and very few had refrained from speaking, and the will of the majority had prevailed.

Retiring from the hall, the mayor and aldermen and the councilmen met in separate rooms, and the council chose their president and clerk, and then both boards assembled in convention and unanimously elected Samuel Foster McCleary city clerk. They then in their separate chambers, proceeded to establish rules regulating the intercourse between the two boards; and passed orders continuing in force the by-laws of the late town. Mr. McCleary, who was born on Charter street in the North End, had been clerk of the Senate since 1813 and resigned that office to become city clerk at the request of his friend, Mayor Phillips, who then was president of the Senate. Mr Phillips had made it a condition of his acceptance of the mayoralty that the clerk of the Senate should be translated to the city clerkship, an office which was second only in importance and dignity to that of the mayor. Mr. McCleary continued to be city clerk, by the almost unanimous votes of twenty-nine successive city councils, until 1852, when his failing health compelled him to decline a re-election. He was followed by his son of the same name, who held the office for thirty-one years. The holding of an office, which depends upon election rather than upon appointment, does not always mean frequent changes.

Faneuil Hall, where the people had gathered for so many years to administer their affairs, the place of the ending of town government and of the beginning of a new and untried system, is the most widely known. building ever given to any town or city in the United States; and it was the gift of an alien in faith and race from those who received it. Sixty years after the coming of the Puritans a little party of Hugenots impelled by similar motives, left their homes in Rochelle, France, and crossed the ocean to these shores. Among them, or coming soon after, was Andrew Faneuil, whose business ventures in Boston made him a rich man. His death in February, 1738, was an occasion of great importance in the town and province. His nephew and

heir, Peter Faneuil, was careful, we are told, that every propriety of the occasion should be observed without stint. Three thousand pairs of gloves were distributed at the funeral, and later two hundred mourning rings were given to the nearer friends. Peter Faneuil was thirty-eight years of age when he came into possession of his uncle's fortune, which, added to his own accumulations, made him the merchant prince of his time. His mansion was on Tremont street, in the midst of extensive gardens, opposite King's Chapel Burial Ground.

Seeing the disadvantage under which trade was conducted, with no market house as a center of exchange "and people forced to go out upon the neck and spend a great part of the day in providing necessaries for their families," he offered to give the town a building for a market; and 347 citizens petitioned the selectmen to bring his plan before the town, setting forth that Peter Faneuil has been generously "pleased to Offer at his Own proper cost and Charge, to Erect and Build a noble and complete Structure or Edifice to be Improved for a Market for the sole use, Benefit and advantage of the town." July 4, 1740, the selectmen issued a warrant calling a town meeting to be held ten days later. So numerous were the voters that, as on former occasions, an adjournment was taken to the Brattle Street Meeting House, after voting "That the Thanks of the Town be given to Peter Faneuil for his Generous Offer." the adjourned meeting in the afternoon a "considerable debate" ensued; and the yeas had it by a majority of only seven votes; and his offer would have been refused had there not been added to the proposal: "and we would humbly propose that, notwithstanding the said building should be encouraged and come to effect, yet that the market people should be at liberty to carry their marketing wheresoever they please about the town to dispose of it." The meeting instructed the selectmen to "Wait upon Peter Faneuil Esquire, and to Present the Thanks of this Town to Him, as Voted in the Forenoon; and also to Acquaint Him, that the Town have, by their Vote, come to a Resolution to Accept of his Generous Offer of Erecting a Market House on Dock Square, According to his Proposal."

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When the building was finished and the keys delivered to the selectmen, and a meeting, September 13, 1742, was held in the town house, there was a unanimous agreement "to accept this most generous and noble benefaction for the use and intention they are designed for," and to put upon record that Peter Faneuil had Erected a Noble Structure far exceeding his first Proposal, inasmuch as it contains not only a large and Sufficient Accommodation for a Market place, but has also Superadded a Spacious and Most Beautiful Town Hall over it, and Several other Convenient Rooms, which may prove very Beneficial to the Town." The meeting also appointed a committee "to wait upon Peter Faneuil, Esq., and in the name of the town to render him their most hearty thanks for so bountiful a gift, with their prayers that this and other expressions of his bounty and charity may be abundantly recompensed with the divine blessing." And it was further voted, on motion of Thomas Hutchinson, later royal governor, "that in testimony of the town's gratitude to the said Peter Faneuil Esq., and to perpetuate his memory, the hall over the market place be named Faneuil Hall, and at all times hereafter be called and known by that name." And then a "Motion was made by Mr. William Price that as a further Testimony of the Towns Gratitude to the said Peter Faneuil Esq., The Picture of the said Peter Faneuil Esq., may be drawn in full length and placed in the said Hall, at the Expense of the Town. Which was also Unanimously Voted in the Affirmative." This picture perhaps was carried away when Boston was evacuated by the British troops, though another account says it was destroyed by some of the citizens in resentment because several of the Faneuil family, who were Loyalists, left the town when the British sailed away. The great-hearted donor did not live long after his gift was accepted, as he died in the following March at the age of forty-two, greatly lamented by his fellow citizens. Schoolmaster John Lovell of the Boston Latin School pronounced his eulogy in the hall, March 14, 1743, the first public use of the building. With prophetic forecast he concluded his eulogy: "May Liberty always spread its joyful wings over this place."

