new homes in distant lands. The Tyrians, skirting Northern Africa, stopt
at Carthage; Carthaginians dotted Spain and even the distant coasts of
Britain and Ireland; Greeks gemmed Italy and Sicily with art-loving
settlements; Rome carried multitudinous colonies with her conquering
eagles. Saxons, Danes, and Normans violently mingled with the original
Britons. And in modern times, Venice, Genoa, Portugal, Spain, France,
and England, all sent forth emigrants to people foreign shores. But in
these various expeditions, trade or war was the impelling motive. Too
often commerce and conquest moved hand in hand, and the colony was
incarnadined with blood.
On the day we celebrate, the sun for the first time in his course looked
down upon a different scene, begun and continued under a different
inspiration. A few conscientious Englishmen, in obedience to the monitor
within, and that they might be free to worship God according to their
own sense of duty, set sail for the unknown wilds of the North American
continent. After a voyage of sixty-four days in the ship _Mayflower_,
with Liberty at the prow and Conscience at the helm, they sighted the
white sandbanks of Cape Cod, and soon thereafter in the small cabin
framed that brief compact, forever memorable, which is the first written
constitution of government in human history, and the very corner-stone
of the American Republic; and then these Pilgrims landed.
This compact was not only foremost in time, it was also august in
character, and worthy of perpetual example. Never before had the object
of the "civil body public" been announced as "to enact, constitute, and
frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and
offices from time to time as shall be thought most meet and convenient
for the general good of the colony." How lofty! how true! Undoubtedly,
these were the grandest words of government with the largest promise of
any at that time uttered.
If more were needed to illustrate the new epoch, it would be found in
the parting words of the venerable pastor, John Robinson, addrest to the
Pilgrims, as they were about to sail from Delfshaven--words often
quoted, yet never enough. How sweetly and beautifully he says: "And if
God should reveal anything to you by any other instrument of his, be as
ready to receive it as ever you were to receive any truth by my
ministry; but I am confident that the Lord hath more light and truth yet
to break forth out of his holy word." And then how justly the good
preacher rebukes those who close their souls to truth! "The Lutherans,
for example, can not be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw, and whatever
part of God's will he hath further imparted to Calvin, they will rather
die than embrace, and so the Calvinists stick where he left them. This
is a misery much to be lamented, for tho they were precious, shining
lights in their times, God hath not revealed his whole will to them."
Beyond the merited rebuke, here is a plain recognition of the law of
human progress little discerned at the time, which teaches the sure
advance of the human family, and opens the vista of the
ever-broadening, never-ending future on earth.
Our Pilgrims were few and poor. The whole outfit of this historic
voyage, including £1,700 of trading stock, was only £2,400, and how
little was required for their succor appears in the experience of the
soldier Captain Miles Standish, who, being sent to England for
assistance--not military, but financial--(God save the mark!) succeeded
in borrowing--how much do you suppose?--£150 sterling. Something in the
way of help; and the historian adds, "tho at fifty per cent. interest."
So much for a valiant soldier on a financial expedition. A later agent,
Allerton, was able to borrow for the colony £200 at a reduced interest
of thirty per cent. Plainly, the money-sharks of our day may trace an
undoubted pedigree to these London merchants. But I know not if any son
of New England, opprest by exorbitant interest, will be consoled by the
thought that the Pilgrims paid the same.
And yet this small people--so obscure and outcast in condition--so
slender in numbers and in means--so entirely unknown to the proud and
great--so absolutely without name in contemporary records--whose
departure from the Old World took little more than the breath of their
bodies--are now illustrious beyond the lot of men; and the _Mayflower_
is immortal beyond the Grecian _Argo_, or the stately ship of any
victorious admiral. Tho this was little foreseen in their day, it is
plain now how it has come to pass. The highest greatness surviving time
and storm is that which proceeds from the soul of man. Monarchs and
cabinets, generals and admirals, with the pomp of courts and the
circumstance of war, in the gradual lapse of time disappear from sight;
but the pioneers of truth, tho poor and lowly, especially those whose
example elevates human nature and teaches the rights of man, so that
government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not
perish from the earth, such harbingers can never be forgotten, and their
renown spreads co-extensive with the cause they served.
