158 THE RETROSPECT OF THE YEAR. 



and it becomes me to resign the hour to them. They will 

 offer you explanations and reflections for which their po- 

 sition and studies will command respect. We all have our 

 theories. We have in the Uphams, father and son, able 

 guides to a just conclusion. The interchange of views, 

 on a centennial like this, cannot but be welcome and in- 

 spiring to all of us. 



I find, then, an excuse for this commemoration, if excuse 

 it need, in the belief that the wretched slaughter of women, 

 in 1692, whether we will it or not, will be remembered. 

 Had they perished by conflagration, by shipwreck, or by 

 flood, by any agency where no human motive intervened, 

 their fate had been sad indeed, but time would slowly wipe 

 out the living memory. Had they died by Indian mas- 

 sacre even, or by famine or by siege, the memory of it 

 would linger long, but not forever. Not the number of 

 the victims, not so much the character of the victims, but 

 the nature and animus of the violence under which they 

 fell, determines, I think, the final judgment of mankind. 

 Smithfield and the Inquisition will not be forgotten ; the 

 bloody upheaval in France a century ago will not be for- 

 gotten ; the groundless strangulation in Salem two hun- 

 dred years ago will not be forgotten. 



I ask your attention, therefore, to what is about to be 

 said, in order that we may help to record and hand down 

 the actual fact and not expose our ancestors to the distorted 

 misconceptions of writers who may not feel the solemn 

 obligation resting upon us to see to it that the censure is 

 apportioned to the fault. 1 shall rejoice if persons who 

 have supposed us anxious to keep alive these memories for 

 our own aggrandizement shall be persuaded by the solem- 

 nity of this occasion, that such is not the fact, and that 

 while we cannot shape our history, we accept it in all se- 

 riousness as it is, and have no disposition to treat in a light 



