TRIBUTE TO HERBERT SPENCER

[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.]

[Speech of William M. Evarts at a dinner given to Herbert Spencer, New York City, November 9, 1882, the day before his return to England. Mr. Evarts presided, and delivered this speech, in introducing Mr. Spencer to the company.]

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 andput 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 ofthe 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.]

[Speech of William M. Evarts at the Thanksgiving Jubilee of the Yale Alumni, New York City, December 7, 1883. Chauncey M. Depew presided. Mr. Evarts responded for the Alumni.]

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 saidof 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 dextramNon 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 whetherit 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 cannow 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.]

[Speech of William M. Evarts at the banquet given by the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, June 24, 1885, to the officers of the French national ship "Isere," which brought over the Bartholdi statue. Charles Stewart Smith, vice-President of the Chamber, presided at the dinner and introduced the speaker as follows: "Gentlemen, fill your glasses for the seventh regular toast: 'Liberty Enlightening the World, a great truth beautifully and majestically expressed by the unique gift which our guests of to-night have brought safely to our shores.' The gentleman who will respond to this toast needs no introduction—Senator William M. Evarts."]

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 drawnfrom 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 stepforward 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 uscontribute 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.]

[Speech of Thomas C. Ewing at the first annual banquet of the New York Southern Society, February 22, 1887. Algernon S. Sullivan, the President of the Society, was in the chair, and announced that General Ewing would respond to the toast "Ohio and the Northwest." General Ewing was greeted with applause and cheers for Ohio.]

Mr. President and Gentlemen:—Ohio and her four sisters of the Northwest are always proud and happy to be reminded of the fact of their kinship to Virginia. It was the valor and the intrepidity of the Old Dominion which, long before the Confederation was formed, wrested that great territory from the Frenchmen and the savages. It was her lofty generosity which gave to the poor young Republic that vast territory out of which has been formed five of our greatest States, and in which dwell millions of our people. It was her humane and unselfish statesmanship which annexed to the gift the condition that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, excepting punishment for crime, should ever exist in that magnificent domain. Thousands of our Revolutionary heroes sleep in Ohio in land given to them as a recognition of their own priceless services, and the beautiful district between the Scioto and the Little Miami is filled with their descendants. Therefore, Mr. President, whenever Virginia sits at the head of the table, Ohio claims a seat as one of the family.

I, too, coming from that great State, and proud of it and its condition, may join in congratulating you, gentlemen, on the establishment of this "Southern Society of New York." After the long season of strife and discontent this is one of the many signs which mark the vernal equinox, and foretell the coming summer. I believe, notwithstanding the infinite disasters of the war, the overthrow of slavery, and with it all the industrial system of the South, and the needless loss and the humiliations of reconstruction—I believe that there is to-day a kinder and more cordial fraternity between the North and South than ever existed since the agitation of the slavery question sixty or seventy years ago. This society formed, and meeting here in this great centre of American political and business life, can do much to promote that peace. We need more social intercourse between the Northern and Southern men, and we need, above all, a clearer and manlier understanding of each other, in order that the recollections of the war may cease to check the growing accord between us.

Gentlemen, the North craves a living and lasting peace with the South; it asks no humiliating conditions; it recognizes the fact that the proximate cause of the war was the constitutional question of the right of secession—a question which, until it was settled by the war, had neither a right nor wrong side to it. Our forefathers, in framing the Constitution purposely left the question unsettled; to have settled it distinctly in the Constitution would have been to prevent the formation of the union of the Thirteen States. They, therefore, committed that question to the future and the war came on and settled it forever. Now, the Northern people are not so mean, fanatical or foolish as to blame the South because it believed then and believes now that it had the right side of that question. How could we respect the South if it were to say now that it was insincere then, or if it were to pretend that its convictions on a question of constitutional construction had been changed by the cuffs and blows of the war? It is enough that the North and South alike agree that the war settled that question in favor of the Northern construction finally and forever.

