Date: February 12, 1919.
Location: Boston, MA
(Original source available here)
Mr. Toastmaster, Ladies and Guests, Fellow Members of the Middlesex Club:
In accordance with a long custom, we meet here tonight to pay observance to the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, and I am glad to be one of those who have the privilege of extending the greetings of this Club to the Governor of that State which sent Lincoln to the White House. His name is a great inheritance to us and his memory is one of the greatest inspirations of all American life. I know that not only my party but all Americans look to him with equal veneration and especially that ten million of the colored race whom he helped to free.
It is a great privilege for a party to be able to say that he was the first President that it elected, but if we are to be anything like what he was we shall not turn continually to the past – in fact, sometimes it seems that he broke with all the past, and even in that great speech at Cooper Union when he revealed, as a result of careful and painstaking research, what had been the record of those who drew up and through their efforts secured the adoption of the American Constitution, it was not for the purpose of justifying himself and the things that he was arguing for, so much as to show that they had been on the right side. So that if we are to observe that characteristic of his greatness while we shall look to him with veneration, we shall also look not only to the present but to the future.
I heard someone say not very long ago that no one seemed to know now what the Republican Party stands for. Perhaps that is technically true, for the principles and the precepts of the Republican Party are the result of cooperation, they are the result of consultation one with another, and they never have been entrusted to any one party or any one person.
I do not know but that at the present time, and for some time in the past, our opponents have had something the advantage of us in that respect and it may not be of great importance that that person is now abroad in France. I am aware that the Republican Party is not naturally a party of opposition. I am aware that through its long history it has been a party that has had a positive rather than a negative position, and perhaps it is not able to shine in opposition so much as some other party might. But I think that here in Massachusetts it is pretty well understood what the Republican Party stands for, and I am of the opinion too, that we are not different from the other states of this great nation.
One thing that our party wants to support, and has and will and does support, is an economical administration of our public affairs. It is time for us now to come back to some old fashioned economy in the administration of government.
We have exemplified that here in this Commonwealth and during the past year the net debt of the State has decreased by nearly a million of dollars. That is a positive achievement and it was brought about by a Republican administration.
You know that the Republican Party stands for education, and education not only of the youth of the land but extended insofar as is necessary to all those who need that helpful cooperation on the part of governmental agencies, whether they be those that are born among us or whether they be those that are new arrivals on our shores.
I am sure that as a result of the wise legislation that has characterized our efforts in the past, our party has done its part in extending the material welfare of this nation to all the people – equal opportunity and equal rewards for equal service insofar as that can be done. That is an achievement, I think, and a policy that we have stood for and that we propose to carry on into the future.
Of course we are going to take care of our returning soldiers. We are doing that out of our own resources and for the most part without the assistance of government agencies. But we wish to do more than to welcome them in returning here. We want to see such a treaty of peace made and such an adjustment of the great international problems, that their return will be permanent and will last. I do not know of any better way to do that than to provide, so far as possible, that not only the war through which we have just gone, but, insofar as human ingenuity can provide, all wars shall be unprofitable and all the guilty brought to justice.
So let us renew our allegiance to these principles. They are not exactly those of the show window, but they are substantial and solid and give us a firm foundation for party activity and for patriotic endeavor. And let us keep before us the great example of Abraham Lincoln, and let us remember that he put the Union above peace and that he put righteousness above the preservation of life.
Citation: Vermont Historical Society
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