56 forefather's day. 



yet there has never been on this North Shore the slightest 

 disposition to disparage the personnel or quality of the 

 Plymouth colony, nor to deny to those noble men who 

 planted there, differing widely from us as they did in their 

 views of church polity, the fullest credit for high purpose, 

 iHicalculating self-sacrifice, and a courage and devotion 

 which adversity could not touch. 



Mr. Vice President Rantoul made some allusion to efforts 

 he had made while abroad with a view to obtain for publi- 

 cation a copy of a manuscript vindication of Hugh Peters, 

 written by the elder Disraeli. He spoke as follows: 



The late Benjamin Disraeli, first Earl of Beaconsfield, 

 prefixed to an edition of his father's "Curiosities of Liter- 

 ature," which appeared in 1858, a sketch of that author, 

 Isaac Disraeli, and therein stated, with some commenda- 

 tion of the essay alluded to, that the "last labor of his lit- 

 erary life was to vindicate the character of Hugh Peters." 

 This vindication of Hugh Peters was intended as a sup- 

 plementary chapter of Isaac Disraeli's "Life and Reign of 

 Charles I," but, the author dying while the booit was on 

 its way through the press, was inadvertently omitted and 

 has never appeared in print. The manuscript copy, says 

 Boase and Courtena3^'s ^' Bihliotheca CornuMejinis," was still 

 in existence in 1875, and in the possession of Rt. Hon. 

 Benj. Disraeli; all of whose manuscripts were left by his 

 will to Conigsby Disraeli, his nephew. 



The character and reputation of Rev. Hugh Peters, a 

 pastor of our first church, 1636-1641, afterwards decapi- 

 tated in London for his activity under Cromwell, in some 

 sense belong to Salem, and in some sense also to the Essex 

 Institute, for we have had the good fortune to come into 

 possession of what remains of the old meeting house in 

 which he ministered, the carefully preserved frame of which 

 becomes every day an object of more general interest. 



