Thomas B. Reed

[Speech of William M. Evarts at the sixty-seventh anniversary banquet of the New England Society in the City of New York, December 23, 1872. The President, Elliot C. Cowden, occupied the chair. Introducing the speaker, he said: "I now ask your attention to the eighth regular toast: 'The Geneva Tribunal of Arbitration, a victory of peace, demonstrating that the statesman's wisdom is mightier than the warrior's sword.' This sentiment will be responded to by one who has added a new lustre to a fame already achieved by his consummate argument in defence of our claims before the late Tribunal of Arbitration, your honored ex-President, Mr. Evarts."]

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the New England Society:—It has, I believe, in the history of our race, never been permitted that a great nation should pass through the perils of a serious internal conflict without suffering, in some form or other, an intervention in its affairs by other nations that would not have been permitted, or been possible, but for the distraction of its power, or the stress to which it was exposed by its intestine strifes. And when, in our modern civilization, a nation so great as ours was pressed by so great a stress as our Civil War imposed upon us, we could not escape this common fate in human affairs. It has rarely, in the history of our race, been permitted to a nation that has suffered this foreign intervention, in whatever form, to preserve its peace and the peace of the world, and yet settle its account with the nations which had interposed in its affairs. [Applause.]

When the great power of France seized upon the occasion of our Civil War to renew a European possession upon our boundaries, and when England, upon the same opportunity, swept the seas of our commerce; properly to deal with those forms of intervention, when our domestic troubles were ended by the triumph of our arms, called for the exercise of the highest statesmanship and the most powerful diplomacy. It was at this juncture that our great minister of foreign affairs (than whom no greater has been seen in our country, and than whom no greater has been presented in the service of any foreign nation) was able, without war, to drive the French from Mexico, and to establish the principle of arbitration, for the settlement of our controversy with England. [Applause.] It was reserved for the present administration to extricate the imperfect work of the adjustment of the differences between England and the United States from a difficulty of the gravest character, and to place the negotiations upon a footing satisfactory to the public sense of our people by the illustrious work of the Joint High Commission at Washington. It was reserved for that administration to complete, within its first term of power, the absolute extinction of all antecedent causes, occasions or opportunities for future contention between our nation and the mother country, by the actual result of the Geneva arbitration. [Applause.]

And now, gentlemen, I think we may well be proud of that self-contained, yet adequate, appreciation of our power, of our right, and of our duty, that could thus, while abating not one jot or tittle of our rights, compose such grave differences by the wisdom of statesmanship, instead of renewing the struggles of war. I may, I think, recognize in the general appreciation by our countrymen of the excellence of this great adjustment between England and the United States, their satisfaction with this settlement, which, without in the least abating the dignity or disturbing the peace of England, has maintained the dignity and made secure the peace of the United States. [Applause.] I think I may recognize in this general satisfaction of our countrymen, their conviction that the result of the Geneva arbitration has secured for us every point that was important as indemnity for the past, and yet has so adjusted the difficult question between neutrality and belligerency as to make it safe for us, in maintaining our natural, and, as we hope, our perpetual, position in the future, of a neutral, and not a belligerent.

The gentlemen to whom were entrusted, by the favor of the President of the United States, the representation of our country in this great forensic controversy, have been somewhat differently situated from lawyers, in ordinary lawsuits, charged with the interests of clients. For, as we all know, the interest of the client and the duty of the lawyer are, for the most part, limited to success in the particular controversy that is being agitated, and, therein, the whole power of the lawyer and all his resources may be properly directed to secure the completest victory in the particular suit. But, when a nation is a party, and when the lawsuit is but an incident, in its perpetual duty and its perpetual interests, in which it must expect to change sides, in the changing circumstances of human affairs, it is very plainly its interest, and the duty of those to whom its interests are entrusted, to see to it, that in the zeal of the particular contest there shall be no triumph that shall disturb, embarrass, or burden its future relations with foreign nations. [Applause.] In other words, when our government was calling to account a neutral which had interfered with our rights as belligerents, it was of very great importance that we should insist upon neither a measure of right nor a measure of indemnity, that we could not, wisely and safely, submit to in the future ourselves. [Applause.]

While, then, there was a preliminary question of gravest importance to be determined in this arbitration—this peaceful substitute for war—"the terrible litigation of States"—no less than this, how widely and how heavily we should press the question of accountability against a neutral, and how far the question should be pressed, in the future, against us, I must congratulate the country for having received, at the outset of the deliberations at Geneva, a determination from the Tribunal, upon the general principles of public law, that when peaceful adjustments in redress of wrongs are attempted between friendly States, no measure of indemnity can be claimed which at all savors of the exactions made only by a victorious over a beaten foe. [Applause.]