The market did not become popular for some time, being often closed for longer or shorter periods but the hall above was in constant use. Until then the people had been dependent upon the courtesy of the pew holders for the use of their meeting houses, when, as was often the case, the town hall was not large enough. One of the earliest gatherings in the hall was October 10, 1744, to celebrate the king's coronation day "with a concert of music." In May, 1747, a series of concerts were given there, and on election day the governor and council dined there, inaugurating the long series of banquets for which the hall has been famous. In 1760 it was illuminated to celebrate the conquest of Canada; and when the Stamp Act was repealed the town voted, March 18, 1767, that the hall should again be illuminated, and that the selectmen should make provision for the people to drink the king's health. After the passage of the Port Bill, which closed the harbor to commerce, when not a fishing boat could land, or a gundalow flcat down the Charles or Mystic, with provisions for the distressed people, when contributions of food were arriving from every one of the thirteen colonies, the committee made their distribution from Faneuil Hall. Israel Putnam, who had fought for King George at Ticonderoga, drove a flock of sheep all the way from Connecticut into the market place around the hall. In the summer of 1778 John Hancock gave here an elaborate entertainment to the officers of the French fleet under D'Estaing, when toasts were drunk to the French King, Congress, Washington, the Army, and the Alliance of the two countries. In 1781, when the fleet under DeGrasse entered the harbor, the merchants of Boston gave a sumptuous banquet in the hall. In 1784 a banquet was given by the merchants in honor of Lafayette. A remarkable occasion in Faneuil Hall was the civic festival in January, 1793, in commemoration of the successes of their French brethren, in their glorious enterprise for the establishment of equal liberty. "An elegant and sumptuous Entertainment was provided, at which near three hundred partook, citizen S. Adams acting as President, and the citizen Letombe, as Vice President." At the west end of the hall over the head of the president,

"arose an obelisk, bearing in front the figure of Liberty, her left hand supporting her insignia, and her extended right hand displaying The Rights of Man- Under her feet, the badges of Civil and Ecclesiastical Despotism, a crown, sceptre, mitre and chains, broken in pieces Over her head, a descending cherub presented in its right hand a wreath, as The Reward of Virtue, and in its left hand, The Palm of Peace. A garter

annexed, emphatically expressed: Thus we go to the stars. Over the whole, the benign Eye of Providence appeared to view with approbation the scene, and to express I guard the faithful. The right side of the Obelisk displayed the American, and the left the French flags.

We come to an historic evening in 1837. In Alton in Illinois a mob, inflamed against an abolitionist newspaper, had destroyed three printing presses. Citizens of Boston petitioned for the use of Faneuil Hall, the Rev. Dr. William Ellery Channing heading the petition, to denounce this assault upon the freedom of the press. The petition at first was refused, but subsequently was granted. Several speeches had been made, the speakers dwelling upon the great principle involved, when the Attorney-General of the Commonwealth, sitting in the front gallery, rose and said that the people of Alton had as much right to break Lovejoy's printing press and throw it into the river as the people of Boston had to throw the detested tea into the harbor; and he was applauded loudly by a portion of the audience. When he had finished, a tall young man, a graduate of Harvard, who had studied law, but who had not had much practice, Wendell Phillips by name, son of our first mayor, walked up the steps to the platform and said: "When I heard the gentleman lay down principles placing the murderers, incendiaries and rioters of Alton side by side with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy and Adams," pointing to their portraits, "I thought those pictured lips would have broken into voice to rebuke. the recreant American, the slanderer of the dead." 1848 William H. Seward, then the rising statesman of the Empire State, and a tall and ungainly man with a homely countenance, unknown to fame, Abraham Lincoln by name, made speeches in this hall. The

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