"It is argued that because we have had protection in the United States for the last thirty years, we have drawn all our prosperity, our national greatness, our individual and social advancement from a law of Congress, and not from the character and enterprise of our people, the resources of our country, the freedom of our government, and the blessing of Almighty God.

"But we have grown great and prosperous, we have increased in numbers and wealth, not because of protection, but because no law of Congress can stand in the pathway of human progress. You may frame your McKinley bills, and human progress will trample them under its feet. You cannot deaden science, and banish art, and drive out invention, and destroy enterprise, and prevent every man in this great, free country from seeking in all possible ways to better his condition, and to advance his own personal welfare.

"Mr. Speaker, this is a very old world, but long before human history began to be written, the fatal secret was disclosed that there is no easier, no quicker, no more abundant way of gathering wealth, and gathering power, than by exercising the privilege of taxing the masses of the people. That secret disclosed, and eagerly seized before the dawn of human history, is yet the dominant force in all the world. It is but two hundred years since men were willing to fight for the idea that governments are made for the governed, and not for the exclusive benefit of those who govern; and not yet in all the world is there a single nation whose government is administered in the interest of all the governed.

"This is not a battle over percentages, over this or that tariff schedule-it is a battle for human freedom. Mr. Burke truly said, every great battle for human freedom is waged around the question of taxation. . . . We are trying in this country the experiment whether, under God's favor, with the blessings of religion and education and free government and unbounded resources, we can have a country where every man will be born to the possibility that he can rise to a life of culture, and not be condemned from birth to a life of un

ending mechanical toil, or hopeless drudgery for the mere necessities of existence. We want to make this a country where no man shall be taxed for the private benefit of another man, but where all the blessings of free government, all the influences of church and school, all our resources, with skill and science and invention applied to their development, shall be the common untaxed heritage of all the people, adding to the comforts of all, adding to the culture of all."

As I heard the last words fall from the lips of the impassioned orator, such was the electric effect of Wilson's speech, that the House was in a whirl of excitement. Ringing cheers and shouts from House and galleries ensued, in the midst of which I saw two stalwart members, Tucker, of Virginia, and Bryan, of Nebraska, who gathered up the lithe form of Wilson, lifted him upon their shoulders and carried him triumphantly down the aisle to the members' lobby. Such a dramatic scene was never before nor since enacted on the floor of Congress.

To those who miss, in my necessarily concise sketches, the names of Randolph, Marshall, Everett, Prentiss, Seward, Douglas, Choate, and many more eloquent sons of the North, the South and the West, I must plead the brevity demanded by the occasion.

Let me close by remarking that we need not go to ancient days for our only choice models of eloquence. All true eloquence has its birth in the human soul. Great causes still inspire great utterances. As we join in the onward march of humanity, we may be pardoned for believing that the golden age is not behind us, but before.

A FIRE IN AN OLD TIME F STREET TAVERN

AND WHAT IT REVEALED.

BY W. B. BRYAN.

(Read before the Society, December 11, 1905.)

More than three quarters of a century ago on an April morning a fire broke out in a stable in the vicinity of the Navy Yard. Hardly had the fire fighters of the day, who were citizens that volunteered their services, succeeded in getting the flames under control and preventing their spread to the neighboring lumber yard on Coomb's wharf, when flames were seen bursting from a building in the northwestern section of the city.

By a singular coincidence this fire also had its origin in a stable, one which was attached to the tavern kept by George Miller at the southwest corner of Thirteenth and F Streets. Fanned by a strong northwest wind not only was the stable destroyed and the tavern, but also the building of Joseph Walker fronting on Thirteenth Street, and two buildings occupied as taverns on F Street, to the west of the Miller tavern.

This disaster, or rather series of disasters, was no doubt of considerable consequence on that April morning in the year 1819 and the details probably formed the staple of conversation in the sparse community for months afterwards. For in addition to the attention which such a calamity excites in the public mind, there was the further quality in this instance of novelty, for it was very unusual at that period for property to be destroyed by fire.

In the year 1816, the Intelligencer, commenting on a