A SPEECH DELIVERED ON THE 22d OF DECEMBER, 1843, AT THE PUBLIC DINNER OF
THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY OF NEW YORK, IN COMMEMORATION OF THE LANDING OF
THE PILGRIMS.
[The great Pilgrim festival was celebrated on the 22d of December, 1843,
by the New England Society of New York, with uncommon spirit and
success. A commemorative oration was delivered in the morning by Hon.
Rufus Choate, in a style of eloquence rarely equalled. The public dinner
of the Society, at the Astor House, at which M.H. Grinnell, Esq.
presided, was attended by a very large company, composed of the members
of the Society and their invited guests. Several appropriate toasts
having been given and responded to by the distinguished individuals
present, George Griswold, Esq. rose to offer one in honor of Mr.
Webster. After a few remarks complimentary to that gentleman, in
reference to his services in refuting the doctrine of nullification and
in averting the danger of war by the treaty of Washington, Mr. Griswold
gave the following toast:--
"DANIEL WEBSTER,--the gift of New England to his country, his whole
country, and nothing but his country."
This was received with great applause, and on rising to respond to it
Mr. Webster was greeted with nine enthusiastic cheers, and the most
hearty and prolonged approbation. When silence was restored, he spoke as
follows.]
MR. PRESIDENT:--I have a grateful duty to perform in acknowledging the
kindness of the sentiment thus expressed towards me. And yet I must say,
Gentlemen, that I rise upon this occasion under a consciousness that I
may probably disappoint highly raised, too highly raised expectations.
In the scenes of this evening, and in the scene of this day, my part is
an humble one. I can enter into no competition with the fresher geniuses
of those more eloquent gentlemen, learned and reverend, who have
addressed this Society. I may perform, however, the humbler, but
sometimes useful, duty of contrast, by adding the dark ground of the
picture, which shall serve to bring out the more brilliant colors.
I must receive, Gentlemen, the sentiment proposed by the worthy and
distinguished citizen of New York before me, as intended to convey the
idea that, as a citizen of New England, as a son, a child, a _creation_
of New England, I may be yet supposed to entertain, in some degree, that
enlarged view of my duty as a citizen of the United States and as a
public man, which may, in some small measure, commend me to the regard
of the whole country. While I am free to confess, Gentlemen, that there
is no compliment of which I am more desirous to be thought worthy, I
will add, that a compliment of that kind could have proceeded from no
source more agreeable to my own feelings than from the gentleman who has
proposed it,--an eminent merchant, the member of a body of eminent
merchants, known throughout the world for their intelligence and
enterprise. I the more especially feel this, Gentlemen, because, whether
I view the present state of things or recur to the history of the past,
I can in neither case be ignorant how much that profession, and its
distinguished members, from an early day of our history, have
contributed to make the country what it is, and the government what it
is.
Gentlemen, the free nature of our institutions, and the popular form of
those governments which have come down to us from the Rock of Plymouth,
give scope to intelligence, to talent, enterprise, and public spirit,
from all classes making up the great body of the community. And the
country has received benefit in all its history and in all its
exigencies, of the most eminent and striking character, from persons of
the class to which my friend before me belongs. Who will ever forget
that the first name signed to our ever-memorable and ever-glorious
Declaration of Independence is the name of John Hancock, a merchant of
Boston? Who will ever forget that, in the most disastrous days of the
Revolution, when the treasury of the country was bankrupt, with unpaid
navies and starving armies, it was a merchant,--Robert Morris of
Philadelphia,--who, by a noble sacrifice of his own fortune, as well as
by the exercise of his great financial abilities, sustained and
supported the wise men of the country in council, and the brave men of
the country in the field of battle? Nor are there wanting more recent
instances. I have the pleasure to see near me, and near my friend who
proposed this sentiment, the son of an eminent merchant of New England
(Mr. Goodhue), an early member of the Senate of the United States,
always consulted, always respected, in whatever belonged to the duty and
the means of putting in operation the financial and commercial system of
the country; and this mention of the father of my friend brings to my
mind the memory of his great colleague, the early associate of Hamilton
and of Ames, trusted and beloved by Washington, consulted on all
occasions connected with the administration of the finances, the
establishment of the treasury department, the imposition of the first
rates of duty, and with every thing that belonged to the commercial
system of the United States,--George Cabot, of Massachusetts.
