Excerpt from Arguments in Behalf of Petitions for Aid in the Preservation of the Old South Meeting-House

The property has not yet been conveyed to the corporation which was chartered last winter, because it was not thought desirable to convey it to that corporation until it is abso lutely secure. That corporation, as you Will remember, consists of the Governor, the Mayor of Boston, the President of Harvard College, and several other persons named in the Act, who are authorized to hold the property for public purposes, and to make contracts with the commonwealth for the use of it for election sermons and for other public pur poses.

We come here to ask the commonwealth to contribute what will amount to between ten and twelve per cent only of the cost. We ask for this with confidence, because it is in accordance with the established policy of the common wealth to do whatever' is proper, by preserving and erecting memorials or by celebrations, to perpetuate the remembrance of whatever is great and good in the history of the State. The State appropriated and paid seven thousand dollars toward Bunker Hill Monument. It paid nearly sixty thousand dollars for the centennial celebration in Philadel phia. It paid seventeen thousand dollars to celebrate on a single day the centennial anniversary ot'the battle of Bunker Hill. It paid seventy-five hundred dollars last year, or appropriated it, for a monument to commemorate the battle of Bennington. The State has not only done this itself, but it has encouraged taxation by towns for like purposes. In 1864 it authorized any town or city in the commonwealth to build soldiers' monuments, and under this authority hun dreds of thousands of dollars have been appropriated. In 1874: and 1875 it authorized Concord and Lexington and many other towns to make large appropriations to celebrate the centennial anniversary of the battle of Lexington.

Mr. Russell. - Didn't the State also make a grant of two thousand dollars for the Acton monument?

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