i6 



street and Saltonstall and Nathaniel Ward of Ipswich and 

 his " Body of Laws."' and their compeers and successors, 

 names equally worthy, hut too long - a list to call here, — 

 in their independence, their courage, their endurance, 

 their faith and piety — that the high qualities which dis- 

 tinguished them have been perpetuated in their descen- 

 dants, and that we owe them a debt of gratitude it were 

 hard to pay. And as they, with all our early ancestors, 

 came across the sea for freedom of conscience, and to 

 escape the intolerable exactions of church and state, to 

 hardship, to privation, and to an unbroken wilderness, 

 the best citizen, whether farmer or not, remembering 

 their immigration and our descent, and the many thou- 

 sands who have since come to us from every land, English- 

 men, Irishmen, Germans and Scandinavians, and who 

 have become a part of our best citizenship in every sphere 

 of life, welcomes those who still come to us, provided they 

 are of the kind who wish to become, and will make good 

 citizens, honest, law-abiding, ready to do any honest 

 work : but he has no welcome nor open arms for, but the 

 strongest possible protest against, paupers, criminals, and 

 anarchists. 



He believes that no other county in the Commonwealth 

 has a Merrimac river running its entire length on one 

 side — once making its way unvexed to the sea, but now, 

 subject to the brain and hand of man, turning hundreds 

 of wheels and driving innumerable spindles, supporting, 

 or the smiling witness to the multiform industries, and 

 the homes of its beautiful, busy and thriving towns and 

 cities ; and, on the other, a sea coast like that from 

 Nahant to the extreme point of Cape Ann. 



That nowhere else in this Commonwealth, as in our 

 own count}' — with an area of less than five hundred 