I will take this occasion to say, Gentlemen, that there is no truth
better developed and established in the history of the United States,
from the formation of the Constitution to the present time, than
this,--that the mercantile classes, the great commercial masses of the
country, whose affairs connect them strongly with every State in the
Union and with all the nations of the earth, whose business and
profession give a sort of nationality to their character,--that no class
of men among us, from the beginning, have shown a stronger and firmer
devotion to whatsoever has been designed, or to whatever has tended, to
preserve the union of these States and the stability of the free
government under which we live. The Constitution of the United States,
in regard to the various municipal regulations and local interests, has
left the States individual, disconnected, isolated. It has left them
their own codes of criminal law; it has left them their own system of
municipal regulations. But there was one great interest, one great
concern, which, from the very nature of the case, was no longer to be
left under the regulations of the then thirteen, afterwards twenty, and
now twenty-six States, but was committed, necessarily committed, to the
care, the protection, and the regulation of one government; and this was
that great unit, as it has been called, the commerce of the United
States. There is no commerce of New York, no commerce of Massachusetts,
none of Georgia, none of Alabama or Louisiana. All and singular, in the
aggregate and in all its parts, is the commerce of the United States,
regulated at home by a uniform system of laws under the authority of the
general government, and protected abroad under the flag of our
government, the glorious _E Pluribus Unum_, and guarded, if need be, by
the power of the general government all over the world. There is,
therefore, Gentlemen, nothing more cementing, nothing that makes us more
cohesive, nothing that more repels all tendencies to separation and
dismemberment, than this great, this common, I may say this overwhelming
interest of one commerce, one general system of trade and navigation,
one everywhere and with every nation of the globe. There is no flag of
any particular American State seen in the Pacific seas, or in the
Baltic, or in the Indian Ocean. Who knows, or who hears, there of your
proud State, or of my proud State? Who knows, or who hears, of any
thing, at the extremest north or south, or at the antipodes,--in the
remotest regions of the Eastern or Western Sea,--who ever hears, or
knows, of any thing but an American ship, or of any American enterprise
of a commercial character that does not bear the impression of the
American Union with it?
It would be a presumption of which I cannot be guilty, Gentlemen, for me
to imagine for a moment, that, among the gifts which New England has
made to our common country, I am any thing more than one of the most
inconsiderable. I readily bring to mind the great men, not only with
whom I have met, but those of the generation before me, who now sleep
with their fathers, distinguished in the Revolution, distinguished in
the formation of the Constitution and in the early administration of the
government, always and everywhere distinguished; and I shrink in just
and conscious humiliation before their established character and
established renown; and all that I venture to say, and all that I
venture to hope may be thought true, in the sentiment proposed, is,
that, so far as mind and purpose, so far as intention and will, are
concerned, I may be found among those who are capable of embracing the
whole country of which they are members in a proper, comprehensive, and
patriotic regard. We all know that the objects which are nearest are the
objects which are dearest; family affections, neighborhood affections,
social relations, these in truth are nearest and dearest to us all; but
whosoever shall be able rightly to adjust the graduation of his
affections, and to love his friends and his neighbors, and his country,
as he ought to love them, merits the commendation pronounced by the
philosophic poet upon him
"Qui didicit patriae quid debeat, et quid amicis."
Gentlemen, it has been my fortune, in the little part which I have acted
in public life, for good or for evil to the community, to be connected
entirely with that government which, within the limits of constitutional
power, exercises jurisdiction over all the States and all the people. My
friend at the end of the table on my left has spoken pleasantly to us
to-night of the reputed miracles of tutelar saints. In a sober sense, in
a sense of deep conviction, I say that the emergence of this country
from British domination, and its union under its present form of
government beneath the general Constitution of the country, if not a
miracle, is, I do not say the most, but one of the most fortunate, the
most admirable, the most auspicious occurrences, which have ever fallen
to the lot of man. Circumstances have wrought out for us a state of
things which, in other times and other regions, philosophy has dreamed
of, and theory has proposed, and speculation has suggested, but which
man has never been able to accomplish. I mean the government of a great
nation over a vastly extended portion of the surface of the earth, _by
means of local institutions for local purposes, and general institutions
for general purposes_. I know of nothing in the history of the world,
notwithstanding the great league of Grecian states, notwithstanding the
success of the Roman system, (and certainly there is no exception to the
remark in modern history,)--I know of nothing so suitable on the whole
for the great interests of a great people spread over a large portion of
the globe, as the provision of local legislation for local and municipal
purposes, with, not a confederacy, nor a loose binding together of
separate parts, but a limited, positive general government for positive
general purposes, over the whole. We may derive eminent proofs of this
truth from the past and the present. What see we to-day in the
agitations on the other side of the Atlantic? I speak of them, of
course, without expressing any opinion on questions of politics in a
foreign country; but I speak of them as an occurrence which shows the
great expediency, the utility, I may say the necessity, of local
legislation. If, in a country on the other side of the water (Ireland),
there be some who desire a severance of one part of the empire from
another, under a proposition of repeal, there are others who propose a
continuance of the existing relation under a federative system: and
what is this? No more, and no less, than an approximation to that system
under which we live, which for local, municipal purposes shall have a
local legislature, and for general purposes a general legislature.
