SAMUEL ADAMS WELLS. JULY 4, 1819. FOR THE WASHINGTON SOCIETY. WAS a son of Thomas Wells, who married Hannah, daughter of Gov. Samuel Adams. He was president of the Atlas Insurance Company, and married Margaret Gibbs. Mr. Wells was a tenacious advocate of the Democratic party, and prepared Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Gov. Samuel Adams, his grandfather, comprising three volumes in manuscript, which it is said were disposed of to George Bancroft, the historian. This is to be regarded as a public calamity, unless the purchaser should cause it to be printed. Whitcomb said of our American Cato, "Eclipsed by merit, rivals all submit, Laying their withered laurels at thy feet." Mr. Wells was the corresponding secretary of the Republican Institution, originated at the dwelling-house of Mr. Ebenezer Clough, Nov. 16, 1818. Gen. Henry Dearborn was its first president. Its annual meetings occur on the 4th of March. It was incorporated Feb. 18, 1819. The late Hon. James Lloyd founded a political library for this important engine of the party. In 1820, Mr. Wells was a delegate to the Massachusetts convention for revising the State constitution, and engaged in public debate. At the town-meeting in Faneuil Hall, Jan 2, 1822, on the subject of a city charter of Boston, Mr. Wells moved that the word city be stricken out, and the word town be inserted, as a substitute. He died Aug. 12, 1840. THEODORE LYMAN. JULY 4, 1820. FOR THE TOWN AUTHORITIES. Was born in Boston, Feb. 22, 1792. Rev. Joseph S. Buckminster was his private teacher, at Waltham; entered Exeter Academy in 1804; was a graduate at Harvard College in 1810, became a mer chant, and married Mary E. Henderson in 1820, by whom he had Theodore and Cora. He was a representative in 1825, and in 1824 a senator, in the State Legislature. He engaged in military life; was, in 1821, the lieutenant of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, an aid-de-camp to Gov. Brooks, and brigadier-general of the Boston militia. He was Mayor of Boston in 1834 and '35, a period in the history of the city stained by the spirit of insubordination, and the dark hues of intolerance. This will ever be remembered as the time when the disgraceful Garrison riot, and the destruction of the Ursuline Convent, disturbed the peace of the old metropolis of the Bay State. Gen. Lyman was the author of Diplomacy of the United States with Foreign Nations, 2 vols. 8vo., 1826; The Political State of Italy, 8vo., 1820; Three Weeks in Paris,-the result of his visit to France; and an account of the Hartford Convention, addressed to the fair-minded and well-disposed, favoring the motives of that body, published in 1823. He was president of the Prison Discipline Society; was president of the Farm School three years, and a member of the Massachusetts Historical and the New England Genealogic Historical societies. Our own city of Boston has never been honored with a more munificent native citizen than was Mayor Lyman, for the last half-century; besides his private charities to the suffering children of abject poverty. It was said of Lyman, "He is gracious if he be observed; He hath a tear for pity, and a hand Mayor Lyman, on the foundation of the State Reform School, at Westboro', which he originated, was the secret donor of twenty-two thousand dollars to this institution,- a secret not publicly disclosed until after his decease; and by his last will he bequeathed fifty thousand dollars to the same institution, in addition to his previous gifts. He bequeathed ten thousand dollars to the Boston Farm School, which had previously received his gifts, and ten thousand dollars to the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. He died at Brookline, July 17, 1849. HENRY ORNE. JULY 4, 1820. FOR THE WASHINGTON SOCIETY. Was born at Marblehead, and married Frances Boyd, daughter of William Little, of Boston. He graduated at Dartmouth College in 1812; was a counsellor-at-law, and married, a second time, Sempronia, the sister of his first wife; was an appraiser of the Boston customs, and one of the committee on the city charter. He was a judge of the Police Court, and of the city Council in 1822. Col. Orne was a leader of the Democratic party, and a ready writer. He was an editor of the Boston Yankee, and a liberal contributor to the Boston Statesman. He was the author of the Letters of Columbus, originally published in the Boston Bulletin, to which are added two letters to Gen. Duff Green, in 1829. They are valuable as unfolding the differences of the Jackson party. Col. Orne finally removed to Oxford, Me. He was a warm-hearted and patriotic man. CHARLES GREELY LORING. JULY 4, 1821. FOR THE TOWN AUTHORITIES. WAS last of the orators for the town authorities, of whose performance an eminent politician, the late Dr. William Ingalls, remarked, that it was the only oration on our national independence, that he had ever heard, which had a beginning, a middle, or an end. In alluding to the result of the convention for revising the State constitution, Mr. Loring remarks that it "affords convincing proof of the stability of a government which they so impressively proclaim to be founded on the affections and confidence of its citizens. Let the advocate of the degrading maxim, that man is incapable of self-government, contemplate the scene of moral grandeur which this event unfolds; let him behold the reverence and