HON. WILLIAM A. CHENEY.

WILLIAM ATWELL CHENEY was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in the year 1848, and after receiving an academic education, left his native state for California in 1868. Mr. Cheney was elected judge of the county court of Plumas County in 1878, and was sent to the senate of the state from the district of Butte, Plumas, and Lassen counties in 1880; he served as state senator for three sessions. During that period he formed a partnership with Hon. Creed Haymond, and in 1882 moved to Los Angeles. He was elected judge of the superior court of Los Angeles County in 1884, and served in that position until 1891. He is now engaged in the practice of law at Los Angeles. Judge Cheney has written many excellent poems, and is a brilliant conversationalist. He has always stood in the front rank as an orator.

AMERICA

[Delivered at Los Angeles, California, July 4, 1901.)

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, - My heart is yet in my throat, after that last burning, patriotic song, and it is difficult to begin. If my memory serves me rightly, it has been about a decade since I permitted myself to yield to the seductiveness of an invitation to give a Fourth of July oration. I have thought the younger men of the community should be allowed to take this responsibility from the shoulders of us older ones, but I have consented this year.

One night this week I read an editorial in an evening paper, which decried the usual dreariness of orations upon these occasions, and regretted the fact that the Philadelphians had not, as at first planned, urged Minister Wu, of the "firecracker kingdom," to deliver the oration of the day in their city, because orators always say the same things on these national birthday occasions.

Well, I had a beautiful speech prepared before I read that editorial, but after that, it was all gone; its beauty, if it really had any, marred by the consciousness that it but repeated the old things which have been familiar to us all ever since we can remember. The editorial was in full sympathy with the expressions of popular opinion as I had heard them many times, and I was troubled. The editorial statements were evidently truthful; but how far were they so? Forthwith I began a search for the new,-a new liberty, a new patriotism, - but, alas! all that I found was old, old, old.

I walked around Liberty to find something new, but it was the same old thing; the same that had been flung bleeding and battered against the reddened pavements of Paris many times, but never destroyed; the same that Moses, in the ancient days, begged for his people from the hardened Pharaoh, that has an unsettled account in the nethermost hell with Nero, which waits for an equation with the modern Turk, and which turned its determined face westward to the rocky shores of New England under the swelling sails of the Mayflower.

There is nothing new about Liberty; with all our modern improvements in its garments, it has not changed.

Oh, that the goddess would touch my lips, that I might this day tell the old, old story in a new, new way!

As my halting tongue struggles to so begin the ancient tale, my thoughts for the moment refuse to be marshaled, while I wonder if things have come to that pass in this country, that American hearts will only respond to, and American patriotism be kept alive by, the representative, however eloquent, however noble, of a heathen, despotic empire!

Perhaps we must admit with reluctance that in these modern days the muses of poetry and art sweep in vain their despairing wings in search of transcendent genius, and that the rumble of wheels, the clatter of machinery, the hideous windowed metropolitan monuments of steel, and the lowering clouds of smoke, tell us we live in the age of iron; but has the iron entered our souls? Is it true that all sentiment is dead? Are we wearied with the old stories? Is it no longer a living truth that "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty”? Shall we admit this day that the telling of the story of the birthpangs of our country no longer thrills us? Are we so dead that our hearts do not stir within us at the story of Paul Revere's ride, -of how, when, from the tower of the Old North Church, the first light of liberty for the United Colonies sent its quivering finger across the waters of the Charles River, the waiting patriot sprang to his saddle,- of how he plunged through the darkening night to raise the cry, “To arms! to arms!” while upon the country lanes and over the wooden bridge at Concord his horse's hoof-beats clattered madly, “Liberty, liberty, liberty”?

Are we weary when we hear of the kneeling patriots behind the redoubt at Bunker Hill, - of how they waited to see the whites of the eyes of the charging foe, and of how the long line of flint-locks belched in a stream of fire one fierce cry of “Liberty”?

Are we calloused to the tale of the crossing of the Delaware? Do the drifting snow, the bitter frost, the gaunt starvation at Valley Forge, and the infinite patience of the patriotic Washington arouse no response within us?

All these are old, old, old! Are we dead to them? Do not let your reason speak: give way, give way to that thrill which is bubbling within you; let it have its sway; let it travel up the spinal column and crawl over your scalp; you need it; it will do you good.

Patriotism is not reason; it is sentiment, -not of the mewling, mawkish, gushing character, but ennobling, elevating, inspiring!

