At this stage Bro. Major Hill-Male suggested that a telegram of loyal congratulation be sent to Her Majesty the Queen.- The Grand Master said they had already thought about this matter and had prepared a telegram. Before that was done he thought they ought to welcome their brother from America, Bro. McHenry Jones. (Applause.) Bro. Major Hill-Male, who had seen something of the working of the Order in America, had undertaken to introduce Bro. Jones. Major Hill-Male thereupon retired, and in a few minutes reappeared with Bro. Jones on his arm, their entry into the hall being the signal for loud applause, which was renewed with redoubled vigour when they appeared upon the platform. Bro. Major RR. Hill-Male then introduced Bro. McHenry Jones to the G.M., and through him to the Order. He congratulated Bro. Jones upon his safe arrival amongst them. At an informal meeting the previous evening Bro. Jones told them that in his explanation to some of their brethren in America as to his visit to England that he thought his presence amongst them would add colour to their meeting. (Laughter.) He assured Bro. Jones that the Order welcomed him as representing the great American branch of the small tree in the United Kingdom. (Applause.) Referring to his own visit to America as Grand Master he acknowledged his splendid and fraternal reception, and he was sure nothing could happen between the two nations but goodwill, brotherly love, relief, and truth. They could not give Bro. Jones the same reception that he had in America, but he could assure him of equal feelings of friendship which were felt towards him in this country. He hoped that meeting would be the means of cementing and binding together with iron links that friendship which had subsisted for so many years, and be the means of laying the foundation of such a Grand United Order that might face

The Opposition of the Whole World. -The Grand Master also added a welcome, remarking with satisfaction that it was the proud boast of their Order that it fixed no distinctions narrower than those fixed by the Great Father of all. (Hear, hear.) On rising to respond Bro. Jones had a cordial reception, the delegates rising and cheering lustily. He said: Brethren, your brothers from beyond the deep and rolling ocean, plighting their vows at the same sacred altar, drinking from the same perennial stream at the fountain of Friend ship, warmed by the influences emanating from the glowing coals on the altar of Loved, and worshipping at the Shrine of Truth, with increasing affection send fraternal greetings and goodwill to the mother Grand Lodge in England. (Hear, hear.) Having for years attempted to make known through correspondence, the love and gratitude Order in America cherishes toward you, I have been sent to emphasize and in measure give voice to the enduring nature of those sentiments. It is now more than a half-century since a few noble men of my race despised, outlawed, and virtually expatriated, turned their discouraged faces toward this God-blessed land. It was with feelings of mingled hope and fear that these determined, righteous men made their appeal to the Grand United Order of Oddfellows. Repulsed at home, their petition treated with contempt, their aspirations, ridiculed their right to brotherhood peremptorily refused, is it strange that day by day, awaiting the return of their chosen messenger, their hope in the 0007 6final triumph of their cause grew dimmer, and their faith in the justice of the world was on the eve of going out for ever? Lashed by misfortune, strangers in the land of their nativity, without political standing and under the ban of social ostracism, waifs upon Time's heartless ocean, they longed for a resting place among the brotherhood. Keenly sensitive to the isolation of their condition, they sought through Peter Ogden, a member of Victoria Lodge, admission into the temple of Fraternity, and rising above the littleness of caste, too great to be mean, the Grand United Order of Oddfellows welcomed our fathers into the family of mankind. (Applause) Holding aloft the gleaming torch of Truth, the older in England declared: “Fraternity is an ocean which washes the shores of every country, and its influence can only be bounded by the jutting crags to Eternity.” Fifty name of the widows and orphans of our brotherhood. I came to thank you that his story was believed. He came bearing the petition of the oppressed; I come to offer the homage of the free. Over him hung the raven-wing of doubt, above me expands the rainbow of eternal promise. (Applause) He came from the night in search of the dawn; I come clothed with the morning, expecting the noonday. Like a dove, bearing olive branch, Peter Ogden returned to the long neglected ark, beneath whose roof our fathers impatiently waited. I bring back the much cherished emblem of peace, and with a full heart and open hands, present the greetings of 160,000 Black Oddfellows, whose lives have been inspired and manhood strengthened by its significant teachings. It would not be amiss on this auspicious occasion, to turn on their golden hinges the gilded leaves of the past and take an inventory of the historic foot-prints left by progress on the years that have flown. “Tis greatly wise to talk with your past hours. And ask them what reports they have borne to heaven, and how they might have borne more welcome news.” What a change has come over the world since our fathers gathered first around the scared alter, and pledged their fidelity to the principles of our Order! What a breath of years, measured by the events which have crowded into history since that of which must endear their memories to their race! The world has lived a thousand years since then, so rapidly has progress trodden upon