Democracy.

I have the honour of addressing the Historical Society in the Great Metropolis of the Great Republic. These simple words suggest to me so wide a range of thought, that you will pardon me if I do not dwell on local details of our history or of any history. I see before me an immense result, and I would fain grope my way, with such lantern as I can provide for myself, towards causes whether distant or near. As I have sometimes wandered almost at random through this magnificent city; as I marked the long, sumptuous avenues of stone and marble houses, which seemed to multiply even while I looked upon them—as in tropical regions the strenuous, full, vitalised vegetation, with its gorgeous blossoms, rampant vines, overshadowing foliage, expands in growth almost beneath the gazers eye; as I saw the innumerable steamers and ships which crowd your wharves, like moving woods and shifting palaces, forming an unbroken chain of connection with every zone and clime; as I moved through the crowded mart, whose slightest throb sends a pulsation through the world; as I felt myself—a casual spectator—caught up and whirled along, almost against my will, on the impetuous rapids of this swift commercial life; when I surveyed this million-headed monster stretching forth its feelers and feeders—its long lines of rail, river, and canal—into the far distance, devouring for its daily needs the product of farm, forest, factory, and mine in every corner of the globe; clutching in its ever-expanding arms, as each day rolls on, thousands of the forlorn, the adventurous, the outcast, and lifting them out of misery into hope; assimilating all this discordant material into its own flesh and blood with a swiftness which suggests an occasional doubt whether such violent digestive powers are quite natural or wholesome; as I turned from these scenes of excitement to the stately parks—than which nothing more luxurious is to be found in older and imperial cities—to the frequent splendid churches of every sect, to the colleges, libraries, institutions of charity, of administration, and justice; as I looked upon and listened to this vast, resonant, vehement whole, I was oppressed with a single thought—that all this is of to-day. There is something at once startling and depressing in the rapidity with which this result has been reached.

We talk of History. No man can more highly appreciate than I do the noble labours of this Society, and of others in this country, for the preservation of memorials belonging to our brief but most important Past. We can never collect too many of them, nor ponder them too carefully, for they mark the era of a new civilization. But that interesting past presses so closely upon our sight that it seems still a portion of the present—the glimmering dawn preceding the noontide of to-day. I shall not be misunderstood, then, if I say that there is no such thing as human history. Nothing can be more profoundly, sadly true. The annals of mankind have never been written, never can be written; nor would it be within human capacity to read them if they were written. We have a leaf or two torn from the groat hook of human fate as it flutters in the storm-winds ever sweeping across the earth. We decipher them as we best can, with purblind eyes, and endeavour to learn their mystery as we float along to the abyss; but it is all confused babble—hieroglyphics of which the key is lost. Consider but a moment. The island on which this city stands is perhaps as perfect a site as man could desire for a great commercial, imperial city. Byzantium, which the lords of the ancient world built for the capital of the earth—which the temperate and vigorous Turk, in the days of his stern military discipline, plucked from the decrepit hands which held the sceptre of Cæsar and Constantine, and for the possession of which the present lords of Europe are wrangling; not Byzantium nor hundred-gated Thebes, not London nor Liverpool, Paris nor Moscow, can surpass the future certainties of this thirteen-mile-long Manhattan. And yet it was but yesterday—for what are two centuries and a half in the boundless vista of the Past?—that the Mohawk and the Mohican were tomahawking and scalping each other throughout these regions, and had been doing so for centuries; when the whole surface of this island, now groaning under millions of wealth which oppress the imagination, hardly furnished a respectable hunting- page 6 ground for a single Sachem, in his war-paint and moccasins, who imagined himself proprietor of the soil. But yesterday, Cimmerian darkness, primeval night; to-day grandeur, luxury, wealth, power.

I came not here to-night to draw pictures or pour forth dithyrambics, that I may gratify your vanity, or my own, whether municipal or national. To appreciate the unexampled advantages bestowed by the Omnipotent upon this favoured Republic His youngest child of civilization, is rather to oppress the thoughtful mind with an overwhelming sense of responsibility—to sadden with quick-coming fears—to torture with reasonable doubts. The world's great hope is here. The future of humanity—at least for that cycle in which we are now revolving—depends mainly upon the manner in which we deal with our great trust. The good old times! Where and when were those good old times? "All times, when old, are good," says Byron.

It is of Human Progress that I speak to-night. It is of Progress that I find a startling result when I survey the spectacle which the American Present displays. This nation stands on the point toward which other people are moving. It has put itself—or rather, destiny has placed it—more immediately than other nations, in subordination to the law governing all bodies political as inexorably as Kepler's law controls the motions of the planets. The law is Progress; the result Democracy, Nearly forty years ago the clear philosophical mind of De Tocqueville was so impressed by this comparatively infant Republic, the phenomena of which he had examined with microscopic minuteness, and with statesmanlike breadth of vision, that he exhorted his countrymen and Europe in general to accept the fact that Democracy was the preordained condition of the human race—a condition to which the world was steadily tending—and to seek happiness in conforming to the divine command, instead of wearing themselves out in futile struggles with the inevitable. Circumstances, mainly due to now very obvious phenomena in the policy of this country, to which the philosopher did not pay sufficient heed, have retarded the result, but it is again signalling its approach with swiftly augmenting speed. Whether it be a bane or a blessing, it is all-important for us to accept and make the best of it. No man more thoroughly believes and rejoices in the fundamental truth on which our system is founded than I do; but it is not to flatter nor exult that I allude to this foremost position which we occupy—not entirely through our merits, but mainly from the bounty of Heaven.

