THE PRESIDENT. It is a matter of great gratification that we are honored, this evening, with the company of so many sons of New Hampshire who occupy eminent positions in society, and from whom we should be happy to hear did the time permit. But I shall be obliged for the present to call alternately on gentlemen of this city and our friends from other States. The 'next sentiment will be:

12. Phillips Academy - An institution from which have been taken some of the brightest gems that adorn and bless our country. Long may it continue to wear the laurels of its well-earned reputation.

I call upon HENRY F. FRENCH, Esq., of Exeter, to respond.

Mr. President:

Speech of Henry F. French, Esq.

It is almost impossible, at this late hour of the evening, when the subject of the ladies has already been before the audience, and when the minds of all "good men and true" are constantly turned in that direction, to go back and talk about matters of literature and science. When you gave the sentiment which was responded to by our friend from Michigan, I almost wished that I might be permitted to respond to it also. That gentleman talks like an antediluvian, and yet has not a gray hair in his head. He talks about being acquainted with our mothers and great-grandmothers; but you and I, Mr. President, though our heads are a little frost-sprinkled, can boast that we know some ladies of this generation, and that we can go into New Hampshire or Massachusetts, and find young and blooming faces ever ready to greet us. I feel, sir, coming from old Exeter, as if I were almost called upon to say something in behalf of the daughters of New Hampshire. Here are fifteen hundred of the sons; and there ought to be fifteen hundred of the daughters next their hearts. [Applause.] Gentlemen, it has been said, that one reason why they are not here, is, that there is not a hall in Boston large enough to hold the company, if each of us brought a lady. But for one I should be willing, for the sake of the society, to sit a great deal closer. [Cheers.] I do not know but I should be willing to be squeezed into half the space occupied here, if I could have, instead of my respectable friend here, a handsome lady by my side. An Exeter man has a peculiar reason to look after the interests of the ladies, and be mindful of them; and why? Because connected with the history of the colony which was commenced at Exeter, is a peculiar circumstance, which has not been alluded to here, but which ought not to be forgotten. The leading spirit of the settlement at Exeter was a woman. a noble-hearted, learned, accom

plished and modest woman— -bearing a name not very common on modern lips, but a name famous in history. That woman was ANN HUTCHINSON. As this is a time for renewing historical recollections, let me allude briefly to the circumstances connected with her and the settlement of our town. To her we are chiefly indebted for the settlement of Exeter; and I think it will be readily admitted by all, that we have been greatly indebted to the same gentle sex for the continuation of that settlement to the present time. [Great applause.] It has been said here by some gentleman that the main business of New Hampshire is to raise men; and I should like to know if that is a business which has been conducted by the "lords of creation" without the assistance and affectionate sympathy of others? [Cheers.]

In 1629, JOHN WHEELRIGHT and others bought a tract of land, of which Exeter is a part, of Passaconaway and others of the Indian Sagamores. They paid them in something better than bank bills; in blankets, and coats, and kettles, and took the famous decd which is on registry in our County of Rockingham. John Wheelright was a brother of Ann Hutchinson, and was a learned and pious preacher in Braintree. He was of the sect known as the Antinomians, and so was Ann Hutchinson, and she was the leader of that sect in the Massachusetts colony. She was one of the "giants in those days," of which my friend has spoken, for she stood forth a whole century before her time, claiming for all the largest liberty, both civil and religious. The word Antinomian signifies literally, I believe, "an opposer of law." They adopted the name with pride, as devoting their belief in the doctrine of salvation by faith, and not by works of the law, while their enemies applied it to them in derision, as opposers of the laws of the land.

Ann Hutchinson, supported by her brother, and encouraged by Sir Henry Vane, the Governor of the colony, taught doctrines which were at war with those of the established clergy of the times. She claimed with Descartes, that "the conscious judgment of the mind is the highest authority to itself." Her doctrines were similar in many points to the Quakers. She advocated the most absolute freedom of mind in religious belief, and the supremacy of conscience above human law. She believed in "the inner light," what perhaps might now be called "the higher law," and claimed the spirit of God as the constant companion of man.

It may at times be called heresy, but I believe it is a principle of every religious sect now, that a plain law of God is never to be transgressed. That was the doctrine of the "giants in those days," among whom were Ann Hutchinson and John Wheelright. In this goodly city of Boston, where the Puritans lived, there was no such thing as religious toleration as we esteem it now-a-days. The doctrine then was, to tolerate what was right and nothing else. The Bible was the right, and the clergy were to decide what the Bible was; and so they controlled all civil and religious matters.

Ann Hutchison went about and preached civil and religious freedom; the largest liberty to every man. This antinomian controversy sprung up, and it came to be a political question, and the antinomian party was voted down. Finally, Ann Hutchinson and John Wheelright, and a few others of the leading spirits were exiled from Massachusetts colony, "because they were unfit for the society of its citizens; " and in 1638, they removed to the banks of the Piscataqua, to the land purchased by Wheelright, of the Indians; and in the beautiful language of Bancroft, "at the head of the tide waters on that stream, they founded the town of Exeter, one more little republic in the wilderness, organized on the principles of natural justice, by the voluntary combination of the inhabitants." [Cheers.]

There they established the very first church ever assembled in New Hampshire, and the very first government, too, worthy of the name. They recognized the right of every man to have a voice in the election of civil officers, and made the people subject to no laws, except such as they themselves enacted. No such restriction of the right of voting and holding offices, to church-members alone, as was provided in Massachusetts, was adopted there. In short, their civil organization was, as nearly as possible, a pure democracy, and in religious sentiment, perfect toleration; "the largest liberty" was their principle. [Applause.]

