Date: October 27, 1906
Location: Northampton, MA
(Original document available here)
Fellow Citizens:
The frost may be on the pumpkin, but it does not seem to be in city hall.
In the name of the city committee I welcome you all to a discussion of our public affairs. For that is our purpose here to take counsel together for the common good. I realize it might be better if these meetings could be held other than in the midst of a heated political campaign, for we are prone now to discuss personalities not measures; we are prone to forget that this is a government of laws, not of men. Yet this is the only time that public interest is sufficient to warrant public meetings. They must come now or not at all. So we annually gather here at this season. We send out a general invitation, remembering that the vote of the humblest counts for as much as the vote of the chief magistrate, remembering that the alien would learn with us, remembering that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are as dear to the cottage as the palace, remembering that the most exalted should take counsel of the lowliest, remembering that where there is a personality there is a voice if not a vote. We call in every kind, “barbarian scythian, bond or free,” you are welcome one and all, we care not at what shrine you worship, nor how you eat your pie. That includes what Senator Lodge calls cossaks. We gather in the old town house of Northampton, and it is hallowed ground. Here have come the fathers of the Commonwealth. Here have stood Butler and Stearns and Russell. Here you have listened to Dawes and Robinson and Hoar. And I bid you remember as you listen to the speakers this evening that they are carrying on the work the fathers have left to us. I bid you remember that credit and esteem and honor are not alone for the dead. The men who speak to you here, whether from my party or another, are all striving to lead us – through different avenues perhaps, in part mistakenly, perhaps, but all honestly striving to one goal, the common good.
It is axiomatic that popular government cannot long exist without a free ballot. It is the aim of all wise election laws that the popular will may be freely and fully expressed. Our first speaker is a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives who has done more to perfect our election laws so that every voter may register his wish at the primaries and at the election than any other man in a generation. He has been in the House for a number of years and we shall hear from him again. He is the author of the law which generally bears his name, Representative Robert Luce.
Citation: Vermont Historical Society
The Coolidge Foundation gratefully acknowledges the volunteer efforts of Isaac Oberman, who prepared this document for digital publication.