Sydney Smith once alluded, if I remember rightly, to a person who allowed himself to speak disrespectfully of the equator. I have a strong objection to be suspected of flattering the equator. Yet were it not for that little angle of 23° 27' 26" which it is good enough to make with the plane of the ecliptic, the history of this earth and of "all which it inherit "would have been essentially modified, even if it had not been altogether a blank. Out of the obliquity of the equator has come forth our civilization. It was long observed by one of the most thoughtful writers that ever dealt with human history, John von Herder, that it was to the gradual shading away of zones and alternation of seasons that the vigour and variety of mankind were attributable. Nothing good or great had ever come out of the eternal Spring or Midsummer of the tropics, nor from the thick-ribbed Winter of the poles. From the temperate zone, with its healthful and stimulating succession of seasons, have come civilization and progress. But for this graceful inclination of our mother earth toward the sun, as she revolves about that source of light and life—a dip which great Jupiter, standing perpendicular on his plane, disdains to make, and doubt less causes his children to suffer woefully inconsequence—who can tell whether our places might not have been occupied by wandering savages or speechless brutes? It is certainly no merit of ours, however, that the earth makes this blessed angle, and as earth-men we may gratefully recognise our superiority to Jupiterians without page 7 being braggarts. And, as Americans, we have the right to rejoice—but with trembling—at the more fortunate conditions in which our political orbit has been traced around that great central fact toward which all civilised bodies must turn. I have never remarked, moreover, that the nations by whom our tendency to boastfulness is sometimes rebuked are absolutely overwhelmed with bashfulness themselves, or ready to sink into the earth with shame, when alluding to their own advantages or achievements. Self-assertion is perhaps the natural, although not engaging, characteristic of vigorous and progressive peoples. It is sometimes as well to appreciate as to despise in national self-contemplation. And certainly we are never likely to pine for want of sharp criticism on this or the other side the water; for if ever nation survived perpetual vivisection, especially during the last half-dozen years, and grew fat and strong upon it, that nation is America. Not a quivering muscle, not a thrilling nerve, even in moments of tension and agony, but has been laid hare before the world, and serenely lectured upon for the instruction of ignorant audiences by the learned doctors of privilege; but when the long sigh of relief had been drawn from the spectators at the demonstrated death of Democracy, behold the monster on his feet again, and very much more alive than ever. There is no reason, then, why we should shrink from our opinions, even if not entirely unfavourable to our national character or our national hopes. I honour the man of opinions, and of courage to proclaim them, and I deprecate neither the wrath nor the lamentations of the prophets of evil on either side the ocean. Men of genius and virtue have uttered boding shrieks from time to time, and have done us excellent service. I trust sincerely that their voices may never grow too hoarse to croak for our good. And if I speak hopefully, even in regions where Mammon is supposed to be not entirely without votaries—

"Mammon, the least creeled spirit that fell
From heaven—"

it is because I know that the pursuit of riches in this country, maddening and often demoralising though it be, has strengthened the energies of the land, and that wealth has been poured forth like water at all times and seasons, whenever needed to save a nation, to encourage enterprise, relieve distress, or foster science and art. Out of the vast reservoir the overflow has been constant. If Midas has bathed in our Pactolus, and Croesus incrusted himself all over in its golden waters, we know, too, that its perennial streams have fertilised the broadest prairies and the lowest depths of humanity.

I asked, where and when were the good old times? This earth of ours has been spinning about in space, great philosophers tell us, some few hundred millions of years. We are not very familiar with our predecessors on this continent. For the present, the oldest inhabitant must be represented here by the man of Natchez, whose bones were unearthed not long ago under the Mississippi bluffs, in strata which were said to argue him to be at least 100,000 years old. Yet he is a mere modem, a person on this planet, if we are to trust illustrious teachers of science, compared with men whose bones and whose implements have been found in high mountain valleys and gravel pits of Europe; while these again are thought by the same authorities to be descendants of races which flourished many year-thousands before, and whose relics science is confidently expecting to discover, although the icy sea had once engulfed them and their dwelling-places. We of to-day have no filial interest in the man of Natchez, He was no ancestor of ours, nor have he and his descendants left traces along the dreary track of their existence to induce a desire to claim relationship with them. We are Americans; but yesterday we were Europeans—Netherlanders, Saxons, Normans, Swabians, Celts; and the day before yesterday, Asiatics, Mongolisms—what you will. Go to the ancestral home of many of us; strike into the very heart of London with pickaxe and spade; sink a shaft in the central ganglion of confused and thickly crammed streets about Tower Hill and Thames Street, along which the ever-accumulating mass of traffic has been rolling for a dozen centuries, and if you go deep enough, and excavate widely enough, you will find beautiful statues, tesselated pavements, mosaic pictures, pagan shrines—relies of that puissant Roman people who governed what they thought the world, when Britons were painted savages. Yet they never dreamed of the existence of that great American continent where the man of Natchez and his race had been roaming hundreds of year-thousands before, but never producing temples nor pictures, statues nor fountains. For what are Roman antiquities in England or anywhere page 8 else? Many of us trace back our ancestry to Bedfordshire and Suffolk, and are never weary of tracking the footsteps of our pilgrim fathers in quiet villages and peaceful English scenery of two or three hundred years ago. Go back two or three hundred thousand years, and saunter on the margin of the Ouse or through the primitive valleys of Bedford, and find your ancestors—as great naturalists inform us you will contemporaries and companions of the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros, the lion, and the hyena. Yet we talk of history, because we can grope backward dimly and vaguely for a matter of thirty centuries, while those rude forefathers of ours have faded for ever from our chronicles.

Men, through all ages—other than those accepting the revelations of Holy Writ—have solaced or distressed themselves with shadowy or whimsical fancies of a great beginning of the universe and of themselves; but perhaps they had better pause in their theorizing until the modern dauntless investigators shall find, in full fruition of their hopes, among the fossils of the pre-glacial period, some connecting anthroposimial links, some precious relies of the ancient ancestral ape, and

