Washington, Adams, Franklin, Rush, Paine—every one of them immortal names—struggled with the task with which God had entrusted them. They felt the great responsibility, and their faces, as they looked into each other’s eyes, spoke their anxiety. Each knew that every other as well as self had something in his heart that he dared not utter. They looked inquiringly again and again for some yielding in some face. But they hesitated all. And well they might; for it was not the fate of three million people merely that was in their hands, but the future destinies of the world. One of these men had said but little; but the set features of his face showed a stern resolve; showed that he was waiting for the proper time in which to speak. He knew that it would fall to him to break the way; to say the words which each one felt but dared not speak; and speak at last he did; and they were the words of mighty import that came forth from him; words that were to deliver the people who had come to their full time—a birth that should herald a new race of people to the world; and they came forth from him as if all his powers were concentrated in the effort; as if that effort were the last struggle of the mother to bring forth her child; and the “four” caught up the child and became god-father to it, and they bore it to the people. The people recognised it as their own; took it to their hearts, and at once adopted it. Its name was—Revolution—Independence; and the words rang up and down the wave-washed shores, and fired the people with their inspiration—revolution as the means, independence as the end. One hundred years have come and gone since that eventful day, great with the future’s destinies. Its hundredth anniversary has passed, and forty million people have commemorated the work of those five men, of those three million people:—commemorated it by reaffirming the truths that then were uttered for the first time in the new world; commemorated them by brilliant flights of oratory, by firing cannons and profuse displays of “stars and stripes” harmoniously blended with the flags of almost every other nation of the globe, whose sons and daughters were participating in the glory of the day; with feasting, fireworks; with general rejoicing everywhere. As if with a universal assent, these swarming millions re-echoed with a will the words that that stern man had uttered on that never-to-be-forgotten day a hundred years ago. OUR COMMERCIAL GREATNESS.