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The current of action in this world at this day rushes on such rapid course that even recent and most noteworthy events are soon forgotten. It is not a week since St. John celebrated its centenary, and now the illuminations having all gone out, the fireworks exploded, the flowers withered, the fancy dresses being laid bye, the flags furled, the papers with the prayers and speeches and glowing accounts of the jubilee demonstrations put on file, that event belongs to the past. When we say that it is already almost forgotten we speak only, of course, in a public sense. There is no doubt that the memories of the 18th, May, 1883, will be proudly cherished in many a breast, and that in fact it will be a pleasing, intermittent recollection for all time to come. Heaven, it may without reverence be said, smiled on the celebration. Only imagine what the day would have been if instead of glorious sunshine and an unclouded sky, a thick fog had rolled up the harbor and enveloped the city in a murky mist! The brightness and beauty of the whole holiday demonstration would have been taken out and its poetry would have been reduced to dull prose. The pageantry of the landing of the Loyalists, the armoured knights on horseback, the long cabin, the Tally-Ho coach, the old St. George, and the bravery of the fire companies, the floral and artistic ornamentation of the fire engines, would have seemed poor – out of keeping and ridiculous in the midst of clouds and drizzly darkness.
Everybody in Fredericton who was not in St. John on the 17th and 18th has read the full accounts given in the City press of the celebration so that it is needless for us to give a summary here of the proceedings. In-fact, it would be impossible to summarize even all the incidents that occurred in the Loyalist City from 8 o’clock on Wednesday evening to Thursday at midnight. But, it is allowable for us to congratulate the citizens of St. John on the entire success of their Centennial celebration, and on the admirable spirit that pervaded all the proceedings of the day. Close, captious, criticism might find some things to object to, but the general effect of the moving panorama was so fine that fault-finding was out of the question.
Sir John, we venture to say, was never so proud of its origin as it is to-day. Surely the enthusiasm evoked on the 18th will not die out. It will, it is to be hoped, find tangible expression in some lasting memorial (take what shape that may) in honor of the patriot band who, ruined in the cause of their king, upon conscientious conviction of the right, a hundred years ago landed on the then unhospitable and barren coasts of the Bay to begin life over again. We suspect that in St. John there are many who have very little or no sympathy for the cause for which the Loyalist founders of their city periled life and fortune. In-fact, people of this day cannot enter into the feelings and motives which actuated those men “in the brave days of old.” The world always accepts accomplished facts, and to-day the cause of the rebels against the old obstinate king’s authority appears righteous, praiseworthy, and the only one they were open to adopt. All the constitutional liberty this country enjoys springs from that rebellion, for it is an undoubted fact that the success of the American Revolution gave an impetus to the freedom of political thought and action all the world over. And though that freedom was accompanied by most brutal and murderous license in France, and led to the waging of a long, bloody, and devastating wars, its success now, in these quiet times, when all the boons it wrested from the grip of tyranny are accepted, as a matter of course, cannot be deplored. “Revolutions,” somebody said, “cannot be made with rosewater, and though horrified onlookers at revolutionary excesses might exclaim “oh, liberty, what crimes are committed in they name!” Comparatively few now would like to say that they would rather have missed the liberty than that the crimes should have been committed. But what-ever people now may think of the old Loyalists as politicians or statesmen there can be no doubt that their conduct as men was worthy of all admiration, and as long as the world esteems self-sacrifice, devotion to a cause, unflinching courage in adversity, resolution, pluck, determination, and breast to overcome the sternest obstacles, it will hold these same Loyalists in honor.
The close of the first century of St. John and the Province, and in great part the country, or rather the opening of the second, finds the great Republic and the Dominion of Canada on sisterly terms of friendship. Such terms do not preclude occasional “spats” and mutual casual loss of temper, but it is to be hoped that they bar all serious quarrellings. Never were the United States more friendly disposed to the Empire to which we are all proud to belong than at the present day. And for the good feeling existing, not anything has much contributed as the virtues of the Crowned Head of the Empire. That it may continue to exist we could wish, that the wish contained in the old Spanish salutation was, with regard to Her Majesty, capable of literal fulfillment, and then millennium would be upon us.