times
of your troubles in England--Charles Francis Adams [long
applause]--whose maintenance of your dignity was concurrent with a sense
of the importance of good relations between England and America.

Gentlemen, next year you will celebrate your Centennial, and I have been
kindly asked by every person who wished me good-bye to come back to this
Centennial. [Laughter.] As for the Centennial itself, I have no
particular inclination to come back. I think it is quite right you
should have your Centennial, but I do not quite see what an Englishman
has to do with it. [Long laughter and applause.] It is a thing which a
philosopher might almost make the foundation of a theory, that you who
are going to have this magnificent celebration of the one hundredth year
of your liberation from the horrible rule of England, at the same time
accompany it with the warmest feelings toward the British nation.
[Laughter and applause.] Now, if you will clearly understand that this
Centennial is to be your last celebration of this kind, and that from
that moment you become part of the great community of Europe, then I say
it will be a very useful celebration and one which all the world will be
ready to honor. Celebrating your independence, you call it. A very noble
act at a very noble time! Your repulsion was fully justified by the
folly and the stupidity and the ignorance of England.

The causes of England and America are not different, but common to both.
You have your own local difficulties, just as we have. You have your own
religious difficulties, just as we have. Take a single instance. The
question of local taxation--a very serious question with you, a question
agitated in the great States. That question is one of the greatest
importance that we are at this moment discussing in politics. It is a
matter of great interest to us whether local taxation should be
entrusted and commissioned to a body of persons specially appointed for
that purpose by the Crown, or whether it should be entrusted to certain
persons selected by the people. That will be one of the most important
questions we shall have to consider in the next session or two of
Parliament. It is said that there is great profusion, great waste, in
our present arrangement of those matters, and that if our local
expenditure were conducted by persons specially appointed for that
purpose, it would be cheaper. I don't say more honestly, but more
economically managed. This is a question