the heels of time. In 1843 Bismarck was unknown; Gladstone, the grand old English gentleman, winning his spurs as a stateman; Lincoln, a name sufficiently glorious to illuminate any age, was a country lawyer; Grant was at West Point, at the foot of his class. It was the darkest hour for my people in American history. Every device that the hate could concoct, brain contrive, or oppression execute, fell, unchecked, upon the bowed back of the poor forsaken Negro. The return of Peter Odgen, therefore, triumphantly bearing the charter of English recognition, was like a ray of light from a midnight sky. In 1843, without property, without the moral support of the community, without anything save our faith in God and hope for a better day, we organised the first Lodge. A decade after the institution of the Order in America, our number had grown to 1,482. We now number nearly 160,000. We expended for sick ducs during the past year 198,423. 82 dollars, paid to widows and widows and orphans 40,360.72 dollars; paid for funerals 96,400 dollars, and and after the expenditure of this large sum, aggregating 335,183.54 dollars, we still have invested in funds and securities 1,867.597 dollars. We have subordinate Lodges in thirty-nine States, four Territories, the District of Columbia, West Indies, Canada, Hayti, South America, and Africa. Our Past Grand Masters' Counsils number 182. Our women, also, have joined with us in pushing forward the victories of our most humane institution. Experience has fully demonstrated that the union of man's strength and vigour with woman's faith and sympathy in a friendly society is an act of the highest wisdom. Nowhere has this fact been more satisfactorily exemplified than in the organization of the Household of Ruth. Side by side with the brethren our sisters, 30,000 strong, are dedicating their services to the scared cause of practical charity. Nor are they satisfied to move along in the beaten path, but with a more enlighten conception of their needs they are proposing and organising new departments in keeping with the progressive lines of their development. The last B.M.C.; stamped with its approval the organization of Juvenile Lodges, to be controlled by the Household of Ruth. Through this new organization or God-fearing mothers, wives, and sisters will strive to inculcate lessons of virtue, economy, and sobriety in the hearts of the children. Too much credit cannot be given to the women of our race. The world has but one new woman-the Afro-American women. In the face of the most cruel conditions that ever Blighted and Outraged Womankind, our mothers_God bless them-conquering fate, have outlived the past, and are rearing and educating manly sons and virtuous daughters to fill places of trust and profit in the Great Republic. Our military division-the Patriarchie, like the Household of Ruth, is an innovation unknown in England, but filling an actual need in our work. The highest branch in the Order, it seeks to weave into an endless chain the teachings and experiences of the subordinate Lodge and Past Grand Masters' Council, and with heart to heart and hand to hand render inseparable the moral lessons of Oddfellowship. We have laboured to conserve in their pristine purity the principles and mysteries entrusted to our fathers in the days of other years. We teach the Fatherhood of God, and thus postulate the brotherhood of men. The Grand United Order are at one with Christianity in promulgating the universal truth. “From one blood hath God created all the nations of the earth.” We believe in the absolute equality of men. Before liberty, equality, and fraternity became the rallying cry of oppressed humanity, it was taught and widely practised among Oddfellows. Justice and charity, friendship and truth bear the same interpretation, and kindle the same enthusiasm in America as in England. Liberty founded upon justice, charity tempered with fraternity, equality based upon merit, shares a large place in the teachings of our Order. It would not be un-interesting perhaps to notice in passing the character and progress of the people among whom the seeds of Oddfellowship have been planted in America. Much been said of us at home and abroad; much, the out-growth of ignorance or prejudice; much a combination of both ignorance and prejudice. We are too often judged by our worst, rather than our best performances. Who would visit Whitechapel to find an average Englishman, or the Tenderloia 0008 7district in New York in search of a representative American? We judge a people by their statesmen, artists, scholars, artisans, in short, by the industrious producers of all classes. We are too frequently measured from beneath, from our criminals, our worst elements. The indolent, vicious and improvident are pointed out as a proof of our worthlessness, while the toiling, industrious millions scarcely merit a moment's notice. Our fault are hunted down and exaggerated, our virtues overlooked or minimised. Our Order represents the high-water mark among the masses of our people. Young men of the best social standing, cultivation and worth, as well as their white-haired sires, the solid men among us, have linked in their fortunes with our brotherhood. The progress of the American negro during the last generation finds no parallel in the history of the world. Whatever our enemies may say, facts are more convincing than theories, and truth is stranger than fiction. At the close of the war of the Rebellion the freedmen were the poorest people on the face of the earth. We had no home, no roof to shelter us from the inhospitable storm, nothing save the blue sky and friendly sunshine by day, the unsympathising stars by night. We were houseless, homeless wanderers upon the face of the earth.

