in the town governments of Massachusetts. You have heard the
town-meeting referred to this evening. It seemed to me that the towns in
this Commonwealth correspond in part to what we might call the
water-tight compartments of the ship of state, and while sometimes our
State Government has wavered, sometimes it has been suspended, and it
has been thought that the people could not care for themselves under
those conditions. Whenever that has arisen the towns of the Commonwealth
have come to the rescue and been able to furnish the foundation and the
strength on which might not only be carried on, but on which might again
be erected the failing government of the Commonwealth or the failing
government of the Nation. So that I know nothing to which we New
Englanders owe more, and especially the people of Massachusetts, of our
civil liberties than we do to our form of town government.

The history of Weston has been long and interesting, beginning, as your
town seal designates, back in 1630, when Watertown was recognized as one
of the three or four towns in the Commonwealth; set off by boundaries
into the Farmers' Precinct in 1698, and becoming incorporated as a town
in 1713. There begins a long and honorable history. Of course, the first
part of it gathered to a large degree around the church. The first
church was started here, I think, in 1695, and I believe that the land
on which it was to be erected was purchased of a man who bore my name.
Your first clergyman seems to have been settled about 1702; and the
long and even tenor of your ways here and your devotion to things which
were established is perhaps shown and exemplified in the fact that
during the next one hundred and seventy-four years, coming clear down to
1876, you had but six clergymen presiding over that church. You have an
example here now, along the same line, in the long tenure of office that
has come to your present town clerk, he having been first elected, I
believe, in 1864 and having held office from that time to this, probably