Preservation of the Falls 



hire, the series of most honorable executive acts in this movement 1885 

 for the restoration of Niagara Falls. The transfer of title has 

 now been completed, and we have been called to witness its 

 public recognition. No longer is Niagara, at least upon this bank, 

 the property of men. The formal title does, indeed, rest in that 

 great corporation composed of the people of the State in their 

 sovereign capacity; but they assert no ownership. They rever- 

 ently acknowledge a trust. In the allotment among different 

 races and nations of the majestic displays of natural beauty or 

 power, this chief example has fallen under their dominion. But 

 its great purpose and essential use are not thereby changed. It 

 is theirs only to restore, protect and preserve — theirs only, in 

 common with all lovers of the sublime and the beautiful, to revere 

 and enjoy. 



The State of New York has done many memorable things 

 which illumine her annals. She has erected great structures 

 dedicated to charity. She has established a great system of uni- 

 versal education. She has raised and sent into the field vast 

 armies to defend liberty and perpetuate the great nation of which 

 she forms a part; but in no single act has she shown herself 

 more worthy of her renown, or of the place she fills in the nation 

 and in the world, than by avowing, as she does to-day, her inten- 

 tion to forever guard and secure this spot against all profanation, 

 for the delight, the elevation and the improvement of mankind. 



The effort has not passed into successful accomplishment 

 wholly without a challenge. Minds accustomed to scrutinize 

 narrowly the objects to which it is proposed to devote the public 

 revenue have questioned whether our civil Constitution permitted 

 such an expenditure for the mere purpose of indulging a senti- 

 ment. The question and its decisions are alike honorable. We 

 cannot appropriate public moneys to anything but a public use. 

 But public uses should certainly be deemed broad enough to 

 embrace the gratification of the noblest aspirations of which 

 human nature is capable. Pitiable, indeed, would be the spec- 

 tacle of a people who had paralyzed themselves against the 



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