he Western idea
has ever failed to command the earnest attention to which it is
entitled. There is a sentiment which is growing more general and
vigorous every day in the far West, that the time is near at hand when
it will decline to adhere to the fortunes of any leader or body which
recklessly ignores its claims or persistently refuses to it recognition.
It is a very significant fact, Mr. President, that this great region,
containing one-fourth of the National area, one-seventeenth of the
population, and constituting one-seventh of the whole number of States
has had up to this time, but one member of the Cabinet. In the present
Cabinet, fourteen States (east of the Mississippi and North of the old
Mason and Dixon's Line) have seven members and the remaining thirty
States have but one. Those thirty States will see to it in the future
that the party which succeeds through their support has its
representation their efforts have deserved.

I cannot close, Mr. President, without giving expression to a sentiment
to which Southerners in the West are peculiarly alive--the sentiment of
sympathy and fraternity which exists between the South and the West.
[Applause.] The course of historical development which I have outlined
of the Western man has wrought a bond of friendship between them, and
that bond is not a reminiscence, but a living, vital, and efficient
fact. Only but yesterday, politicians, thank God not the people, sought
for selfish ends to cast back the South into Stygian gloom from which
she had slowly and laboriously but gloriously emerged, to forge upon her
again hope-killing shackles of a barbarous rule. In that hour of trial
which you and I, sir, know to have been a menace and a reality to whom
did she turn for succor? To this man of the West, and quick and glorious
was the response.

SAMUEL BALDWIN WARD

THE MEDICAL PROFESSION

[Speech of Dr. Samuel B. Ward at the annual banquet of the New York
State Bar Association, in the City of Albany, January 18, 1887.]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--That a medical man should be
asked to be in attendance at a banquet such as this was natural, and
when I looked over the list of toasts and found that the clergymen had
been omitted, I took it as an intended though perhaps rather dubious
compliment to my profession, the supposition being that the services of
the clergy would not of course be required. When I was asked to respond
to this toast, in an un