When we charge imperialism upon the administration this question is put exultingly: "Where is the crown?" I answer from history. England waited a century, after the conquests by Clive and Hastings, for a Beaconsfield to crown Britain's Queen "Empress of the Indies." The crown is but a bauble. Empire means vast armies employed in ignominious service, burdensome taxation at home, and ruthless maladministration of affairs abroad. In two short years of imperialism, these evils have ceased to be imaginative merely, and they have taken a place among the unwelcome realities of our national life. Before I close this discourse I shall return to the subject that I have now introduced to your attention, and for the purpose of asking you to foster and preserve the quality of consistency in the history of the county of Essex. Mr. Moody introduced two topics to the Essex Club of which I am to take notice. They concern me personally, but there is an aspect of one of them that may merit public attention. With a kindliness of spirit, that I could not have anticipated, Mr. Moody attributes my failure to continue in the opinions that he claims were entertained by me in 1859, to the infirmities incident to advancing years. He thus raises a question that I am not competent to discuss. I pass it by. I trust that Mr. Moody may live to the age of two and eighty years; that his experience may be more fortunate than the fate that he attributes to me, and that at that advanced period of his life his ability to interpret the Constitution of his country will not be less than it now is. The speech of Mr. Moody, as it appears in the _Transcript_ of August 30, closes with this sentence: "He at least might spare the epithets to the party that has showered upon him every honor within its gift, except the presidency." If I have applied any disparaging epithet to the Republican Party, my error is due to my ignorance of the meaning of the word. The quotations which Mr. Moody has made from my speech at the Cooper Institute contain a declaration in two forms of expression, which may have led Mr. Moody to charge me with the use of epithets. I find nothing else on which this allegation can be founded. I reproduce the quotations: "President McKinley and his imperialistic supporters through two steps in an argument have deduced an erroneous conclusion from admitted truths. "(1) Our government in common with other sovereignties has a right to acquire territory. "(2) That right carries with it the right to govern territory so acquired. "From these propositions they deduce the false conclusion that Congress may indulge a full and free discretion in the government of the territories so acquired. Herein is the error, and herein is the usurpation."