affection with which the numerous delegates of a free people approach the institutions of their ancestors, to effect those alterations which a change of political situation had rendered essential; let him observe the impressive sense of respons ibility, the unity of design, the solemn earnestness, which pervade their deliberations, the dignified and manly deference with which prejudices and preconceived opinions are yielded to the force of truth and reason, and the feelings which prompt a voluntary and simultaneous homage to that revered patriot [John Adams] who happily remains to see, in the pride of its strength, the temple he assisted to raise; let him view, in the result of their labors, a confirmation of all the essential principles of our constitution; and, following them to their homes, let him see them diffusing an increased love and veneration for the institutions of our country, without carrying with them a feeling of party animosity, or local jealousy, to disturb the tranquillity of the republic. Let him look still further, and contemplate the submission of the recommendations of these delegates to the decision of their constituents; and, instead of the eagerness for change, characteristic of every other than a free people, let him view our fellow-citizens rejecting most of the proposed amendments, clinging with fond veneration to the institutions of their fathers, scarce willing to touch, even with a sparing hand, the edifice in which they had so happily and securely dwelt, and then let him renounce a doctrine so insulting to our race and to God!" Charles Greely, a son of Hon. Caleb Loring, was born in Boston, May 2, 1794; entered the Latin School in 1804, and graduated at Harvard College in 1812, when he pronounced the salutatory oration in Latin; and, at an exhibition, he gave an oration on "De literis Romanis." He read law in Boston with the Hon. Charles Jackson and the Hon. Samuel Hubbard; and at Litchfield, in 1813, under Hon. Judges Reeve and Gould, of the latter of whom Mr. Loring once remarked: "The recollection is as fresh as the events of yesterday, of our passing along the broad shaded streets of one of the most beautiful of the villages of New England, with our inkstands in our hands, and our portfolios under our arms, to the lecture-room of Judge Gould, the last of the Romans, of Common Law lawyers- the impersonation of its genius and spirit. It was, indeed, in his eyes, the perfection of human reason, by which he measured not only every principle and rule of action, but almost every sentiment. Why, sir, his highest visions of poetry seemed to be in the refinements of special pleading; and, to him, a non sequitur in logic was an offence deserving, at the least, fine and imprisonment, and a repetition of it transportation for life." Mr. Loring is an eminent counsellor, and married Anna Pierce Brace, in 1818. His second wife was Mary Ann, a daughter of Hon. Judge Putnam, formerly of Salem, whom he married in 1840. His third wife was Mrs. Cornelia Amory Goddard. The office of Mr. Loring is on the site of that occupied by John Adams in 1770. In 1834 he prepared the report of the city committee on the destruction of the Ursuline Convent, proposing an indemnity to the Roman Catholics for that outrage. He was for nearly fifteen years the superintendent of the Sabbath-school of Rev. Dr. Lowell's religious society, and has been one of the corporation of Harvard University from 1838. He was a decided friend of the Mercantile Library Association, and drafted its act of incorporation. He delivered for this institution, Feb. 26, 1845, at the Odeon, an address on the Relations of the Bar to Society, exhibiting the moral and political influence of the legal profession. Were Shakspeare now living, he would not include Mr. Loring in the malediction, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." In 1847 Mr. Loring gave an effective speech in the Senate-chamber in favor of the "air-line" railroad route to New York, in contest with Mr. Choate, when it was said of him that he was a cool, deliberate speaker, "with great concentrative power and logical force, while Mr. Choate is all excitement, wit, and imagination." He was the moderator of a political meeting in Faneuil Hall, Nov. 7,1845, when Webster and Winthrop argued on the Native American abstraction, and was president of the Suffolk Whig Committee at that period. In 1848 he was president of the Webster Whig Club, organized previous to the nomination of Zachary Taylor. His arguments for the Eastern Railroad, Boston and Woonsocket corporations, have been published. When the coalition Legislature of 1851 proposed to the people to call a convention for an alteration of the State constitution, which was decided by the people in the negative, at the election of State officers for the year ensuing,- Mr. Loring, who had been requested to speak at a public meeting in Faneuil Hall, Nov. 7th, of that period, having engagements beyond his control, declined the invitation, and addressed a letter to the county committee, from which we make extracts, as it is a fragment in political history worthy of record: "The only pretence of right to change the constitution in the manner proposed, which I have seen stated or heard of, is the assumed principle that the majority of the people have the right, at any time, and in any manner which may seem meet to them, to change their form |