6 
 
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 ^'N/VG..i-,Tr Off 
 SAN Ufts^j
 
 iHt UNIVERSITY LIBRAR? 
 
 mmsijy OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO 
 
 LA JOLU, CALIFORNIA 
 
 Historic Progress 
 
 American Democracy 
 
 AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
 
 NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY, 
 
 SIXTY-FOURTH ANNIVERSABT, 
 DECEMBER 16, 18G8, 
 
 JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. 
 
 " Sed inter hominem et belluam hoc maxime interest . . . quort Eomo ra- 
 tiocis est particeps, per quam consequentia cernit, causas rerum videt, earumque 
 progressus et qnasi antecessiones non i^morat, similitudines comparat, et rcbu6 
 praeseutibus adj ungit atque annectit futuras."— Cic. de Off. i. 16. 
 
 NEW-YORK : 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER AND CO 
 
 654 BKOADWAY. 
 
 iscy.
 
 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by 
 
 THE NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of 
 
 New-Yorl£. 
 
 John A. Gkat & Grebn, Printkes, 16 akd 18 Jacob Strect, Nkw-York.
 
 OFFICERS OF THE SOCIETY, 
 
 18G9. 
 
 PRESIDENT, 
 
 HAMILTON FISH, LL.D. 
 
 FIRST VICE-PRESIDE>"r, 
 
 THOMAS DE WITT, D.D. 
 
 SECOXD VICE-PRESIDENT, 
 
 GULIAN C. VERPLANCK, LL.D. 
 
 FOREIGN CORRESPONDING SECRETARY, 
 
 JOHN ROMEYX BRODHEAD, LL.D 
 
 DOMESTIC CORRESPONDING SECRETARY, 
 
 WILLIAM J. HOPPIN. 
 
 EECORDING SECRETARY, 
 
 ANDREW WARNER, 
 
 TREASURER, 
 
 BENJAMIN H. FIELD. 
 
 LIBRARIAN, • 
 
 GEORGE H. MOORE, LL.D. 

 
 COMMITTEE OF ARRANGEMENTS 
 
 SIXTY-FOURTH ANNIVERSARY. 
 
 CHARLES P. KIRKLAND, WILLIAM CHAUNCET, 
 
 WILLIAM T. BLODGETT, ANDREW WARNER, 
 
 GEORGE H. MOORE.
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 I HAVE the honor of addressing the Histoiical So- 
 ciety 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 wandered yesterday, 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 vitalized 
 vegetation, with its gorgeous blossoms, rampant vines, 
 overshadowing foliage, expands in growth almost 
 beneath the gazer's eye ; as I saw the innumerable 
 steamers and ships which crowd your wharves, like 
 moving woods and shifting palaces, forming an un-
 
 broken cliain of connection with every zone and 
 clime ; as I moved tLrougli tlie crowded mart wliose 
 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 im- 
 petuous ra^^ids 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-exj)anding arras, as each day rolls on, 
 thousands of the forlorn, the adventurous, the out- 
 cast, and lifting them out of misery into hope ; assimi- 
 latino; all this discordant material into its o^vn flesh 
 and blood with a swiftness which suggests an oc- 
 casional doubt whether such violently digestive 
 powers are quite natural or wholesome ; as I turned 
 from these scenes of excitement to the stately j^arks 
 — 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, the libraries, 
 the institutions of charity, of administration, of jus- 
 tice ; as I looked upon and listened to this vast, 
 resonant, vehement whole, I was opjoressed with a 
 single thought — that all this is of To-Day. There is
 
 something at once startling and depressing in the 
 rapidity with whicli this result has been reached. 
 
 We talk of History. No man can more highly 
 appreciate than I do the noble labors of your 
 Society and of others in this country, for the pre- 
 servation 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 noon-tide of to- 
 day. 
 
 I shall not be misunderstood, then, if I say that 
 there is no such thing as human history. No- 
 thing 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 great book 
 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 en- 
 deavor to learn their mystery as we float along to 
 the abyss; but it is all confused babble, hierogly- 
 phics of Avhich the key is lost. Consider but a
 
 moment. The island on wliicli this city stands is 
 as perfect a site as man could desire for a great, 
 commercial, imperial city. Byzantium, whicli 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 Caesar and Constantine, and for the sue 
 cession to whicli the present lords of Europe are 
 wrangling ; not Byzantium, nor hundred-gated 
 Thebes; nor London, nor Liverpool, Paris, nor Mos- 
 cow can surpass the future certainties of this thir- 
 teen-mile long Manhattan, 
 
 And yet it was Init yesterday — for what are tAVO 
 centuries and a half in the boundless vista of the 
 Past ? — that the Mohawk and the • Mohican were 
 tomahawking and scalping each othef throughout 
 these regions, and had been doing so for centuries ; 
 when the whole surface of this island, now groaning 
 under millions of wealth which oj^press the imagina- 
 tion, hardly furnished a respectable hun.ting-ground 
 for a single Sachem, in his war-2:>aint and moccasins, 
 who imagined himself proprietor of the soil. 
 
 But yesterday Cimmerian darkness ; primeval night. 
 To-day, grandeur, luxury, wealth, poAver. I come not 
 here to-night to draw pictures or pour forth dithy-
 
 rambics that I may gratify your vanity or my 
 own, whether municipal or national. To appreciate 
 the unexampled advantages bestowed by the Omni- 
 potent upon this favored Kepublic, this youngest 
 child of civilization, is rather to oppress the thought- 
 ful mind with an overwhelming sense of responsi- 
 bility ; 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. 
 
 "And all our yesterdays have lighted fools 
 The way to dusty death," 
 
 says the great master of morals and humanity. 
 
 But neither fools nor sages ; neither individuals nor 
 nations; have any other light to guide them along 
 the track which all must tread, save that long glim- 
 mering vista of yesterdays which grows so swiftly 
 fainter and fainter as the present fades off into 
 the past.
 
 And I believe it possible to discover a law out 
 of all tliis apparently chaotic wliirl and bustle ; 
 tliis tangled skein of liunian affairs as it spins itself 
 througli the centuries. That law is ]3rogress — slow, 
 confused, contradictory, but ceaseless development, 
 intellectual and moral, of the human race. 
 
 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 towards which 
 other peoples are moving — the starting-point, not 
 the goal. It has put itself — or rather Destiny has 
 placed it — more immediately than other nations in 
 subordination to the law governing all bodies poli- 
 tical as inexorably as Kepler's law controls the mo- 
 tions of the planets. 
 
 The law is Progress ; the result Democracy. 
 Nearly forty years ago tlie clear, philosophical mind 
 of De Tocqueville was so impressed by this com- 
 paratively infant Ilepublic, the phenomena of which 
 he had examined witli microscopic minuteness and 
 with statesman-like breadth of vision, that he ex- 
 horted his countrymen and Euroj^e 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 hap- 
 piness in conforming to tlie 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 aGcei)t 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 right- 
 ly, to a person who allowed himself to speak disre- 
 spectfully 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°, 2f, 2G'', 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.
 