And when we come to the final award of this High Tribunal, I think the country may be congratulated, and the world may be congratulated, that while we have secured a judgment of able and impartial publicists in favor of the propositions of international law on which we had insisted, and have received amends by its judgment for the wrongs we had suffered from Great Britain, we have also secured great principles in favor of neutrality in the future, making it easier, instead of harder, for nations to repress the sympathies, the passions and the enlistments of their people, and to keep, during the pendency of war, the action of a neutral State within and subject to the dictates of duty and of law. For we have there established that the duty of a neutral government to preserve its subjects from interference with belligerent rights is in proportion to the magnitude of the evils that will be suffered by the nation against whom, and at whose cost, the infraction of neutrality is provoked. We have made it apparent, also, that a powerful nation, in the advanced civilization of our age, cannot escape from an accountability upon the rough calculation, upon which so much reliance has doubtless been placed in the past, upon the unwillingness of the offended and injured nation, in the correction of its wrongs, to rush into the costs and sacrifices of war. And we have made it apparent to the proudest power in the world (and there is none prouder than our own nation,) that there must be a peaceful accounting for errors and wrongs, in which justice shall be done without the effusion of blood. [Prolonged applause.] Practically, too, we have established principles of great importance in aid of the efforts of every Government to preserve its neutrality in trying and difficult situations of sympathy. An error long provided, that if a vessel, in violation of neutrality, should escape to commit its ravages upon the sea, and should once secure the protection of a commission from the offending belligerent, that that was an end of it, and all the nations of the world must bow their heads before these bastard flags of belligerency. But the tribunal has determined, as the public law of the world, that a commission from a belligerent gives no protection to a vessel that owes its power and place upon the seas to a violation of neutrality. [Applause.] The consequence is, that so far from our success in this arbitration having exposed us, as a neutral nation, in the future, to greater difficulties, we have established principles of law that are to aid our Government, and every other Government, to restrain our people and every other people, in the future, from such infractions of neutrality.

And now, gentlemen, is it too much for us to say that, coming out from a strife with our own blood and kindred, upon the many hard-fought fields of our Civil War, with our government confirmed, with the principles of our confederation made secure forever, we have also come out from this peaceful contest with a great power of the world, with important principles established between this nation and our principal rival in the business affairs of the world, and with an established conviction, alike prevalent in both countries, that, hereafter, each must do its duty to the other, and that each must be held accountable for that duty?

I give you, gentlemen, in conclusion, this sentiment: "The little Court-room at Geneva—where our royal mother England, and her proud though untitled daughter, alike bent their heads to the majesty of Law and accepted Justice as a greater and better arbiter than Power." [Prolonged applause.]

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THE REPUBLIC AND ITS OUTLOOK

[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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THE FRENCH ALLIANCE

[Speech of William M. Evarts at a banquet of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, New York City, November 5, 1881. The banquet was given in honor of the guests of the nation, the French diplomatic representatives in America, and members of the families descended from our foreign sympathizers and helpers, General Lafayette, Count de Rochambeau, Count de Grasse, Baron von Steuben, and others, who were present at the Centennial celebration of the victory at Yorktown. The chairman, James M. Brown, Vice-President of the Chamber of Commerce, proposed the following toast: "The French Alliance; the amicable relations between our two countries founded in 1778, by the Treaty of Amity and Commerce, between the nation of France and the American people, cemented in blood in 1781, renewed by this visit of our distinguished guests, will, we trust, be perpetuated through all time."]

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Chamber of Commerce:—It is with great pride, as well as with great pleasure, that I respond to the call in behalf of the merchants of the United States, as represented by the merchants of the great city of the United States, through this ancient guild of the Chamber of Commerce, in paying their tribute of honor and applause to the French nation, that was present as a nation in the contest of our Revolution, and is present here as a nation by its representatives to-day [applause]; and to the great Frenchmen that were present with their personal heroism in the struggles of the Revolution, and are present here in their personal descendants, to see the fruits of that Revolution, and to receive our respectful greeting [applause]; and to the Germans who were present, where they could not have been spared in the great trials of our feeble nation in its struggles against the greatest power in the world, and who are here, by the descendants of those heroic Germans, to join in this feast of freedom and of glory. [Applause.]

