Excerpt from Oration Delivered Before the City Government and Citizens of Boston, in Music Hall, July 4, 1874 Mr. Mayor, Gentlemen of the Council, Fellow-Citizens: - The annual town-meeting, held in Boston in 1783, voted "that the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence should be constantly celebrated by the delivery of a public oration, in which the orator shall consider the feelings, manners, and principles which led to this great national event, as well as the important and happy effects" that "shall forever continue to flow from it." From that time there has been a succession of utterances giving expression to the love and veneration in which successive generations on this historic soil hold the memory of the sages and heroes of the Revolution. The men of Boston of that era, by their unswerving devotion to principle, won the admiration of their brethren in all the colonies, and the gratitude of posterity. We meet to-day, not as citizens of a town, or of a city, or of a State, but as Americans. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.