Language makes man. The beast can chatter, roar, or bellow, but man can speak. The child talks in fragments, and earlier languages are monosyllabic. A page break Chinese Dr. Johnson would be impossible. He would perish for want of polysyllables. If it had not been for the tower of Babel we should have been spared much superfluous trouble, for although we all are speaking very choice Aryan at bottom, we find it difficult to converse fluently with each other in that tongue, or even in the more modern Sanscrit, which we are told by great scholars—no doubt with accuracy—is essentially English, French, German, or Greek. It is an awful thought that languages, perhaps, cannot live unless they are stone dead. Cicero or Demosthenes might take his stand on any platform to-day and be reported in the papers for a classically educated public speaker; but should King Alfred come from his tomb, like the elder Hamlet, to reveal important secrets, he would find no living soul, save a professor or two, throughout his ancient realms, to comprehend his warnings. We celebrated Shakespeare's third centenary four years ago. Let another half-a-dozen centuries go by, and perhaps 'there will be none to philosophize with Hamlet or weep over the sorrows of Lear. Shakespeare himself may become as mythical as either of those princes whom he seems to have endowed with immortality, and some future Wolf may divide him into a score of balladmongers. It is a dreary possibility at least, that unless the Anglo-Saxon race dies out after a few centuries, the accretions and transmutations of language may make those wonderful dramas as obsolete as the odes of the Kymri or the lays of Llewellyn. Man, as far back as we know or imagine him, could speak; but it was long before ho learned his letters, without which accomplishment erudition is apt to be limited. At last Schoolmaster Cadmus came out of the East—as is the habit of schoolmasters—and brought sixteen counters in his pocket which he had picked up among the Pelasgians. The schoolmaster being abroad at last, progress became rapid enough. For in truth what human invention can compare with that of the alphabet? It is no wonder that Cadmus was pronounced not only a king's son, but allied to the Immortals. "Founders of states and lawgivers," says Lord Bacon, "were honoured with titles of demigods, but inventors were consecrated among the gods themselves." And if heathen mythology still prevailed, what a pantheon we should have in the Patent Office at Washington!

After the almost infinite space already traversed by mankind, at last something like tradition, record, and monumental history began. And cotemporaneous with the epoch of Egyptian and Hebrew grandeur there was a siege—so men say—of a city in Asia Minor, and it chanced that a blind man sang some songs about it, if he was a man and was blind. Wonderful power of poetic genius! The leading personages in that war, their passions and sentiments, the minute details of their costume, the colour of their hair and eyes, the names of their soldiers, and their ships, their habits of social life, the scenery surrounding them, the daily military and household events of that insignificant quarrel are almost as familiar in this remote hemisphere to-day as the siege of Vicksburg, with all its heroic, picturesque, and passionate circumstance, and its momentous consequences for all time. And out of the confusion of songs, monuments, and records there comes at last a glimmer of chronology. There, was once a cook in Athens. Whether he was skilful or not in the kitchen is not known, but he was swift of foot. He ran a race at the Olympic games, his name was the first to be recorded as victor in the archives of those festivals, and accordingly the subsequent history of Greece, with all her heroes, poets, sages, is registered from the Olympiad in which Corcebus won his race. Strangely enough, too, the date of this first-registered Olympiad has a sacred but familiar sound in our ears. It was 776 years before Christ. One thousand seven hundred and seventy-six years after Christ another epoch was established, from which this great Republic dates its records; a day on which equal rights were proclaimed as the heritage of mankind—a nobler era for the world than any that cooks or racers are ever likely to establish. At exactly the same period with Corœbus—as chronologists have settled it among themselves—there was a certain she-wolf in an Italian swamp with a pair of human foster-children. And, as we all have read in the storybooks, the foster-children founded a city which has had much influence for good and evil upon the cause of human progress.

The orbit of civilization, so far as our perishing records enable us to trace it, seems preordained from east to west. China, India, Palestine, Egypt, Greece, Rome, are successively lighted up as the majestic orb of day moves over them, and, as he Ranees still further through his storied and mysterious xodiac, we behold the shadows of evening as surely falling on the lands which he leaves behind him.

Religion, poetry, æsthetic art have already ennobled the progress of man. What page break would the world have been without Palestine? What present idea of human civilization would be possible without the poetry, sculpture, architecture, the magnificent drama, the subtle, lofty, almost divine philosophy of Greece—without the imperious and cruel nationalism, the all-surpassing: military art, the colossal self-esteem, the cynic materialism, the massive, sharply-chiselled jurisprudence which made Rome the mistress of the world? Dead Athens shines there for ever—not a constellation, but a whole universe of lustre—with the milky way of her exquisite, half-nebulous fables; with the pure starry light of her fixed and unchanging truths illuminating vast spaces of obscurity before and since her brief mortal' existence;—Rome, both in her military and legal glory, and in her shameful crapulous decrepitude, remains a perpetual memory to encourage human progress, and to warn from the dangers of luxury, ambition, and ineffable disdain of human rights by which she justly perished. And then came the wandering of the nations—the northern deluge. Rome sank miserably beneath the glacial flood which, like that in early geological ages, had become necessary in the grand scheme of civilization. Surely the Roman world had need of submergence and of ice. And at last, as the deluge subsided, Germany conquered Rome, and the new civilization began. But a low civilization at best. The iron-clad man on horseback divided the whole soil among his captains and corporals; the multitudes were throttled and made to wear the collar of serfdom marked with their owners' names; burglars and filibusters became kings, princes, by grace of God—which meant the steel-gloved list; the feudal system was established, and poetry, romance, grovelling legend and sycophantic chronicle have spread a halo around the perpetual crime unto our own days. Man still reeled on—falling, rising again, staggering forward with hue and cry at his heels, a wounded felon daring to escape from the prison to which grace of God had inexorably doomed him.

And still there was progress. Beside the sword two other instruments grew every day more potent—the pen and the purse. The power of the pen soon created a stupendous monopoly. Clerks obtained privilege of murder, because of their learning; a Norman king gloried in the appellation of fine clerk because ho could spell; the sons of serfs and washerwomen became high pontiffs, put their feet on the necks of emperors through the might of education, and appalled the souls of idiotic tyrants with their weird anathemas. Naturally the priests kept the talisman of learning to themselves. How should education help them to power and pelf if the people could participate in the mystic spell? But there was another power steadily augmenting the magic purse of Fortunatas, with its clink of perennial gold. Commerce changed clusters of hovels, cowering for protection under feudal castles, into powerful cities. Burghers wrested or purchased liberties from their lords and masters. And at last there were leagues of municipalities, chains of commercial republics, in all but name, stretched across Christendom, and tripping up Tyranny at every turn. Liberties in the plural, not liberty of man; concessions to corporations from the iron fist, from grace of God, in exchange for coin or in reparation of buffets.