 8 
 
 " Some say he bid his angels turn askance 
 The poles of eartli twice ten degrees and more 
 From the sun's axle ; they with labor pushed 
 Oblique the central globe .... 
 
 to bring in change 
 
 Of seasons to each clime, else had the spring 
 Perpetual smiled on earth with verdant flowers 
 Equal in days and nights, except to those 
 Beyond the polar circles." 
 
 Out of tlie obliquity of the equator lias come 
 fortli our civilization. It was long ago observed 
 by one of tlie most tlioughtful 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 vigor and variety of 
 mankind were attributaljle. Nothing good or great 
 could ever come out of the eternal spring or mid- 
 summer of the tropics, nor from the thick-ribbed 
 winter of tlie 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 towards 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, 
 
 * See Idecn znr GescMclde dcr Menschlieit. Iter Thcil, Ites Buch, S. iv. 
 Herder's Siimmtliche Wcrke, 28ter Band.
 
 and doubtless causes liis cliildren to suffer wofully 
 ill consequence — who can tell whether our places 
 might not have been occupied by wandering savages 
 or broods of speechless rej^tiles? 
 
 It is certainly no merit of ours, however, that 
 the earth makes this blessed angle, and as earth- 
 men we may gratefully recognize our superiority to 
 Jupiterians without being braggarts. And as Ameri- 
 cans we have the right to rejoice — but with trembling 
 — at the more fortunate conditions in which our po- 
 litical orbit has been traced around that great central 
 fact towards which all civilized bodies must turn. 
 
 I have never remarked, moreover, that the nations 
 , by whom our tendency to boastfulness is sometimes 
 rebuked are absolutely overwhelmed with bashful- 
 ness themselves, or ready to sink into the earth 
 with shame when alluding to their own advan- 
 tao-es or achievements. Self-assertion is the na- 
 tural althouo:h not ens-ao-ino; characteristic of vis^or- 
 ous 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 sharj) criticism on this or the 
 other side of the water ; for if ever nation sur- 
 vived perpetual vivisection, especially during the 
 last half-dozen years, and grew fat and strong upon
 
 10 
 
 it, tliat nation is America. Not a quivering muscle, 
 not a thrilling nerve, even in moments of tension and 
 agony, but has been laid bare before the world and 
 serenely lectured upon by tlie 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 its 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 unfavorable 
 to our national character or our national hopes. I 
 honor the men of opinions and of courage to pro- 
 claim 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 with- 
 out votaries, 
 
 " Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell 
 From Heaven," 
 
 it is because I know that the pursuit of riches in 
 this country, maddening and often demoralizing 
 though it be, has strengthened the energies of the
 
 11 
 
 land, and tliat wealth has been poured forth like 
 water at all times and seasons, whenever needed to 
 save a nation, to encourage enterprise, relieve dis- 
 tress, or foster Science and Art. Out of the vast 
 reservoir the outflow has heen constant. If Midas 
 has hathed in our Pactolus and Croesus incrusted 
 himself all over in its golden waters, we know too 
 that its perennial streams have fertilized 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 prede- 
 cessors 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 one hundred thousand 
 years old. Yet he is a mere modern, a parvenu on 
 this planet, if we are to trust illustrious teachers of 
 science, compared with the men whose bones and 
 whose implements have been found in high moun- 
 tain 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 con-
 
 12 
 
 fidently expecting to discover^ althougli the icy sea 
 liad 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 Euro- 
 peans — Netherlanders, Saxons, Normans, Swabians, 
 Celts— and the day before yesterday, Asiatics, Mon- 
 golians, what you will. Go to the ancestral home 
 of many of us. Strike into the busy heart of 
 London with pick-axe 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 pic- 
 tures, pagan shrines — relics 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 conti- 
 nent 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.
 
 13 
 
 For what are Koman antiquities in England or 
 anywhere else ? Many of ns trace back our ancestry 
 to Beclfordsliire and Suffolk, and are never weary of 
 tracking tlie 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 Ave talk of history because we can grope back- 
 wards 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 dis- 
 tressed themselves with shadowy or whimsical fancies 
 of a great beginning of tlie Universe and of them- 
 selves ; but perhaps they had better pause in their 
 theorizino; until the modern dauntless investiorators 
 shall find in full fruition of their hopes, among the 
 fossils of the pre-glacial period, some connecting 
 
 * Sir Charles Lyell. Geological Fc'ulences of the xintiquity of Man. 
 2d edition. Murray, 1863. Pages 3V5-376.
 
 14 
 
 antLropo-simial links, some precious relics of the 
 ancient ancestral ape, and 
 
 " Madly play with that great kinsman's bone 
 As with a ckib," 
 
 to smite all other theories to the earth. But even 
 then we shall probably arrive at the same conclusion 
 with the venerable Ephraim Jenkinson, in the " Vicar 
 of Wakefield," who sold Moses a gross of green spec- 
 tacles with copper rims, and told him at the same 
 time " that the cosmogony or creation of the world 
 had puzzled the philosophers of all ages." 
 
 One thing is certain. Man is here. And another 
 thing is equally certain : he has arrived at his present 
 condition through a long series of improvements and 
 developments. Placed on " this isthmus of a middle 
 state," between two eternities, he looks backward with a 
 curiosity half exultant, half loathing, and forward with 
 a hope which is often akin to despair. To be created 
 at once in likeness to the Omnipotent and to a fantastic 
 brute ; to be compounded thus of the l)estial and the 
 angelic, alternately dragged upward and do\vnward b}' 
 conflicting forces, presses upon us the conviction, even 
 without divine revelation, that this world is a place of 
 trial and of j)rogress towards some higher spliere. 
 
 But let the gorilla stand erect in frightful carica- 
 ture of humanity. Weigh his brain and a Hottentot's
 
 15 
 
 together in the same balance, if you choose, and find 
 less difference between the two than between Hanni- 
 bal's and a more southern African's. Until you can 
 find a dumb animal endowed with the relio-ious 
 faculty; who worships the Eternal Father on his 
 knees; who has treasured in his heart the liojie of 
 an immortal future ; who " looks before and after, and 
 pines for what is not ;" you may be sure that the 
 interval between Man and the ans-els will be crossed 
 at a single leap sooner than the infinite sj^ace be- 
 tween the brute and Man will be diminished by a 
 hair's-breadth. All the inconceivable time since pri- 
 meval Man before the glacial flood is but an hour's 
 span compared to that wliich the brute must tra- 
 verse before he can crawl even to the threshold of 
 humanity. Nothing can betoken a weaker faith in 
 Omnipotent love than to " sag with doubt " before 
 the grand generalizations of science, for fear of for- 
 feiting the grasp on immortality. If to survey the 
 enormous progress already made does not encourage 
 fiith in that eternal law, I know not of what element 
 hope can be compounded. 
 