I know not if any whom I now have the honor of addressing have thought
to recall the great in rank and power filling the gaze of the world as
the _Mayflower_ with her company fared forth on their adventurous
voyage. The foolish James was yet on the English throne, glorying that
he had "peppered the Puritans." The morose Louis XIII, through whom
Richelieu ruled, was King of France. The imbecile Philip III swayed
Spain and the Indies. The persecuting Ferdinand the Second, tormentor of
Protestants, was Emperor of Germany. Paul V, of the House of Borghese,
was Pope of Rome. In the same princely company and all contemporaries
were Christian IV, King of Denmark, and his son Christian, Prince of
Norway; Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden; Sigmund the Third, King of
Poland; Frederick, King of Bohemia, with his wife, the unhappy Elizabeth
of England, progenitor of the House of Hanover; George William, Margrave
of Brandenburg, and ancestor of the Prussian house that has given an
emperor to Germany; Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria; Maurice, landgrave of
Hesse; Christian, Duke of Brunswick and Lunenburg; John Frederick, Duke
of Würtemberg and Teck; John, Count of Nassau; Henry, Duke of Lorraine;
Isabella, Infanta of Spain and ruler of the Low Countries; Maurice,
fourth Prince of Orange; Charles Emanuel, Duke of Savoy and ancestor of
the King of United Italy; Cosmo dé Medici, third Grand Duke of Florence;
Antonio Priuli, ninety-third Doge of Venice, just after the terrible
tragedy commemorated on the English stage as "Venice Preserved";
Bethlehem Gabor, Prince of Unitarian Transylvania, and elected King of
Hungary, with the countenance of an African; and the Sultan Mustapha, of
Constantinople, twentieth ruler of the Turks.
Such at that time were the crowned sovereigns of Europe, whose names
were mentioned always with awe, and whose countenances are handed down
by art, so that at this day they are visible to the curious as if they
walked these streets. Mark now the contrast. There was no artist for
our forefathers, nor are their countenances now known to men; but more
than any powerful contemporaries at whose tread the earth trembled is
their memory sacred. Pope, emperor, king, sultan, grand-duke, duke,
doge, margrave, landgrave, count--what are they all by the side of the
humble company that landed on Plymouth Rock? Theirs indeed, were the
ensigns of worldly power, but our Pilgrims had in themselves that inborn
virtue which was more than all else besides, and their landing was an
epoch.
Who in the imposing troop of worldly grandeur is now remembered but with
indifference or contempt? If I except Gustavus Adolphus, it is because
he revealed a superior character. Confront the _Mayflower_ and the
Pilgrims with the potentates who occupied such space in the world. The
former are ascending into the firmament, there to shine forever, while
the latter have been long dropping into the darkness of oblivion, to be
brought forth only to point a moral or illustrate the fame of
contemporaries whom they regarded not. Do I err in supposing this an
illustration of the supremacy which belongs to the triumphs of the moral
nature? At first impeded or postponed, they at last prevail. Theirs is a
brightness which, breaking through all clouds, will shine forth with
ever-increasing splendor. I have often thought that if I were a
preacher, if I had the honor to occupy the pulpit so grandly filled by
my friend near me, one of my sermons should be from the text, "A little
leaven shall leaven the whole lump." Nor do I know a better illustration
of these words than the influence exerted by our Pilgrims. That small
band, with the lesson of self-sacrifice, of just and equal laws, of the
government of a majority, of unshrinking loyalty to principle, is now
leavening this whole continent, and in the fulness of time will leaven
the world. By their example, republican institutions have been
commended, and in proportion as we imitate them will these institutions
be assured.
