[Speech of Ralph Waldo Emerson at the banquet given by the City of
Boston, August 21, 1868, to the Hon. Anson Burlingame, Envoy
Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary from China, and his
associates, Chih Ta-Jin and Sun Ta-Jin, of the Chinese Embassy to the
United States and the European powers. Mr. Emerson responded to the
toast: "The union of the farthest East and the farthest West."]
MR. MAYOR:--I suppose we are all of one opinion on this
remarkable occasion of meeting the Embassy sent from the oldest Empire
in the world to the youngest Republic. All share the surprise and
pleasure when the venerable oriental dynasty, hitherto a romantic legend
to most of us, suddenly steps into the fellowship of nations. This
auspicious event, considered in connection with the late innovations in
Japan, marks a new era, and is an irresistible result of the science
which has given us the power of steam and the electric telegraph. It is
the more welcome for the surprise. We had said of China, as the old
prophet said of Egypt, "Her strength is to sit still." Her people had
such elemental conservatism, that by some wonderful force of race and
national manners the wars and revolutions that occur in her annals
proved but momentary swells or surges on the Pacific Ocean of her
history, leaving no trace. But in its immovability this race has claims.
China is old not in time only, but in wisdom, which is gray hair to a
nation, or rather, truly seen, is eternal youth. As we know, China had
the magnet centuries before Europe; and block-printing and stereotype,
and lithography, and gunpowder, and vaccination, and canals; had
anticipated Linnæus's nomenclature of plants; had codes, journals,
clubs, hackney coaches, and, thirty centuries before New York, had the
custom of New-Year's calls of comity and reconciliation. I need not
mention its useful arts,--its pottery, indispensable to the world; the
luxury of silks; and its tea, the cordial of nations. But I must
remember that she had respectable remains of astronomic science, and
historic records of forgotten time, that have supplied important gaps in
the ancient history of the western nations.
Then she has philosophers who cannot be spared. Confucius has not yet
gathered all his fame. When Socrates heard that the oracle declared that
he was the wisest of men, he said, it must mean that other men held that
they were wise, but that he knew that he knew nothing. Confucius had
already affirmed this of himself: and what we call the Golden Rule of
Jesus, Confucius had uttered in the same terms, five hundred years
before. His morals, though addressed to a state of society utterly
unlike ours, we read with profit to-day. His rare perception appears in
his Golden Mean, his doctrine of Reciprocity, his unerring insight,
putting always the blame of our misfortunes on our selves; as when to
the governor who complained of thieves he said: "If you, sir, were not
covetous, though you should reward them for it, they would not steal."
His ideal of greatness predicts Marcus Antoninus. At the same time, he
abstained from paradox, and met the ingrained prudence of his nation by
saying always: "Bend one cubit to straighten eight."
China interests us at this moment in a point of politics. I am sure that
gentlemen around me bear in mind the bill which Hon. Mr. Jenckes, of
Rhode Island, has twice attempted to carry through Congress, requiring
that candidates for public offices shall first pass examination on their
literary qualifications for the same. Well, China has preceded us, as
well as England and France, in this essential correction of a reckless
usage; and the like high esteem of education appears in China in social
life, to whose distinctions it is made an indispensable passport.
It is gratifying to know that the advantages of the new intercourse
between the two countries are daily manifest on the Pacific coast. The
immigrants from Asia come in crowds. Their power of continuous labor,
their versatility in adapting themselves to new conditions, their
stoical economy, are unlooked-for virtues. They send back to their
friends, in China, money, new products of art, new tools, machinery, new
foods, etc., and are thus establishing a commerce without limit.
I cannot help adding, after what I have heard to-night, that I have read
in the journals a statement from an English source, that Sir Frederic
Bruce attributed to Mr. Burlingame the merit of the happy reform in the
relations of foreign governments to China. I am quite sure that I heard
from Mr. Burlingame in New York, in his last visit to America, that the
whole merit of it belonged to Sir Frederic Bruce. It appears that the
ambassadors were emulous in their magnanimity. It is certainly the best
guaranty for the interests of China and of humanity.