But I felt a little doubt, Mr. Chairman, whether the etiquette of this occasion required me to speak in my own tongue, or in the German or the French, for I speak French and German equally well [laughter], but I thought it would be a poor compliment, after all, to talk to these Frenchmen, or these Germans, in their native tongues. They surely hear enough of that at home. [Laughter.]

Well, Mr. President, the French Alliance was one of the noblest transactions in history. The sixth day of February, 1778, witnessed the Treaty of Alliance and the accompanying Treaty of Amity and Commerce which filled out our Declaration of Independence, and made that an assured triumph, which was until then nothing but a heroic effort on our part. [Cheers.] I do not know that the sixth of February has anywhere been honored in any due proportion to the Fourth of July; but for my part, as an humble individual, from the earliest moment I have done all in my power to show my homage to that day, for on that day I was born. [Laughter and applause.]

Now, we talk the most and must feel the most and with great propriety, of the presence of our French and of our German aids, and of our own presence at the battle of Yorktown and the surrender. But what would that occasion have amounted to, either in the fact of it or in the celebration of it, if the English had not been there? [Laughter.] You may remember the composure of the hero that was going to the block and felt that there was no occasion for hurry or confusion in the attendant crowd, as nothing important could take place until he got there [laughter]; and so, in this past history and in the present celebration, we recognize that it is not a question of personal mortification or of personal triumph—not even of national mortification or of national triumph. This was one of the great battles of the world, in which all the nations engaged, and all other nations had an everlasting interest and one through which they were to reap an everlasting good. [Applause.]

And I would like to know if the granddaughter of George III has ever had from her subjects, British or Indian, any sweeter incense than has just now been poured out from the hearts of the American people, who freely give that homage to her virtues as a woman that they deny to her sceptre and her crown as a queen. [Applause.] Who would not rather be a great man than a great king? Who would not rather be a great woman than a great queen? [Applause.] Ah, is there not a wider sovereignty over the race, and a deeper homage from human nature than ever can come from an allegiance to power? And for woman, though she be a queen, what personal power in human affairs can equal that of drawing a throb from every heart and a tear from every eye, when she spoke to us as a woman in the distress of our nation? [Applause.]

It was a very great thing for France to make the Treaty of Alliance and the Treaty of Amity and Commerce with a nation that, as yet, had received no acceptance from the powers of the earth. And when we remember that France, in the contests of a thousand years, had found England no unequal match in the quarrels that belonged to the two nations, I must think that human history has shown nothing nobler than her espousal of this growing struggle between these colonists and the great power of England. [Applause.] How much nearer France was to England than we! How much wider her possessions through the world, open to the thunders of the British navy and the prowess of the British arms! And when France, in a treaty, the equal terms of which will strike every reader with wonder, speaks of the "common cause" to be pursued until the result of our complete independence, governmental and commercial, was attained, I know nothing in the way of the "bearing the burdens of one another," enjoined as the Christian spirit, that is greater than this stupendous action of France. [Applause.]

The relations of blood and history that make England and us one, as we always shall be, do not, nevertheless, make it clear that there is not a closer feeling of attachment, after all, between us and France. It is a very great compliment, no doubt, in classical phrase, to bespoken of as "matre pulchra filia pulchrior"—the fairer daughter of a fair mother, but, after all, it is a greater compliment to the daughter than to the mother. I don't know that maternal affection, the purest sentiment on earth, is ever quite pleased that the daughter is taller and fairer and more winning in her ways than the mother is, or ever was [laughter]; and I do know that there comes a time when the daughter leaves the mother and cleaves to a closer affection. And here were we, a young, growing, self-conscious, self-possessed damsel, just peeping from out our mother's apron, when there comes a gallant and noble friend, who takes up our cause, and that, too, at a time when it was not quite apparent whether we should turn out a beauty or a hoyden. [Laughter and applause.] And that is our relation to France. Nothing can limit, nothing can disturb it; nothing shall disparage it. It is that we, from that time and onward, and now finally in the great consummation of two Republics united together against the world, represent in a new sense Shakespeare's figure of the "unity and married calm of states." [Applause.]

The French people have the advantage of us in a great many things, and I don't know that we have any real advantage of them, except in a superior opinion of ourselves. [Laughter.] God forbid that anybody should take that from us! Great as is our affection and gratitude toward the French and German nations, there is one thing that we cannot quite put up with in those nations, and that is, that, but for them, the English and we should think ourselves the greatest nations in the world. [Laughter.] So, with all the bonds of amity between us and them, we must admit that the Frenchmen and Germans make a pretty good show on the field of history in the past, and, apparently, mean to have a pretty good share of the future of this world. [Applause.]

