"So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm;
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,

A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For born on the night wind of the past,
Through all our history to the last,

In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere."

How my soul thrills with recollection when I think where I stood in Carpenters Hall, Philadelphia, on the 4th of July, 1776, among the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and heard that grandest of human productions proclaimed to the world.

Each of the fifty-six signers was a modern Moses in himself, and to-day their heroic statues, in imperishable bronze, should stand aloft on the shining marble copings of the National Capitol.

The glowing features and earnest, eloquent tones of

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 mutally 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,

and heard him hurl these javelins of defiant patri

otic eloquence against the brazen brutality of British judicial tyranny:

"When my spirit shall be wafted to a more friendly port; when my shade shall have joined the bands of those martyred heroes who have shed their blood on the scaffold and in the field, in defense of their country and virtue, this is my hope: I wish that my memory and name may animate those who survive me, while I look down with complacency on the destruction of this perfidious Government, which upholds its dominion by blasphemy of the Most High.

"The blood which you seek is not congealed by the artificial terrors which surround your victim; it circulates warmly and unruffled through the channels which God created for noble purposes, but which you are bent to destroy for purposes so grievous that they cry to Heaven!

"Let no man write my epitaph; for, as no one who knows my motives dares now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them and me repose in obscurity and peace, and my

tomb remain uninscribed until other times and other men can do justice to my character and memory. When my country shall take her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written."

Again, in my peripatetic tour of nations, seeking and aiding the hosts of Liberty, I stood with GENERAL ANDREW JACKSON,

the greatest Irish-American citizen, soldier and President, behind the cotton bales and swamps of

New Orleans, and on the 8th of January, 1815, I saw him hurl more than two thousand "Red Coats" into eternity, with only a loss of seven men, three killed and four wounded.

Kentucky and Tennessee "Bushwhackers," with a lot of New Orleans shopkeepers, armed with squirrel rifles, killed and defeated General Pakenham, and the veteran troops of John Bull, in their raids over the globe for land, loot and human blood.

And still moving across the Gulf of Mexico, to Vera Cruz; and by land to Buena Vista, with

SCOTT AND TAYLOR,

I heard the scream of the American eagle as it swooped down on the tyrant troops of Santa Ana, and with the Stars and Stripes waving in the breeze, beheld the United States soldiers charge the castellated heights of Chapultepec, and the next day, the 14th of September, 1847, saw General Scott plant his colors over the "National Palace," with his conquering army marching in glory through the city and halls of the Montezumas.

Yet, with all the woes of Mexico, I saw it in after years, rise out of the toils of foreign monarchy, when General Juarez, the native liberator, captured and killed the Archduke Maximilian, the representative of the Little Napoleon of France. The "Monroe Doctrine" triumphed in the death gurgle of Maximilian.

Sic semper tyrannis!

Treason to tyrants is truth to the people!