secured to every town one representative, and an additional representative for every five thousand inhabitants, believing this would be a great improvement on the present system. You have rejected that proposition. We asked for "bread" and you have given us a stone."

A few men would rather throw this Constitution and the whole system of our government into the maelstrom of political warfare, than yield to the demands of the majority of the people of this State. This is a strange position. It has only one parallel, the man who hoped to go through the whirlpool of Niagara in a barrel. But he was smart enough to send his dog in the barrel first; and so you send your plurality amendment through ahead, hoping thereby to quiet the demands of an incensed people for a constitutional revision.

The burning question of our State to-day is not the rights of the colored man, or the repeal of the Sherman Act or of the McKinley Bill, but it is whether Republican principles shall triumph, or whether two hundred American citizens in New Haven shall not have any more political power than one citizen in Union. While we live under a government that is Republican and Democratic in principles, it is practically the most abominable oligarchy in existence to-day the wide world over; and while we profess Republican principles, we are the biggest political hypocrites recorded in history.

Democrats and Republicans alike are responsible for the present state of affairs. There have been times when the Democrats have had full authority in the General Assembly and could have righted these wrongs, but we have been cursed, as you have been, with a lot of men with about as much political sagacity as a mule. They did not dare to do right for fear it would hurt the party. Most of these men, thank God, are in heaven to-day; the rest are still occasionally seen in Democratic conventions.

If you can succeed much longer in defeating this honest uprising of the people, if the majority are not to rule in this State, then I await with pleasure the hour when, under the leadership of another Parnell, the thwarted and checkmated majority shall stop the whole wheels of legislation, and paralyze the public business, as happened in England, when the proud English nation stood at bay, and were obliged to give an unwilling ear to the wrongs of Ireland.

This will be my final message to the General Assembly of 1893, for never again do I intend to intrude upon your deliberations, and I want to thank you, one and all, for the kindness you have extended to me.

To my Democratic friends who expect to reap some political advantages from this proposed constitutional convention, and to my Republican friends, who fear disaster to their party from such a

convention, to one and all I say, I beg of you to

remember that while "man proposes, God disposes." It is as true of nations as of individuals, that

"There's a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will."

All history, ancient and modern, is studded and blazoned with events showing the short-sightedness of the vast majority of political schemes and actions; for in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the evil that was foretold never really happened, and the good that was expected was never fully realized.

When the French arms went down on that fated battlefield of Sedan in the Franco-German War, and apparently the Germans triumphed, it was, in fact, the greatest victory ever won by Frenchmen. It was the death-knell to Napoleonism. Over its ashes the French people have been enabled to erect a republic; and never were they so strong, so prosperous, and so much a menace to Germany as they are to-day.

What the Frenchmen could not do, Bismarck and King William, in the hands of an overruling Providence, did for them.

The Republican party contended for negro suffrage, and won, and without it they would not be in supreme control in the national government to-day. Neither do all the foreigners remember when they

cast their ballots how the Democratic party fought and went through the slough of political despondency in its struggle against Knownothingism. The greatest victory won by the South in that awful war of the Rebellion, and the greatest blessing ever conferred on them was when they surrendered at Appomattox, and returned to help rule the government they had once hoped to destroy.

The Republican party carried through triumphantly the McKinley bill; but the manufacturer forgot his benefactor, and the Republican party passed into a minority.

I shall vote for this bill, not because I think it will benefit the Democratic party, for I do not think either political party will reap any permanent political advantages from a constitutional convention, but I shall vote for this bill because it is right.

This question rises above all party politics. The State is greater than any political party. Your children and your children's children have an abiding interest in your action to-day.

I prefer to stand where the old Roman stood, and "to do right, though the heavens fall."

SPEECH

Delivered January 16, 1895, in regard to the East Hartford Bridge.

I TOOK the liberty to introduce this resolution on the opening day of this session of the General Assembly.

The guns were then just announcing the inauguration of the present distinguished Governor of this State, and I have since regretted my intrusion upon the happy hours of that, to many of you, festive day.

But the boom of that cannon is now slowly reverberating and dying out down among the hills of Middlesex County, and it is time that we enter upon the serious business of this session; and I know of no business more serious than the matter. embraced in this resolution.

It is not the object of this resolution to investigate any scandal connected with the passage of the law under discussion.

That was the business of the Legislature of 1893; and when Luzon B. Morris declined to call that General Assembly together, the acts of its members passed beyond the pale of legislative