And still Man struggled on. An experimenting friar, fond of chemistry, in one corner of Europe put nitre and charcoal together; a sexton or doctor in another obscure nook carved letters on blocks of wood; and, lo! there were explosions shaking the solid earth and causing the iron-clad man on horseback to reel in his saddle. Much good was accomplished both in the ancient and the new establishments, but freedom of religion was scarcely dreamed of; mutual toleration was accounted a crime. It was no wonder that Dr. Faustas was supposed to have sold his soul to the fiend. Whence but from devilish alliance could he have derived such power to strike down grace of God? But sacerdotalism (political priesthood) reigned too long and went too far. There was a reformation, but it was only a leap into the light. Priesthood was triumphant after all, for Church and State maintained their incestuous union. The people obtained new creeds, if their masters professed one, or remained with the ball and chain of ancient dogma rivetted to their limbs, if their masters remained faithful to that. Whoever governs you, his religion shall be yours! Cujus regio, ejus religio— were ever more blasphemous and insulting words hurled in the face of mankind? Yet this was accepted as the net result of the Reformation, so far as priests and princes could settle the account. This was the ingenious compromise by which it was thought possible to remove the troublesome question of religion for ever from the sphere of politics. Cujus regio, ejus religio. Could it be doubted that the ancient church would seize this weapon from the Protestant hands which had page 11 forged it, and smite every people with it that struggled for emancipation? Not freedom of religion, but freedom of princes to prescribe religion to their slaves. For this so many tens of thousands had died on the battle-field or been burned and buried alive. And it was sincerely hoped and believed that humanity could be thus remanded to its dungeon, buffetted, flouted, jeered out of its rights, and the padlock placed for ever on the immortal mind. And truly, to those who reckon history by the year, who find the record of Man's progress only in political annals, how dreary must seem our fate! Unless we hold fast to the fact, that in human, as in physical history, Nature is ever patiently producing her effects through long lapses of time, by causes which have been in operation since the beginning, history is but another word for despair. But history is never hysterical, never proceeds by catastrophes and cataclysms; and it is only by remembering this, that we can comprehend its higher meaning.

But now another talisman was to change the face of the world; for the great discoveries are apt to leap from the highly electrified brain of man at identical epochs. Christopher Columbus, confiding in his own stout heart and the mariner's compass, sailed forth on unknown seas, and—behold America! Here was the chief event thus far recorded in human progress, as time, in its deliberate patience, was one day to prove. Speech, the Alphabet, Mount Sinai, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Nazareth, the Wandering of the Nations, the Feudal System, Magna Charta, Gunpowder, Printing, the Reformation, the Mariner's Compass, America—here are some of the great landmarks of human motion. As we pause for a moment's rest after our rapid sweep through the cons and the centuries, have we not the right to record proof of man's progress since the days of the rhinoceros-eaters of Bedfordshire, of the man of Natchez?

But what concerns us most nearly at present is the actual civilization of Europe and America. Europe and America—twin sisters—the one long hidden in entranced sleep within primeval forests, while the other was slowly groping its way along the path of progress; yet both indissolubly connected by an ever-palpitating bond. In the fullness of time, after so many errors, crimes, and disappointments, civilization seemed to find a fresh field for its endeavours, as the discovery of this continent revealed a virgin world. It is impossible to imagine a more fortunate position than that occupied by this Republic. Nature has done its best, and it is not for physical advantages alone that she should be ever grateful. To be rid of the cumbrous machinery of military conquest; to have escaped from all the good Lamas into whom the soul of the great Schaka successively passes, enduing them with infallibility and omniscience; to have forgotten many of these worn-out traditions of Europe and Asia, is a boon for which America ought to be daily upon her knees. But to the solemn birthday of the infant America, around whose cradle, obscure as it was, so many good spirits had invisibly clustered, one malignant fairy had not been bidden, and her name was Privilege. And even as in the story-books, she sent a curse to avenge the slight. Almost on that natal day—we know the tale too well, and have had cause to ponder it bitterly—came the accursed bark, with its freight of victims from unhappy Africa, and Privilege had silently planted in this virgin soil the seeds of her future sway. It was an accident—if anything can be called accidental in the grand scheme of creation—yet out of that grain of mustard-seed was one day to sprout an evil to overshadow this land; to poison with its deadly exhalations the vigorous atmosphere of freedom,. Oligarchy grew up and held its own side by side with Democracy—until the time came for deciding whether the one principle or the other was in conformity with the eternal law.

Chemistry resolves the universe into a few ingredients. What, for example, is a man? Take a little hydrogen and oxygen, nitrogen and carbon, potash, lime, and sulphur, with a pinch or two of salt, and there is your hero or your prize-fighter, your Plato or your Washington. And political chemistry is no less subtle and rapid in its analysis. Oligarchy is resolved into the same gaseous vapours on one side the ocean and the other. So soon as it was demonstrated that the Slave power rested on Divine right; so soon as it was ascertained on authority that the Bible ordained not negro Slavery merely, but human Slavery without distinction of colour, as a divine institution; so soon as it had been proclaimed that "the Bible argument in favour of Slavery was its sheet anchor;" so soon as it had been categorically stated at the South "that Slavery is just, natural, and necessary, and that it does not depend on difference of colour;" so soon as the new Evangel had page 12 announced that "the experiment of universal liberty had failed, that the evils of free society are insufferable, and that policy and humanity alike forbade the extension of its evils to new people and coming generations," and that "there was no solution of the great problem of reuniting the interests of capital and labour so simple and effective as to make the labourer himself capital in all which statements I am only quoting literally from eminent slave-power authority—it became obvious that the identity of Privilege whether cis or trans-Atlantic was perfect. Grace of God, Right Divine, property in mankind claimed by human creatures superior to mankind, military dominion, political priesthood—what are all these but the nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon, lime, and potash, out of which Privilege is always compounded. Yet this great innocent, ingenuous American Demos rubbed its eyes with astonishment, as its great fight with Oligarchy began, to find no tears running down the iron cheek of Privilege. Why, Privilege would have been an idiot if it had wept in sympathy with the Demos. Slavery and serfdom had been abolished throughout Europe, but so long as the soil of many great empires belong to an exquisite small minority of the inhabitants, are not Wamba the witless and Gurth the swineherd almost as much born thralls to their master as if his collar was still upon their necks?