 There is somethinsf in man alone wliich has weisrhed 
 the heavenly bodies, measured their inconceivable dis- 
 tances, marked the spot where lost worlds after year- 
 thousands must reappear, prescribed the course in
 
 16 
 
 wliicb. tlie planets wheel, expounded tlie laws whieli 
 the universe obeys ; something which lias guided 
 the almost divine iinger of the sculptor, the pencil 
 of the painter to create visions more beautiful than 
 Nature's self has revealed ; something which has in- 
 spired the poet to raise his less gifted brethren into 
 spheres of thought and emotion far above the visible 
 world ; something which has produced from shape- 
 less matter the Grecian temple, the Gothic cathedral, 
 the Pacific Railroad; something which has nerved 
 heroes to despise luxury and welcome death in the 
 sacred cause of country ; something which ties the 
 great sailor to the main-top, above the smoke of the 
 conflict, that he may control his fleet and guide the 
 battle, nor fall, even though he die, till victory 
 is won ; something which chains the great soldier, 
 despite of danger, oj^position, or censure, to one line, 
 even if it takes all summer, ay, and all winter too, 
 when Duty commands ; something which has enabled 
 the scientific adventurer to confront for years, alone 
 and almost forgotten, the jDerils of torrid, l)arbarous 
 Africa, or the barriers which guard the frozen mys- 
 teries of the Pole; something which has sustained 
 thousands of obscure men and feeble women, as they 
 were consuming by slow fire at the stake, when a 
 word against what they believed religious truth
 
 17 
 
 would have saved tliem. So long as liistory gamers 
 such j^roofs of progress out of the lower depths, 
 Man needs not to tremble lest the angelic part of 
 him should be imperilled by his likeness to the 
 brute. 
 
 Language makes Man. The beast can chatter, 
 roar, or bellow, but man cau speak. The child 
 talks in fragments, and earlier languages are 
 monosyllabic. A Chinese Dr. Johnson would be 
 impossible. He would perish for want of poly- 
 syllables. 
 
 If it had not been for the tower of Babel, we 
 should have been sj^ared much superfluous trouble ; 
 for although we are all sj^eaking very choice Aryan 
 at bottom, Ave find it difficult to converse fluent- 
 ly 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 also an awful thought that languages per- 
 haps cannot live unless they are stone dead. Cicero 
 or Demosthenes might take his stand on any plat- 
 form to-day and be reported in the papers for a 
 classically educated public; but should King Alfred 
 come from his toml), like the elder Hamlet, to re- 
 veal important secrets, he would find no living soul,
 
 18 
 
 save a professor or two, tliroiigliout his ancient 
 realms, to comprehend his warnings. 
 
 The great German of all, from whom the race is 
 fancied to derive its name — Herman, Arminius, War- 
 Man, Ger-Man — the patriot who smote Varus in the 
 Frisian sw^amps, and caused Augustus to shrielc 
 through his marble halls for his legions, would l^e 
 unintelligible to his Fatherland should he come 
 forth to make a sj^eech on the Schleswig-Holstein 
 question, to the National, Patriotic, German Union 
 of to-day.* 
 
 We celebrated Shakespeare's third century four 
 years ago. Let another half a dozen centuries go 
 l)y, and perhaps there will be none to philoso- 
 phize with Hamlet, or weep over the sorrows of 
 Lear. Shakespeare himself may l^ecome 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 ballad-mongers. It 
 is a dreary possibility, at least, that unless the An- 
 glo-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. 
 
 * See Lyell. Antiquity of Man. Chap, xxiii. pp. 454-470. f Ibid.
 
 19 
 
 If a Somersetsliire peasant needs but three liun- 
 dred words out of the hundred and fifty million 
 now perhaps in use on this planet, how much of 
 human vocabulary can be saved by poets, philoso- 
 phers and men of business from desuetude, as Time 
 rolls remorselessly away ? 
 
 Man, as far back as we know or imagine him, 
 could speak, but it was long before he 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 school- 
 masters — 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 Avas pronounced not 
 only a king's son, but allied to the immortals. 
 " Founders of states and lawgivers," says Lord 
 Bacon, " were honored with the titles of demigods ; 
 but inventors were ever consecrated among the gods 
 themselves." And if heathen mythology still pre- 
 vailed, 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,
 
 20 
 
 Monumental History began. Tlie civilization of 
 Egypt is a parenthesis between two barbarisms ; the 
 present wandering tribes of the Delta having inherit- 
 ed no more culture from the Pharaohs and the Pto- 
 lemies than did those royal lines from the savages 
 who preceded them, 
 
 And contemporaneous 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, if lie was a man and was blind, sang 
 some songs about it. Wonderful power of poetic 
 genius! Tlie leading personages in that war, their 
 passions and sentiments, the minute details of their 
 costume, the color of their hair and eyes, the names 
 of their soldiers and their shi})s, 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 liemi- 
 sphere 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 chrono- 
 logy. There was once a cook in Athens. Whether 
 he w\as skilful or not in the kitchen is unknown, 
 but he was swift of foot. He ran a race at the
 
 21 
 
 Olymj^ic Games; liis name was tlie first to be re- 
 corded as victor on the arcliives of tliose festivals ; and 
 accordingly the subsequent history of Gi-eece, with all 
 her heroes, poets, sages, is registered from the Olym- 
 piad in which Coroebus won his race. Truly, says Sir 
 Thomas Browne, " the iniquity of oblivion blindly 
 scattereth her poppies, and deals wdth the memories 
 of men without regard to merit of jierpetuity." 
 
 Strangely enough, too, the date of this first regis- 
 tered 01ym2:)iad has a sacred but familiar sound in 
 our ears. It was 776 before Christ ; 1776 years 
 after Christ another epoch was established, from 
 which this great Republic dates its records; a day 
 on which equal rights were j)roclaimed as the heri- 
 tage 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 Corcebus — as 
 chronoloo-ists have settled it amono; themselves — 
 there was a certain she-wolf in an Italian swamp, 
 with a pair of j^romising foster-children ; and, as we 
 all have read in the story-books, 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,
 
 22 
 
 Greece, Rome, are successively lighted up as tlie 
 majestic orb of day moves over them ; aud as lie ad- 
 vances still further through his storied and mysterious 
 zodiac, we behold the shadows of evening as surely 
 falling on the lands which he leaves behind him. 
 Religion, poetry, aesthetic art, have already ennobled 
 the progress of Man. What 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 sub- 
 tle, lofty, almost divine philosophy of Greece ; without 
 the imperious and cruel nationalism, the all-surpass- 
 ing military art, the colossal self-esteem, the cynic ma- 
 terialism, the massive, sharply-chiselled j uris2:)rudence, 
 which made Rome the mistress of the world? 
 
 Dead Athens shines there for ever — not a constel- 
 lation, but a whole universe of lustre — with the 
 milky way of her exquisite, half nebulous fables; 
 with the pure starry liglit of her fixed and un- 
 changing truth — illuminating vast sj^aces of ol)SCur- 
 ity before and since her brief mortal existence. 
 