This becomes the more important when we consider that the United States
stretch over so many degrees of latitude,--that they embrace such a
variety of climate,--that various conditions and relations of society
naturally call for different laws and regulations. Let me ask whether
the legislature of New York could wisely pass laws for the government of
Louisiana, or whether the legislature of Louisiana could wisely pass
laws for Pennsylvania or New York? Everybody will say, "No." And yet the
interests of New York and Pennsylvania and Louisiana, in whatever
concerns their relations between themselves and their general relations
with all the states of the world, are found to be perfectly well
provided for, and adjusted with perfect congruity, by committing these
general interests to one common government, the result of popular
general elections among them all.
I confess, Gentlemen, that having been, as I have said, in my humble
career in public life, employed in that portion of the public service
which is connected with the general government, I have contemplated, as
the great object of every proceeding, not only the particular benefit of
the moment, or the exigency of the occasion, but the preservation of
this system; for I do consider it so much the result of circumstances,
and that so much of it is due to fortunate concurrence, as well as to
the sagacity of the great men acting upon those occasions,--that it is
an experiment of such remarkable and renowned success,--that he is a
fool or a madman who would wish to try that experiment a second time. I
see to-day, and we all see, that the descendants of the Puritans who
landed upon the Rock of Plymouth; the followers of Raleigh, who settled
Virginia and North Carolina; he who lives where the truncheon of empire,
so to speak, was borne by Smith; the inhabitants of Georgia; he who
settled under the auspices of France at the mouth of the Mississippi;
the Swede on the Delaware, the Quaker of Pennsylvania,--all find, at
this day, their common interest, their common protection, their common
_glory_, under the united government, which leaves them all,
nevertheless, in the administration of their own municipal and local
affairs, to be Frenchmen, or Swedes, or Quakers, or whatever they
choose. And when one considers that this system of government, I will
not say has produced, because God and nature and circumstances have had
an agency in it,--but when it is considered that this system has not
prevented, but has rather encouraged, the growth of the people of this
country from three millions, on the glorious 4th of July, 1776, to
seventeen millions now, who is there that will say, upon this
hemisphere,--nay, who is there that will stand up in any hemisphere, who
is there in any part of the world, that will say that the great
experiment of a united republic has _failed_ in America? And yet I know,
Gentlemen, I feel, that this united system is held together by strong
tendencies to union, at the same time that it is kept from too much
leaning toward consolidation by a strong tendency in the several States
to support each its own power and consideration. In the physical world
it is said, that
"All nature's difference keeps all nature's peace,"
and there is in the political world this same harmonious difference,
this regular play of the positive and negative powers, (if I may so
say,) which, at least for one glorious half-century, has kept us as we
have been kept, and made us what we are.
But, Gentlemen, I must not allow myself to pursue this topic. It is a
sentiment so commonly repeated by me upon all public occasions, and upon
all private occasions, and everywhere, that I forbear to dwell upon it
now. It is the union of these States, it is the system of government
under which we live, beneath the Constitution of the United States,
happily framed, wisely adopted, successfully administered for fifty
years,--it is mainly this, I say, that gives us power at home and credit
abroad. And, for one, I never stop to consider the power or wealth or
greatness of a State. I tell you, Mr. Chairman, I care nothing for your
Empire State as such. Delaware and Rhode Island are as high in my regard
as New York. In population, in power, in the government over us, you
have a greater share. You would have the same share if you were divided
into forty States. It is not, therefore, as a State sovereignty, it is
only because New York is a vast portion of the whole American people,
that I regard this State, as I always shall regard her, as respectable
and honorable. But among State sovereignties there is no preference;
there is nothing high and nothing low; every State is independent and
every State is equal. If we depart from this great principle, then are
we no longer one people; but we are thrown back again upon the
Confederation, and upon that state of things in which the inequality of
the States produced all the evils which befell us in times past, and a
thousand ill-adjusted and jarring interests.
