[Speech of William M. Evarts at the first banquet of the New England
Society of the City of Brooklyn, December 21, 1880. Benjamin D.
Silliman, President of the Society, occupied the chair and introduced
Mr. Evarts to speak to the toast, "The Republic and its Outlook,"
saying: "He may well speak of the 'Outlook' who is on the watch-tower.
His brethren of the bar would prefer his remaining here but if he will
return to the competitions and collisions of the courts, he will be
welcomed as a brother, however unwelcome he may be as an adversary.
Meantime, that he may tell us of the outlook of the Republic, let us
listen to the Secretary of State, the Honorable William M. Evarts."]
MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY OF
BROOKLYN:--I have been accustomed to the City of New York, and have
been accustomed to the estimate which the people of New York make of the
people of Brooklyn. [Laughter.] I now come to make some trial of the
estimate which the people of Brooklyn put upon the people of New York.
[Applause.] In one distinct feature of the City of New York--I mean in
its population--and in one distinct feature of the City of Brooklyn--in
its population--you will see the secret of your vast superiority to us.
[Laughter.] In the City of New York there are more Irishmen than there
are in Dublin. [Applause.] In the City of Brooklyn there are more
Bostonians than there are in Boston. [Laughter.] We have always felt it
as a reproach, however little we relish the satire, that our New England
festivals--mean in New York--were little in keeping with the poverty and
frugality, and perhaps with the virtues, of our ancestors. But here I
see exactly such a company, and exactly such a feast, as in the first
years of the emigration, our ancestors would have sat down to.
[Laughter.] We honor our fathers with loud praises, you, by noble and
self-denying example. [Laughter.]
The Republic, which is the theme I am to speak to, is the Republic which
has grown from the seed that was planted in New England. It has gained
as the oak has gained in its growth, from the soil, and from the air; so
in the body and the strength, and the numbers and the wealth of the
Republic, it has gained by the accretions of other races, and the
incoming population from many shores. But the oak, nevertheless, is an
oak, because the seed which was planted was the seed of an oak. [Loud
applause.] Now, our Pilgrim Fathers seem to have been frustrated by
Providence a good deal, in many of their plans. They came with the
purpose, it is said, of occupying the pleasant seat of all this wealth
and prosperity which these great cities enjoy. But the point was to
plant them in New England, where they might grow, but would never stay.
One of the first letters which I received after taking charge of the
Department over which I preside was an extremely well-written one from a
western State, asking for a Consulate, and beginning in this wise: "I
have no excuse for intruding on your busy occupations except a
pardonable desire to live elsewhere." [Laughter.] Now that has been the
mainspring of New Englanders ever since they were seated by Providence
on its barren shores, a pardonable desire to live elsewhere. [Laughter.]
If they had been planted here--if they had been seated in the luxurious
climate and with the fertile soil of the South, they would have had no
desire, pardonable or otherwise, to live elsewhere. Though they might
have grown and lived they never would have proved the seed that was to
make the Great Republic as it now is. [Applause.]
There has been an idea that some part of the active, spreading and
increasing influence of the New England people as they moved about the
world, was from a meddlesome disposition to interfere with other people.
There is nothing in that. If there ever was a race that confined itself
strictly to minding its own business, it is the New Englanders; and they
mind it, with great results. The solution of this apparent discord is
simply this: that a New Englander considers everybody else's business
his business. [Loud laughter.] Now these two essential notions of
wishing to live elsewhere, and regarding everybody else's business as
our business, furnish the explanation of the processes by which this
Republic has come to be what it is--great in every form of power, of
strength, of wealth. This dissemination of New England men, and this
permeation through other people's business--of our control of it--have
made the nation what it is. [Applause.]
The statesmanship of the New England character, was the greatest
statesmanship of the world. It did not undertake to govern by authority,
or by power, but by those ideas and methods which were common to human
nature, and were to make a people great, and able to govern themselves.
