"THE GREAT INCENDIARY"

It is interesting to speculate on what Sam Adams would have to say at "town meeting" today, if he could return to Faneuil Hall to the celebration of his two-hundredth birthday. His remarks, it is safe to say, would be direct and would hit, what they were aiming at. Probably a grim chuckle, two or three pleasantries, and then a vigorous, powerful attack on what struck Adams as the outstanding abuse of the day in the town of Boston. Opinions may differ as to Adams' choice today, but there is no question that whatever he took up would be settled then and there before he let it drop. Adams never minced words, but his reasoning was usually so cogent and what he said so much to the point, that his attacks were feared as no others in his time. Hutchinson whom, as the Royal Governor of the province, 'Adams' activities had driven from office, referred to him in his report to the Crown as "of such an obstinate and inflexible disposition that no gift nor office would ever conciliate him."

Adams left behind him the nickname of the "Great Incendiary", which has given him unjustly the reputation of a demagogue at best, if an inspired one. Governor Cox's term for him in his proclamation fits better,--a "Sentinel for Liberty". All through his life Adams kept his alertness and his fearless regard for duty as he saw it. As an undergraduate at Harvard, his thesis for a degree was a strong defense or the proposition that "it is lawful to resist the Supreme Magistrate if the Commonwealth cannot be otherwise preserved." There is no reason to believe that Adams ever swerved from this conviction. But he was no mere firebrand. When the question of the Constitution hung in the balance in Massachusetts it was Adams who, unsatisfied as he was with the document, used his influence for its adoption.

Adams was a great leader and an unselfish one, keeping himself in the background while moulding the public opinion of his time. It is a pity that the University should allow the bicentennial of one of the greatest of its graduates to pass without some active recognition.