"Patriotism," said Samuel Johnson at the epoch of our war of Independence, "is the last refuge of a scoundrel." His parents believed, you remember, in the right divine of a royal queen's finger to cure the scrofula. And there have been a series of Dr. Johnsons from his day to ours, all over Europe, to denounce patriots and republicans, especially when they are causing interruptions to trade. So close an electric chain unites America and Europe, so instantaneous are their action and retroaction, that the American civil war, at least in Western Europe, became as much an affair of passionate party feeling as if it were raging on that side the Atlantic. "I had no idea," said a very eminent statesman to John Bright on two different occasions, "how much influence the example of that Republic was having upon public opinion in England, until I discovered the universal congratulation that the Republic was likely to be broken up." And yet, strange to say, in spite of the breathless interest with which the result and the daily details were watched for, it would be difficult to exaggerate the ignorance enwrapping the general mind of Europe as to the merits and meaning of the conflict. In popular periodicals and lectures of to-day you may learn much of the bays, rivers, inlets, oceans, and continents of the planet Mars; and if inclined for a vacation excursion, and could you find a conveyance thither, you might easily arrange a tour in that planet, starting from Huggin's Inlet and sailing 30,000 miles along one of its very convenient estuarios without ever losing sight of land. I know not whether the Martians have accepted the nomenclature of Dawes Continent, Table-Leg Bay, and the other designations laid down on their planet by the spirited geographers of ours, but at least they might be flattered did they know of the interest they excite on this earth. Perhaps, however, if they knew what was said of them here, they might be almost as much amazed as we used to be in America at the wonderful discoveries made by Europe concerning our politics, geography, history, statistics, national character, Constitution, and condition, during the late civil war. It was not that light was impossible. The thinkers and the workers were never misled; the brains and the bone and muscle of Europe were in the right place. Without mentioning other illustrious names which might be cited, I will remind you but of this. There was one man in England—greatest and truest of all—who made our cause his own through good report and bad report, and whose voice found an echo in every patriotic heart in this country; whose intellect shone like the sun through the mists of passion and prejudice obscuring the cause of liberty; a man whose public speeches will be treasured on either side the ocean as models of earnest thought and pure English eloquence; a statesman whose simple Anglo-Saxon name will be always dear to lovers of liberty everywhere in future time as in the present; you know already that I mean John Bright.

And the great conflict went on while the world stood wondering. Never in human history has there been such a battle with such a stake. It was not tor territory, empire, power. It was not merely for the integrity of the vast Republican heritage. These things, though precious, are of little worth compared to the sacred principle concerned in the struggle. For it was to be decided whether the great law of history which we have been tracing was a truth or a lie; whether the human race has been steadily, although slowly progressing, or whether we have been fatally page 13 arifting back to chaos. For surely, if freedom is an evil from which society, new or old, is to be saved, and slavery the great remedy and the great hope of the world, the only solution of political problems, then is the science of history the most dismal and contemptible of all imaginable studies. It was not a question for America, but for the world. The toiling multitudes of the whole earth are interested in the fate of this great republic of refuge, which receives and protects the oppressed of every race. "My countrymen, who work for your living," said John Bright at Birmingham, in 1863, "remember this; there will be one wild shriek of freedom to startle all mankind if that Republic should be overthrown." But the game was fought out, and both winners and losers are the gainers. The South, while deeming itself to have lost all save honour, will be more prosperous than it ever dreamed of, ere a generation of mankind shall have passed away. Let its "bruised arms be hung up for monuments," along with the trophies of the triumphant North, for the valour, the endurance, and self-sacrifice were equal on both sides, and the defeated party was vanquished because neither pride of colour nor immortal hate can successfully struggle against the inexorable law of freedom and progress.

I have spoken much of America. The political affairs of its sister Europe aro at this moment in a more fluid state than usual. The effect of the triumph of freedom in this country on the cause of progress in Europe is plain; but it would be impossible, in the limits of this address, to take a survey of the whole field. It seems natural, however, to glance at the political and social heart of Europe—Germany. Ever since the great rising for freedom against the Roman Empire, from near the dawn of the Christian Era down to this hour, Germany has been the main source of European and American culture. The common mother of nations and empires—alma mater felix prote—she still rules the thought of her vast brood of children—Franks, Saxons, Netherlander, Americans, Germans,—all. Her Gothic branches, in the fifth and sixth centuries sweeping to and fro over the extinct Roman empire, from the ultima thale of Britain to the confines of Asia; her energetic Norman branch of pirates, seating themselves with such happy audacity on every throne in Europe, from the Williams and Henrys of the North to the Rogers, Tancreds, Godfreys, of the South and East—from the Rurics of Russia to the Roderics of Spain; everywhere, in high places and low, all-conquering Germany has stamped our civilization with her impress, and bequeathed to modern languages the treasures of her ample and varied dialects: but everywhere, separation into small national groupings was the initial characteristic of European history. Seven German kingdoms in what we now call England; as many independent dukes and sovereigns in present France; a dozen kings in Spain; in Italy; hundreds of them in Germany proper; a plurality of sovereigns, in short, in all the districts of Christendom,—thus was Europe broken into hostile and discordant fragments. And the tendency to unite these jarring sovereignties into a few solid masses has marked her later history. A thousand years ago there was a Heptarchy in half the tittle island of Britain. Now Europe itself is hardly more than a Heptarchy, five hundred years ago the seven Electors of the Emperor acquired complete sovereignty within their own dominions. Three centuries later, when the shameful peace of Westphalia had at last ended that conflict of demons which we call the Thirty Years' War, the disunion of Germany was completed. More than 300 sovereignties were established over the unhappy land. Over the 307 independent sovereigns reigned an Emperor, enjoying the privilege of issuing orders which none of them heeded, and of governing despotically his ancestral possessions, too feeble to resist tyranny. Such was the "Holy Roman Empire" an appellation which, as Voltaire remarked, was open to criticism on three points. It was not holy, was not Roman, and was not an empire. With those exceptions the description is perfect. After nearly two centuries more had passed away, the Congress of Vienna, as a part of the little good that it had established for humanity, at least much diminished the catalogue of petty princes in Germany. Three hundred and odd of them went up to that political guillotine, and only thirty-five escaped with life.