Mr. President, I wish, then, without pursuing these thoughts, without
especially attempting to produce any fervid impression by dwelling upon
them, to take this occasion to answer my friend who has proposed the
sentiment, and to respond to it by saying, that whoever would serve his
country in this our day, with whatever degree of talent, great or small,
it may have pleased the Almighty Power to give him, he cannot serve it,
he will not serve it, unless he be able, at least, to extend his
political designs, purposes, and objects, till they shall comprehend the
whole country of which he is a servant.
Sir, I must say a word in connection with that event which we have
assembled to commemorate. It has seemed fit to the dwellers in New York,
New-Englanders by birth or descent, to form this society. They have
formed it for the relief of the poor and distressed, and for the purpose
of commemorating annually the great event of the settlement of the
country from which they spring. It would be great presumption in me to
go back to the scene of that settlement, or to attempt to exhibit it in
any colors, after the exhibition made to-day; yet it is an event that in
all time since, and in all time to come, and more in times to come than
in times past, must stand out in great and striking characteristics to
the admiration of the world. The sun's return to his winter solstice, in
1620, is the epoch from which he dates his first acquaintance with the
small people, now one of the happiest, and destined to be one of the
greatest, that his rays fall upon; and his annual visitation, from that
day to this, to our frozen region, has enabled him to see that progress,
_progress_, was the characteristic of that small people. He has seen
them from a handful, that one of his beams coming through a key-hole
might illuminate, spread over a hemisphere which he cannot enlighten
under the slightest eclipse. Nor, though this globe should revolve round
him for tens of hundreds of thousands of years, will he see such another
incipient colonization upon any part of this attendant upon his mighty
orb. What else he may see in those other planets which revolve around
him we cannot tell, at least until we have tried the fifty-foot
telescope which Lord Rosse is preparing for that purpose.
There is not, Gentlemen, and we may as well admit it, in any history of
the past, another epoch from which so many great events have taken a
turn; events which, while important to us, are equally important to the
country from whence we came. The settlement of Plymouth--concurring, I
always wish to be understood, with that of Virginia--was the settlement
of New England by colonies of Old England. Now, Gentlemen, take these
two ideas and run out the thoughts suggested by both. What has been, and
what is to be, Old England? What has been, what is, and what may be, in
the providence of God, _New_ England, with her neighbors and associates?
I would not dwell, Gentlemen, with any particular emphasis upon the
sentiment, which I nevertheless entertain, with respect to the great
diversity in the races of men. I do not know how far in that respect I
might not encroach on those mysteries of Providence which, while I
adore, I may not comprehend; but it does seem to me to be very
remarkable, that we may go back to the time when New England, or those
who founded it, were _subtracted_ from Old England; and both Old England
and New England went on, nevertheless, in their mighty career of
progress and power.
Let me begin with New England for a moment. What has resulted,
embracing, as I say, the nearly contemporaneous settlement of
Virginia,--what has resulted from the planting upon this continent of
two or three slender colonies from the mother country? Gentlemen, the
great epitaph commemorative of the character and the worth, the
discoveries and glory, of Columbus, was, that he had _given a new world
to the crowns of Castile and Aragon_. Gentlemen, this is a great
mistake. It does not come up at all to the great merits of Columbus. He
gave the territory of the southern hemisphere to the crowns of Castile
and Aragon; but as a place for the plantation of colonies, as a place
for the habitation of men, as a place to which laws and religion, and
manners and science, were to be transferred, as a place in which the
creatures of God should multiply and fill the earth, under friendly
skies and with religious hearts, he gave it to the whole world, he gave
it to universal man! From this seminal principle, and from a handful, a
hundred saints, blessed of God and ever honored of men, landed on the
shores of Plymouth and elsewhere along the coast, united, as I have said
already more than once, in the process of time, with the settlement at
Jamestown, has sprung this great people of which we are a portion.