In comparing the Yorktown era with the present day, we find that then a great many more Frenchmen came here than Germans; but now a great many more Germans come here than Frenchmen. The original disparity of numbers seems to have been redressed by the later immigration, and we are reduced to that puzzling equilibrium of the happy swain whenever we are obliged to choose sides in the contest between these nations:—

"How happy could I be with either,
Were t'other dear charmer away."

[Laughter.]

The French are a great people in their conduct toward us in this respect, that the aid and sympathy and alliance has been all in our favor; they have done everything for us, and have been strong enough not to need anything from us. [Applause.] The fault of the French, changing a little Mr. Canning's memorable lines:—

"The fault of the French, unlike the Dutch,
Is asking too little, and giving too much."

[Laughter and applause.]

Now, this treaty commences with the very sensible statement that the two nations being desirous of placing their commerce and correspondence upon permanent and equitable grounds, His Most Christian Majesty and the United States of America had thought, to that end, it was best to place these relations upon perfect equality and reciprocity, without any of those burdensome preferences which are the source of debate and misunderstanding and of discontent between nations. In this spirit it is, no doubt, that we have each pursued toward each other, in commerce, that most equitable and equal system, by prohibitory duties, of keeping all of each other's products out of the other that we can. [Laughter.] Well, the Frenchmen knew, after all, that the Americans can never get along without their wines, and without their silks, and without their jewels, and without their art, and without their science, and without the numberless elegancies which make life even in our backwoods tolerable. And we know that they cannot very well dispense with our wheat and corn and the oil from the earth and the cotton to weave into those delicate tissues with which they clothe the world. [Applause.] So that, after all, these superficial barriers of customs duties do not really obstruct our commerce; and even if they have too much of our pork, as would seem to be the notion at present, we have no desire to dispense with their wines. [Laughter.]

But there are some other interchanges between nations besides those of commerce in the raw material or in the products of industry. If we could make more of a moral interchange with the French; if we could take some of the moral sunlight which shines upon that great nation; if we could be more cheerful, more gay, more debonair, and if they could take from us some of the superfluous ice which we produce morally as well as naturally, and some of that cold resistance against the inflammation of enthusiasm which sometimes raises a conflagration among their citizens at home, we have no tariff on either side that would interfere in the blending and intercommunication of the moral resources of both nations, that shall make us more and more one people, in laws, liberties and national glory, and in all the passions that guide and animate the conduct of nations. [Applause.]

I am happy to announce myself to you, gentlemen, what I am vain enough to suppose you would not suspect, that I am a contemporary of Lafayette. As a Boston schoolboy, I stood in the ranks at Boston when Lafayette in 1825 passed with a splendid cortÉge along the malls of Boston Common. I had the pleasure, as a descendant of one of his Revolutionary friends, to be presented to him personally, and to hear him say that he well remembered his old friend, my grandfather. [Cheers.] This pleasing courtesy, it may be said, was all French politeness; but I can say to these Frenchmen that whether they believe one another at home or not, we always believe them in this country. [Applause.]

And now your toast desires that this friendship, thus beginning and continued, shall be perpetual. Who is to stop it? No power but ourselves and yourselves, sir (turning to the French Minister), can interrupt it. What motive have you—what motive have we—what sentiment, but that on either side would be dishonor to the two nations—can ever breathe a breath to spoil its splendor and its purity? [Applause.] And, sir, your munificence and your affection is again to be impressed upon the American people in that noble present you are designing to make to us, in the great statue of "Liberty enlightening the World," an unexampled munificence from the private citizens of one nation to the people of another. We are to furnish the island for its site and the pedestal to place the statue on. This our people will do with an enthusiasm equal to your own. But, after all, the obligation will be wholly ours, for it is to be a lighthouse in our great harbor, a splendid monument to add new beauty to the glorious Bay of New York. [Applause.]

TRIBUTE TO HERBERT SPENCER

Gentlemen:—We are here to-night, to show the feeling of Americans toward our distinguished guest. As no room and no city can hold all his friends and admirers, it was necessary that a company should be made up by some method out of the mass, and what so good a method as that of natural selection [laughter] and the inclusion, within these walls, of the ladies? It is a little hard upon the rational instincts and experience of man that we should take up the abstruse subjects of philosophy and of evolution, of all the great topics that make up Mr. Spencer's contribution to the learning and the wisdom of his time, at this end of the dinner.

