We have all learned to revere the memory of the men who framed and adopted the Declaration of Independence. All men and all nations have learned to regard with admiration the energy, the courage, the fortitude, the exhaustless patience with which our fathers fought the battles of freedom and inaugurated on this continent the “great experiment” of popular government. No one now dares to question the wisdom of their policy, the lofty purity of their lives and purposes, or the sublime quality of that heroic faith in the final triumph of their cause, which never failed them in the darkest hours of their long and bitter struggle to be free. There were tories _then_ all around them, as there are tories _now_ in the war we are waging, but there is no one _now_ to vouchsafe a word of praise on behalf of the tories of the Revolution. They have sunk to that oblivion, or have earned that unenviable immortality, which belongs to the lot of all who fail their country in its hour of trial, and have neither voice nor sympathy but for its enemies. Only those who aided the Colonies in their struggle with Britain and remembered now with gratitude. And having been, for eighty years and more, a great and prosperous and happy people, we feel increasingly, as the years go by, that we cannot venerate the men too highly, through whose blood and tears, and prayers and blessings, we were made and kept a nation. On a day like this, and in these hours of our history, facts like these have great significance.