The German Demos, somewhat later, striving after union and strength, had partially achieved, under the lead of Prussia, a customs union. The national league, filled with larger ideas of union, resolved, as an exemplification of a principle, to free the German inhabitants of Schleswig-Holstein from the Danish crown. The great powers took the war into their own hands. Else had Democracy taken the bit into its teeth. The Schleswig-Holstein war was soon over. The provinces page 14 were taken from Denmark. Then followed the dispute for the booty. The rest of the story is familiar. The seven weeks' war; the disastrous day to Austria of Sadowa; the peace of Prague—which passed all understanding—for, behold, when the smoke was cleared away, not only was Austria excluded from Germany, but even her allies in the defunct Bund—the Southern States—had accepted, by treaty, the military and commercial supremacy of Prussia. Thus another immense stride had been made toward German unity. In 1648, more than 300 sovereignties; in 1815, three dozen; in 1866, one, essentially, practically one. How much has liberty gained by this progress? Time will show that progress and liberty are identical. It is impossible that all this dazzling success of Prussia is to end in the establishment of one great military empire the more. The example and the retroaction of America, the success here of freedom and progress, forbid that result. The great statesman of Prussia is distinguished for courage, insight, breadth of vision, iron will, and a warm and steadfast heart. His genius consists in the instinctive power of governing by conforming to the spirit of the age. No man knows better than he to read the signs of the times.

Small is the chance of despotism in these latter days to stem the rapids. She may utter dismal shrieks, but shoot Niagara she must. The present government of Austria has placed itself conscientiously on the right road out of great perplexities. The brief history of constitutionalism in that empire is full of instruction. The experiment has been a triple one—centralism, federalism, dualism. The realm is an agglomerate of many distinct nationalities, scattered through ten kingdoms and more than thirty duchies or other principalities. The little river Leytha is the boundary between the hereditary provinces of Hapsburg and the triune realm of the holy Stephen—consisting of Hungary, Transylvania, and Croatia, but commonly called the kingdom of Hungary. After the war of 1859, the right of the Austrian people to representation and legislation was announced in general terms by the October Diploma of 1860, and an elaborate Constitution was proclaimed in the following February. A Central Parliament or Reichsrath was established for the whole empire, consisting of a House of Peers and of a Representative Chamber, chosen, somewhat as United States Senators are elected, for six years and by the Provincial Diets. The Parliament began its session and was hailed with great enthusiasm by the Germanic element throughout the west half. But beyond the Leytha, Hungary scorned the new Constitution, stiffly maintained the continuity of her own, and refused to merge her legal and historical independence in the central imperial system newly promulgated. "We can wait," said Minister Schmerling. "We, too, can wait," replied the Hungarians. And they won the waiting game. In September,. 1860, the Schmerling Cabinet fell; the February Constitution was suspended by Imperial edict; the experiment of centralism was acknowledged to have failed, and a cabinet founded on what is called Fedralism was formed. Fedralism was to consist mainly in enlarging the powers of the provincial diets for consultative and financial purposes, and in coming to an arrangement with Hungary by means of moderate concessions.

The Diet of Hungary was summoned once more. As soon as assembled, the Magyars were found as faithful as ever to the crown of St. Stephen, as indifferent to all other crowns on the brow of their monarch. Not a thought was admitted of swerving from the ancient constitution. The light and soul of the Diet was Francis Deak, a man born in the middle classes, a practising lawyer of moderate fortune, with no personal aims, and of surpassing forensic ability, wielding by the power of genius and integrity an almost despotic sway over the proudest aristocracy in the world. The Prussian war brought the Debates to a sudden close. So soon as it was over the Hungarian Diet was once more convened. Baron Beust, a statesman of quick intellect, large political experience, ready eloquence with tongue and pen, imperturbable temper, and immense power of work, who had long been administrator of the little kingdom of Saxony, become Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Austrian Empire. Considering the experiments both of centralism and of federation to have failed, he decided on complete concession to Hungary. The Constitution was restored at last, and a Hungarian Ministry formed. At Pesth, in the midst of the most stately and picturesque pageant that had been seen in Europe for centuries—a scene so full of historical and mediæval splendour that it seems like a living chapter of Froissart or Phillippe de Commines—the king, attired in a long broca mantle, with the sacred jewelled crown of St. Stephen on his head, and mounted on splendidly-caparisoned white horse which he managed with perfect skill, amid wild page 15 shouts of Eljen from his lieges almost mad with enthusiasm, rode up the sacred mound on the Danube, and waved the ancient sword of a long line of ancestors to the four quarters of the world, in symbol of protection to the realm. Hungary was restored.

The next problem was to establish Constitutionalism on the other side of the Leytha. An e pluribus unum had failed. An e pluribus duo was resolved upon. A kind of constituent assembly of the western provinces was convoked. Then came a great outbreak of dissatisfaction on both sides the Leytha, from the Sclavonic nationalities, which considerably outnumber the Germans and the Magyars combined. In Austria the leading three are the German, Hungarian, and Sclavonic. The Magyars, the direct emigration out of Asia into Europe have held the wild, fruitful plains on the borders of Turkey and Asia for 1,000 years, wedging themselves firmly between the more ancient settlers of the Sclavonic family. At this moment there are about 5,000,000 Magyars, 9,000,000 Germans, and 15,000,000 Sclaves out of the 32,000,000 of the whole population of the Empire. But there has been no single dominant national language to absorb into itself these various tongues; and difference of speech has kept nationalities distinct, and of course promoted disunion. The system of state rights, and of consequent provincialism, is thus manifested on a vast scale. So soon as the pressure of absolutism was removed, each nationality began to assert its own rights, its own independence, its own dialect, and to separate its aspirations and traditions from those of its sisters. Subjects which would seem more appropriate to antiquarian societies or debating clubs than to the realm of politics became popular themes for statesmen and legislators. The Magyars, a proud, chivalrous people, with much aptitude for politics, had for centuries governed twice their number of Sclaves, controlling not only the whole of Hungary, but the annexed provinces of Transylvania and Croatia. In these remote, and, to the American public, obscure regions, lie the seeds of many future convulsions in Europe, to which I shall not allude on this occasion. Thirty years ago, the Magyars, alarmed, it has been suggested, by symptoms adverse to the duration of their race, determined to force their language over the whole triune kingdom. Previously, the debates in the Diet at Pesth, to which came up deputies from Transylvania and Croatia, as well as from Hungary proper, had been conducted in Latin, as a common medium in which alone Sclaves and Magyars could comprehend each other. It was now ordained that Hungarian only should be used in Legislative Assemblies, in courts of justice, in municipal sessions, in all the common affairs of civic life. If there was a dispute about money matters, the tribunal would refuse to adjudicate unless accounts had been kept in Magyar, by those who knew not a word of the language. In towns where the population was exclusively Sclavonic, Magyar clergymen were required to preach in Magyar language, to congregations of course unable to understand a word of their discourse. Sclave children were required to learn the catechism in Magyar. Whoever resented or resisted such tyranny was punished with stripes, because the dignity of the nation required it. If the Legislature of New York should ordain today that in churches, courts of justice, legislative and municipal assemblies, schools and bible classes, the Dutch language should be used, to the exclusion, in part, of other tongues, because a very distinguished and influential portion of the population are of Netherland descent, it would be a mild exemplification of the language-policy thus forced on the non-Magyar inhabitants of Hungary, and at the same time of the inherent difficulties and evils in steady encouragement of state traditions, provincial feelings, and separate nationalities in a great country. Certainly if members of the Legislature could only understand each other by using a dead language, it would seem natural enough for the dominant nationality to enforce its own dialect on the rest. But unfortunately the Magyar is most difficult to acquire, and as different from Sclavonic. Dualism was denounced as unjust, illegal, monstrous—a logical self-contradiction. To divide an empire into two halves, and still to retain its existence, was declared to be like squaring the circle—a geometrical impossibility. On the other hand, the German party, swallowing their grief at the extinction of centralism, warmly supported the policy of Government. The imperial arch may be said, therefore, to rest on the two columns of Germanism and Magyarism—upon the two dominant nationalities in which the Chancellor expects firmest support—some of the most progressive and eloquent German representatives in the old Reichsrath having seats in the Beust Cabinet. Still more significant are the abolition of the Concordat, and the liberation of education and marriage from the exclusive control of the Catholic priesthood, or of any other priesthood. The law of last page 16 December establishes free liberty for all opinions—liberty of the press, liberty of faith, liberty of marriage, liberty of education. More just, enlightened, progressive legislation than this could not be expected in New York, Ohio, Massachusetts, in any part of this Republic. E plaribus duo is estimated; the attempt to square the political circle has a fair prospect of success.