The most ancient nations, even in their primitive condition, saw the folly of this, and when one wished either to be inspired with the thoughts of others or to be himself a diviner of the thoughts of others, fasting was necessary, and a people from whom I think a great many things might be learned for the good of the people of the present time have a maxim that will commend itself to your common-sense. They say the continually stuffed body cannot see secret things. [Laughter.] Now, from my personal knowledge of the men I see at these tables, they are owners of continually stuffed bodies. [Laughter.] I have addressed them at public dinners, on all topics and for all purposes, and whatever sympathy they may have shown with the divers occasions which brought them together, they come up to this notion of continually stuffed bodies. In primitive times they had a custom which we only under the system of differentiation practise now at this dinner. When men wished to possess themselves of the learning, the wisdom, the philosophy, the courage, the great traits of any person, they immediately proceeded to eat him up as soon as he was dead. [Laughter.] Having only this diversity in that early time, that he should be either roasted or boiled according as he was fat or thin. [Laughter.] Now, out of that narrow compass, see how by the process of differentiation and of multiplication of effects we have come to a dinner of a dozen courses and wines of as many varieties; and that simple process of appropriating the virtue and the wisdom of the great man that was brought before the feast is now diversified into an analysis of all the men here under the cunning management of many speakers. No doubt, preserving as we do the identity of all these institutions, it is often considered a great art, or at least a great delight, to roast our friends and put in hot water those against whom we have a grudge. [Laughter.]

Now, Mr. Spencer, we are glad to meet you here. [Applause.] We are glad to see you and we are glad to have you see us. [Laughter.] We are glad to see you, for we recognize in the breadth of your knowledge, such knowledge as is useful to your race, a greater comprehension than any living man has presented to our generation. [Applause.] We are glad to see you, because in our judgment you have brought to the analysis and distribution of this vast knowledge a more penetrating intelligence and a more thorough insight than any living man has brought even to the minor topics of his special knowledge. [Applause.] In theology, in psychology, in natural science, in the knowledge of individual man and his exposition, and in the knowledge of the world, in the proper sense of society, which makes up the world, the world worth knowing, the world worth speaking of, the world worth planning for, the world worth working for, we acknowledge your labors as surpassing those of any of our kind. [Applause.] You seem to us to carry away and maintain in the future the same measure of fame among others that we are told was given in the Middle Ages to Albertus Magnus, the most learned man of those times, whose comprehension of theology, of psychology, of natural history, of politics, of history and of learning comprehended more than any man since the classic time certainly; and yet it was found of him that his knowledge was rather an accumulation, and that he had added no new processes and no new wealth to the learning which he had achieved.

Now, I have said that we are glad to have you see us. You have already treated us to a very unique piece of work in this reception, and we are expecting perhaps that the world may be instructed after you are safely on the other side of the Atlantic in a more intimate and thorough manner concerning our merits and our few faults. [Applause and laughter.] This faculty of laying on a dissecting board an entire nation or an entire age and finding out all the arteries and veins and pulsations of their life is an extension beyond any that our own medical schools afford. You give us that knowledge of man which is practical and useful, and whatever the claims or the debates may be about your system of the system of those who agree with you, and however it may be compared with other competing systems that have preceded it, we must all agree that it is practical, that it is benevolent, that it is serious, and that it is reverent; that it aims at the highest results in virtue; that it treats evil, not as eternal, but as evanescent, and that it expects to arrive at what is sought through the aid of the millennium—that condition of affairs in which there is the highest morality and the greatest happiness. [Applause.] And if we can come to that by these processes and these instructions it matters little to the race whether it be called scientific morality and mathematical freedom or by another less pretentious name. [Applause.] You will please fill your glasses while we propose the health of our guest, Herbert Spencer. [Continued applause.]

THE CLASSICS IN EDUCATION

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Alumni:—I congratulate you, Mr. President, on having such a noble, such a generous, such a patient, such an appreciative body to preside over. I congratulate you, gentlemen, on having a President who combines in himself in a marked degree these two great traits of a presiding officer:—confidence in himself [great laughter], and distrust of all who are to come after him. [Laughter.] I remember forty years ago to have heard a Senator of the United States, making a stump speech in a quiet town in Vermont, amuse his audience with a story of a woodsawyer who had worked for him and who had the habit of accompanying the movement of his saw with talking to himself. He asked him one day why he did so. "Why," said he, "for two reasons. The first is, that it is a great pleasure to hear a sensible man talk, and the second is that it is a great pleasure to talk to a sensible man." [Laughter.]