I do not reckon myself among quite the oldest of the land, and yet it so
happens that very recently I recurred to an exulting speech or oration
of my own, in which I spoke of my country as consisting of nine millions
of people. I could hardly persuade myself that within the short time
which had elapsed since that epoch our population had doubled; and that
at the present moment there does exist most unquestionably as great a
probability of its continued progress, in the same ratio, as has ever
existed in any previous time. I do not know whose imagination is fertile
enough, I do not know whose conjectures, I may almost say, are _wild_
enough to tell what may be the progress of wealth and population in the
United States in half a century to come. All we know is, here is a
people of from seventeen to twenty millions, intelligent, educated,
freeholders, freemen, republicans, possessed of all the means of modern
improvement, modern science, arts, literature, with the world before
them! There is nothing to check them till they touch the shores of the
Pacific, and then, they are so much accustomed to water, that _that's_ a
facility, and no obstruction!
So much, Gentlemen, for this branch of the English race; but what has
happened, meanwhile, to England herself since the period of the
departure of the Puritans from the coast of Lincolnshire, from the
English Boston? Gentlemen, in speaking of the progress of English power,
of English dominion and authority, from that period to the present, I
shall be understood, of course, as neither entering into any defence or
any accusation of the policy which has conducted her to her present
state. As to the justice of her wars, the necessity of her conquests,
the propriety of those acts by which she has taken possession of so
great a portion of the globe, it is not the business of the present
occasion to inquire. _Neque teneo, neque refello._ But I speak of them,
or intend to speak of them, as facts of the most extraordinary
character, unequalled in the history of any nation on the globe, and the
consequences of which may and must reach through a thousand generations.
The Puritans left England in the reign of James the First. England
herself had then become somewhat settled and established in the
Protestant faith, and in the quiet enjoyment of property, by the
previous energetic, long, and prosperous reign of Elizabeth. Her
successor was James the Sixth of Scotland, now become James the First
of England; and here was a union of the crowns, but not of the
kingdoms,--a very important distinction. Ireland was held by a military
power, and one cannot but see that at that day, whatever may be true or
untrue in more recent periods of her history, Ireland was held by
England by the two great potencies, the power of the sword and the power
of confiscation. In other respects, England was nothing like the England
which we now behold. Her foreign possessions were quite inconsiderable.
She had some hold on the West India Islands; she had Acadia, or Nova
Scotia, which King James granted, by wholesale, for the endowment of the
knights whom he created by hundreds. And what has been her progress? Did
she then possess Gibraltar, the key to the Mediterranean? Did she
possess a port in the Mediterranean? Was Malta hers? Were the Ionian
Islands hers? Was the southern extremity of Africa, was the Cape of Good
Hope, hers? Were the whole of her vast possessions in India hers? Was
her great Australian empire hers? While that branch of her population
which followed the western star, and under its guidance committed itself
to the duty of settling, fertilizing, and peopling an unknown wilderness
in the West, were pursuing their destinies, other causes, providential
doubtless, were leading English power eastward and southward, in
consequence and by means of her naval prowess, and the extent of her
commerce, until in our day we have seen that within the Mediterranean,
on the western coast and at the southern extremity of Africa, in Arabia,
in hither India and farther India, she has a population _ten times_ as
great as that of the British Isles two centuries ago. And recently, as
we have witnessed,--I will not say with how much truth and justice,
policy or impolicy, I do not speak at all to the morality of the action,
I only speak to the _fact_,--she has found admission into China, and has
carried the Christian religion and the Protestant faith to the doors of
three hundred millions of people.
It has been said that whosoever would see the Eastern world before it
turns into a Western world must make his visit soon, because steamboats
and omnibuses, commerce, and all the arts of Europe, are extending
themselves from Egypt to Suez, from Suez to the Indian seas, and from
the Indian seas all over the explored regions of the still farther East.
Now, Gentlemen. I do not know what practical views or what practical
results may take place from this great expansion of the power of the two
branches of Old England. It is not for me to say. I only can see, that
on this continent _all_ is to be _Anglo-American_ from Plymouth Rock to
the Pacific seas, from the north pole to California. That is certain;
and in the Eastern world, I only see that you can hardly place a finger
on a map of the world and be an _inch_ from an English settlement.
Gentlemen, if there be any thing in the supremacy of races, the
experiment now in progress will develop it. If there be any truth in the
idea, that those who issued from the great Caucasian fountain, and
spread over Europe, are to react on India and on Asia, and to act on the
whole Western world, it may not be for us, nor our children, nor our
grandchildren, to see it, but it will be for our descendants of some
generation to see the extent of that progress and dominion of the
favored races.
