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UNIVERSITY COURIER.
defying not only the threats of their king but the anathemas of the pope, to them the representative of Heaven. The Great Charter was granted and with that as a text they have moved onward and upward, often bending to the exigencies of the time, but amidst all the tumults of a thousand years never once has their restless energy wearied in its onward march toward the consummation of a true and perfect freedom.
Magna Charta, Religious Toleration, Reform Bill, one by one they have been wrested from king, church, and nobles till now the English Constitution stands before the world, the survivor of a hundred conflicts, unique in its conception and grand in its completion. No Spanish Inquisition re-echoing to the dying groans of its victims; no French Revolution with its blood-stained guillotine; no Russian Nihilism reckoning with midnight assassinations are left like specters in its path. But strewn along its course are the blasted hopes of ambition and the abortive assaults of tyrants. Neither could subvert it, and now as we stand on the brink of the twentieth century, gazing across the unknown ocean of time toward eternity, can we say that the descendant of the Saxon has accomplished his destiny, that his lofty head shall be bowed to the dust and his name mingled with the forgotten memories of the past?
Governments have risen, lived out their span of usefulness, and passed away, making but a ripple in the great sea of human affairs and leaving only scattered debris to mark the place where they once towered in all their glory. Their little part in the mighty world's drama was played and they were heard no more. But there has passed in the dreams of philosopher and philanthropist visions of a united humanity, when wars and rumors of wars shall cease in the dawning of eternal peace. As we cast our eyes back over the past a little band, just visible, starts from the Asian meadows moving ever toward the Occident. The Persian arrayed in the magnificence of the East, the Roman bristling with the strength of the West, and the Dane terrible in his ferocious courage assail it. Undaunted it passes on its way ever announcing freedom to the nations, till now, behold, we look abroad and its standard and speech never cease to salute the flaming chariot of day. Again the vision of poet and philosopher rises before us and the awakening hope of the heart draws the shadowy form out from the mist of night into the light of an assured and glorious dawn.
JOHN QUINGY ADAMS.
Contest Oration by Fred A, Stocks, Orophilian Society.
The advancement of civilization and enlightenment of mankind is due to those men who, sacrificing personal ambition, have battled manfully for the right. In all the great circles of the world's history when everything was hanging in the balance and needed but a breath to turn the scale, some man has come forth who checked the impending ruin and gave a new impetus to progress.
There is grandeur in moral firmness, in the determination to do right at the sacrifice of position, fortune, and friends, that lifts one above the common crowd and gives to his words a power that attracts the attention and moulds the thought of future generations. We all admire the patriotism of those who braved shot and shell for their country; we admire the statesmen who against overwhelming opposition and the possibility of political ostracism manfully contend for principles that
will give the greatest good to all. We Americans need not turn back the pages of history far to find the name of one eminent among such noble men.
When the American patriots first began to cry out against the wrongs of the mother country, when Otis "had sounded the trumpet of the revolution," and Patrick Henry hurled defiance at the King of England; when the spark of war was growing brighter and brighter and was almost ready to burst into a blaze, John Quincy Adams was born. "The cradle hymns of the child were the songs of liberty." Reared in the hot-bed of the revolution his youthful mind was filled with the grand ideas of liberty. While but yet a child it was the custom of his mother to climb with him the high granite hills near his home and there listening to the sounds of conflict on Bunker Hill, and watching the flaming ruins of Charlestown repeat to him those beautiful lines of Collins-
'How sleep the brave who sink to rest By all their country's wishes blest.'
What wonder that he was a patriot! That he was inspired with so much of what is known as "the spirit of 76." Imbued with this spirit, which lead the colonists to revolt, he began life with the sincere determination to do all in his power to attain union at home, free the people from all foreign entanglements, and win for them an honorable place among the nations of the earth. With broad and liberal ideas obtained by an intercourse with the learned men of both continents, he was not hampered by the narrowness of ideas which restrained so many of the patriots of the revolution, but quickly saw the present needs of the country and endeavored to shape the policy of the government so that its future might be a success. In the uncertainty of the present, when a change in affairs may forever blast the political advancement of men, we are apt to lose sight of the high mark for which we were striving and content ourselves with the advancement of private interests to the detriment of the welfare and prosperity of the public at large. The desire to be always on the popular side has destroyed the usefulness of some of the greatest men our country has ever had, and often well nigh proved disastrous to the nation itself. This man, pre-eminent in ability, possessing a profound knowledge of our internal and foreign affairs, inheriting an influence from his father, had he been less devoted to principle, he might have risen higher in the public estimation than he did, but he would have died without making that grand struggle for human progress and human liberty which endears him in the hearts of the people at the present time, and will last when the memory of his more popular and brilliant contemporaries has passed into insignificance.
With the adoption of the constitution we found ourselves alone among all the nations of the earth in offering universal suffrage to mankind. But the officers and soldiers of France, who had mingled in the contest, carried home the seeds of freedom and scattered them broadcast over a field ready to receive them. Ground down by an iron-heeled despotism for centuries, the French people eagerly grasped at this straw and created a revolution, such as the world has never known before or since.
When the pent-up flames of revolution burst forth at the very portals of the governments of the Old World, when the French King had lost his throne, and then his head, when the clarion notes of freedom were resound-