We have had
many heroes, many youths of promise, and men of note, whose names are our
only great and enduring riches; but no one of them all better
illustrated, short as was his career, the virtues we desire for all our
sons. We have long delayed this tribute to his character and his deeds,
but in spite of our neglect his fame has grown year by year, as war and
politics have taught us what is really admirable in a human being; and we
are now sure that we are not erecting a monument to an ephemeral
reputation. It is fit that it should stand here, one of the chief
distinctions of our splendid Capitol, here in the political centre of the
State, here in the city where first in all the world was proclaimed and
put into a political charter the fundamental idea of democracy, that
"government rests upon the consent of the people," here in the city where
by the action of these self existing towns was formed the model, the town
and the commonwealth, the bi-cameral legislature, of our constitutional
federal union. If the soul of Nathan Hale, immortal in youth in the air
of heaven, can behold today this scene, as doubtless it can, in the midst
of a State whose prosperity the young colonist could not have imagined in
his wildest dreams for his country, he must feel anew the truth that
there is nothing too sacred for a man to give for his native land.
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