When we consider that no where else, in the new world or the old, there existed then any true religious toleration, the liberal course of the Antinomians seems truly remarkable. The Rev. Mr. WARD who preached at Agawam, now Ipswich, expressed pretty strongly the popular idea upon. this subject. "He that is willing to tolerate any unsound opinion that his own may be tolerated, though never so sound, will for a need hang God's Bible at the devil's girdle. It is said that man ought to have liberty of conscience, and that it is persecution to bar them of it. I can rather stand amazed, than reply to this; it is an astonishment that the brains of men should be parboiled in such impious ignorance."

And yet in the very days of such intolerance, the noble spirits who led in the settlement at the falls of the Squamscot, two hundred years ago, maintained the same liberal views of the rights of conscience of which the present generation boasts.

The first settlement of Exeter, then, was mainly for the enjoyment of religious and civil liberty; and in this, as has been said already, this settlement was peculiar. Subsequent history shows that the inhabitants never abandoned their principles; for we find that when, a few years later, the Colony of New Hampshire united with Massachusetts, there was this remarkable provision expressed in the compact; that citizens of New Hampshire might vote and be eligible to seats in the General Assembly, though

they were not members of the church, while none but church-members in Massachusetts could aspire to such privileges.

We claim for the settlement of Exeter a higher motive than actuated those who commenced the other settlements in New Hampshire. The earliest settlements in New Hampshire were at Portsmouth and Dover, in 1623, but they were for other objects than the enjoyment of liberty, either civil or religious. "The Company of Laconia," consisting chiefly of merchants of London, fitted out two companies for the establishment of a colony and fisheries at the mouth of the Piscataqua. Belknap gives us some idea of the quality of these pioneers in the new country. He says that they sent over DAVID THOMPSON, a Scotchman, and EDWARD and WILLIAM HILTON, fishmongers of London, with a number of other people. One company landed at Little Harbor, below Portsmouth, and there set up, saltworks, and the other went further up, and established themselves at a place called Northam, now Dover, N. H. The main employments of both companies were fishing and trading. No such transcendental notions as Antinomianism, or Inner Light, disturbed their business operations. Our Portsmouth friends who are present will not be offended at the suggestion that there is a slight "ancient and fishlike" savor of their early history in their frequent boast, at the present day, that they have the best fish-market in the country, at their spring market. [Applause.]

Hampton, the other of the four original settlements, was settled in 1636, by a colony from Massachusetts, by authority of the General Court, chiefly for the valuable salt marshes there. It was claimed as a colony, and was for a long time under the jurisdiction of the laws of Massachusetts.

History will justify us in boasting somewhat of old Exeter. We find her people ever ready to resist oppression, in every form; and the spirit of ANN HUTCHINSON still alive among her women. In 1683, when the royal governor, Cranfield, undertook to impose taxes on the people of New Hampshire without their consent, at Exeter, his officers, who were sent to collect the tax, were beaten off with clubs by the men, and attacked by the women, with true Antinomian spirit, with boiling water, whenever they attempted to enter their houses. [Cheers.] We have had the same fearless spirit there, ever since. The descendants of the same JOHN SULLIVAN already named, who — when PAUL REVERE, of Boston, carried news to the New Hampshire Colony, in 1774, that an order to prevent the exportation of gunpowder to the colonies, had been passed by the King in council — raised a company, and with JOHN LANGDON, captured Fort William and Mary, and carried away her military stores, have always to this day maintained in our midst the credit of their ancestor. The blood of the same NICHOLAS GILMAN, who signed the Declaration of Independence, still fills the veins of many

of the sons of Exeter who bear his name. The home of LEWIS CASS, a noble-hearted, liberty-loving man, the house where he was born, is still pointed out, in a retired street of our town; and GENERAL DEARBORN, whose name has been named with honor here to-night, if I mistake not had also his birth-place among us. [Applause.]

I feel proud, sir, to be announced as coming from Exeter, and proud to be called on, though as you, at least, well know, without notice, to respond to the sentiment proposed. Chief among the means of maintaining the high rank of our town, in the esteem of the learned and great men of our land, has been the PHILLIPS ACADEMY, an institution which for more than seventy years has stood resplendent above all others below the rank of colleges in New England. That academy has done more for the training of the great minds which have swayed the opinions, if not the destinies, of our country, than any other institution of its class. At the Abbot Festival, in 1838, if I recollect aright, it was stated that under the tuition of that learned and good man, Doct. ABBOT, during the fifty years in which he was Principal of the Academy, more than three hundred and fifty young men, who afterwards were graduated at colleges, pursued their preparatory studies. To that institution Massachusets, and especially Boston, owes a debt of gratitude, for the education of her great men, which, as has been said on another topic this evening, "she is ready at all times to acknowledge." [Cheers.]

The SALTONSTALLS, and PEABODYS, and BUCKMINSTERS, names dear to the hearts of so many here present, and SPARKS, whose fame is over all the earth, and he who so recently presided over the principal university of Massachusetts-all these men have been proud to acknowledge their obligations to the good influences of their early training at Exeter. The EVERETTS, too, both, I think, pupils, and one a teacher there, have often borne public testimony in word, as well as brilliant life, to the value of their connection with that school of great men; and DANIEL WEBSTER, whose name, however often repeated among us, awakens anew our admiration - DANIEL WEBSTER, at the festival which I have named, - a reunion of the pupils of the school with their teacher, - presided over the ceremonies, and expressed in heartfelt language his grateful sense of the value of his connection as a student with the Phillips Exeter Academy.

Mr. President, allow me to close my remarks by referring once more to the subject with which I commenced, and proposing a sentiment which has, in substance, been given before:

The Daughters of New Hampshire - Absent, but not forgotten.

[Great applause.]