What does the change mean? That is the question that is uppermost in our minds to-day. That is the question I am going to try to answer, in order, if I may, to interpret the occasion.

It means much more than the mere success of a party. The success of a party means little except when the nation is using that party for a large and definite purpose.

Some old things with which we had grown familiar, and which had begun to creep into the very habit of our thought and of our lives, have altered their aspect as we have latterly looked critically upon them.

Some new things, as we look frankly upon them, willing to comprehend their real character, have come to assume the aspect of things long believed in and familiar, stuff of our own convictions. We have been refreshed by a new insight into our own life.

We see that in many things that life is very great. It is incomparably great in its material aspects, in its body of wealth, in the diversity and sweep of its energy, in the industries which have been conceived and built up by the genius of individual men and the limitless enterprise of groups of men.

It is great, also, very great, in its moral force. Nowhere else in the world have noble men and women exhibited in more striking forms the beauty and the energy of sympathy and helpfulness ,and counsel in their efforts to rectify wrong, alleviate suffering and set the weak in the way of strength and hope.

We have built up, moreover, a great system of government, which has stood through a long age as, in many respects, a model for those who seek to set liberty upon foundations that will endure against fortuitous change, against storm and accident.

But the evil has come with the good.

With riches has come inexcusable waste. We have squandered a great part of what we might have used, and have not stopped to conserve the exceeding bounty of nature.

We have been proud of our industrial achievements, but we have not hitherto stopped thoughtfully enough to count the human

cost.

The great government we loved has too often been made use of for private and selfish purposes; and those who used it had forgotten the people.

At last a vision has been vouchsafed us of our life as a whole. We see the bad with the good, the debased and decadent with the sound and vital. With this vision we approach new affairs. Our duty is to cleanse, to reconsider, to restore, to correct the evil without impairing the good, to purify and humanize every process of our common life without weakening or sentimentalizing it.

We have come now to the sober second thought. The scales of heedlessness have fallen from our eyes. We have made up our minds to square every process of our national life again with the standards we so proudly set up at the beginning and have always carried at our hearts. Our work is a work of restoration.

We have studied as perhaps no other nation has the most effective means of production, but we have not studied cost or economy as we should either as organizers of industry, as statesmen, or as individuals.

Nor have we studied and perfected the means by which government may be put at the service of humanity, in safeguarding the health of the nation, the health of its men and its women and its children, as well as their rights in the struggle for existence. This is no sentimental duty. The firm basis of government is justice, not pity. These are matters of justice.

There can be no equality of opportunity, the first essential of justice in the body politic, if men and women and children be not shielded in their lives, their very vitality, from the consequences of great industrial and social processes which they cannot alter, control or singly cope with.

Society must see to it that it does not itself crush or weaken or damage its own constituent parts. The first duty of law is to keep sound the society it serves.

These are some of the things we ought to do, and not leave the others undone, the old-fashioned, never-to-be-neglected, fundamental safeguarding of property and of individual right.

This is the high enterprise of the new day: to lift everything that concerns our life as a nation to the light that shines from the hearthfire of every man's conscience and vision of the right.

It is inconceivable that we should do this as partisans; it is inconceivable we should do it in ignorance of the facts as they are or in blind haste. We shall restore, not destroy.

We shall deal with our economic system as it is and as it may

be modified, not as it might be if we had a clean sheet of paper to write upon; and step by step we shall make it what it should be, in the spirit of those who question their own wisdom and seek counsel and knowledge, not shallow self-satisfaction or the excitement of excursions whither they cannot tell. Justice, and only justice, shall always be our motto.

And yet it will be no cool process of mere science. The nation has been deeply stirred, stirred by a solemn passion, stirred by the knowledge of wrong, of ideals lost, of government too often debauched and made an instrument of evil,

The feelings with which we face this new age of right and opportunity sweep across our heart-strings like some air out of God's own presence, where justice and mercy are reconciled and the judge and the brother are one.

We know our task to be no mere task of politics, but a task which shall search us through and through, whether we be able to understand our time and the need of our people, whether we be indeed their spokesmen and interpreters, whether we have the pure heart to comprehend and the rectified will to choose our high course of action.

This is not a day of triumph; it is a day of dedication. Here muster, not the forces of party, but the forces of humanity. Men's hearts wait upon us; men's lives hang in the balance; men's hopes call upon us to say what we will do.

Who shall live up to the great trust? Who dares fail to try? I summon all honest men, all patriotic, all forward-looking men, to my side.

