[From the same]
General,
The house of representatives of the United States, impelled alike by its
own feelings, and by those of the whole American people, could not have
assigned to me a more gratifying duty than that of presenting to you
cordial congratulations upon the occasion of your recent arrival in the
United States, in compliance with the wishes of Congress, and to assure
you of the very high satisfaction which your presence affords on this
early theatre of your glory and renown. Although but few of the members
who compose this body shared with you in the war of our revolution, all
have, from impartial history, or from faithful tradition, a knowledge of
the perils, the sufferings, and the sacrifices, which you voluntarily
encountered, and the signal services, in America and in Europe, which
you performed for an infant, a distant, and an alien people; and all
feel and own the very great extent of the obligations under which you
have placed our country. But the relations in which you have ever stood
to the United States, interesting and important as they have been, do
not constitute the only motive of the respect and admiration which the
house of representatives entertain for you. Your consistency of
character, your uniform devotion to regulated liberty, in all the
vicissitudes of a long and arduous life, also commands its admiration.
During all the recent convulsions of Europe, amidst, as after the
dispersion of, every political storm, the people of the United States
have beheld you, true to your old principles, firm and erect, cheering
and animating with your well-known voice, the votaries of liberty, its
faithful and fearless champion, ready to shed the last drop of that
blood which here you so freely and nobly spilt, in the same holy cause.
The vain wish has been sometimes indulged, that Providence would allow
the patriot, after death, to return to his country, and to contemplate
the intermediate changes which had taken place; to view the forest
felled, the cities built, the mountains levelled, the canals cut, the
highways constructed, the progress of the arts, advancement of learning,
and the increase of population. General, your present visit to the
United States is a realization of the consoling object of that wish. You
are in the midst of posterity. Every where, you must have been struck
with the great changes, physical and moral, which have occurred since
you left us. Even this very city, bearing a venerated name, alike
endeared to you and to us, has since emerged from the forest which then
covered its site. In one respect you behold us unaltered, and this is in
the sentiment of continued devotion to liberty, and of ardent affection
and profound gratitude to your departed friend, the father of his
country, and to you, and to your illustrious associates in the field and
in the cabinet, for the multiplied blessings which surround us, and for
the very privilege of addressing you which I now exercise. This
sentiment, now fondly cherished by more than ten millions of people,
will be transmitted, with unabated vigor, down the tide of time, through
the countless millions who are destined to inhabit this continent, to
the latest posterity.[5]