If a foe lands upon our shores, we do not stop to reason about it. We go; we fight; we die, if need be! Patriotism is not reason; it is sentiment.

This is, then, a day of sentiment, set apart that we may give free, untrammeled utterance to it.

All the great things of the world which have lifted humanity and pushed it on toward a fuller, grander life are old, are hoary with age, and the eyes with which we look at them are those of sentiment, not of reason. The Cross is old, and yet unnumbered millions turn their tear-veiled eyes to it for help; human rights are old, yet we cling to them even till our names are numbered with the dead; love is old, yet every glade and dell, every leafy bower, every glistening star of night, has heard its old, old story from ancient days, and will till Time shall be no more; the history of our native land is old, of necessity old, and each day older, yet the new is builded upon it; it holds on its Atlas shoulders all that is dear to us. Fellow-citizens, brothers, here is Liberty, old, battered, and scarred, but with the same fire as of yore in the heart, and the same unyielding demand for the unconditional surrender of Tyranny. Let us not this day weary of its ancient stories.

Here is the Flag! It is the same old Flag. I could find nothing new about it, save the added stars, which increase its glory. To raise it over any church, or school, or party, is not to say, “This is the church, this is the school, this is the party of the flag." It has no church, no school, no party; it stands for principle, and is the people's. 'Tis your flag; 't is mine; 't is the people's! It limits its representation to no condition, to no wealth, to no poverty, to no position. It liketh not the caressing touch of bejeweled fingers more than the fevered grasp of the worn and wearied wanderer in the wastes of want and distress. 'Tis your flag; 't is mine; 't is the people's! Its sinuous folds weave in and out to fit the rights and wrongs of every son of Liberty; raise it over the rolling drums, and its beckoning undulations cause the mountains, valleys, forests, aye, the very deserts, to give forth their men and women, regardless of creed, or sect, or school, or cult; these things drop from them, at the call of the Flag, as forgotten burdens. Its fabric is as transparent as the meshes of a net to the soulless, unscrupulous plutocrat, or the ambitious, blatant demagogue, who endeavors to hide behind its folds! 'Tis your flag; 'tis mine; 't is the people's! No political hypocrite, no satanic anarchist, may stand behind its waving stripes and recite his creed or repose in safety.

It is the same old flag that fluttered over our ancestors behind the stone walls of New England and amid the rail fences of Virginia. It is old; it never changes; it never smiled on oppression, nor waved over a subject people. It stands for coherent democracy. If over the hilltops of glory we should see its shade fluttering amid the standards of Turkey, Russia, and China, it would mean no less, no more, than now; it would be the same old flag.

I have seen it on the ocean, rising from the horizon, mocking the swelling waves with its weaving folds, playing in its beauteous stripes with the darting streamers of the morning sun, and I knew that sons of Liberty were near me, on the deep! And I have seen it in foreign lands, when, lone, homesick, and weary, with my heart in my throat, as I wandered in the narrow streets of a foreign city, strange tongues about me, stranger customs, and still stranger hearts, it would lift its silken folds from some obscure corner and say to me, with its waving stripes and stars, "Liberty has its watchmen everywhere."

The suggestion that we give way to the sentiment of patriotism on this day does not reach so far as to call for a foolish and profitless gloating over the victories which were won by our forefathers from the troops of a particular nation, but rather for rejoicing because of the wonderful and far-reaching results of those victories. When the patriot soldiers and statesmen of the eighteenth century lifted the people of the United Colonies of America, they elevated the citizens of England to just the same degree. The Declaration of Independence was the gospel not only of America, but also of the British Isles. It was not of so much importance to our ancestors what they wrested from Mother England as what they grasped from the raw material of humanity and melted into ingots of golden rights and principles to pass current in all ages in enlightened lands.

The independence of the United States of America, as a mere event, would be but a petty factor in the evolution of humanity or of human government. Its preaching and living the gospel of freedom, of individualism, and of government by the people, have been and will be giant forces in the overturning of tyranny, the prevention of cruelty, the development of the individual, and in anchoring fast the foundations of personal rights. A great philosopher has warned us to beware when a thinker is turned loose upon the earth. The last hand which signed that old and wearisome document, the Declaration of Independence, turned three millions loose, and the world of absolute government has been wary ever since.

Why? Because it was the proclamation of the unloosing of tongues, the invigoration of stammering voices, the unshackeling of souls, and the enfranchisement of free thought.