Liberty, which we so much covet, is not a solitary plant. Always by its
side is justice. But Justice is nothing but right applied to human
affairs. Do not forget, I entreat you, that with the highest morality is
the highest liberty. A great poet, in one of his inspired sonnets,
speaking of his priceless possession, has said, "But who loves that must
first be wise and good." Therefore do Pilgrims in their beautiful
example teach liberty, teach republican institutions, as at an earlier
day, Socrates and Plato, in their lessons of wisdom, taught liberty and
helped the idea of the republic. If republican government has thus far
failed in any experiment, as, perhaps, somewhere in Spanish America, it
is because these lessons have been wanting. There have been no Pilgrims
to teach the moral law.
Mr. President, with these thoughts, which I imperfectly express, I
confess my obligations to the forefathers of New England, and offer to
them the homage of a grateful heart. But not in thanksgiving only would
I celebrate their memory. I would if I could make their example a
universal lesson, and stamp it upon the land. The conscience which
directed them should be the guide for our public councils. The just and
equal laws which they required should be ordained by us, and the
hospitality to truth which was their rule should be ours. Nor would I
forget their courage and stedfastness. Had they turned back or wavered,
I know not what would have been the record of this continent, but I see
clearly that a great example would have been lost. Had Columbus yielded
to his mutinous crew and returned to Spain without his great discovery;
had Washington shrunk away disheartened by British power and the snows
of New Jersey, these great instances would have been wanting for the
encouragement of men. But our Pilgrims belong to the same heroic
company, and their example is not less precious.
Only a short time after the landing on Plymouth Rock, the great
republican poet, John Milton, wrote his "Comus," so wonderful for beauty
and truth. His nature was more refined than that of the Pilgrims, and
yet it requires little effort of imagination to catch from one of them,
or at least from their beloved pastor, the exquisite, almost angelic
words at the close--
"Mortals, who would follow me,
Love Virtue; she alone is free;
She can teach ye how to climb
Higher than the sphery chime.
Or if Virtue feeble were,
Heaven itself would stoop to her."
THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING RACE
BY GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Chamber of Commerce:--I rise with some
trepidation to respond to this toast, because we have been assured upon
high authority, altho after what we have heard this evening we can not
believe it, that the English-speaking race speaks altogether too much.
Our eloquent Minister in England recently congratulated the Mechanics'
Institute at Nottingham that it had abolished its debating club, and
said that he gladly anticipated the establishment in all great
institutions of education of a professorship of Silence. I confess that
the proposal never seemed to me so timely and wise as at this moment.
If I had only taken a high degree in silence, Mr. Chairman, how
cordially you would congratulate me and this cheerful company!
When Mr. Phelps proceeded to say that Americans are not allowed to talk
all the time, and that our orators are turned loose upon the public only
once in four years, I was lost in admiration of the boundless sweep of
his imagination. But when he said that the result of this quadrennial
outburst was to make the country grateful that it did not come oftener,
I saw that his case required heroic treatment, and must be turned over
to Dr. Depew.
I am sure, at least, that when our distinguished friends from England
return to their native land they will hasten to besiege His Excellency
to tell them where the Americans are kept who speak only once in four
years. And if they will but remain through the winter, they will
discover that if our orators are turned loose upon the public only once
in four years, they are turned loose in private all the rest of the
time; and if the experience and observation of our guests are as
fortunate as mine, they will learn that there are certain orators of
both branches of the English-speaking race--not one hundred miles from
me at this moment--whom the public would gladly hear, if they were
turned loose upon it every four hours.
Wendell Phillips used to say that as soon as a Yankee baby could sit up
in his cradle, he called the nursery to order and proceeded to address
the house. If this Parliamentary instinct is irrepressible, if all the
year round we are listening to orations, speeches, lectures, sermons,
and the incessant, if not always soothing, oratory of the press, to
which His Honor the Mayor is understood to be a closely attentive
listener, we have at least the consolation of knowing that the talking
countries are the free countries, and that the English-speaking races
are the invincible legions of liberty.