 Rome, both in ]wv military and legal glor\', and in 
 her shameful and cr.'ipulous decre])itude, remains a per- 
 petual memory to encourage human progress, and to 
 warn from the dangers of luxury, ambition, and in- 
 effable disdain of hunum rights by which she justly 
 perished.
 
 23 
 
 And tlien came tlie wandering of the nations; 
 tlie northern deluge. Eome sank miserably beneath 
 the glacial flood, which like that in early geologi- 
 cal ages, had become necessary in tlie grand scheme 
 of civilization. Surely the Koman world had need 
 of submergence and of ice. And at last as the del- 
 uge subsided, Germany had conquered Eome, and 
 the new civilization began. But a low civilization 
 at best. The passionate rising for freedom, the 
 great mutiny against Eome, resulted only in new 
 and heterogeneous forms of despotism. Man made 
 progress still, for lie had been born again out of 
 death into life, but the People did not exist, nor 
 were there indications of its birth. Europe became 
 a camp on conquered territory. The iron-clad 
 man on horseback divided the ^vliole soil among 
 his captains and corporals ; the multitudes were 
 throttled and made to ^vear the collar of serfdom, 
 marked with their owners' names ; land-robbers and 
 filibusters became kings and princes by grace of 
 God — which meant the steel-gloved fist ; the feudal 
 system was established, and poetry, romance, gro- 
 velling legend and sycophantic chronicle have spread 
 a halo around the perpetual crime even unto our 
 own days. Do what you will, even in this dis- 
 tant land and age, you can not entirely remove.
 
 24 
 
 as yet, tlie tenacious fil^res from that foreign root 
 wliicli are twisted into our law, Listory, literature, 
 into our social and political being. 
 
 Man still reeled on — falling, rising again, stagger- 
 ing forward witli 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. Besides the 
 sword, two other instruments grew every day more 
 potent — the pen and the purse. 
 
 The power of the pen soon created a stupendous 
 monojioly. Clerks obtained j)i"ivnlege of murder be- 
 cause of their learning; a Norman king gloried in 
 the appellation of "fine clerk" because he could spell ; 
 the sons of serfs and washerwomen became high 
 pontiffs, put their feet on the neck of emperors, 
 thi'ough the might of education, and appalled the 
 souls of tyrants w^ith their weird anathemas. Na- 
 turally, the priests kej^t the talisman of learning 
 to themselves. How should education help them 
 to power and pelf if the people could participate 
 in the mystic spell ? The icy Dead-liand of the 
 Church, ever extended, was filled to overflowing 
 by tremljling baron and superstitious hind. The 
 fairest valleys, the richest plains, the noblest forests 
 of Europe were clutclied by the comfortable friars 
 in perpetual mortmain.
 
 25 
 
 But there Avas anotlier power steadily aiigment- 
 
 ino- tlie magic purse of Fortuuatus with its clink 
 
 of petennial 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 com- 
 mercial republics in all but name, stretched across 
 Christendom, and tripping up tyranny at every turn. 
 Liberties in the plural, not liberty of man ; con- 
 cessions to corporations from the iron fist, from 
 grace of God, in exchange for coin or in repara- 
 tion of buffets. 
 
 And still Man struggled on. An experimenting 
 friar, fond of chemistry, in one corner of Europe, put 
 nitre, sulphur, 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. 
 
 It was no wonder that Dr. Faustus 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 ? 
 
 The military encampment had secured all ter- 
 ritory to the crown ; the pen had given control
 
 2G 
 
 of the human mind to the Chm"ch ; floating capital 
 was locked up in the strong-box of corporations. 
 Man had made progress, but everywhere the People 
 was submerged; pursuing its monotonous and dark- 
 ened course, destined to gloomy servitude almost 
 beneath the reach of hope ; with encampments, 
 establishments, corporations, piled upon it mountains 
 high. 
 
 But Sacerdotalism, political Priesthood, reigned too 
 long and went too far. Auction sales of indul- 
 gences, for every j^o^^ible and imaginable crime, 
 had been too audacious ; Christian temples had 
 gro\vn too gorgeous on the proceeds of remitted 
 sin ; the balefid splendor which had grown out 
 of the putrescence of the traffic had become 
 too noisome an exhalation for the human mind to 
 endure. 
 
 There was a reformation. But it was only a leap 
 into the liglit. It was not a mere difference of 
 creed and dogma. Good Catholics and virtuous 
 men were as much offended at heart l)y Borgianism, 
 as Luther or Calvin had been. It was not an up- 
 rising against the Church, 1)ut against the prostitu- 
 tion of the Cliurch to temporal purposes. Much 
 good was accomj)lished, both in the ancient and 
 tlie new establishments, but freedom of religion was
 
 27 
 
 scarcely dreamed of; mutual toleration was account- 
 ed a crime. 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 blasphe- 
 mous 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 ins-euious com- 
 promise by which it was thought possible to re- 
 move thje troublesome question of religion for ever 
 from the sphere of politics. 
 
 Cujus regio^ ejus religio! Could it be doul)ted 
 that the ancient Church would seize this weapon 
 from the Protestant hands which had forged it, and 
 smite every people with it that stniggled for eman- 
 cipation? Not freedom of religion, but freedom of 
 princes to prescribe religion to their slaves — iov this 
 so many tens of thousands had died on the battle- 
 field, or been bunied, and buried alive ! 
 
 And it was sincerely hoped and believed that
 
 28 
 
 humanity could be thus remanded to its dungeon, 
 buifeted, flouted, jeered out of its rights, and the 
 padlock placed for ever on the immortal mind. 
 And truly to those Avho reckon history by the year, 
 who find the record of man's progress only in 
 political annals, how dreary must seem our fate ! 
 What can be more monotonous than the dull cata- 
 logue of kings, princes, and priestly or courtly poli- 
 ticians, with their palace revolutions, insipid cere- 
 monials, and ghastly chronicles of murderous wars 
 for i^etty questions, as whether Charles or Ferdinand, 
 Louis or Peter, shall sit on this throne, restore that 
 province, or esj)ouse this princess? 
 
 Unless w^e hold fost to the fact, tliat in human 
 as in physical history, Nature is ever patiently pro- 
 ducing her effects through long lapses of time, l)y 
 causes which have been in operation since the be- 
 ginning, History is but another word for despair. 
 But history is never hysterical, never j^roceeds l)y 
 catastrophes and cataclysms ; and it is only by I'e- 
 membering this that Ave can comprehend its higher 
 meaning. 
 
 To discover the great intellectual law prescribed 
 by the Creator is tlie science of history. To induce 
 mankind to conform to that law is tlie science of 
 politics.
 
 29 
 
 The great mutiny against sacerdotal Rome, which 
 we call the Keformation, even like the universal 
 revolt against imperial Kome a thousand years be- 
 fore, which we call the wandering of the nations, 
 had been balked of its loo-ical result. 
 