God helping me, I will not fail them, if they will but counsel and sustain me!

Woodrow Wilson.

DANIEL O'CONNELL ON REPEAL OF THE UNION

Probably the largest political gathering in the history of the world was held on the Hill of Tara, August 15, 1843. It is estimated that not less than a quarter of a million persons were present. They came from all parts of Ireland, under the guidance of their parish priests, to hear the great orator.

We are standing upon Tara of the Kings; the spot where the monarchs of Ireland were elected, and where the chieftains of Ireland bound themselves, by the most solemn pledges of honor, to

protect their native land against the Dane and every stranger. This was emphatically the spot from which emanated every social power and legal authority by which the force of the entire country was concentrated for the purposes of national defense.

On this spot I have a most important duty to perform. I here protest, in the name of my country and in the name of my God, against the unfounded and unjust Union. My proposition to Ireland is that the Union is not binding on her people. It is void in conscience and in principle, and as a matter of constitutional law I attest these facts. Yes, I attest by everything that is sacred, without being profane, the truth of my assertions. There is no real union between the two countries, and my proposition is that there was no authority given to any one to pass the Act of Union. Neither the English nor the Irish Legislature was competent to pass that Act, and I arraign it on these grounds. One authority alone could make that Act binding, and that was the voice of the people of Ireland. The Irish Parliament was elected to make laws, and not to make legislatures; and, therefore, it had no right to assume the authority to pass the Act of Union. The Irish Parliament was elected by the Irish people as their trustees; the people were their masters, and the members were their servants, and had no right to transfer the property to any other power on earth. If the Irish Parliament had transferred its power of legislation to the French Chamber, would any man assert that the Act was valid? Would any man be mad enough to assert it? Would any man be insane enough to assert it, and would the insanity of. the assertion be mitigated by sending any number of members to the French Chamber? Everybody must admit that it would not. What care I for France? - and I care as little for England as for France, for both countries are foreign to me. The very highest authority in England has proclaimed us to be aliens in blood, in religion, and in language. To show the invalidity of the Union, I will only quote the declaration of Lord Plunket in the Irish Parliament, who told them that they had no authority to transfer the legislation of the country to other hands. As well, said he, might a maniac imagine that the blow by which he destroys his wretched body annihilates his immortal soul, as you imagine that you can annihilate the soul of Ireland her constitutional rights. I therefore proclaim the nullity of the Union. In the face of Europe I proclaim its nullity. In the face of France and of Spain,

I proclaim its nullity; and I proclaim its nullity in the face of the liberated States of America. I go farther, and proclaim its nullity on the grounds of the iniquitous means by which it was carried. It was effected by the most flagrant fraud. A rebellion was provoked by the Government of the day, in order that they might have a pretext for crushing the liberties of Ireland. There was this addition to the fraud, that at the time of the Union, Ireland had no legal protection. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, and the lives and liberties of the people were at the mercy of courts-martial. You remember the shrieks of those who suffered under martial law. The next fraud was that the Irish people were not allowed to meet to remonstrate against it. In King's County the High Sheriff called the people together in the courthouse, and Colonel Connor, of the North Cork Militia, supported by artillery and a troop of horse, entered the courthouse at the head of two hundred of his regiment, and turned out the sheriff, magistrates, grand jurors, and free-holders assembled to petition against the enactment of the Union. In Tipperary a similar scene took place. A meeting convened by the High Sheriff was dispersed at the point of the bayonet. Thus public sentiment was stifled; and if there was a compact, as is alleged, it is void on account of the fraud and force by which it was carried.

My next impeachment against the Union is the gross corruption with which it was carried. No less than £1,275,000 was spent upon the rotten boroughs, and £2,000,000 was given in direct bribery. There was not one office that was not made instrumental to the carrying of the measure. Six to seven judges were raised to the Bench for the votes they gave in its support; and no less than twelve bishops were elevated to the Episcopal Bench for having taken the side of the Union; for corruption then spared nothing to effect its purpose corruption was never carried so far; and if this is to be binding on the Irish nation, there is no use in honesty at all.

My next impeachment of the Union is its destructive and deleterious effect upon the industry and prosperity of the country. The county of Meath was once studded with noble residences. What is it now? You remember the once prosperous linen-weavers of Meath. There is scarcely a penny paid to them now. In short, the Union struck down the manufactures of Ireland. The Commissioners of the Poor Law prove that 120,000 persons in Ireland