Now, sir, I have but one warning to give you. It is said of Mercutio, the wittiest creation of Shakespeare, who is despatched very early in the play, "My sore wound hath served its turn, although it were not as deep as a well nor as wide as a church door." It is said that if Shakespeare hadn't killed Mercutio early, Mercutio would have killed him. If you [turning to the President] are to preside year after year or to attempt it upon so high and brilliant and bold a key as you have assumed here to-night, if you don't kill the Alumni dinners, the Alumni dinners will kill you. [Great laughter.] Yale College, as represented by its graduates, is not self-conceited nor obtrusive. It is true they have always felt the magnificent compliment paid to the College by that greatest of English thinkers and philosophers Lord Bacon, who said in a famous passage, as you will recall: "Eating makes a full man, drinking a ready man, but to be an Alumnus of Yale, a wise man." Yet we are modest and even reverent toward the claims of other universities. We are satisfied at the humble position which the French bishop took towards that great berry, the strawberry. "Doubtless," said he, "God Almighty might have made a better berry than the strawberry, but doubtless He has not." [Laughter.] That is our opinion of Yale College. [Applause.]

Now, to be an Alumnus of Yale College, is the object of all those who enter the college and the object after getting there is to get out. Sometimes indeed, the four years are spent without that fortunate result. I remember to have heard of the son of a somewhat conspicuous gentleman who had desired to give his children the benefit of an education such as Yale affords, who had spent four years there; but the entire four years were spent as a member of the Freshman class. [Laughter.] What a fortunate condition to be continually towering over more and more of those who are competing with him in scholarship and for distinction! I know of none greater unless some mode might be discovered by which one could be a Senior for four years. There is nothing in human affairs that could equal that happiness! [Laughter.] Well, college life in my generation—and I certainly had a singular reminder to-night from you, Mr. President, that I belonged to a generation that has passed out of memory, for you have excited the enthusiasm of this company only in the applause that you have drawn from those who were graduated under Presidents Woolsey and Porter. What are you to say for us who graduated under President Day? College life, I was about to say, is a charming life. The best men, we may presume, are collected from the community, placed under the happiest relations one to another and under the happiest influences from above and around them.

The President of the college has spoken to you of the pleasing fact that there is an endowment of seventy thousand dollars for fellowships. Well, when I was in college, a very moderate endowment of five dollars contributed by those who were associated as companions was a very good endowment for good fellowship. [Laughter.] And now in looking at life as it is, as we remember it in college and have seen it since, who is there that would compare mere fellowship with good-fellowship? What is there that is heartier, what sincerer, what more generous and what more just than the relations of young men of a liberal spirit toward one another in college? How many of us as we have gone on in life, prosperous, as we may have been, with nothing to complain of as to our success or our situation—how many of us have been disposed to repeat that lament of Æneas where he was continually baffled in holding closer conversation with his goddess-mother who was always carried off in a nimbus or her accents lost in the whisper of the wind:—

"cur dextrae jungere dextram
Non datur, ac veras audire et reddere voces?"

Maybe in the good-fellowship of after-life, you, Mr. President, will not hesitate to walk down Broadway with your arm over General Jackson's shoulder and his about your waist, and then all the people shall cry with applause: "See how Yale men love one another!"

You will observe, from this little classic allusion that I am on the side of those who favor in the curriculum the maintenance of the learned languages. For myself, whether an education in the classic languages and in the classic literature should or should not be discarded from the education of the noble youth of the country is the question whether it is worth while in the advancing and strenuous life of modern times that men should have a liberal education. For be sure that there is no trait in that education that entitles it to the name of liberal more sure and more valuable than this education in the literature, in the history, in the language of the great men of the ages past. If any boy is put through what is called a liberal education, and finds when he goes out from it, that he is not on a level with those who understand and cherish the Greek language and literature, he will find that he is mistaken in wishing to dispense with that distinguishing trait.