 The first mutiny established the Feudal system 
 over the people ; the second strengthened Church 
 and military government by confirming instead of 
 dissolving the connection between the two. 
 
 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. Christojjher 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 hu- 
 man 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 Cliarta, 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 raj^id 
 sweep through the eons and the centuries, have we
 
 30 
 
 not the riglit to record proof of man's progress 
 since tlie days of tlie rhinoceros-eaters of Bedford- 
 shire, of tlie man of Natchez ? 
 
 And for details and detached scenes in the gene- 
 ral phantasmagoria, which has been ever shifting 
 before us, we may seek for illustration, instruction, 
 or comfort, in any age or Land where authentic 
 record can be found. We may take a calm sur- 
 vey of passionate, democratic Greece in her great 
 civil war through the terse, judicial narrative of 
 Thucydides ; we may learn to loathe despotism in that 
 marvellous portrait-gallery of crime w^hich the som- 
 l)re and terrible Tacitus has bequeathed ; we may 
 cross the yawning abysses and dreary deserts which 
 lie between two civilizations over that stately via- 
 duct of a thousand arches w^hich the great hand 
 of Gibbon has constructed ; w^e may penetrate to the 
 inmost political and social heart of England, during 
 a period of nine years, by help of the magic wand 
 of Macaulay; we may linger in the stately portico 
 to the unlniilt dome which the daring genius of 
 Buckle consumed his life in devising ; we may yield 
 to the sweet fascinations wdiich ever dwell in the 
 picturesque i:>ages of Prescott ; avc may investigate 
 rules, apply and ponder examples; but the detail of 
 history is essentially a blank, and nothing could be
 
 31 
 
 more clisoial tlian its pursuit unless tlie mind be 
 filled by a broad view of its general scheme. 
 
 But wbat 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 ^^I'ii^^val forests, while the 
 other was slowly groping its way along the path 
 of j^rogress ; yet both indissolubly connected by 
 an ever palpitating bond. 
 
 In the fulness of time, after so many errors, 
 crimes, and disappointments, civilization seemed to 
 find a fresh field for its endeavors, as the discovery 
 of this continent revealed a virgin world. 
 
 It is impossible to imagine a more fortunate 
 position than that occuj^ied by this Republic. Na- 
 ture has done its best, and it is not for physical 
 advantages alone that she should be ever grateful. 
 i All the exj^erience of the old world, all its acqui- 
 sitions, all its suiferings, all its beacons of warning 
 are for our benefit. Feudal System, Divine Right, 
 are essentially as dead figments here as the laws of 
 Lycurgus or Draco. Religion can be honestly and 
 ardently cherished because priesthood is deprived of 
 political power. Universal education, the only pos- 
 sible foundation of human freedom, is the easiest 
 duty, because the Church is powerless to arrogate a 
 function which it can never discharge.
 
 32 
 
 To be rid of the cumbrous macliiiiery of military 
 conquest, to have escaped from all the grand Lamas 
 into whom the soul of the great Schaka successively 
 passes, enduing them with infallibility and omni- 
 science, 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. 
 
 The great inventions making democracy on an im- 
 perial scale possible; representation by rule of three, 
 the steam-engine, the telegraph, the free school, and 
 that immense instrument of civilization, the daily 
 press, had been waiting to be perfected until she 
 could show their value on a colossal scale. 
 
 For in time a new term would have to be inven- 
 ted for what men call civilization and polity. From 
 civitas — city, civilization, civility ; from 2^olis — poli- 
 tics, politician, polit}^ — always from the city had 
 grown empire as in antiquity, or by the city had 
 been wrested liberties as in media3val times. Culture 
 was ever of the town, " townish. But here a vast 
 empire had been waiting for its empty S2:)aces to be 
 peopled, three millions of miles with never a town 
 on its surface. Clearly the phenomenon was a new 
 one and culture here could only mean Democracy. 
 
 But to the solemn birthday of the infant Ame- 
 rica, around whose cradle, obscure as it was, so
 
 33 
 
 many good spirits had invisibly clustered, one malig- 
 nant fairy had not been bidden, and her name was 
 Privilege. And even as in the story-book 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 any thing can be called ac- 
 cidental 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 free- 
 dom. Oligarchy grew up and held its own, side by 
 side with Democracy — until the time came for de- 
 ciding whether the one principle or the other was 
 in conformity with the eternal law. 
 
 Chemistry resolves the universe into a few ingre- 
 dients. What, for example, is a man? Take a little 
 hydrogen and oxygen, nitrogen and carbon, potash, 
 lime, and sulphur, Avith 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 vapors on one side
 
 34 
 
 the ocean and the other. So soon as it was demon- 
 strated that the Slave power rested on Divine 
 Right ; so soon as it was ascertained on authority 
 that the Bible ordained not negro slavery merely, 
 bnt hnman slavery without distinction of color; so 
 soon as it had been proclaimed that " the Bible argu- 
 ment in favor 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 color ; " so soon as the new 
 Evangel had announced that " the experiment of uni- 
 versal 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 peoples and 
 coming generations," and that " there was no solution 
 of the great j^roblem of reconciling the interests of 
 caj)ital and labor so simple and effective as to make 
 the laborer 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, Kiglit Divine, property in mankind 
 claimed by human creatures superior to mankind, mili- 
 tary 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 De- 
 mos rubbed its eyes with astonishment — as its great 
 fight with Oligarchy began — to find no tears run- 
 ning down the iron cheek of Privilege. Why, Pri- 
 vilege would have been an idiot if it had wept in 
 sympathy with the Demos. Nothing but the sancta 
 simpUcitas of perfect confidence in the right, nothing 
 but the conviction that the Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence reaffirmed the statutes of the Omnipotent 
 could have explained the popular delusion. Slavery 
 and serfdom have been abolished throuo^hout Eu- 
 roj)e, but so long as the soil of many great emj^ires 
 belongs to an exquisitely small minority of the in- 
 habitants, are not Wamba the Witless and Gurth 
 the Swineherd almost as much born thralls to their 
 master as if his collar were 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 queen's finger to cure the 
 scrofula. And there has been a series of Dr. John- 
 sons from his day to ours, all over Europe, to de- 
 nounce patriots and rej^ublicatis, especially when 
 they are causing interruptions to trade. So close an 
 electric chain unites America and Europe, so instan- 
 taneous are their action and retroaction, that the
 
 36 
 
 American civil war, at least in Western Europe, be- 
 came as mucli an affair of passionate party feeling 
 as if it were raging on that side tlie Atlantic. "I 
 had no idea," said a very eminent statesman to John 
 Bright, on two different occasions, "how mnch in- 
 fluence the example of that Eepublic 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 tlie daily details 
 were watched for, it would be difficult to exagge- 
 rate 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 con- 
 veyance thithei', you might easily arrange a tour in 
 that planet, starting from Huggin's Inlet and sailing 
 thirty thousand miles along one of its very conveni- 
 ent estuaries 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
 
 87 
 
 miglit be flattered did tliey know of the interest 
 they excite on this eartli. 
 