The North does ask that the settlement of the war as embodied in the constitutional amendments shall be accepted, and obeyed in the letter and spirit, as good faith and good citizenship require. There have been undoubtedly very many instances of violation of the spirit of the amendments and there will be in the future, but no more than from the very nature of things was to have been expected; and I have no doubt that they will decrease in number as time goes on, and willfinally disappear in the breaking-up of the color line in the South; and under the influence of that great sentiment become more familiar and more general every year, in favor of equal political rights to every American citizen. Aside from these questions, there is nothing to perpetuate alienation between the North and South. The new questions will lead to new divisions on other lines; already the representatives of Alabama are getting ready to stand with Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey in support of the tariff on the iron industry; the spinners of the Dan and the Saco will stand very soon with the spinners of the Willimantic and the Merrimac in supporting the cotton interests, and now we see the cotton-growers of the South and the wheat-growers of the Northwest united in demanding a tariff for revenue only.

Common political interests, the ministry of social and political intercourse, and perhaps higher than all, the pride of a common citizenship are rapidly supplanting sectionalism among our own people and leading us to stand together and work out our common destiny in fraternal reunion. It has often occurred to me, as a cause of thankfulness to Almighty God—and I believe He is guiding this Republic so as to work out the problem of self-government for all mankind—that the tremendous fact of the war has caused so little change in our system of government; constitutional amendments have been so limited by interpretation by the Supreme Court of the United States that they have hardly added anything to the powers of the general Government or impaired the powers of the States. The legislation following the war when Congress seemed to have run mad with the theory that it could legislate outside of the Constitution has to a large extent fallen under the decisions of that high tribunal. One would have supposed that it could have been certain that, considering the fact that the war was waged to extend the extremest proposition of State sovereignty, that the triumph of the Federal theory would have added enormously and permanently to the powers of the general Government and diminished very greatly and permanently the powers of the States. It is well for Republican government that that evil was averted. We have our free State Government, States still stand as the fortresses of Americanliberty, and our Federal government moves in its orb with scarcely a perturbation to mark the influence of the war upon it.

Gentlemen, we have successfully worked out the problem of self-government, and our example will undoubtedly and in due time be followed by the world. What else is there for this Republic to do? There is a tremendous question yet unsolved which is now rising unbidden in this and in every enlightened nation. It is the question of the proper distribution of the earnings of labor and capital combined. This is a question that will not down, and we have got to meet it. British publicists and statesmen from whom we have taken in the past far too much of our politics have either ignored that question entirely, or have treated it as practically settled by the apothegm of Ricardo, that the laborer is entitled out of his earnings to just enough food and clothing to keep the machine of his body in working order, and that when that machine becomes disarranged or worn out, he must go to the almshouse.

In the United States, so far as the question does not lie outside of the powers of the State or general Government, so far as those powers can be used fairly to adjust the question, methods of adjustment will fall within the lines relating to revenue, currency, corporations, police regulations. The settlement of the intricate problem and of that immensely important one, will not be added to by flagrant assaults on public authority, nor by the interference by bodies or individuals with the free right of every single workingman to work for whatever he pleases and for whomever he pleases and as many hours as he pleases; nor by the confiscation of real or personal property. And on the other hand that question will not be solved nor aided in its solution by police interference with the right of free assembly and discussion, nor by police interference with the right to form organizations open or secret, nor by police interference with the right of laboring men to combine for their own benefit if they keep within the limits of the law. On the other hand, I dissentin totofrom some of the sentiments expressed in the letter of Mr. Hewitt. [Abram S. Hewitt, Mayor of the City of New York.] This question will only be settled by the people at the ballot-box and by the enactment of such lawsas will fairly distribute the net earnings which labor and capital combine to make.

Gentlemen, let us who have borne the heat and burden of the Civil War, commit it and its issues to the past, and join the incoming generation in settling this great industrial question in such a way as will be just to all, and best for the masses of the people. The South has always produced great statesmen. It was her peerless and immortal son whose love of the people and whose faith in their power of self-government did most to establish and animate our free institutions. And again let the New South send forth other statesmen armed with the power and animated with the spirit of Jefferson, [Applause.]

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