Many assessment insurance companies are not what they ought to be, but there are those worthy of confidence and patronage, whose managers are making the business a careful study, and bringing to its administration, honesty of purpose and large executive ability.

If the insuring public will learn to discriminate and place their risks in the best assessment companies, remembering that insurance in any good company must cost a reasonable amount, they need have no apprehension as to the result.

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THE HERO OF LAKE ERIE.

ORATION DELIVERED AT THE UNVEILING OF HIS STATUE AT NEWPORT, R.I., SEPT. 10, 1885.

By Hon. William P. Sheffield.

The battle of Lake Erie was fought seventy-two years ago to-day; and we have convened to dedicate to the public and to posterity a statue in memory of the Commander of the American fleet on that occasion,

Oliver Hazard Perry needs no monument of bronze or marble to commemorate his name, or to illustrate his glory.  History has taken these into its keeping and will preserve them for posterity, while genius in battle and heroic valor and unfaltering energy in the performance of high duty, receive the homage of the American people.

Wherever the patriotism of the citizen is the only reliance for the defence of the nation, the people owe it to themselves to show their appreciation of the conduct of those persons who have arisen among them that have been public benefactors, and have conferred distinction upon their localities.  They owe it to those who may come after them, that they so manifest their gratitude that it will inspire succeeding generations with a due sense of patriotism, and be an incentive to them to rise above narrow and sinister purposes to the plane of exalted virtues, and be stimulated to the performance of great actions.

Citizens of South Kingstown, the town in which he was born,—­of Newport, where he was reared, had his home in mature life, and is buried;—­together with the State and people at large, who have participated in his glory, have been impelled by this common sense of obligation to undertake the erection of a memorial statue of Commodore Perry, a task, the execution of which was committed to a native artist, and here is the artist’s finished work.

The statue is designed to represent Perry, not as he was superintending the cutting down of the forest for the construction of his ships; not as he was meditating the plan of the battle of Lake Erie or the order of its execution; not as he appeared the evening previous to the action advising his subordinate commanders in the words of Nelson, “No captain can do wrong if he places his ship alongside of that of an enemy;” nor as he was opening the battle flag which bore upon its folds the dying words of a gallant captain; not as he was leaving his wrecked ship with the deck strewed