I am able to give you a very interesting anecdote, as it seems to me, of this very point, of how a great man, great in his power, great in his fame, yet of an ingenuous and simple nature, may look at this accomplishment. On my return from Europe, when I first visited it, upon a public errand, while President Lincoln was at the height of his fame from the assured although not completed success and triumph in the war, and from the great transaction that had made him one of the famous men for all ages—the emancipation of the slaves—I had occasion, in a friendly meeting with him, to express a hope that he would find it in his power after the cares of State were laid aside to visit Europe and see the statesmen and great men there whose mouths were full of plaudits for his assured accomplished fame. Said he: "You are very kind in thinking I should meet with a reception so gratifying as you have proposed, and I certainly should enjoy as much as any one the acquisition and the observation that such a visit would give; but," added he, "as you know very well my early education was of the narrowest, and in the society in which I should move I should be constantly exposed in conversation to have a scrap of Greek or Latin spoken that I should know nothing about." Certainly that was a very peculiar statement to be made by this wonderful man, but it struck me at the moment that his clear mind, his self-poised nature, recognized the fact that his greatness and his fame did not lie in the direction of an association with what he regarded as the accomplished men of society and of public life brought.

I believe, therefore, that we will stand by the college while it stands by the Greek and the Latin, and certainly as representatives of the great mass of graduates we can now talk more of Greek and Latin as a common accomplishment than the greatest genius and orators of ancient times, Demosthenes or Cicero, could of English. [Laughter.]

There are many things, gentlemen, that if I were the President of this association or the President of the University, I should say and expect to be listened to, while saying it. But I confess that I have pretty much exhausted, as I perceive, your patience and my own capacity. I am now living for the reputation of making short speeches, and I am only afraid that my life will not be long enough to succeed. But I promise you that if I get a good forum and a good audience like this I will run a short speech even if I run it into the mud. [Applause.]

LIBERTY ENLIGHTENING THE WORLD

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen:—I may be permitted at the outset, to speak a little about the share that we have taken on this side of the water in this great achievement which in its glorious consummation, now receives the applause of the world.

When this great conception of friendship for America, joy at our triumph, and their own undaunted love of liberty, liberty for France, liberty for the United States, liberty for the world, arose, then the French people were set aflame with a desire to bring, as it were, their gifts of frankincense and myrrh to lay on this altar of liberty, that its censer might never die out, but forever perfume and ennoble the air of the world. [Applause.]

The genius of Art, the patriotism of France, the enthusiasm of its people, accomplished by contributions drawn from more than one hundred thousand, perhaps two hundred thousand givers, made up this statue, not equalled in the history of the world, and not conceived in its genius or its courage before. [Applause.]

Then it was for us to say whether we would furnish the pedestal upon which this great gift and emblem of Liberty should find its secure and permanent home; without the aid of the Government and by the movement of our own people in this city, an organization wholly voluntary, and without pretension or assumption had the faith that the American people would furnish a home fit for the statue of Liberty, however magnificent should be the reception, that would comport with its own splendor. [Cheers.]

This organization undertook actively its work in 1882, before the statue was completed, and while it remained somewhat uncertain to many who doubted whether the great statue would really be brought to its anticipated prosperity and success. But we went on, and now, within three years, this work, both of receiving and collecting subscriptions and of raising the pedestal itself, will have been completed, and I do not hesitate to say, in the face of all critics and all doubters, that a work of so great magnitude, either in its magnificence, or in its labor, has never before been completed in so short a time. [Applause.]

When we were reasonably assured of adequate funds, we commenced the concrete base on which this pedestal was to rest; and no structure of that kind, of that magnitude, of that necessity, of that perfection and permanence has ever been accomplished in the works of masonry before. [Cheers.] Commencing on the ninth of October, 1883, it was completed on the seventeenth day of May, 1884—and then commenced the work of the structure proper, of the pedestal, and it went on, and it went on, and it went sure, and it went safe, if it went slow, and there it stands. [Cheers.]

And now a word or two about the Committee. An eminent lawyer of our city was once detected and exposed and applauded for being seen standing with his hands in his own pockets [laughter], and for about three months, if you had visited the meetings of this Committee of ours, you would have seen the whole assembly standing with their hands in their own pockets [applause], and taking the first step forward asking their fellow-citizens to follow us, and not for us to follow them. [Cheers.] And so we went on, and on the tenth of this present month, we had received in hand $241,000, of which $50,000 came from the grand and popular movement of a great newspaper—"The World" [three cheers for "The World"]—fifty thousand dollars! and that made up substantially what we had announced in advance as what would be required to complete the pedestal. But where did we miscarry even in that calculation? The exploration showed us that the concrete mass must go deeper in the ground, and that cost us alone $85,000, about $30,000 more than we had counted upon before the exploration; and then the $20,000 more that makes it up to the $300,000 as our need to complete the pedestal (when we had counted upon $250,000), is made by such delay and such expenses as made the general outlay for this immense structure, continuing longer than would have been necessary, had the promptness of contributions kept pace with the possibility of completion.

