debated again the theories of the men who wrote the Declaration of
Independence, the Constitution of the Nation, and laid down the
fundamental law of our own Commonwealth. Along with this examination of
our form of government has gone an examination of our social,
industrial, and economic system. What is to come out of it all?

In the last fifty years w