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"Imperialism"

AND

"The Tracks of Our Forefathers"

A PAPER READ BY

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS

Before the Lexington, Massachusetts, Historical Society

Tuesday, December 20, 1898

"In a word, many wise men thought it a time wherein those two miserableadjuncts, which Nerva was deified for uniting, imperium et libertas, were as wellreconciled as is possible."—Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, B. 1. § 163.

"I put my foot in the tracks of our forefathers, where I can neither wander norstumble."—Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America.

BOSTON
DANA ESTES & COMPANY
210 SUMMER STREET
1899

What the feast of the Passover was to the children ofIsrael, that the days between the nineteenth of Decemberand the fourth of January—the Yuletide—are and willremain to the people of New England. The Passover began"in the first month on the fourteenth day of the month ateven," and it lasted one week, "until the one and twentiethday of the month at even." It was the period of the sacrificeof the Paschal lamb, and the feast of unleavened bread; andof it as a commemoration it is written, "When your childrenshall say unto you, What mean ye by this service? thatye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the Lord's passover, whopassed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt,when he smote the Egyptians. Now the sojourning of thechildren of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundredand thirty years." And thus, by their yearly Passover,were the Jewish congregations of old put in mind whatfarewell they took of the land of Egypt.

So our own earliest records tell us that it was on themorning of Saturday, of what is now the nineteenth ofDecember, that the little exploring party from the Mayflower,then lying at her anchor in Provincetown Harbor, after aday and night of much trouble and danger, sorely buffetedby wind and wave in rough New England's December seas,found themselves on an island in Plymouth Bay. It was amild, "faire sunshining day. And this being the last day ofthe weeke, they prepared ther to keepe the Sabath. OnMunday they sounded the harbor, and marched into the land,and found a place fitt for situation. So they returned totheir shipp againe [at Provincetown] with this news. Onthe twenty-fifth of December they weyed anchor to goe tothe place they had discovered, and came within two leaguesof it, but were faine to bear up againe; but the twenty-sixthday, the winde came faire, and they arrived safe in thisharbor. And after wards tooke better view of the place, andresolved wher to pitch their dwelling; and the fourth day [ofJanuary] begane to erecte the first house for commone use toreceive them and their goods." Such, in the quaint languageof Bradford, is the calendar of New England's Passover;and, beginning on the nineteenth of December, it ends onthe fourth of January, covering as nearly as may be theChristmas holyday period.

Is there any better use to which the Passover anniversarycan be put than to retrospection? "And when your childrenshall say unto you, What mean you by this service?ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the Lord's passover, whenhe smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses." So theold story is told again, being thus kept ever green in memory;and, in telling it, the experiences of the past are broughtinsensibly to bear on the conditions of the present. Thus,once a year, like the Israelites of old, we, as a people, maytake our bearings and verify our course, as we plunge on outof the infinite past into the unknowable future. It is auseful practice; and we are here this first evening of our