It is with a most peculiar pleasure that we greet you and welcome this sacred relic within the boundaries of the Old Dominion. It is most fitting that it should rest upon the breast of this great old State, for it was the voice of a great Virginian that sounded the tocsin of the Revolution; it was the pen of a great Virginian that drafted the Declaration of Independence that was greeted by the voice of this bell; it was the sword of a great Virginian that made that declaration an accomplished fact, and it was while tolling the requiem for the soul of the great Virginian jurist, John Marshall, that its voice ever became silent. It is with feelings of heartfelt delight that we welcome it within the corporate limits of Fredericksburg, connected inseparably, as she is, like your own great and proud city of Philadelphia, with the events proclaimed in that glorious past by that sacred bell; for it was in Fredericksburg, on the 29th of April, 1775, that the first resolutions breathing the spirit of the Declaration of Independence were offered; it was in Fredericksburg that Hugh Mercer lived, whose ashes rest in your beloved soil, in whose defence he died; and in Fredericksburg once lived that great American President that gave to all the ages the grand doctrine that these United States would never tolerate the acquisition of an inch of American soil by any prince, potentate or power of Europe. We are glad that this bell is going about the land, in the language of your great and good president, Judge Thayer, "stirring up everywhere as it goes those memories and patriotic impulses that are so inseparably connected with its history, and which themselves can never grow mute," and we doubt not that this bell, though voiceless now, can still "proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof; and who can tell but that as the rolling waves of the blue Mexican Gulf thunder upon the shores of the Queen of the Antilles, the proud, triumphal progress of the Liberty Bell, they may bear to patriots, struggling to be free in that far off land, the sympathy of the great hearts of American freemen that yet beat responsive to the efforts of those whose love of liberty is stronger than death?" We are glad that our men and women may see it, and at the sacred flame that burns about its altar replenish the patriotic fire that still is trimmed and burning in the hearts of a re-united American people. We are glad that our children may see it to learn from its presence and history that the dearest heritage left them by their fathers is that liberty and independence once proclaimed by this bell. And so we bid God speed to the bell which once "rang redress to all mankind," as it goes through the land proclaiming to all the nations of the world that a