places?
What hope and confidence in the future of a people, where
all men and all women of all parties and sections, of all
faiths and creeds, of all classes and conditions, are ready
to respond as ours have responded to the emotion of a mighty
love.

"You and I are Republicans. You and I are men of the North.
Most of us are Protestants in religion. We are men of native
birth. Yet if every Republican were to-day to fall in his
place, as William McKinley has fallen, I believe our countrymen
of the other party, in spite of what we deem their errors,
would take the Republic and bear on the flag to liberty and
glory. I believe if every Protestant were to be stricken
down by a lightning-stroke, that our brethren of the Catholic
faith would still carry on the Republic in the spirit of a
true and liberal freedom. I believe if every man of native
birth within our borders were to die this day, the men of
foreign birth, who have come here to seek homes and liberty
under the shadow of the Republic, would carry it on in God's
appointed way. I believe if every man of the North were to
die, the new and chastened South, with the virtues it has
cherished from the beginning, with its courage and its constancy,
would take the country and bear it on to the achievement of
its lofty destiny. The Anarchist must slay 75,000,000 Americans
before he can slay the Republic.

"Of course there would be mistakes. Of course there would
be disappointments and grievous errors. Of course there would
be many things for which the lovers of liberty would mourn.
But America would survive them all, and the nation our fathers
planted would endure in perennial life.

"William McKinley has fallen in high place. The spirit of
Anarchy, always the servant of the spirit of Despotism, aimed
its shaft at him, and his life for this world is over. But
there comes from his fresh grave a voice of lofty triumph:
'Be of good cheer. It is God's way.'"

I account it my supreme good fortune that my public life
has been spent in the service of Massachusetts. No man can
know better than I do how unworthy I have been of a place
in the great line of public men who have adorned her history
for nearly three hundred years. What a succession it has
been. What royal house, what empire or monarchy, can show
a catalogue like that of the men whom in every generation
she has called to high places--Bradford, and Winthrop, and
Sir Henry Vane, Leverett, and Sam Adams