THE CHAIRMAN, It becomes my pleasant duty, at this point in the programme, in behalf of the people of this town, to thank the members of the orchestra of the Brookline High School for their presence here this evening, which adds so much to the attractiveness of these exercises.

V.

THE GLORIA.

MOZART'S TWELFTH MASS,

BY CHORUS AND ORCHESTRA.

THE CHAIRMAN,-Some time ago President Cleveland selected one of our townsmen as Collector of the Port of Boston. It gave me very sincere pleasure, not only because it was conferring a high honor upon a neighbor and friend, but because I knew that the office would be conducted in an honest, and upright and independent manner; and I know that the citizens of Boston felt as I did. It gives me a very great pleasure to have an opportunity of introducing Mr. Warren to you, his neighbors and friends, this evening, in the position which he holds as the representative of the President of the United States on this occasion. I have the pleasure and the honor of introducing to you the Honorable WINSLOW WARREN, Collector of the Port of Boston.

VI.

ADDRESS.

HON. WINSLOW WARREN.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, NEIGHBORS AND FRIENDS :Eight years ago we celebrated the 250th anniversary of the incorporation of the town of Dedham. Tonight we are met together to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the first free school within our limits. Which is the greater event of the two? The creation of a municipal body was, of course, the precursor of subsequent action, but nevertheless one was but a political fact, while the other was the recognition of intellectual needs. The first was a combination for mutual safety and order, the latter was laying deep the foundation of the future.

Think of the foresight and unselfish devotion which led those plain farmers, struggling for a scanty subsistence in a wilderness, poor and alone, to deliberately and unanimously vote that they would put their hands into their almost empty pockets and tax themselves on account of "the great necessitie of providing some means for the education of the youth of our said towne." It is difficult now to realize the sacrifice they made for coming generations, and it is all the more impressive from the fact that it was not a sporadic movement of Dedham only, but a movement common to so many communities in our neighborhood.

Eight years before, Harvard College had been founded at Newtowne, now Cambridge, differing little from a free school, and at about the same time, Boston and Dorchester, Plymouth and perhaps other towns, in one shape or another, provided that their children should be taught at the public expense those principles which lie at the bottom of free government and those rudiments of learning necessary for the well-being of a growing State.

It was a grand exhibition of the Anglo-Saxon sense and forethought which have made our country what it is today. Hand in hand, in town, village and hamlet, went the church and the common school, and never was the poverty of those men so great nor their hardships so severe that they could forget that the problems of the future were to be measured by the intelligence of the masses of the people. They trusted the people because they intended, so far as in them lay, that their descendants should be educated to meet all questions which might arise with the intelligence born of the training of the common school.

Time has not changed the situation; the people's education now, as ever, is the only sure reliance for the permanency of our institutions, and no amount of material prosperity, no rolling up of millions of wealth, no outward exhibition of numbers or strength, will avail, unless the future is based upon this same education of the people and on something better than temporary success or riches.

Without this sure foundation republican institutions will prove a failure, and I believe in no other manner can the vast influx of foreign material poured upon our shores be moulded into true American citizens. Our fathers were firm in the faith that education was the guardian of liberty, and their meaning was not the education of the favored few, but the common instruction of the masses of the people.

The average education and intelligence of the people will be the average of administrative and political ideas; the stream of constitutional government will never rise higher than its source, and universal suffrage itself must be tested by the knowledge and wisdom and sense of the masses, who, for good or ill, will wield the ballot. Where else are we to find the answer to the great economic and financial questions of the day? How else are we to settle the perplexing questions as to the relations of labor and capital? How are we to secure honest administration, not only of our towns and cities, but of the great and overpowering private trusts and corporations, unless the ultimate resort is to the intelligence of the people?

The flag which proudly floats over your school-houses will be but an empty symbol unless those schools from year to year shall send forth men and women trained in the principles which stand for high citizenship, and equipped for a sturdy contest with false ideas and theories of government. Republican freemen can be born only of republican ideas, and it is for the common schools to implant these ideas. It is not the wide range of studies that will save us; it is the thoroughness with which our youth are taught those great basic principles, that honesty is not only the best policy, but the highest duty of every true man; that ignorance is un-American, and that sturdy independence of thought and action is the inherited treasure of American freemen.

This meeting, too, is a noticeable recognition of intellect rather than physical force. A word to our schools upon that point. They are, and ever will be, first and foremost, for the training of the intellectual man,-all else must be subordinate ; and though I would be the last to deprecate such physical training as is necessary for the sound well-being of the body, the sports and games proper and desirable for growing youth should. never be allowed to absorb the time and thoughts of the pupils to the detriment of the sound mental athletics they can acquire nowhere else so well as at the schools. Therefore, my friends, I believe in the common free schools. I believe in them because they are American, because they are democratic, and because the active contact there with just the forces and just the kinds of mind and thought to be met with in after life, will best fit their graduates to grapple with American ideas. Self-confidence and rugged honesty are best engendered by early struggle and early impression, and if our schools are what they ought to be they should turn out the best type of the American citizen.

I am glad, then, to join in marking this great event in our local history. My best wishes for our people can only be that the wisdom of the fathers may descend to the sons, and that they may never forget what was sacrificed for their welfare, and be ready in turn to sacrifice without stint for those coming

generations who will take up their work and carry, we hope, to a more complete fruition, the great experiment of a free government by a free people.

THE CHAIRMAN,-Ladies and Gentlemen, Massachusetts has been fortunate in the character of her Governors. They have been without exception, honest, able and patriotic. But I thought this afternoon as I was forecasting this celebration, how particularly fortunate Dedham had been in the men who had occupied the gubernatorial chair at the times when her great anniversaries had occurred. In 1836, when she celebrated the two hundredth anniversary of the incorporation of the town, the Hon. Edward Everett was Governor. In 1886, when we celebrated the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the same event, the Hon. George D. Robinson was Governor of Massachusetts. To-night, we are equally fortunate in the presence here of the Hon. FREDERIC T. GREENHALGE.

[At this point the applause was so great and continuous that the Chairman was unable to proceed, and Governor Greenhalge rose to address the audience without further introduction.]

VII.

ADDRESS.

HIS EXCELLENCY, FREDERIC T. GREENHALGE,

GOVERNOR OF THE COMMONWEALTH.

MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN :— I was told that I should find a cold audience in Dedham [laughter]. That certainly seems to have been a gross misrepresentation and I shall contradict it at the first opportunity [applause].