The cause of human progress is benefited by the experiment now making in Austria, and the friends of civilisation and freedom should wish it God speed. A double Ministry, out of which a third one is evolved for imperial purposes only. Such a scheme seems delicate and complicated for rough work. But dualism, combined with personal union under one sovereign, is rather a phrase than a fact, the two halves of the empire being practically conjoined and dependent on each other, and the two great subjects of war and foreign affairs being essentially in one hand. But, alas! progress must be fettered and halting everywhere, under the military rule prevailing over continental Europe. Reflect upon these little figures in simple arithmetic: France has 1,200,000 soldiers, Italy has 500,000, Prussia about 1,000,000, Austria 800,000, Russia nearly 1,000,000. Thus, merely the Pentarchy of the Continent—its five leading Powers alone—not counting the middle and lesser Powers, and saying nothing of Great Britain, keep nearly 5,000,000 of men perpetually on foot, while this great Republic has about 40,000 men. No epigram could be terser. We know from recent experience how much it costs to keep up great armies. And we have proved to the world that where great principles, or where the national existence is at stake, every citizen becomes a soldier, that immortal commanders start out of obscurity into fame, and that great armies resolve themselves again into the mass of the people, becoming ennobled by their military experience, and even better citizens than before. But here is the heart of life taken systematically out of all these citizens in every monarchy. For a period varying from fifteen to nine years—the whole of youth and the cream of middle age—these men lose their family, their home, their country, becoming citizens only of that dangerous military commonwealth which holds potentates and subjects alike in its iron grasp. Is it really the final result of European civilisation to decide which nation shall have the most populous armies and the biggest guns?

I have dwelt long, by way of illustration, on recent events in Central Europe. I should have liked to say something about Spain, and Italy, and France, but time fails me, and perhaps one or two examples are as useful as a score. It is impossible, however, not to make a passing allusion to the Presidential election which has just occurred in Great Britain, almost simultaneously with our own. I say Presidential election, because, on the vote just taken, it has been decided that Mr. Gladstone, and not Mr. Disraeli, is to preside over affairs in England for the next political term, be it long or short, as conclusively as if their names had been voted for on a general ticket. There the First Lord of the Treasury is Prime Minister for Her Majesty the Queen; here the President is Prime Minister to His Majesty the People. The British Parliament, which governs 30,000,000 of citizens and 150,000,000 of subjects, which by a statute paper at any moment can alter the succession to the crown, convert the monarchy into a Commonwealth or a Despotism, prescribe the creed of the church, make or unmake the President, Prime Minister—or whatever you prefer to call him—has been hitherto a representative of land, and not of man. The best club in London; exclusive, full of distinguished and eloquent gentlemen; delightfully situated on the Thames, with charming terraces and bay windows on the river; an excellent library, superior restaurant, within five minutes' walk of all the public offices, and with the privilege of governing a splendid empire into the bargain, it is no wonder that men were willing to pay well for seats in the House of Commons, and it is a sure mark of progress that the average expense of seats has been steadily diminishing. The good old times are gone for ever when boroughs advertised themselves for sale in the public journals, and when a working majority of the House held their seats on the nomination and at the pleasure of less than 200 landholders—about two members on an average for each landholder. It is certainly to the credit of the British people, and proof of their indomitable love of liberty, that they have moved steadily forward against a government thus constituted, and without civil war have achieved such triumphs as Catholic emancipation, the Corn Law repeal, the Reform Bill of 1830, and the Reform Bill just coming into operation. Who doubts that the new English Household Suffrage Bill is the fruit of the Appomatox apple tree? Who imagined in 1862 that power would be transferred in England from land to people without bloodshed, and that it would be done by Tories?

England is a landed aristocracy. Twenty millions of men live in England—30,000 men own England. The pyramid stands on its apex. In America is a landed democracy. Every man votes, and every man may be a bondholder who is willing to go west for a homestead. Our experiment has often been pronounced a new and a bold one. It is an experiment, but scarcely a bold one. It in simply to see if the pyramid can be made to stand on its base. Thus far it has stood, although Privilege was amazed, the other day, that it was not toppled over, feeling that no other government could have resisted such a shock as was dealt to our fabric. There are movements all over Europe, as I hope to have proved by pregnant examples. Through the long past there have been political lullabies for the infant man: Divine right, infallibility, charters to the people, instead of charters from the people; universal suffrage combined with universal bayonets; above all, the magnificent platitude that government always exists with full consent of the governed. The European emigrant, the forlorn outcast, it may be, of older civilizations, finds already accomplished here the revolution which he has "dreaded, but dwelt upon "as the darkest of crimes. But that emigration, amounting to 3,000,000 Europeans every ten or twelve years, has been in one direction, and on a comparatively small scale.

