Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1868 edition. Excerpt: ... tendency to increase the self-respect of the lower classes, and to educate them by active participation in public affairs; to prevent the odious and invidious distinctions which create and imbitter the animosities of caste; and to dimmish the temptation to disaffection, tumult, and disorder. We have said above that the ignorant many, when possessed of political power, must choose from the enlightened few the persons to intrust with its administration, or must lose their power. It is very easy for such a government to be thus destroyed, for power will not long remain in the hands of ignorance, and the enlightened, with or without votes, are natural rulers. The object of the plan we have ventured to suggest is to secure obedience to this principle by law. Sidney G. Fisher. Art. IX.--Governor Andrew. John Albion Andrew, late Governor of Massachusetts, was born May 31, 1818, at Windham, a small town near Lake Sebago, about fifteen miles from Portland, --two years before the separation of Maine from Massachusetts. The family was English in origin, descending in America from Robert Andrew, who immigrated to Rowley Village, now Boxford, in Essex County, Mass., and died there in 1668. It was connected by marriage with several of the famous ancient families of the Colony, --a grandmother of the Governor being a granddaughter of the brave Captain William Pickering, who commanded the Province Galley in 1707, to protect the fisheries against the French and Indians, and the mother of her husband being Mary Higginson, a direct descendant from Francis Higginson, the organizer of the first church in the Colony. A portrait of this old clergyman, his ancestor, depicted with snow-white hair and gray mustache, clad in a black robe, holding a book in one hand,