 Perliaj^s, 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 dis- 
 coveries made by Euroj^e concerning our politics, 
 geography, history, statistics, national character, con- 
 stitution, 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 l)ad re^^ort, ^vhose voice found an echo 
 in every patriotic heart in this country, and whose 
 intellect shone like the sun throus^h the mists of 
 passion and prejudice obscuring the cause of liberty ; 
 a statesman whose public speeches will be always 
 treasured on either side the ocean as models of 
 eloquence ; and whose simple Anglo-Saxon name 
 will be always dear to lovers of liberty in future 
 times as in the present. You know already that I 
 mean John Bright. 
 
 And the great conflict went on while the world
 
 38 
 
 stood wondering. Xever in liiiman liistory lias 
 there been sucli a battle with such a stake. It 
 was not for territory, empire, power. It was not 
 merely for the integrity of jthis vast rei^ublican 
 heritage. These things, though 2:)recious, are of little 
 worth compared to the sacred principle concerned 
 in the struo-ojle. For it was to be decided whether 
 the great law of liistory which we have been trac- 
 inir was a truth or a lie ; whether the human race 
 has been steadily although slowly progressing or 
 whether we have been fatally drifting 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 for the world, the 
 only solution of j^olitical problems, then is the 
 science of history the most contemptible of all ima- 
 ginable studies. It was not a question for Ame- 
 rica but for the world. The toilino; multitudes of 
 the earth are interested in the fate of this great 
 republic of refuge, which receives and ])rotects the 
 oppressed of every race. " My countrymen who 
 work for your living," said John Bright, at Bir- 
 mingham, in I8G0, " I'emember 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 v/inners and los-
 
 39 
 
 ers are the gainers. The South, while deeming 
 itself to have lost all save honor, 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 valor, the endurance, and self sacrifice were equal 
 on both sides, and the defeated party was van- 
 quished because neither pride of color nor immortal 
 hate can successfully struggle against the inexorable 
 law of Freedom and Progress. 
 
 I have spoken much of America. The politi- 
 cal aftairs of its sister Europe are at this mo- 
 ment in a more fluid state than usual. The ef- 
 fect 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 that political 
 and social heart of Europe — Germany. Ever since 
 the great rising for freedom against the Roman em- 
 pire, 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 ^^ro/c— she still rules the thought 
 of her vast brood of children; Franks, Goths,
 
 40 
 
 Saxons, Lombards, Normans, Netlierlanders, Ameri- 
 cans — Germans all. Her Gothic branches in the 
 fifth and sixth centuries sweeping to and fro over the 
 extinct Koman empire from the Ultima Thule of 
 Britain to the confines of Asia, overlaying and con- 
 trolling the Latin, Celtic, Sclavonic provinces and 
 tribes ; her energetic Norman branch of pirates, 
 seating themselves afterwards with such happy 
 audacity on every throne in Europe, from the Wil- 
 liams and Henrys of the North to the Rogers, 
 Tancreds, Godfreys, and Baldwins of the South and 
 East, from the Rurics of Russia to the Roderics of 
 Spain ; everywhere in high places and low, all-con- 
 quering Germany has stamped our civilization with 
 her impress and bequeathed to modern languages 
 the treasures of her ample and varied dialects. 
 
 Europe, essentially homogeneous in its upper strata, 
 might have been a united nation a thousand years ago, 
 had Science been sufiiciently advanced to make Union 
 and Democracy possible or even conceivable. 
 
 But disintegration was the preliminary process by 
 which the ground was prepared for new culture. 
 Everywhere separation into small national group- 
 ings was the initial characteristic of European his- 
 tory. Seven German kingdoms in Avhat we now 
 call England ; as many independent dukes and
 
 41 
 
 sovereigns in present France ; a dozen kings in 
 Spain ; in Italy ; hundreds of tliem in Germany 
 proper ; a plurality of sovereignties, in short, in all 
 the districts of Christendom ; thus was Europe 
 broken into hostile and discordant fragments. And 
 the tendency to imite these jarring sovereignties into 
 a few solid masses has marked her later history. 
 A thousand years ago there was a Heptarchy in 
 half the little island of Britain. Now, Europe itself 
 is hardly more than a Heptarchy. 
 
 It is fortunate for civilization that Charlemagne's 
 attempt did not succeed, because at that stage of 
 intellectual advancement. Progress was of necessity 
 sporadic and intermittent. Being regarded as a dis- 
 ease, it was dealt with for centuries by heroic re^ 
 medies — fire and sword — vigorously applied by tlie 
 military and sacerdotal doctors who controlled the 
 body politic. The new empire was a splendid failure, 
 and that essential portion of it, Germany, was soon 
 shivered into many fragments of sovereignty. Un- 
 der the Golden Bull, five hundred years ago, the 
 seven electors of the emperor acquired complete 
 sovereignty within their own dominions. Three cen- 
 turies 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
 
 42 
 
 was completed. More than three hundred sovereign- 
 ties were established over the unhappy land. State- 
 rights symbolized in dynasties of every imaginable size 
 — from kingdoms with one hundred thousand perma- 
 nent troops to principalities with, standing armies of 
 half a dozen men apiece — were enjoyed to the full. 
 As an inevitable consequence, Germany was perpetu- 
 ally exposed to domestic intrigue and foreign inva- 
 sion. Over the three hundred and seven indepen- 
 dent 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 appel- 
 lation 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 ex- 
 ceptions, the description was perfect. The people 
 were ground to powder and kept in microscopic 
 divisions of territory which had neither the dignity 
 of monarchy nor the freedom of rejiublicanism. A 
 net-work of sovereign and independent custom-houses 
 and forts at every turn as tliick as mile-stones, 
 an intolerable confusion of debased and detestable 
 currencies, strangled commerce and impeded circula- 
 tion, while the great Gei'man heart, yearning for
 
 43 
 
 union and nationality, and for freedom, the legitimate 
 child of both, grew sick with hoj)e deferred. 
 
 After nearly two centuries more had passed away, 
 the Congress of Vienna, as part of the little good 
 that it accomplished for humanity, at least much 
 diminished the catalogue of petty princes in Ger- 
 many. Three hundred and odd of them went up to 
 that political guillotine, and only thirty-five escaped 
 with life. The Germanic Confederation, a league 
 of sovereigns called in the vernacular the Bund, 
 was set up in place of the defunct empire, and 
 conducted itself with much pomp until its power 
 of standing alone should be tested. Magnificent in 
 its deportment towards the lesser powers of Ger- 
 many, and especially towards the people, whose 
 existence it never recognized, it was on its knees 
 whenever the great empire or the great kingdom — 
 Austria or Prussia — wore a frowning face. 
 
 Meantime the German Demos, 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 ex- 
 emplification of a princij^le, to free the German in- 
 habitants of Schleswisi-Holstein from the Danish 
 crown. The two great jiowers took the war into 
 their own hands. Else had Democracy taken the
 
 u 
 
 bit into its teeth. Tlie Sclileswig-Holstein war was 
 soon over. The provinces were taken from Den- 
 mark. Then followed the dispute for the booty. 
 
