CITY OF BOSTON. IN BOARD OF ALDERMEN, July 18, 1870. Ordered, That the thanks of this Board be presented to WILLIAM EVERETT, Esquire, for his eloquent and appropriate Address before the City Government and Citizens of Boston, on the occasion of the ninety-fourth Anniversary of the Declaration of American Independence; and that he be requested to furnish a copy of the Address for publication by the City. Passed. S. F. MCCLEARY, City Clerk. Approved, 18th July, 1870. NATHANIEL B. SHURTLEFF, Mayor. ORATION. MR. MAYOR AND FELLOW-CITIZENS OF BOSTON: It is, I assure you, with no slight diffidence that I approach the honorable task which the Committee of Arrangements imposes on me. The mere recital of the names of the distinguished men who have preceded me in the list of annual orators is enough to make any man feel the distinction as well as the labor of this duty. This list is not short; for a hundred successive years has the vote of the town or city government chosen an orator to speak before them on a great public anniversary. In the year 1771, it was voted that an oration be delivered on the Fifth of March, in commemoration of the so-called Massacre - the first collision of British troops and American citizens—in the previous year; and James Lovell, the master of the Boston Latin School, was chosen to deliver it. A wise choice; for no man can be better prepared to trace with accuracy the distresses and duties of nations, or express them with elegance and precision, than he whose daily duty it is to train the youth of his native town in the language, the literature and the history of the wondrous peoples of antiquity. Thirteen orations were delivered on this anni versary. When in 1783 the treaty between England and the United States had set the first seal on the independence of the latter, it was voted, on motion, I believe, of James Otis, that the annual Boston oration should be on the Fourth of July. Dr. John Warren, an honored name and title, never, it should seem, to die out among us, accordingly performed this duty in 1783. It is now, therefore, the hundredth year of the celebration, and I am the hundred and first orator to address his fellow-citizens of Boston. My distinguished predecessor, whom we all value for his practical wisdom as much as his attic wit, has told us Little of all we value here Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year, an axiom which some antiquaries in England attempt to carry still further, by asserting that no man is properly authenticated as having lived to be a hundred years old; and certainly there is a strong feeling in our community that anything which has existed for a hundred years has got to show cause why this lease for three lives should be renewed. The oldworld prepossession in favor of antiquity has very little hold now upon us; we care for little that has not modern improvements attached to it; - and after tinkering away on the Fourth of July celebrations to get them as close to modern ideas as possible, the public has begun to hear a murmur creep through it, that the old house had better be pulled down altogether; -or to drop metaphor and take up slang, that the "Fourth of July is played out." I would not quote these words before this audience to defend them; - but they are said, and no one will pretend that the day is observed with the same enthusiasm that it was twenty, thirty, or forty years ago. This might be laid to the charge of the hot weather. In changing the season of our annual celebration from March to July, we certainly have not gained much in comfort and doubtless many persons find a great open-air celebration oppressive in the heats of summer. But if the Fourth of July is really ceasing to excite an annual enthusiasm, it is not because the thermometer stands at 85°, or because we hear the waves beating cool on the rocks at Nahant. The Parisians crowd as eagerly as ever to the fête of Bonaparte on the 15th of August. Is it true, that |