For myself, I believe there is no limit fit to be assigned to it by the
human mind, because I find at work everywhere, on both sides of the
Atlantic, under various forms and degrees of restriction on the one
hand, and under various degrees of motive and stimulus on the other
hand, in these branches of a common race, the great principle _of the
freedom of human thought, and the respectability of individual
character_. I find everywhere an elevation of the character of man as
man, an elevation of the individual as a component part of society. I
find everywhere a rebuke of the idea, that the many are made for the
few, or that government is any thing but an _agency_ for mankind. And I
care not beneath what zone, frozen, temperate, or torrid; I care not of
what complexion, white or brown; I care not under what circumstances of
climate or cultivation,--if I can find a race of men on an inhabitable
spot of earth whose general sentiment it is, and whose general feeling
it is, that government is made for man,--man, as a religious, moral, and
social being,--and not man for government, there I know that I shall
find prosperity and happiness.
Gentlemen, I forbear from these remarks. I recur with pleasure to the
sentiment which I expressed at the commencement of my observations. I
repeat the gratification which I feel at having been referred to on this
occasion by a distinguished member of the mercantile profession; and
without detaining you further, I beg to offer as a sentiment,--
"_The mercantile interest of the United States_, always and everywhere
friendly to a united and free government."
Mr. Webster sat down amid loud and repeated applause; and
immediately after, at the request of the President, rose and
said:--#/
Gentlemen, I have the permission of the President to call your attention
to the circumstance that a distinguished foreigner is at the table
to-night, Mr. Aldham; a gentleman, I am happy to say, of my own
hard-working profession, and a member of the English Parliament from the
great city of Leeds. A traveller in the United States, in the most
unostentatious manner, he has done us the honor, at the request of the
Society, to be present to-night. I rise, Gentlemen, to propose his
health. He is of that Old England of which I have been speaking; of that
Old England with whom we had some fifty years ago rather a serious
family quarrel,--terminated in a manner, I believe, not particularly
disadvantageous to either of us. He will find in this, his first visit
to our country, many things to remind him of his own home, and the
pursuits in which he is engaged in that home. If he will go into our
courts of law, he will find those who practise there referring to the
same books of authority, acknowledging the same principles, discussing
the same subjects which he left under discussion in Westminster Hall. If
he go into our public assemblies, he will find the same rules of
procedure--possibly not always quite as regularly observed--as he left
behind him in that house of Parliament of which he is a member. At any
rate, he will find us a branch of that great family to which he himself
belongs, and I doubt not that, in his sojourn among us, in the
acquaintances he may form, the notions he may naturally imbibe, he will
go home to his own country somewhat better satisfied with what he has
seen and learned on this side of the Atlantic, and somewhat more
convinced of the great importance to both countries of preserving the
peace that at present subsists between them. I propose to you,
Gentlemen, the health of Mr. Aldham.
Mr. Aldham rose and said:--"Mr. President and Gentlemen of the New
England Society, I little expected to be called on to take a part
in the proceedings of this evening; but I am very happy in being
afforded an opportunity of expressing my grateful acknowledgments
for the very cordial hospitality which you have extended to me, and
the very agreeable intellectual treat with which I have been
favored this evening. It was with no little astonishment that I
listened to the terms in which I was introduced to you by a
gentleman whom I so much honor (Mr. Webster). The kind and friendly
terms in which he referred to me were, indeed, quite unmerited by
their humble object, and nothing, indeed, could have been more
inappropriate. It is impossible for any stranger to witness such a
scene as this without the greatest interest. It is the celebration
of an event which already stands recorded as one of the most
interesting and momentous occurrences which ever took place in the
annals of our race. And an Englishman especially cannot but
experience the deepest emotion as he regards such a scene. Every
thing which he sees, every emblem employed in this celebration,
many of the topics introduced, remind him most impressively of that
community of ancestry which exists between his own countrymen and
that great race which peoples this continent, and which, in
enterprise, ingenuity, and commercial activity,--in all the
elements indeed of a great and prosperous nation,--is certainly
not exceeded, perhaps not equalled, by any other nation on the face
of the globe. Gentlemen, I again thank you for the honor you have
done me, and conclude by expressing the hope that the event may
continue to be celebrated in the manner which its importance and
interest merit."
Mr. Aldham sat down amid great applause.