 The rest of the story is familiar. The seven weeks 
 war and the peace of Prague — which passed all un- 
 derstanding — for behold, when the smoke was clear- 
 ed away, not only was Austria excluded from Ger- 
 many, but even her allies in the defunct Bund — 
 the southern states — had accepted, by treaty, the 
 military and commei'cial supremacy of Prussia. Thus 
 another immense stride had been made toward Ger- 
 man unity. In 1648, more than three hundred sove- 
 reignties. In 1815, three dozen. In 1866, with ex- 
 ception of the Germanic possessions of Austria, essen- 
 tially and practically one. 
 
 How much has liberty gained by this pro- 
 gress ? Time will show that progress and liberty 
 are identical. It is impossible that the 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 liere 
 of freedom and progress — forbid that result. The 
 great statesman of Prussia is distinguished for cour- 
 
 age, insight, breadth of vision, iron will, and a warm 
 and steadfast heart. Ilis genius consists in the in- 
 stinctive power of governing by conforming to the
 
 45 
 
 spirit of the age. No man knows better tlian Bis- 
 marck, to read the signs of the times. Small is the 
 chance of Desj^otism in these latter days to stem 
 the Rapids. She may utter dismal shrieks, but 
 shoot Niagara she must. 
 
 The present government of Austria has nobly placed 
 itself on the right road out of great perplexities. 
 Numerous individual deeds of loiightly valor worthy 
 of the age of chivalry ; loyal devotion to antique but 
 sacred ideals ; above all, a spontaneous and signal 
 benevolence manifested by all classes, after the war ; 
 from highest to humblest — converting the jDalaces of 
 great nobles, the mansions of burghers and cottages 
 of the peasant, into hospitals, where the sick and 
 wounded were tenderly ministered to ])y fair and 
 loving hands — could not arrest the inexorable march 
 of events. The brief history of constitutionalism in 
 that empire is full of instruction. The experiment 
 has been a triple one — centralism, federalism, dual- 
 ism. The realm is an agglomerate of many distinct 
 nationalities, scattered through ten kingdoms, and 
 more than thirty duchies or other princi2')alities. 
 The little river Leytlia is the boundary between the 
 hereditary provinces of Habsburg and the triune 
 realm of the holy Stephen — consisting of Hungary, 
 Transylvania, and Croatia — but commonly called the
 
 46 
 
 kingdom of Hungary. Croatia, again, is a triad, com- 
 posed of Croatia, Sclavonia, and Dalmatia. 
 
 After the revolt of 1848-9 had been suppressed, 
 a constitution for the whole Austrian empire was 
 promulgated, whieli, after remaining a dead letter for 
 a couple of years, was repealed. 
 
 Meantime the ancient, aristocratic constitution of 
 Hungary — which the imperial lawyers had declared 
 forfeit throu2:h her revolt, Ijut the leo-al continu- 
 ity of which she steadily maintained, during the 
 long period of martial law and absolutism which 
 ensued — had received 2:reat accessions of the demo- 
 cratic principle during the revolutionary year, espe- 
 cially in the autonomy secured to the towns, and 
 by the provision that the Diet should never be 
 dissolved until it had tlioroughly discussed and 
 accepted budgets and tax-laws laid before it by 
 the crown. The seventeen Cis-Leythan provinces, 
 making up what is called the West Half of the 
 empire, had never possessed a constitution at all. 
 They had provincial diets, quarter-sessions of mag- 
 nates and burghers, to talk of provincial affairs, but 
 without legislative functions. 
 
 After the war of 1859, it became obvious that 
 the people must participate in the government of 
 the empire. The sj^irit of the age Avas too urgent
 
 47 
 
 to be resisted. The right of the Austrian people 
 to representation and legislation was accordingly 
 announced in general terms by the October Diplo- 
 ma of 1860, and an elaborate constitution was pro- 
 claimed in the following February. A central Par- 
 liament or Reichsrath was established for the whole 
 empire, consisting of a House of Peers and of a Re- 
 presentative Chamber, chosen, somewhat as United 
 States Senators are elected, for six years, and by the 
 provincial diets. The Parliament began its sessions, 
 and was hailed with ' great enthusiasm by the Ger- 
 manic element throughout the West Half But beyond 
 the Leytha, Hungary scorned the new constitution, 
 stiffly maintained the continuity of her own, and re- 
 fused, to merge her legal and historical indej^endence 
 in the central imperial system newly promulgated. 
 
 Military government continued accordingly through- 
 out the triune realm of St. Stephen as before. Mean- 
 time the Schmerlino; o-overnment at Vienna adminis- 
 tered affairs ; the 120 seats designed for the members 
 from Hungary remaining vacant. " We can wait," 
 said Minister Schmerling. " We too can wait," replied 
 the Hungarians. And they won the waiting game. 
 
 In September, 1865, the Schmerling cabinet fell, 
 the February Constitution was suspended by Impe- 
 rial edict, the experiment of centralism was acknow-
 
 48 
 
 ledged to have failed, and a cabinet founded on wliat 
 is called federalism was formed. 
 
 Federalism was to consist mainly in enlarging 
 the powers of the provincial diets for consultative and 
 financial j)urj)oses, and in coming to an arrangement 
 with Hungary by means of moderate concessions. 
 The system to be adopted was essentially aristo- 
 cratic, founding itself on state rights, and on the 
 fortification of prerogative against democratic inva- 
 sion. The Diet of Hungary was summoned once 
 more to listen to terms of compromise. 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, nor from the famous statutes, 
 already alluded to, of 1849, by which it had been so 
 thoroughly liberalized. The conciliatory rescripts of 
 the Crown were answered in respectful terms by 
 the addresses of the Diet — papers glowing with elo- 
 quence, splendid with almost oriental imagery, fervid 
 with strictly Hungarian patriotism, merciless both in 
 law and logic. The debates following the address 
 were of the same character ; for the brilliant rhetoric 
 which had been imprisoned in the enforced silence 
 of those eighteen years seemed to pour forth all at
 
 49 
 
 once in passionate and endless strains, like the frozen 
 music in the famous traveller's bngle wlien it be- 
 gan to thaw before the genial blaze. 
 
