The sentiment which has been assigned me to-night--"Washington, the republican; a free and equal ballot the only guarantee of the Nation's security and perpetuity"--is one that was supported with a boldness of utterance, with a defiance that was unexcelled by any leader, by Zachariah Chandler always and everywhere. [Applause.] As Republicans we are fortunate, as has been suggested, in the fact that there is nothing in the history of our party, nothing in the principles that we advocate, to make it impossible for us to gather and to celebrate the birthday of any American who honored or defended his country. [Cheers.] We could even unite with our Democratic friends in celebrating the birthday of St. Jackson, because we enter into fellowship with him when we read his story of how by proclamation he put down nullification in South Carolina. [Applause.] We could meet with them to celebrate the birthday of Thomas Jefferson; because there is no note in the immortal Declaration or in the Constitution of our country that is out of harmony with Republicanism. [Cheers.] But our Democratic friends are under limitation. They have a short calendar of sense, and they must omit from the history of those whose names are on their calendar the best achievements of their lives. I do not know what the party is preserved for. Its history reminds me of the boulder in the stream of progress, impeding and resisting its onward flow and moving only by the force that it resists.