whose duty it shall be to examine the property of the Society in charge of the Librarian and the Cabinet-Keeper, and to report thereon at the Annual Meeting.

ART. 3.These Committees shall be required to report in writing or in print.

CHAPTER XII.

OF THE COUNCIL.

ART. 1.-The Council shall exercise a general oversight of the affairs and property of the Society, and shall prepare and present such business matters and make such recommendations to the Society as they may deem expedient.

ART. 2. They shall, from time to time, carefully consider the claims of all persons whose names have been proposed for membership, and, as vacancies occur in the Society, by death or otherwise, shall, at their discretion, report nominations; but no nomination, whether for Resident, Corresponding, or Honorary Membership, shall be reported, of any person whose name has not been entered in the nomination-book at least thirty days; nor shall any nomination of a member be valid unless seven members of the Council have assented to it.

ART. 3. They shall engage whatever assistance is needed to administer the Library and Cabinet, and shall authorize the Treasurer to pay, from time to time, such sums as may be necessary for the current expenses of the Society.

ART. 4. They shall cause to be made, as often as may seem expedient, a thorough examination of the Library and Cabinet of the Society.

ART. 5. They shall meet in the Society's rooms within one week previous to every regular meeting of the Society, on such day and at such hour as they may agree upon, and at such other times as the President, or in his absence a VicePresident, shall call them together.

ART. 6. On the death of a Resident Member, they shall appoint a person to prepare a memoir of him for publication. in the Proceedings.

ART. 7. They shall make an annual report, to be drawn up by the member at large who has had the longest term of service, or, in case two members have served the same length of time, by the senior of the two as member of the Society.

CHAPTER XIII.

OF THE PUBLICATIONS.

ART. 1. Immediately after the publication of any volume of the Collections of the Society, or at any other time when the Society may order, a committee of not less than three persons shall be appointed by the President, whose duty it shall be to prepare and publish another volume; for which purpose they are authorized to incur such expense as the Council may

approve.

ART. 2. There shall be inserted in each volume published from the income of any fund, a statement in print that it was made at the charge of that fund.

ART. 3. The Recording Secretary, and two other members to be appointed at the regular meeting in May by the President, shall constitute a Committee, with full power to provide for occasional reports, as well as for the permanent publication of the Proceedings of the Society, subject to the following limitations:

First, Neither the remarks nor the name of any member shall be introduced into any report without his permission.

Second, All papers read or remarks made by any member, which such member shall desire or be willing to have printed, shall be submitted to the above-named Committee for the purpose, and shall be subject to their discretion: provided, however, that any member may publish, on his own responsibility, any paper or remarks of his own which the Committee may not think fit to include in their report; but in such case, the Society shall not be mentioned in any way whatever in connection with such publication.

ART. 4. The Council may appoint a member of the Society, or other competent person, who shall be immediately responsible for the proper editing of all volumes, whether of Collections or Proceedings, the supervision of the Society's copyists, and the adequate preparation of all material intended for the press. If the person so appointed be a Resident Member of the Society, he shall be ex officio a member of all committees of publication; but the authority of any editor shall be subordinate to that of said committees. The editor shall receive such salary as may be fixed by the Council.

CHAPTER XIV.

OF AMENDMENTS TO BY-LAWS.

These By-Laws may be amended at any regular meeting at which at least twenty members are present, provided that the proposed amendment has been discussed at a previous meeting, or is reported by a committee appointed for the purpose at such previous meeting. Whenever a proposition to amend the By-Laws is pending, the Recording Secretary shall include a statement to that effect in his notification of the meeting.

57

MAY MEETING, 1908.

THE stated meeting was held on Thursday, the 9th instant, at three o'clock P. M.; the President in the chair.

The record of the April meeting was read and approved; and the Librarian read the list of donors to the Library since the last meeting.

The Cabinet-Keeper reported the gift of political "tokens" by Samuel S. Shaw; and called attention to the framing of the portrait of Governor Winthrop, given at the last meeting by Frederic Winthrop.

The Recording Secretary, as acting Corresponding Secretary, reported the receipt of letters accepting their election from Charles P. Greenough as a Resident Member, and from Henry Morse Stephens as a Corresponding Member; also a letter from Professor Altamira proposing to send to the Society for its library any of his own historical works which it might not already possess.

The Council reported the appointment of the following House Committee: Charles C. Smith, Grenville H. Norcross, and Samuel S. Shaw.

It was voted, that the income of the Massachusetts Historical Trust Fund for the last financial year be retained in the Treasury, to be applied to such purposes as the Council may direct.

The PRESIDENT called the attention of members to the two volumes of the "History of Chelsea," based on material left to the Society by the late Judge Mellen Chamberlain together with a fund for the completion and publication of the work. The preparation of these two volumes, he stated, had occupied five years of time and required a great amount of labor.

He also called attention to the new edition of the Short Account of the Society, the revised By-Laws, and the complete list of members, which was also ready for distribution.

He further reported the receipt of an invitation from the Société Historique Franco-Américaine to attend the next meeting of the Société on May 30, to be devoted, in connection with

the Quebec tercentenary, to a study of the life and voyages of Champlain. The President being unable, because of another important engagement, to accept the invitation personally, Mr. Wendell was designated to represent the Society on that occasion, the Société having requested the appointment of a representative.

WILLIAM R. THAYER called the attention of the Society to the interesting coincidence of the centenary of Charles Darwin and of Abraham Lincoln, and said in substance:

THE CENTENARY OF LINCOLN AND DARWIN.

On February 12, 1909, falls the centenary of Abraham Lincoln and of Charles Darwin. It should be celebrated internationally; for Destiny itself, by ordaining that the foremost Briton and the foremost American of the nineteenth century should be born on the same day of the same year, seems to suggest that the Anglo-American world should unite in celebrating the event. In all history there is no similar coincidence. The twelfth of February should be made a day of festival for our race, of which these two men, better than any others, embody the great characteristics.

Lincoln is the incarnation of Anglo-Saxon ideals of government. These ideals, the growth of many centuries, include the belief in representation and the belief in law. The principle of representation leads straight to Democracy, which is now being worked out in England and America. But political development on both sides of the Atlantic has been moulded by the spirit of compromise and of toleration peculiar to our race. Although England was shaken by dynastic, religious, and civil wars, she organized no Inquisition, to take, like Frankenstein's monster, a terrible vengeance on its creator, and she indulged in no wholesale expulsions, like those of the Huguenots from France and of the Moriscoes from Spain. So we, after our Civil War, permitted no proscriptions, no executions, no sequestrations.

His

The exemplar of these Anglo-Saxon principles and of Democracy itself was Abraham Lincoln. He practised compromise up to the point where it ceases to be a virtue. large tolerance had malice toward none and charity for all. He respected law so truly that when practically dictatorial