A Lecture The Review of a Century, The Fruit of Five Thousand Years (ePub)

Excerpt: 'A hundred years ago, in an upper room in Philadelphia, five men were gathered-men of noble bearing, of brilliant intellects, of undoubted character. Their faces wore a look of stern determination, as if the theme of their consideration was of matters of grave import; was of matters destined to be the beginning of the most important era that had ever dawned upon the earth. A century and eighty years before, a single ship-load of men, women and children, had landed on this virgin soil at Jamestown in Virginia; and a few years later, another one at Plymouth-Rock in Massachusetts. To these, additions had been made until the thirteen States then numbered fully three million souls, upon whom "the king" had imposed onerous taxation, and over whom he had placed obnoxious rulers. The tea had been destroyed in Boston 4harbour, and the people were wrought up to the intensest pitch by their oppressions. They had come from their native lands to escape from tyranny, and were not disposed to brook it here. In this wild, free land, they had become pregnant of liberty, and were even then struggling in the throes of travail. These five men had met to find a way in which the delivery might be safely made, so that both the mother and the child should live to bless the world.'