The sentiment which you have read, Mr. Chairman, describes in a few
comprehensive words the historic characteristics of the English-speaking
race. That it is the founder of commonwealths, let the miracle of empire
which we have wrought upon the Western Continent attest:--its advance
from the seaboard with the rifle and the ax, the plow and the shuttle,
the teapot and the Bible, the rocking-chair and the spelling-book, the
bath-tub and a free constitution, sweeping across the Alleghanies,
over-spreading the prairies and pushing on until the dash of the
Atlantic in their ears dies in the murmur of the Pacific; and as the
wonderful Goddess of the old mythology touched earth, flowers and fruits
answered her footfall, so in the long trail of this advancing race, it
has left clusters of happy States, teeming with a population, man by
man, more intelligent and prosperous than ever before the sun shone
upon, and each remoter camp of that triumphal march is but a further
outpost of English-speaking civilization.
That it is the pioneer of progress, is written all over the globe to the
utmost islands of the sea, and upon every page of the history of civil
and religious and commercial freedom. Every factory that hums with
marvelous machinery, every railway and steamer, every telegraph and
telephone, the changed systems of agriculture, the endless and
universal throb and heat of magical invention, are, in their larger
part, but the expression of the genius of the race that with Watts drew
from the airiest vapor the mightiest of motive powers, with Franklin
leashed the lightning, and with Morse outfabled fairy lore. The race
that extorted from kings the charter of its political rights has won,
from the princes and powers of the air, the earth and the water, the
secret of supreme dominion, the illimitable franchise of beneficent
progress.
That it is the stubborn defender of liberty, let our own annals answer,
for America sprang from the defense of English liberty in English
colonies, by men of English blood, who still proudly speak the English
language, cherish English traditions, and share of right, and as their
own, the ancient glory of England.
No English-speaking people could, if it would, escape its distinctive
name, and, since Greece and Judea, no name has the same worth and honor
among men. We Americans may flout England a hundred times. We may oppose
her opinions with reason, we may think her views unsound, her policy
unwise; but from what country would the most American of Americans
prefer to have derived the characteristic impulse of American
development and civilization rather than England? What language would we
rather speak than the tongue of Shakespeare and Hampden, of the Pilgrims
and King James's version? What yachts, as a tribute to ourselves upon
their own element, would we rather outsail than English yachts? In what
national life, modes of thought, standards and estimates of character
and achievement do we find our own so perfectly reflected as in the
English House of Commons, in English counting-rooms and workshops, and
in English homes?
No doubt the original stock has been essentially modified in the younger
branch. The American, as he looks across the sea, to what Hawthorne
happily called "Our old home," and contemplates himself, is disposed to
murmur: "Out of the eater shall come forth meat and out of the strength
shall come forth sweetness." He left England a Puritan iconoclast; he
has developed in Church and State into a constitutional reformer. He
came hither a knotted club; he has been transformed into a Damascus
blade. He seized and tamed a continent with a hand of iron; he civilizes
and controls it with a touch of velvet. No music is so sweet to his ear
as the sound of the common-school bell; no principle so dear to his
heart as the equal rights of all men; no vision so entrancing to his
hope as those rights universally secured.
This is the Yankee; this is the younger branch; but a branch of no base
or brittle fiber, but of the tough old English oak, which has weathered
triumphantly the tempest of a thousand years. It is a noble contention
whether the younger or the elder branch has further advanced the
frontiers of liberty, but it is unquestionable that liberty, as we
understand it on both sides of the sea, is an English tradition; we
inherit it, we possess it, we transmit it, under forms peculiar to the
English race. It is as Mr. Chamberlain has said, liberty under law. It
is liberty, not license; civilization, not barbarism; it is liberty clad
in the celestial robe of law, because law is the only authoritative
expression of the will of the people, representative government, trial
by jury, habeas corpus, freedom of speech and of the press--why, Mr.