The Negro had no family to strengthen and encourage him, family ties were largely denied him by the circumstances of his most unhappy past. He was void of household gods or sacred memories to hold him in a steady course. We had nothing but willing hands and unshaken trust in God. Under such circumstances, to have established a home and gathered under a common family tree, in a generation his wife and family would have been one of the most remarkable accomplishments of history. To our credit we have done more. In a generation we have accumulated and pay taxes on $400,000,000 worth of real estate. We own and operate a street car railway in Arkansas. We own $630,000 worth of shipping, $102,000 worth of wharfage; fine banks with capital of $3,000,000; 200 daily and weekly newspapers. In one State alone we own 800,000 acres of land. Small, indeed, are these figures when compared with the aggregate wealth of our great country, but worthy of consideration when it is remembered that under circumstances not the most favourable, we have accomplished so much in so short a time. Our material prosperity is by no means our proudest monument. Our mental advancement has surpassed our material advancement. In a quarter of a century over 3,000,000 of our race have learned to read and write. We have acquired and control 18 colleges, 34 academies, 51 high school and seminaries. We have more than 30,000 teachers in the public schools, 33 painters of merited reputation, 16 sculptors, 2,000 physicians, 295 dentists, 3,000 lawyers, 1,800 B.D. ministers, 540 telegraph operators, 1,466 engineers, 1,600 captains and pilots of vessels, 3,970 book-keepers and stenographers and 30,000 skilled workmen of all sorts and conditions. The work of educating and uplifting the masses has been largely done by our own people. Circumstances have compelled us to uplift ourselves. Where in the annals of mankind can be found another example of a race rising to the sublime status of intellectual manhood and womanhood by its own power. We have been largely our own teachers. We would not detract from the help given us by the church, nor the noble self-sacrificing men and women who have suffered ostracism and contempt in order that they might devote their energies to the cause of the despised, but the fact remains, the great force used in elevating our people has come from within. We have made bricks, gathering our own straw. We do not complain, the exertion has been helpful rather than enervating. Circumstances have taught us self-reliance. We only beg for our schools and churches-bread for the mind, bread for the soul. I am telling you of these things now, for it may be 50 years before representatives of the two countries again meet like this. (“No, no.”) It would, however, be a grand thing if an International Congress of representatives of our great Order could be held in Philadelphia next year. (Applause.) There might be brought together English speaking races the world over, and we could proclaim the great fact that in accepting coloured races the Grand United Order stands alone as being world wide. But I will proceed.

