HANCOCK, JEFFERSON, FRANKLIN, AND ADAMS come back to me now, in the sunlight and zenith of republican glory; and as the old bell in the tower rang out Liberty to all the people of the land, the city of Brotherly Love took up the acclaim, while on the wings of the wind it echoed and reached from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi, and from the Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, sounding across the seas, and reverberating among the sparkling halls of royalty, shivering the idols of "Divine Right," and forcing the plain, common people of the world into their long-neglected heritage of Freedom! And there, side by side with Franklin and Jefferson, sat one of the Secretaries of the Continental Congress, TOM PAINE, the great deist, patriot and philosopher; whose elementary proclamations, "The Crisis," "Rights of Man," "Common Sense," and "Age of Reason," did more for the promulgation of freedom during and after the American and French revolutions than any other utterance of man. The logic and philosophy of the great deist and agnostic was worth more to the Colonies, and did more injury to King George and his murdering minions, than all the purblind, bigoted, saphead pulpit thumpers who ever preached for ready cash. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries produced no nobler or better man than the brave Tom Paine, the personal and political compeer and friend of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and Adams. The DECLARATION OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE was the greatest event in the history of mankind since the creation of Adam and the birth of Christ. It was a lofty and true indictment against the crimes of monarchy, and was the entering wedge in splitting the rotten log of robber royalty. These words and phrases keep ever sounding in my soaring soul: "We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness!" "The history of the King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these States." "The King has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns and destroyed the lives of our people." "The road to happiness and glory is open to us; we will climb it apart from the British Government, and acquiesce our eternal separation, and hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends." "And for the support of this Declaration, with reliance in Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor!" Moving along with the martyrs who have died for progress and liberty: I stood in the English Court September 20th, 1803, beside the heroic ROBERT EMMET,