James Otis, the Pre-RevolutionistRidpath, John Clark
History
James Otis, the Pre-Revolutionist
Ridpath, John Clark
Otis, James, 1725-1783
As the American walks the corridors and halls of the Parliament
House at Westminster, he pays no great heed to the painted kings
upon the painted windows, and cares little for the gilded throne
in the gilded House of Lords. The Speaker's chair in the Commons
does not stir him most, nor the white form of Hampden that stands
silent at the door; but his heart beats fastest where, among
great scenes from English triumphs of the days of Puritanism and
the revolution, he sees the departure of the Pilgim Fathers to
found New England.
England will not let that scene go as a part of American history
only, but claims it now as one of the proudest scenes in her own
history, too.
It is a bud of promise, I said, when I first saw it there. Shall
not its full unfolding be some great reunion of the English race,
a prelude to the federation of the world?
Let that picture there in the Parliament House at Westminster
stay always in your mind, to remind you of the England in you.
Let the picture of the signing of the compact on the "Mayflower"
stay with it, to remind you of progress and greater freedom.
That, I take it, is what America--New England, now tempered by
New Germany, New Ireland, New France--that, I take it, is what
America stands for.--Edwin D. Mead.
THE UNIVERSITIES AND THE MEN OF THE REVOLUTION.
You may perhaps remember how Wendell Phillips, in his great
Harvard address on "The Scholar and the Republic" reproached some
men of learning for their conservatism and timidity, their
backwardness in reform. And it is true that conservatism and
timidity are never so hateful and harmful as in the scholar. "Be
bold, be bold, and evermore be bold," those words which Emerson
liked to quote, are words which should ever ring in the scholar's
ear.
But you must remember that Roger Williams and Sir Harry Vane, the
very men whom Wendell Phillips named as "two men deepest in
thought and bravest in speech of all who spoke English in their
day," came, the one from Cambridge, the other from Oxford; and
that Sam Adams and Jefferson, the two men whom he named as
preeminent, in the early days of the republic, for their trust in
the people, were the sons of Harvard and William and Mary. John
Adams and John Hancock and James Otis and Joseph Warren, the
great Boston leaders in the Revolution, were all Harvard men,
like Samuel Adams; and you will remember how many of the great
Virginians were, like Jefferson, sons of William and Mary.
And never was a revolution so completely led by scholars as the
great Puritan Revolution which planted New England and
established the English commonwealth.
No. Scholars have often enough been cowards and trimmers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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