tariff, "helpful to all the industries of the country, where the raw material and the labor can be furnished by our own people;" and a civil service divorced from party politics, based on personal fitness, with tenure of office during good behavior, moderate salaries, and pensions for the aged and sick, and provision for widows and orphans. IX THE END IN 1874, at the age of eighty-three, Mr. Cooper said at a reception given in his honor:-- "When I was born, New York contained 27,000 inhabitants. The upper limits of the city were at Chambers Street. Not a single free school, either by day or night, existed. General Washington had just entered upon his first term as President of the United States, the whole annual expenditures of which did not exceed $2,500,000, being about sixty cents per head of the population. Not a single steam engine had yet been built or erected on the American continent; and the people were clad in homespun, and were characterized by the simple virtues and habits which are usually associated with that primitive garb. I need not tell you what the country now is, and what the habits and the garments of its people now are, or that the expenditure, per capita, of the general government has increased fifteen-fold. But I have witnessed and taken a deep interest in every step of the marvellous development and progress which have characterized this century beyond all the centuries which have gone before. "Measured by the achievements of the years I have seen, I am one of the oldest men who have ever lived; but I do not feel old, and I propose to give you the receipt by which I have preserved my youth. "I have always given a friendly welcome to new ideas, and I have endeavored not to feel too old to learn; and thus, though I stand here with the snows of so many winters upon my head, my faith in human nature, my belief in the progress of man to a better social condition, and especially my trust in the ability of men to establish and maintain self-government, are as fresh and as young as when I began to travel the path of life.