[Applause.] The great elements of that State thus developed, were
education, industry and commerce. Education which, as Aristotle says,
"makes one do by choice what others do by force;" industry, which by
occupying and satisfying all the avidities of our nature, leaves to
government only the simple duty of curbing the vicious and punishing the
wicked. Commerce, that, by unfolding to the world the relations of
people with people, makes a system of foreign relations that is greater
and firmer, and more beneficent, than can be brought about by all the
powers of armies, or all the skill of cabinets. [Applause.]
This being, then, the Republic which has grown up from the seed thus
planted, that has established our relations among ourselves over our
wide heritage, and established our relations with the rest of the world,
what is its outlook to-day? What is it in the sense of material
prosperity? Who can measure it? Who can circumscribe it? Who can,
except by the simple rule of three, which never errs, determine its
progress? As the early settlement of Plymouth is to the United States of
America, as it now is, so is the United States of America to the future
possession and control of the world as they are to be. [Cheering.] This
is to be, not by armies of invasion, nor by navies that are to carry the
thunders of our powers. It is to be by our finding our place in the
moral government of the world, and by the example, and its magnificent
results, of a free people, governed by education, occupied by industry,
and maintaining our connection with the world by commerce. Thus we are
to disarm the armies of Europe, when they dare not disarm them
themselves. [Cheers.] We present to mankind the simple, yet the
wonderful evidence that a peasant in Germany, or France, or Ireland, or
England carrying a soldier on his back, cannot compete in their own
markets with a peasant in America who has no soldier on his back, though
there be 5,000 miles distance between their farms. [Loud applause.] No
doubt wonderful commotions are to take place in the great nations of
Europe, under this example. There is to be overturning, and overturning,
for which we have no responsibility, except, that by this great
instruction, worked out by Providence on this continent, there is to be
a remodelling of society in the ancient countries of the world.
[Applause.] Now you see in the magnitude of the designs of Providence,
how, planting the Puritans where they would desire to spread themselves
abroad, and filling a continent, whence the ideas that they develop
intelligibly to the whole world, are to distribute themselves over the
world, that this is the way in which the redemption of society at home
first, and abroad afterward, is to be accomplished by the power of the
wisdom of God.
And now for the outlook in other senses than that of material
prosperity, how is it? As difficult and critical junctures have been
reached in the development of the nation, and collisions, as when two
tides meet, have awakened our own fears, and tried our own courage, and
have raised the question whether these true ideas of our Republic were
to triumph or to be checked--has not the issue always shown us, that
faith in God, and faith in man, are a match for all the powers of evil
in our midst and elsewhere? [Cheering.] If there needed to be a march
to the sea, it was to be through the Southern country. [Loud applause.]
If there needed to be a surrender of one portion of this people to the
other, it was to be in and of Virginia, and not in and of New England.
[Applause.] And now what a wonderful spectacle is presented to our
nation, and to the world, when the direst calamities that ever afflict a
people--those of Civil War, had fallen upon us; when the marshalling of
armies, in a nation that tolerated no armies, was greater and more
powerful than the conflicts of the world had ever seen; when the
exhaustion of life, of treasure, of labor, had been such as was
unparalleled; yet, in the brief space of fifteen years, the nation is
more homogeneous, more bound together, more powerful and richer than it
ever could have been but for the triumph of the good over the weak
elements of this Republic. [Applause.]
And what does all this show but the essential idea that it is man--man
developed as an individual--man developed by thousands, by hundreds of
thousands, by millions, and tens of millions, these make the strength
and the wealth of a nation. These being left us, the nation, the
consumption as by a fire, attacking a city, or ravaging a whole
territory, or sweeping the coffers of the rich, or invading the cottages
of the poor--all this material wealth may easily be repaired. If the
nation remains with its moral and intellectual strength, brighter and
larger and more indestructible possessions than the first will soon
replace them. On the three great pillars of American society--equality
of right, community of interest, and reciprocity of duty, rests this
great Republic. Riches and honor and length of days will mark the nation
which rests on that imperishable basis. [Prolonged applause.]
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