Two centuries before the Christian era many millions of men were occupied, as we have all read in the school-books, ten years long in building a wall. That wall stands to this day. It is 1,500 miles in length. It is twenty-five feet high, and so broad that six cavalrymen can ride abreast upon it. It is sometimes carried over mountains of a mile's perpendicular height. Its masonry is so conscientious that it is said to be impossible to thrust a nail between the massive stones of which it is composed. There are towers and bastions for armed men at regular intervals through all its prodigious length. This wall was built, as we all know, by Trin-Shee-Hwang-Tee, founder of the dynasty of Trin, as a protection against the incursions of the Tartars. But what is this stupendous piece of mason-work, bristling with armed men, which has done its best for 2,000 years to protect one-third of the human race from the invasion of their fellow-creatures, compared to that air-drawn barrier, invisible, impalpable, yet, until recent events, impregnable which has barred the road to emigration southward, and which we call Mason and Dixon's line? The European wanderer, pushing westward after landing on these shores, finds an enormous plain stretching between the Rocky and Apalachian Mountains from the Gulf to the Arctic, and containing below the 45th parallel a surface of unexampled fertility of 1,500,000 square miles in extent. There is no feudal system, no state church to prescribe or proscribe his religious creed and prohibit the education of his, children. The most commodious building in every town is usually the school-house, in which his children are gratuitously educated, in common with those of the richest, citizens, where all are converted into Americans together; not taught to harp upon nationalities or to wrangle of creeds. He finds Catholics, Protestants, Hebrews, side by side in mutual respect and affection; illustrious men not more advanced and believed by those of their own faith than by those of a different church. But the most tempting semi-tropical region, producing the great staple on which so large a part of the world's industry depends, has not cultivated much more than one per cent, of the soil—a region three times as large as France, which might yield that precious plant in profusion, feed and clothe untold millions, and maintain empires. The cotton crop has languished far behind its possibilities, because, while there was no limit to the demand, an increase to the supply of labour was sternly forbidden, few emigrants daring to cross that awful barrier. We stand on the threshold great events. A change in the condition of mankind is impending.

"A multitude, like which the populous North
Pour'd never from her frozen loins to pass
Rhone or the Danube, when her barbarous sons
Came like a deluge on the South,"

is gradually collecting in distant regions. Is it possible that those vast and fruitful plains, which have so long been panting in vain for culture, are to lie fallow still, when the famishing labour of the world is anxious for a summons? No country I ever prospered long where labour was dishonoured. Look at Spain, where two and a half centuries ago the most effective population of the land—500,000 full-grown men and women-were expelled from the country at the dictate of the Archbishop of Toledo, because they were industrious and because they were Moors—an achievement of such stupendous idiocy that a wiser churchman, Cardinal Richelieu, afterward page 18 declared it to be the most audacious and barbarous ever recorded by history; and think of Spanish misfortunes from that day to this! On remote Bohemian, Moravian, Swabian, Swedish mountains and plains human creatures are toiling life-long, from squalid cradle to pauper grave, for a daily wage of ten cents, each. Down among dismal coal mines, in various parts of Europe, men, women, and children are banished, weeks and months long, from the blessed sunlight, from the warm precincts of the cheerful day, from home affections, from education, from civilization; companions of the fossilized reptiles which perished hundreds of thousands of years ago, overshadowed and begrimed by the charred and carbonized forests of the primeval world, moulting from childhood to old age for a pittance barely sufficient to support life, that they may pile up still higher the magnificent fabric of feudal pomp which has so long doomed them and their fellows to a living burial. Is it to be imagined that such step-children of European civilization would not be wooed from their dismal caves into the genial climate, the virgin forests, the exuberant savannahs of the south, and be converted from gnomes and bobolds into men, so soon as the long trance has been broken there, labour raised from degradation, and the great laws of Democracy accepted?

Thus far I have trespassed on your patience, while endeavouring to trace, from what we know or imagine of history, proofs of that law of progress to the disbelievers in which history can teach nothing. My faith in that law, and in the welfare of the Republic in proportion to her conformity to that law, is absolute. That all mankind are capable of progress I as devoutly believe. None can be debarred from the inalienable right to intellectual and moral development, which is the true meaning of the pursuit of happiness, as proclaimed in our great statute. And hope may come to all. In some of the Western portions of this country, amidst the profusion of nearly all the gifts of heaven, there is a deficiency of pure water. But American energy is not to be baulked by dissembling nature of that first necessity of life. Artesian wells are sunk through the sod of the prairies, through the loam, through the gravel, through the hard-pan, which is almost granite, until at last, 1,000 or 1,500 feet beneath the surface, the hand of man reveals a deep and rapid river coursing through those solitary, sunless depths, at a speed of ten miles the hour, swifter than Ohio, or Mississippi, or Hudson, or any of the bountiful and imperial streams of this country, flowing as they do through picturesque mountain scenery, stately forest, or enamelled meadow, amid towered cities or cultivated fields. And when the shaft has reached that imprisoned river, and the rent for the first time has been made through its dungeon-wall, the waters remembering the august source, on far distant mountain-tops, whence ages ago they fell, leap upwards to the light with terrible energy, rising in an instant far above the surface of the earth, and pouring forth their healthful and fertilising current to delight and refresh mankind. And with even such an awakening are we gladdened when half-forgotten humanity bursts, from time to time, out of the depths in which it has pursued its joyless, sunless course, moaning and murmuring through long centuries, but never quite forgetting its divine and distant origin. Such was the upward movement out of intellectual thraldom which we call the Reformation when the shaft of Luther struck the captive stream; such an awakening, but a more significant and hopeful one, has been heralded for this whole Republic, East and West, North and South, and for all humanity, by the triumph of the right in the recent four years' conflict in which all have been the conquerors.