Chairman, they are the family heirlooms, the family diamonds, and they
go wherever in the wide world go the family name and language and
tradition.
Sir, with all my heart, and, I am sure, with the hearty assent of this
great and representative company, I respond to the final aspiration of
your toast: "May this great family in all its branches ever work
together for the world's welfare." Certainly its division and alienation
would be the world's misfortune. That England and America have had sharp
and angry quarrels is undeniable. Party spirit in this country,
recalling old animosity, has always stigmatized with the English name
whatever it opposed. Every difference, every misunderstanding with
England has been ignobly turned to party account; but the two great
branches of this common race have come of age, and wherever they may
encounter a serious difficulty which must be accommodated they have but
to thrust demagogues aside, to recall the sublime words of Abraham
Lincoln, "With malice toward none, with charity for all," and in that
spirit, and in the spirit and the emotion represented in this country by
the gentlemen upon my right and my left, I make bold to say to Mr.
Chamberlain, in your name, there can be no misunderstanding which may
not be honorably and happily adjusted. For to our race, gentlemen of
both countries, is committed not only the defense, but the illustration
of constitutional liberty.
The question is not what we did a century ago, or in the beginning of
this century, with the lights that shone around us, but what is our duty
to-day, in the light which is given to us of popular government under
the republican form in this country, and the parliamentary form in
England.
If a sensitive public conscience, if general intelligence should not
fail to secure us from unnatural conflict, then liberty will not be
justified of her children, and the glory of the English-speaking race
will decline. I do not believe it. I believe that it is constantly
increasing, and that the colossal power which slumbers in the arms of a
kindred people will henceforth be invoked, not to drive them further
asunder, but to weld them more indissolubly together in the defense of
liberty under law.
WOMAN
BY HORACE PORTER
Mr. President and Gentlemen:--When this toast was proposed to me, I
insisted that it ought to be responded to by a bachelor, by some one who
is known as a ladies' man; but in these days of female proprietorship it
is supposed that a married person is more essentially a ladies' man than
anybody else, and it was thought that only one who had the courage to
address a lady could have the courage, under these circumstances, to
address the New England Society.
The toast, I see, is not in its usual order to-night. At public dinners
this toast is habitually placed last on the list. It seems to be a
benevolent provision of the Committee on Toasts in order to give man in
replying to Woman one chance at least in life of having the last word.
At the New England dinners, unfortunately the most fruitful subject of
remark regarding woman is not so much her appearance as her
disappearance. I know that this was remedied a few years ago, when this
grand annual gastronomic high carnival was held in the Metropolitan
Concert Hall. There, ladies were introduced into the galleries to grace
the scene by their presence; and I am sure the experiment was
sufficiently encouraging to warrant repetition, for it was beautiful to
see the descendants of the Pilgrims sitting with eyes upturned in true
Puritanic sanctity it was encouraging to see the sons of those pious
sires devoting themselves, at least for one night, to setting their
affections upon "things above."
Woman's first home was in the Garden of Eden. There man first married
woman. Strange that the incident should have suggested to Milton the
"Paradise Lost." Man was placed in a profound sleep, a rib was taken
from his side, a woman was created from it, and she became his wife.
Evil-minded persons constantly tell us that thus man's first sleep
became his last repose. But if woman be given at times to that
contrariety of thought and perversity of mind which sometimes passeth
our understanding, it must be recollected in her favor that she was
created out of the crookedest part of man.
The Rabbins have a different theory regarding creation. They go back to
the time when we were all monkeys. They insist that man was originally
created with a kind of Darwinian tail, and that in the process of
evolution this caudal appendage was removed and created into woman.
This might better account for those Caudle lectures which woman is in
the habit of delivering, and some color is given to this theory, from
the fact that husbands even down to the present day seem to inherit a
general disposition to leave their wives behind.