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Address delivered at a dinner at Boston, Mar. 6, 1902, in answer to the toast "Massachusetts." Printed with permission of the author by Frederic and Bertha Goudy on watermarked paper. Bound in blue paper boards. In the letter of permission to Mr. Goudy, Eliot expressed his surprise that anybody would want to pay one dollar for a copy of such a small work. Edition of two hundred and fifty copies by Village Press in Hingham, Massachusetts. In 1903, Frederic Goudy, a former accountant, set up the Village Press in Illinois. Goudy's first press, Camelot Press, had lasted less than a year. The Village Press, however, was successful, and allowed Goudy to continue to design typefaces. By the end of his life, in 1947, Goudy had created one hundred and twenty-four type designs, executing most of them from drawing to casting. |
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Show een pt AON SES MASSACHUSETTS MASSACHUSETTS AN OLD AND PROSPEROUS DEMOCRACY AND A SAFE SOCIAL ORDER: AN ADDRESS By CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT HINGHAM: MASS THE VILLAGE PRESS M-DCCCEa'y NOTE HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS Prince Henry of Prussia visited Boston on March 6th, 1902. At the dinner given by the City in his honor toa company of representative men, Charles W. Eliot LL. D., President of Harvard University, made the following address in answer to the toast ‘‘ Massa- chusetts.” MASSACHUSETTS Mm YOUR Royal Highness: {The nation’s guests—Boston’s this evening—have just had some momentary glim ses of the extemporized Amer ican cities, of the prairies and the Alleghanies, of some greatrivers and lakes, and of prodigious Niagara, & so they have perhaps some vision of the large scale of our country, although they have run over not more than one-thirtieth of its area; but now they have come to little Massachusetts, ly- ing on the extreme eastern seacoast— by comparison a minute Commons wealth, with a rough climate and a oor soil. It has no good scenery to exhibit, no stately castles, churches, or palaces come down through centuries, such as Europe offers, and for at least two generations it has been quite un- able to compete with the fertile fields of the West in producing its own food supplies. What has Massachus setts to show them, or any intelligent European visitors? Only the fruitage this little Commonwealth has been developing in freedom, with no class legislation, feudal system, dominant Church, or standing army to hinder or restrain it. The period of develop: ment has been long enough to show what the issues of democracy are likely to be; and it must be interest- ing for cultivated men brought up under another regime to observe that human nature turns out to be much the same thing under a democratic form of Government as under the —social, industrial and governmen- earlier forms, and that the fundamen- democracy in the world. @ Fortwo hundred and eighty years remain almost unchanged amid ex: tal—of the oldest & most prosperous 8 tal motives and objects of mankind ternal conditions somewhat novel. b 9 % Democracy has not discovered or created a new human nature; it has only modified a little the familiar article. The domestic affections, and loyalty to tribe, clan, race or nation geillrule mankind. The family motive remains supreme. Itis an accepted fact that the character of each civilized nationality is well exhibited in its universities. Now Harvard University has been largely governed for two hundred and fifty years by a body of seven men called the Corporation. Every member of that Corporation which received Your Royal Highness this afternoon at Cambridge is descended 10 from a family stock which has been serviceable in Massachusetts for at least seven generations. More than one hundred years ago Washington was asked to describe all the high officers in the American army of that day who might be thought of for the chief command. He gave his highest praise to Major General Lincoln of Massachusetts, saying of him that he was ‘‘sensible, brave and honest.” There are Massachusetts Lincolns today to whom these words exactly apply. The democracy preserves & uses sound old families; it also utilizes strong blood from foreign sources. II Thus, in the second governing board of Harvard University—the Over seers—a French Bonaparte, a mem+ber of the Roman Catholic Church, sits beside aScotch farmer's son, Pres- byterian by birth and education, now become the leader in every sense of the most famous Puritan Church in Boston. The democracy also pro- motes human beings of remarkable natural gifts who appear as sudden outbursts of personal power, without prediction or announcement through family merit. It is the social mobility of a democracy which enables it to give immediate place to personal merit, whether inherited or 12 not, and also silently to drop unsere viceable descendants of earlier merits torious generations. Democracy, then, is only a further unfolding of the multitudinous hu- man nature, which is essentially stable. It does not mean the abolition of leadership or an averaged population, or a dead-level of society. Like monarchical and aristocratic forms of government, it meansa potent influ- ence for those who prove capable of exerting it, and a highly diversified society on many shifting levels, determined in liberty and perpetually exchanging members up and down. It means sensuous luxury for those PD who want it and can afford to pay presence that a strong root of Massa- for it; & for the wise rich it provides the fine luxury of promoting public objects by well-considered giving. chusetts liberty and prosperity was the German Protestantism of four centuries ago, and that another and toward manufacturing people, like the peo- Since all the world seems tending this somewhat formidable democracy, it is encouraging to see what the result of two hundred and eighty years of democratic experience has been in this peaceful and prosperous Massachusetts. Democ- racy has proved here to be a safe social order—safe for the property of individuals, safe for the finer arts of living, safe for diffused public happi- ness and well-being. “ We 14 remember gratefully in this fresher root of well-being for every ple of Massachusetts, has been Ger- man applied science during the past fifty years. We hope as Your Royal . Highness goes homeward bound ~ across the restless Atlantic—type of the rough ‘sea of storm-engendering liberty’—you may cherish a cheerful remembrance of barren but rich, strenuous but peaceful, free but selfcontrolled MASSACHUSETTS. 15 Printed with the author's permission by Fred and Bertha Goudy at The Village Press, Hingham, Massachusetts, in August, 1905. Two hundred fifty copies. te gt eae PSE we C2 — SUEY SST & ED Fy |
