In dwelling upon the founding of our happy commonwealth it is pleasant
to contemplate how enlightened and exalted were the men whom
Providence employed for the performance of this important work.
Many are apt to think ours the age of culminated enlightenment,
dignity, wisdom, and intelligence, and look upon the fathers of two
and three hundred years ago as mere pigmies, just emerging from an era
of barbarism and ignorance, not at all to be compared with the proud
wiseacres of our day. Never was there a greater mistake. The
shallowness and flippancy of the leaders and politicians of this last
quarter of the nineteenth century show them but little more than
school-boys compared with the sturdy, sober-minded, deep-principled,
dignified, and grand-spirited men who discovered and opened this
continent and laid the foundations of our country's greatness. And
those who were most concerned in the founding of our own commonwealth
suffer in no respect in comparison with the greatest and the best.