t, to the history and the teachings
which in times of soberness have ever had the nation's highest honor. No
nation which is virtuous and vital will ever be slave to the past; at
the command of virtue and of vision it will snap precedent like a reed.
But every people of seriousness, stability, and character is a reverent
people; and when a people's reverence for its noble ancestors, its
sacred oracles and its venerable charters ceases to be sturdy and
becomes sentimental, much more when it ceases to exist at all, then the
hour of that people's decay and doom hast struck. On this anniversary of
the Declaration of Independence, let us remember and vow never to forget
that when it becomes general or popular among us, as it has become
common, to flout at the Declaration and its principles; whenever the
nation commits itself to courses which for the sake of consistency and
respectability invite and compel its disparagement; when our politics
does not match our poetry and cannot be sung; when Washington and
Jefferson and Sumner and Lincoln cease to be quoted in our cabinet and
at our helm, then it is not well with us, but ill, and it is time to
study the compass.

It is right to say, and let us remember it on this sacred anniversary,
as an inspiration to duty, that Boston has been the center of the two
great movements in our history, the movement which gave us independence
and the movement which purged the land of slavery. If we could rear on
Boston Common a monument upon which, around the central form of Samuel
Adams, should be grouped the figures of James Otis and John Adams, John
Hancock and Joseph Warren and their associates, how much that monument
would represent of what was most dynamic in the days which led up to the
American Revolution! If we could rear beside it a monument upon which,
around the central figure of William Lloyd Garrison, should stand
Wendell Phillips, Parker and Channing, Lowell and Emerson, Sumner and
Andrew, how much would be represented by that group of what was most
potent in the anti-slavery struggle! When the final history is written
of the great social and industrial revolution into which we have already
far advanced, and which will continue until there exists throughout the
republic an industrial equality as great as the political equality which
we now enjoy or claim to enjoy, it will be seen that here, too, Boston
has done her conspicuous part. And when we survey the movement in behalf
of the