Centennial records of the women of Wisconsin

              CENTENNIAL   EECOEDS. ' 135
Sim your hearts to-day in the Avarm Ughts of the century past, but do not shut them against the grave lessons veUed m the shadows. It is not for me, it is not, perhaps, for any Uving to speak the lessons of to-day. The voices of a century are in your ears; the voices of the great and vrise and good, who, bemg dead, yet speak. Are there such hving voices now ? Are thei'C such men now ? Is there such pubUc virtue now? Is there a pure society now? How do these days, and the people of these days bear comparison with those days and the people of those days? What has the land to show for the groAvth of a hundred years? Great population, great development, great power, great wealth. Are these aU? Have these brought vidth them none of the luxury and Ucense which tum blessings into curses? Compare the men standing at the end of the century with the men of the beguiiung. Is the standard of pubUo manhood as high? Or, amidst the gigantic growth of the nation, are the men of this day dwarfed by the men of that day? These are not my ques¬ tions. They are the questions of those who made this a national hoUday; the questions of those who gave us this inheritance of glory and of duty; the questions of the past to the present; voices echoing in our ears to-day doAvn a hundred years of history. It is for you, not for me, to answer these. Yet not for you only; for the whole American people. Words Avfll not answer them. They are historical questions, and the answers must be liistorical; the annals which the present is to add to the past.
" One great and wise voice sends warning to our ears to-day, crying ' Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable." Since that glorious head was laid in the dust, the Union has had its trial, and, thank the God of Nations, that danger seems passed forever. If the Uving dead Avitness the doings of posterity, how that great statesman's heart must exult in the security of the Union for which he pleaded in Ufe, since sealed Avith so much precious blood. But his words abide Avith us. Liberty and Union. The Union has survived its trial; Liberty may have its trial next; the Uberty which rests on local self-govemment, the unim¬ paired sovereignty of the states, as the fathers of the countiy founded them a hun¬ dred years ago. Centralization means despotism. History teaches that lesson on a thousand pages. The men of a hundred years ago weU understood it, and gave us a system of general and local sovereignty, the best and Avisest the world has ever seen. The danger of the past was in the states against the Union; the danger of the future may be in the Union %ainst the states. Union and Liberty ¦—the emphasis is Webster's, not mine—they cannot be divided; they are the twin chfldren of the revolution, to Uve or to die together. Hear to-day the A'oice of tiie historic dead—' Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable.'