XLIV.

ON the 7th of December, 1875, the Hebrew Charity Fair in aid of the Mount Sinai Hospital was held at Gilmore's Garden. At eight o'clock Governor Tilden, accompanied by Andrew H. Green and Emanuel B. Hart, entered and took his seat on the platform, surrounded by the leading members of the Jewish community. After the enthusiastic applause which greeted the appearance of Governor Tilden had subsided, and after a few introductory remarks by Mr. Hart, Governor Tilden came forward and spoke as follows.

VACATION SPEECH-HEBREW CHARITIES.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,- It gives me great pleasure to commend the noble charity which you are assembled to promote, not only to that great class by which it has been organized, but to the whole public. The unwritten obligations of the official trust which I have held from the people of the State of New York during the last year have added so largely to its routine duties as to leave me little opportunity for occasions like the present; and when your committee did me the honor to invite me to come here to-night to open your proceedings, I dared hardly hope that it would be in my power to avail myself of their courtesy. It is now two hundred and twenty years since the first little colony of your race and religion planted itself in the city of New York; and although its growth for a long time was slow, latterly the increase has been so great that to-day I am credibly informed it comprises about seventy thousand of the people of the city of New York. It is not in numbers only, it is not for industry and thrift merely, that this class is distinguished; but it is conspicuous in all those pursuits that form the strength and the glory of a commercial metropolis. They are useful citizens, generally setting examples of domestic and social morality. They are distinguished for their respect for parents, for their education of their children, for their fidelity to all moral obligations, and for their personal virtues; and they to-day in New York repay this great commonwealth for the fostering care and equal privileges which from the earliest times it has freely extended to them. This race and creed, which have been persecuted

in every clime and in every age, first found equality before the law in America. This great State of New York to-day comprises almost five millions of population; and from its first independent existence, indeed far back in its colonial period, it extended to you all the rights of American citizenship. How much, ladies and gentlemen, this is, you will see when you reflect for a moment that it is within our own day that the first man of this race and creed was admitted into the municipal councils of London; and it is only a few years since the first man of this race and creed was allowed to take a seat in the Parliament of Great Britain. Fortunate is this State, with some few exceptions the other States of the Union, and our Federal Government, in being foremost in admitting to full equality your kinsmen. While you bear your burdens, your share of all the public charities that are carried on by taxation, you contribute very little to those burdens; you care for your own poor and your own unfortunates to a degree that I think is equalled by no other class of citizens. It is for this reason that this charity commends itself to the sympathy, to the confidence, to the encouragement and support of the whole people. I am informed, also, that in terms this institution is not confined to any nationality or any creed, but that its beneficent care is freely tendered to all poor and unfortunate, and that at least 20 per cent of your benefactions are to races and creeds different from your own. I trust, ladies and gentlemen, your fair will transcend in its success your expectations and your hopes.

XLV.

THE second Annual Message of Governor Tilden was submitted to the Legislature on the 4th of January, 1876. It was at a moment of profound business depression, which had endured already for three consecutive years with no prospect of relief. Wages continued falling, incomes and property were shrinking, and chilling distrust seemed to have arrested the circulation of the nation's wealth. To explain this state of things, to trace its cause and suggest the remedies, was the special and distinguishing feature of this Message. Though applied to a temporary situation, the doctrines here expounded belong to the ripest science of political economy.

SECOND ANNUAL MESSAGE.

To the Legislature.

EXECUTIVE CHAMBER, ALBANY, Jan. 4, 1876.

THE annual meeting of the legislative assemblies at the beginning of the new year finds the people of this commonwealth in the enjoyment of blessings which ought to fill us with reverent thankfulness to Him from whom cometh every good and perfect gift. Whatever the earth could yield to the labor of man under the fructifying and genial forces of nature we have garnered. Health, peace, and domestic tranquillity have been ours. Capacities to produce in largest abundance and with least sacrifice, or to acquire by exchange through the best natural and artificial machinery of transport and travel, all things which minister to material well-being, to the pros perity and wealth of a State, and to the comfort and felicity of its individual members, have been and are subject to our

use.

It was early discovered that New York possessed within her territory the natural passes of military operations which, in the wars for colonial existence and for national independence, cross-tracked our soil with fire and blood. Our territory was also found, on the later development of the national growth, to occupy the natural thoroughfares of travel and traffic. It touches the ocean with a harbor ever open, accessible, and safe, close by whose gates the ocean currents compel to pass nearly all transatlantic navigation to and from this country. It con