Speech #600103563

In seeking the source of those strong and rugged but safe and sane characteristics. which enabled him to distinguish himself along so many different lines in lifes work. we find that he drew his inspiration from an ancestry. all of whom had part in the great movements among the English people toward a larger liberty. during the seventeenth century. who assisted in the development of the great principles of constitutional liberty during the splendid colonial period of American history. who. in every stage of state and national development. have been active and prominent in the maintenance of repreXLIII44 sentative government. and who. during the later period. have been among those who helped to lay the foundations of our unprecedented industrial development. In his veins ran the blood of Robert Proctor. a freeman of substance and position. who. within ten years after the foundIng of the historic town of Concord. in the.old colony of Massachusetts Bay. became one of its residents. and of Jane. the daughter of Richard Hildreth. the founder of the illustrious family of that name in America. They belonged to that remarkable body of English emigrants who. between 1630 and 1645. found their way to Massachusetts. and of whom Fisk says that " in all history there has been no colonization so exclusively affected by picked and chosen men." They represented all that was advanced in English life and liberty and "came mainly." as Campbell tells us. " from that middle class. the class which. always encouraged by Elizabeth. had in her days filled her universities. given England her literature. and made her glorious on sea and land." They were men who. foreseeing the storm which shook the foundations of the throne a little later. provided for themselves a refuge in New England. where. during the period when the English people were breaking the chains of absolutism. they were laying the foundations of States in which the principle of liberty under law was to find its highest expression. It was from his grandfather. Leonard Proctor. the head of the family in Vermont. that he inherited his spirit of veneration for those to whom the late Senator Hoar was wont to refer as the "greatest nation builders in the worlds history." and his lifelong devotion to the principles of free. representative government. for it was this ancestor who. with his two eldest sons. was active in the war of independence. taking part in the fight at Lexington. and in the battles of Trenton and Moumouth. and who was chosen by his fellowpatriots as one of the committee of correspondence in 1780. as well as one of the committee " to take under consideration the new form of government." But it was from his parents.