One other on the list, was but slightly known to me. I remember him, in my early youth, as a man of generous disposition, a prosperous and enterprising mechanic, having many hands in his employ, who were always well taught in their trade and well paid for their work. The world went well with him, and at one time he might have looked with confidence to an old age of competence, as the reward of faithfulness and integrity. But misfortunes came-not by any fault of his, but by the trusting nature of his disposition, and too great a reliance upon those whose rash speculation or wicked recklessness did not prevent their risking the property of others, when it was wanted for their own Old age, an honorable old age,-overtook him, it is true; but it was an old age of toil and comparative poverty. Those who had been the occasion of his downfall had either gone before him, or lived in splendor, unmindful, if indeed they were aware of the fact, that they might do something now to repair the evils which they once assisted to create. Some men die, and their virtues are unsung; while some, who are at least no more worthy, are followed to the grave by long processions, and their characters are eulogized from the pulpit by those who have realized the knowledge of the virtue there is in success.

If they were known to me, I should gladly avail myself of this opportunity to chronicle the events in the unpretending lives of all whose names are before me as having, within the last three years, been stricken by the hand of death from our roll.

Of many a man who has heretofore enjoyed the benefits of our Association, the only epitaph, so far as the world is concerned, was many years ago written by the poet :

"The clouds and sunbeams, o'er his eye
That once their shades and glory threw,

Have left in yonder silent sky

No vestige where they flew.

Lessons upon the mutability of human affairs are to be drawn from every one's experience; and I may well say, in the words of an English writer, that "so many of those who but a few months ago constituted a portion of the present of my own time, are become so completely of the past, that I cannot look back without chronicling death after death, so as to force the considerations we too often try to put far from us, as to the uncertainty of life. We are all, indeed, ready to admit the uncertainty of this precious treasure; yet we act as if it were, at least, as enduring as the sky above us, or the earth upon which we tread."

The founders of our Association, having been active at an earlier day in the accomplishment of one good work, thought it their duty to combine and assume a position towards each other that should enhance their own usefulness and benefit their successors. How far we have followed their examples of industry and usefulness, how faithfully we have obeyed

their injunction to "be just and fear not," let each one of us ask his own conscience.

In other countries, circumstances which it is not necessary to trace out, have placed the Mechanic in a social and political condition very different from that which he enjoys in this. In almost all other parts of the world he has always stood, and to this day stands, at a lower grade in public estimation than he does in New England. The continually growing importance of the arts seems every where but here, to tend to the development of resources, and the accumulation of wealth alone, without raising the inventor or the workman, except in a comparatively few memorable instances, higher than to a subordinate rank. In America, thank Heaven, it is different. This is partly owing to our liberal and free institutions. But in looking at the true state of the case, we find that our free institutions were originally the work of the Mechanics themselves. Our Fathers came to this country poor. They labored with their hands; they toiled for themselves and their families; and not as the retainers of an aristocracy of wealth or power. In a new and unbroken land they carved out their own fortunes, and worked their way in honesty and industry to a position of honor, enabling them to bequeath to their successors a good name and a rich inheritance of morality and principle. They taught their children, as well as the savages around them, the arts of civilized life; and their children have, by the blessing of God, improved upon the lessons they

had set them to learn. The pupils have outstripped their masters in the race.

In time, from being a dependent and a subservient, our Fathers became a rebellious and an independent people. They built for themselves an aristocracy, not inheriting rank and wealth, but an aristocracy whose coat of arms are the symbols of hard labor, whose mottoes are the records of deeds performed in private and in public by the honest minded and strong thinking Mechanics. Their College of Heraldry contains no archives devoted to deeds of arms, no histories of the birth of Kings and Queens, no shameless stories of the union of usurping lords with shameless partners in intrigue and guilt.

The nights and days which preceded the birth of American Independence, were spent by Boston Mechanics in the low, dark rooms of the Green Dragon Tavern, where, taking counsel together, they fomented a Revolution which has shaken, in time, all the thrones of Europe, and has led to the formation of a government that now defies the world,-founded an order with neither stars nor garters for its emblems, nor requiring for its maintenance great wealth or illustrious descent, but with a charter of nobility having for its foundation industry, honor, benevolence and charity.

In those same dark rooms, after the work so well laid out by Boston Mechanics had been finished, and had proved acceptable to the people, Boston Mechanics again assembled, and laid the foundation of another structure. The architects of one pile

became the builders of another. Some of the same men, who worked at the commencement of the Revolution to establish a Government for a people, again applied their minds to the establishment of an Association that in its day has proved of incalculable service to themselves and their successors. The name of Paul Revere is to be found in the accounts of all the early meetings of the Mechanics of Bostra in aid of the Revolution, and his name is inscribed ca the record of the first meeting of this Association. The Green Dragon Tavern was the scene of the first act of rebellion to Great Britain, and it was the scene of the first meeting for the ferraren of a Society for mutual benefit and prosection. The rebellion was the foundation of an Fares. The Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Ascearea will be the means, among others, of koevig that foundation sure; its members will raise ne mide, ta tes to assist in pulling it down.

The sweet of the first meetings was not alone to 200 it redness of present wrongs, it was to devise medis, be the protection of civil liberty throughout The dates The object of the second gatherings was is de protection of moral worth. The first comsect was a charitable compact, for the benefit of the whole human race; and that having proved success

, a second was formed with a view to the more immediate benefit of its individual members. The Best was general; but the second, although more partial, has proved, and will continue to prove, it is hoped, no less important and beneficial to the whole human family.