JOHN WILLIAM GRIGGS

SOCIAL DISCONTENT

[Speech of John William Griggs, ex-Governor of New Jersey, at the 128th
annual banquet of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York,
November 17, 1896. Alexander E. Orr, President of the Chamber,
presided. In 1897 ex-Governor Griggs succeeded Joseph McKenna as
Attorney-General in the Cabinet of President McKinley.]

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN:--I did not know this was
Thanksgiving day. [Laughter.] I did not know that there were any
discontents till I got over here to-night. When I arrive at this period
on an occasion like this, and see you sitting in comfortable
expectation, with your cigars lighted, and your intellects also lighted
by the contact of such a flame as we have received from the
distinguished Postmaster-General [William L. Wilson], I always think
that the composition of the boy on Sir Walter Raleigh is applicable. He
wrote a composition, and it was like this: "Sir Walter Raleigh was a
very great man; he took a voyage and discovered America, and then he
took another voyage and discovered Virginia, and when he had discovered
Virginia he discovered the potato; and when he had discovered the
potato, he discovered tobacco. And when he had done so, he called his
associates about him, and said: 'My friends, be of good cheer; for we
have this day lighted in England a flame which, by God's grace, shall
never be quenched.'" [Laughter.]

New Jersey greets to-night the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New
York. [Applause.] We are your friends and your neighbors. We have
furnished you a candidate in this election, who represents in the person
of Garret A. Hobart [applause] the sympathies and the sentiments of such
men as I see gathered here. We take much of our inspiration from New
York; not all of it. [Laughter.] We have some kinds of inspiration
peculiar to ourselves, of which we are always glad to invite our New
York friends to partake in moderation and properly diluted. [Laughter.]

Our citizens mingle with yours in all the daily walks of life. We read
the same newspapers. We dress as you do, only not so well; and we vote
the same ticket, by a large majority. [Applause.] This similarity is not
always apparent. The impressions of the traveller through New Jersey are
generally of salt marsh and sand banks and long monotonous stretches of
landscape, and, where the railroad pierces some shabby neighborhood, the
weather-boards bear shining invitations to