Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from An Oration on the Annals of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, And, a Rhyme of Rhode Island and the Times: Delivered Before the Sons of Rhode Island in New York, May 29, 1863
It will require an effort in us, who have been familiar with the civilization of a century, to appreciate the full value of our freedom, and to do just honor to those who gained it for us. The boy who rides on the railway car, at the speed of thirty miles an hour, and reads the telegraphic news from California, of the date of yesterday, imagines that these things have been so always. The history of Commerce will inform him how slow and painful have been the steps of improvement, and what a debt he owes to his fathers for their gradual and triumphant experiments. So the civilization of the nineteenth century owes to the Cartesian school of philosophy, and to the lively demo cratic experiments of Rhode I sland men, the familiar blessings of toleration and liberty of thought, which we prize as our birthright.
I trust that it will not be considered presumptuous, there fore, nor in any measure self-complacent, while we talk of Rhode Island's greatness.
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