The Marks of Past Sorrows are not altogether obliterated; still our star of manhood continues to ascend. Reformations go not backward. If the race has left the first apathy of ignorance, when it longs to shake off the darkness of the past, then are we in the whirl of advancing time, and keeping step with the music of progression. Trained in a school of misfortune, we hopefully, fearlessly face the future. Our past sorrows were providential. Through the fiery cloud of suffering can be dimly outlined the puissant hand of God. These facts may be prosaic, but they lead to a broad generalisation. If the Order has been able to grow under circumstances so forbidding, what must be the future under brighter skies and more inviting prospects? It is a pleasure to report that the night is passing, and faint streaks of the coming light soften the threatening sky with prophecies of a better day. Here an there as the gray dawn steals noiselessly upon us a flickering bon-fire, or an illegal lynching flashes out, proof that error dies hard. By the heart throbs that beat in unison, by the mutual sorrows of the past, by the frequent touches of nature that make the whole world kin, we are nearing a better understanding. It is coming by the way of the schoolhouse, scattering enlightenment, by the way of the churches disseminating a purer conception of the holy Christ. Just as the hatred engendered between the two sections of our country by war is disappearing as distance from it recedes, so we believe that the asperities between races must yield to the better influences which time alone will produce. (Hear hear.) We have faith to look into the frowning face of blackest night for the rosy hues of coming morning: faith to believe that through the threatening clouds that so long have overshadowed us, will break the golden light of a new emancipation. Next to our own happiness we pray for the prosperity of England. Our people to a man, hope that the friendly feeling, so long existing between England and the United States, may continue to strengthen as the year roll by. We cherish the hope that never again shall the two nations bound by a common tongue, heirs to a common literature, seeking the same high destiny, the nestors and promulgators of civil and religious liberty, we hope, nay, we demand, that nations so united by a community of interests shall always find some means to settle their difficulties, without an appeal to arms. (Applause.) We join with you in saying “God save the Queen.” (Hear, hear.) Who can estimate the blessings which have unceasingly flowed from the simple act of justice toward our fathers granted by the Grand United Order of Oddfellows? What tears it has 0009 8wiped from the eyes of the lonely widow, the poverty stricken, and fatherless? What hearts smitten by the heavy hand of discouragement it has caused to beat with the hope of a better day? How many lives it has cheered, and how often scattered the flowers of charity along the thorny pathway of the forgotten poor? Time cannot measure the far-reaching influence of this.

Deed of Disinterested Goodness.

Eternity alone can fully unfold its unalloyed blessings. Taking courage from the success of the past, we are enlarging our sphere of usefulness, spreading the boundaries of charity, engrafting into our scheme homes for our orphans and endowment for the relic's of our brotherhood. Side by side with the church we are doing the practical work of Christianity, preaching economy and frugality to a people by nature prodigal, and thus giving true religion an onward impetus. We are only on the border of the wave of fraternity which must ultimately sweep our land. We increased our membership 13,000 during the last year, and still there are more to follow, (Applause.) The principles which we teach and practice are destined to live for ever. No clime nor country can limit their influence. Whenever sorrow lifts its mournful head for want unbidden lurks there the influence of our noble Order will make its appearance. And when our weak efforts are forgotten, and those that follow us shall have suffered our fate, when the flags of England and America, twin sisters in the fore-front of destiny, shall have fallen for want of defenders, the principles which we teach will live on, breathed upon new tongues, articulated under new lies, until the Great Father of the universe shall [?] the chapter of time, “Mid the wrecks of [?] and crash of worlds.” (Applause.) In the name of the S.C. of America, in the name of the B.M.C., and in the name of the black host of Oddfellows in America. I extend to you fraternal greetings. (Loud applause.) - Bro. Curnow expressed his great appreciation of the address, and proposed that it be printed in pamphlet form, adding that such a speech should be sent throughout Europe.-Bro. Thornley (Burton-on-Trent) seconded, and the resolution was carried. It was further agreed that the Grand Master's speech should also be published in the same pamphlet. -Bro. Jones next presented an illuminated address from the Order in America to adorn the offices in Manchester. -'the Grand Master asked if their fathers did right 50 years ago in admitting the race to which their brother, who had just spoken, belonged? He answered unhesitatingly they did. (Hear, hear.) With the single exception of the Church of Christ no organisation had done so much for their American friends as the Grand United Order of Oddfellows. Their success with the coloured race had been a lesson to the whole of civilized humanity. Their Order had done much in lifting up their American brethren, and he thought they ought to be proud of what they had accomplished. For 54 years there had been constant correspondence between the American and English offices, and the American Order had always been loyal to them. It was impossible fittingly to reply to the address given by Bro. Jones, and he moved that a small committee be appointed consisting of five Past Grand Masters and the Grand Editor to draw up a suitable address in reply, to be submitted to the Conference for approval, to be signed by the Grand Master, the Deputy Grand Master, and the Grand Secretary, and presented to Bro. Jones for him to take back with him to America (Applause).-The Deputy Grand Master said he had pleasure in seconding the resolution. He (the speaker) stood before them as the son of a father who had assisted in the granting of the first dispensation to America, which had borne such good fruit, and the wonderful progress of which was evidenced by the eloquent address of Bro. Jones. Many societies claimed the privilege of having introduced Oddfellowship to America, but none could dispute his word when he asserted that the Grand United Order was the first to do it, being led on by Peter Ogden (Hear, hear).-'the proposition was then put and carried.

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