Excerpt from Oration Delivered by Hon. John Randolph Tucker, LL. D: Of Virginia, April 7, 1888, at the Celebration of the Centennial of the Founding of the Northwest at Marietta, Ohio

The Old World, with its crowded populations, with its social orders and castes, and its despotic forms of govern ment was stagnant and unhealthful. Commerce reached forth its bold and eager arms for new fields for human enterprise and a larger and freer civilization.

Motives of gain mingled with religious 'fervor to plant the standard of European polity and the emblem of the cross on the soil of a new world.

We are near the anniversary of that great 1492, which turned the world upside down and doubled the domain of civilized life among men. Columbia opened her doors to European emigration. I The glitter of the precious metals first fascinated the vulgar; but now millions of men with teeming golden harvests, and with fields white with their myriad bales of cotton, and with minerals and forests for light, heat and all the arts of life, feed a hungry, clothe a naked, and house a homeless world.

Three centuries ago the Spanish Armada sank under the storm of God into the British waters in sight of the reefs of Albion; and left England mistress of the seas.

In 1584, Edmund Spenser dedicated the Faerie Queen to Elizabeth, by the grace of God Queen of England, France, and Ireland and Virginia; and in the same year the Virgin Queen gave to Sir Walter Raleigh the charter to take and possess Virginia in her royal name. Virginia was rocked in her infant cradle to the sweet song of the master of English poetry.

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