Now, gentlemen, we have been patient and quiet. Nearly one-fourth of the contributions of the general citizens came from the pockets of the Committee. Instead of hearing from enterprising Chicago, and ambitious Boston, they are talking about the slowness and the dulness of New York's appreciation, of the delays in its contributions. Let the example of our patriotism and munificence be an example for them to imitate; and this city of Boston—let their people there reflect that, when they built Bunker Hill monument, it cost I am informed scarcely $100,000. They were twenty years in raising it, although the whole country was canvassed in its aid. [Laughter.]

Well, gentlemen, so much for that. And how great is this monument! How noble! How beautiful! How inspiring for the time that looks upon its completion and for the ages that shall mark it hereafter! If our country and France, as we hope, may go on in the enlargement and advancement of a glorious civilization, we may feel sure that if our descendants shall overtop us in wealth, in strength, in art, and equal us in love of liberty, they will not say that this was not a worthy triumph for the age in which we live [applause]; and if, unhappily, malign influences shall degrade our civilization and our fame, and travellers and dwellers here shall find their power has waned, and their love of liberty declined, if they shall have become a poverty-stricken and debased people, what will they think of this remaining monument of a past and lost age, but that it was a creation of the gods and that no men ever lived. [Cheers.]

Well, these French gentlemen, the Admiral and the Commandant, how shall we appreciate the beneficence of their visit, the urbanity of their attentions to us, and the happy and hearty manner in which they have accepted our hospitality. Why the Admiral—a greater triumph, let me say, than he could ever have by the power of his navy—has come here and carried New York by storm, without firing a gun. [Cheers.] And as for Commandant De Saune, he has done what in the history of the world—of our modern world, at least—no nation, no ruler has successfully attempted: he has kept "Liberty enlightening the World" under the hatches for thirty days. [Applause.]

It was tried in England, and "Liberty enlightening the World" cut off the head of the king. Tried again, it drove the dynasty of the Stuarts forever from that free island. In France, they tried to suppress it, and it uprooted the ancient monarchy and scattered the forces which were expected to repress it. The milder form of a limited monarchy, even, France would not submit to as a repression of liberty, and again twice over, under an Imperial government, "Liberty enlightening the World" has broken out from under the hatches. [Cheers.]

But Commandant De Saune is not only a bold represser of mutiny on board his vessel, but he is a great and cunning navigator; he did not tell it, but he planned it, and how narrow the calculation was. He arrived here on the seventeenth of June, Bunker Hill day [applause], and missed the eighteenth, the day of Waterloo. [Laughter and applause.]—It is thus that this French genius teaches us new lessons, and evokes irrepressible applause. [Cheers.]

I imagine that a navigator who could thus seize the golden moment, and miss the disastrous one, might, if he undertook it, discover the North Pole. [Laughter.] But I am sure he has better work before him in the world than that. [Applause.] But if he goes on to that destination, oh, let us contribute some portion of the cargo that he will put under the hatches! [Laughter.]

Well, gentlemen, this is a great event, this great triumph of civilization is indeed laden with many instructions, and many illustrations. No doubt "Liberty enlightening the World" in modern history finds its greatest instance in that torch which was lighted here; but from the enthusiasm and the inexorable logic of French philosophy on the "equality of man," was furnished we can never say how much of the zeal and of the courage that enabled our forefathers to shape the institutions of equality and liberty here [cheers], and all can mark the reaction upon France, by which our interests, our prosperity under them encouraged, ennobled and maintained the struggle for liberty there which overthrew ancient establishments and raised in their place new. And now both countries, at least, stand on the same happy combination of liberty regulated by law, and law enlightened by liberty. [Cheers.] And this great structure, emblem of so much else, example of so much else, guide to so much else, yet this emblem, this example, this guide is of the union between the genius and enthusiasm of liberty, the graceful statue and the massive and compact pedestal of our own granite by which it is upheld. [Cheers.]

Liberty can only be supported by solid and sober institutions, founded upon law as built upon a rock; and the structure solid and sober which sustains it, if Liberty has fled, is but a shapeless and unsightly mass that is no longer worthy of respect as a structure, to be torn apart until it can be better rebuilt as the home of liberty. [Prolonged applause.]