"Was there anything in the history of the last century," he asked, "more noble than the way in which the working people of Lancashire insisted that no part should be taken in that struggle, although they were hearing from time to time how the ships of the North were blockading the only ports from which supplies of cotton could come?''

There were (he pointed out) many lessons to be learned from the War. If a nation is to be strong it must be inspired by a strong feeling of unity. In time of stress there must be that kind of courage which, in spite of reverses at first, will go on till victory is won. And, lastly, if engaged in any struggle, whether in politics or in war, men gained enormously in power if a great cause for the benefit of humanity was before them.

Abraham Lincoln's personal life emphasized one or two dangers with which England and America were faced to-day. There was a want of simplicity in the lives of the better-todo classes of both nations. There was a perpetual desire to talk, a perpetual desire for publicity and advertisement. The simplicity of Lincoln's life, and his silence, even more than his speeches, were eloquent on these points.

Lord Stanley of Alderley described himself as one of the few people present who had been face to face with Lincoln. "It is forty-five years since I met him in Washington, yet the memory of his face is still fresh to me. It is easy but unnecessary to dwell on the fine points in Abraham Lincoln's character, but looking back on that period I feel that the merits and qualities of the President were in some degree the merits and qualities of the people in the crisis through which they went. Lincoln would have done nothing if he had not had the people of the United States behind him. His career shows what a free people can do when they are stirred by a great moral cause." Of the lessons to be drawn from Lincoln's career, Lord Stanley said there was one which might be emphasized. Many, nowadays, were in danger of forgetting the earnest conviction which animated their forefathers, that human rights and equal justice

are the paramount duties of the State. Everybody condemned slavery, but was there not to-day a tendency to acquiesce in and even to approve servile conditions?

Mr. Francis Ashworth, president of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce; Mr. George Milner, the Rev. Dr. Goodrich, and Miss Margaret Ashton spoke of the noble work done by Lincoln. Miss Ashton said that just as the women of Lancashire fought on the side of liberty during the Civil War, so they were fighting for their own liberty to-day.

At the conclusion of the speeches it was decided to telegraph to America the following message:

"Manchester citizens honor Lincoln, and send heartiest expressions of good-will."

Mr. J. Duxbury then recited Lincoln's great Gettysburg Speech, and later he gave Walt Whitman's "O Captain, My Captain."

When Major Church Howe, the United States Consul in Manchester, rose to acknowledge the speeches made, he was received with long and hearty applause. Such a manifestation of friendship, he said, made him feel he was at home among his own people. President Roosevelt had likened Lincoln to Bunyan's Greatheart in the "Pilgrim's Progress.” That day in every city, in every town, and in every hamlet in America all business had ceased in order that one great mass meeting of the people might honor the name of the great emancipator. That day, too, President Roosevelt, the British Ambassador, and the Ambassadors of nearly every country in the world were assembled down in the State of Kentucky, and, around the little cabin in which Abraham Lincoln was born, were assisting at the laying of the cornerstone of the memorial hall, built by the people of the United States.

"I am not here," Major Church Howe continued, "to deliver a eulogy on the life of Mr. Lincoln. That was for you to do, and grandly you have done it. I am here to thank

you for this great interest, for the cordial manner in which you bring back to memory Abraham Lincoln, the great, the commoner, the man of the people, the man who believed in the government 'of the people, for the people, by the people.' "I have been asked to relate some of my experiences as a soldier of the Civil War, and I do so with a great deal of pride. I am proud that I was a soldier under the great Commander-in-chief Abraham Lincoln. You must remember that our army was made up of the boys of the country. In my own regiment, the first regiment that responded to the call, there were not twenty per cent. over twenty-two years old. The soldiers of the army were the youth of the country. And they responded as the English boy would respond to-day if he was called upon. The American boy was patriotic, like the English boy. I belonged, as a boy of seventeen years, to the Massachusetts militia, which is similar to your Territorial Force. The War was commenced by the South, not by the North, and Mr. Lincoln, as Commander-in-chief, acted on the defensive. The South, which had enjoyed the fruits of slavery for generations, believing that it was right, that the slave was a chattel and property that could be bought and sold, that wife could be separated from husband and children from father and mother, went into the War in the belief that it could conquer. When Lincoln stood in the way, they declared their intention to establish a union of their own. It was then that Mr. Lincoln saw he was in danger. You can realize now how little he thought the War would amount to, when his first call was for only seventy-five thousand troops. Among those troops was the regiment of which I was a member-the old 6th Massachusetts. At six o'clock in the afternoon we received notice to go to the armory. We took off our clothing, put on our uniforms, and at nine o'clock were on our way to Washington.

"Upon passing through Maryland, a slave-owning State, on the nineteenth of April, about two o'clock in the afternoon, an assault was made on that regiment and the first blood was shed. We proceeded, and in an hour's time we were