and its splendid renown, but
it is also to the leaders of the great Puritan party in England, who
reinforced that immigration by the subsequent higher and nobler life of
the planters of Massachusetts Bay, conspicuous among whom was the
distinguished and ever-to-be-honored Governor Winthrop. [Applause.]

It was from these colleges that so many strong-hearted young men went
forth into political public life in England to act the scholar in
politics, and who, as scholars in politics, enunciated those new
principles and new theories of government which made Old England
glorious for a time, and which made New England the power for good which
she afterward became, first at her home in the old States, and in all
their extension westward even to this hour. These scholars sought
emphatically a reform of the civil service in England. That was their
mission. They vindicated their principles upon the scaffold and their
rights upon the field of battle at home, and they transmitted that
spirit to the emigrants who came out from among them before the great
rebellion reached its great crisis and finished its memorable history.

While, then, we honor the universities of which New England has been
the mother, let us remember that New England owes its being to a
university. In remembering this, we shall be prepared to follow in the
steps of our fathers, and to be mindful of what we ourselves owe to our
own institutions of learning.

In respect to the rivalry between Yale and Harvard, which was noticed in
the sentiment to which I speak, and in reply to the suggestions which
have been offered by the President of Harvard, I will venture a single
remark. You, sir, who are learned in our New England history, are not
unfamiliar with the saying which was once somewhat current, that when a
man was found in Boston, in the earlier generations, who was a little
too bad to live with, they sent him to Rhode Island [Laughter.]; and
when they found a man who was a little too good to be a comfortable
neighbor, they sent him to Connecticut. [Laughter.] The remainder--the
men of average respectability and worth--were allowed to remain on the
shores of Massachusetts Bay and in Boston. And so it happened that these
people of average goodness, from constantly looking each other in the
face, contracted the habit of always praising one another with especial
emphasis; and the habit has not been altogether outgrown. [Laughter.]
The people of Rhode Island, being