 The life and soul of the Diet was Francis Dedk, 
 a man born in the middle classes, a practising 
 lawyer, of moderate fortune, mth 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 interchange of rescripts from the Crown, re- 
 fusing restoration of the Hungarian constitution with- 
 out previous revision, and of addresses from the Diet, 
 refusing revision of it, even to the ninth part of a 
 hair — includino; the democratic statutes of 1849, 
 and laws legalizing disobedience to the Crown, 
 should it contravene the great charter, went on for 
 several months, until 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 states- 
 man of quick intellect, large political experience, 
 ready eloquence with tongue and pen, imperturb- 
 able temper, and immense power of work, who had 
 long been administrator of the little kingdom of 
 Saxony, became Prime Minister and Chancellor of 
 the Austrian empire. Considering the experiments
 
 50 
 
 botli of centralism and of federalism to Lave failed, 
 he decided on complete concession to Hungary. The 
 constitution, in all the reverend and romantic fea- 
 tures of age, and with the vigorous revolutionary- 
 blood poured into its veins in '49 to renew its 
 youth, was restored at last, and a Hungarian minis- 
 try formed. At the head of it was placed Count 
 Andrassy, who, twenty years before, had been con- 
 demned to death for his part in the troubles, but 
 had effected his escape, and who now received full 
 pardon, and became the Hungarian right-hand of 
 the Emj)eroi". 
 
 At Pest, in the midst of the most stately and 
 picturesque pageant that has been seen in Europe 
 for centuries — a scene so full of historical and medi- 
 aeval sj^lendor that it seemed like a living chapter of 
 Froissart or Philippe de Comines — the king, attired 
 in a long brocaded mantle, with the sacred, jewelled 
 crown of St. Stephen on his head, and mounted on 
 a splendidly-caparisoned cream-white liorse, which he 
 managed witli perfect skill, amid wild shouts of Eljen 
 from his lieges, almost mad with enthusiasm, rode 
 up the sacred mound on the Danulje, 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. 
 
 i
 
 Tlie next problem was to reestablish constitution- 
 alism on tlie otlier side of tlie Leytlia. Tlie striking 
 simile of Deak, likening tlie empire to a majestic 
 arcli resting on two stately columns, wliicli could 
 not be brouslit nearer to eacli other without endau- 
 gering the existence of the arch, was much admired. 
 The Hunsfarian column was erect at last, l^ut where 
 was the other pillar ? The West Half, as Deak was 
 fond of calling that part of Austria which was not 
 Hungary, was in reality to be created. 
 
 An e 'plurihus unmn Lad failed. An e plurlhus 
 duo was resolved upon. A kind of constituent 
 assembly of the Western provinces was convoked. 
 Then came a o-reat outbreak of dissatisfaction on 
 both sides the Leytlia, from the Sclavonic nationali- 
 ties, which outnumber the Germans and the Magyars 
 combined. This dissatisfaction is easily explained. 
 
 The problem of fusing nationalities into a nation 
 is always hard to solve. In Austria, the leading 
 three are the German, Hungarian, and Sclavonic. 
 The Mag}'ars, the last direct emigration out of x\sia 
 into Europe, have held the wide, fruitful plains on 
 the borders of Turkey and Russia for a thousand 
 years, wedging themselves firmly between the more 
 ancient settlers of the Sclavonic family. At this 
 moment there are about five million Magyars, nine
 
 52 
 
 million Germans, and fifteen million Selavonians, out 
 of tliirty-two millions of the whole j)opnlation of 
 the empire. 
 
 But there has been no single dominant, national 
 language to absorb into itself those various tongues. 
 And difference of speech has kept nationalities dis- 
 tinct, and of course j^i'omoted disunion. So soon as 
 the pressure of absolutism was removed, each nation- 
 ality began to assert its own rights, its own indepen- 
 dence, 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 poli- 
 tics became popular themes for statesmen and legis- 
 lators. The Magyars — a pi'oud, chivalrous people, 
 with much aptitude for politics — had for centuries 
 governed tAvice their number of Selavonians, control- 
 ling not. only the whole of Hungary, but the annexed 
 provinces of Transylvania and Croatia. In those re- 
 mote, and, to the general 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, and of course long before the fa- 
 mous democratic era of 1849, the Magyars alarmed, it 
 has Ijeen suggested, by sjmiptoms adverse to the dura- 
 tion of their race, determined to force their language
 
 53 
 
 over tte wliole triune kingdom. Previously the de- 
 bates in tlie Diet at Pest, to which came up deputies 
 from Transylvania and Croatia as well as from Hun- 
 gary proper, had been conducted in Latin, as a 
 common medium in which alone Sclavs and Mag- 
 yars could comprehend each other. It was now or- 
 dained that Hungarian only should be used in legis- 
 lative 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 tribu- 
 nal would refuse to adjudicate unless accounts had 
 been kept in Magyar, by those who knew not a 
 word of the lano;uao;e. 
 
 In towns where the population was exclusively 
 Sclavonic, Magyar clergymen were required to preach 
 in the Magyar language to congregations of course 
 unable to understand a Avord of their discourse, and 
 Sclav children were required to learn their catechism 
 in Magyar, those Avho resisted such tyranny being 
 punished with stripes, because the dignity of the 
 nation required it. 
 
 If the legislature of New- York should ordain to- 
 day that in churches, courts of justice, legislative 
 and municipal assemblies, schools and Bible classes, 
 the Dutch lanmiao-e should be used to the exclusion, 
 in part, of other tongues, because a very distinguish-
 
 54 
 
 ed and influential portion of the population are of 
 Netherland descent, it would exemplify the language- 
 policy forced, in the last generation, on the non-Mag- 
 yar inhabitants of Hungary. Thus would be seen 
 tlie evils inherent in steady encouragement of state 
 traditions, ^^I'ovincial feelings, and separate nationali- 
 ties in a great country. Certainly, if members of 
 one legislature could only understand each other by 
 using a dead language, it would seem natural enough 
 for the dominant nationality to enforce its own dia- 
 lect on the rest. But unfortunately, the Magyar is 
 most difficult to acquire, while Dutch would be easy 
 enough to learn in this State, l)eing only another 
 branch of Anglo-Saxon. By its ready power of as- 
 similation, the composite English language has be- 
 come the admirable tongue it is for a3sthetic and 
 practical purposes. It is through the same process 
 too that a great nation has evolved itself here, while 
 in Austria the self-assertion of nationalities has pre- 
 vented an empire from becoming a nation. 
 
 On the other side the Leytha, the dominant national- 
 ity, although a minority likewise, is German, number- 
 ing but nine out of nineteen millions. So soon, there- 
 fore, as Hungary had carried its ])oint of entire in- 
 dependence, and was about to make a treaty with 
 something called the West Half, "as one indepen-
 
 55 
 
 dent nation treats with another independent nation," 
 the Sclavonic resentment thus explained was every- 
 where intense. In Gallieia, where the j^opulation is 
 entirely Sclav; in Bohemia and Moravia, where the 
 German and Sclavonic elements are in equilibrium, by 
 at least ten millions of the peoj^le therefore, there was 
 fierce opposition to the new j^olicy. Dualism was 
 denounced as unjust, illegal, monstrous, a logical self- 
 contradiction. To divide an empire into two halves 
 and still to retain the existence of the empire, was 
 declared to be like squaring the circle; a geometri- 
 cal impossibility. 
 
 On the other hand, the German party, swallow- 
 ing their grief at the extinction of centralism, ^varm- 
 ly supported the j)olicy of the 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 Baron Beust expects firmest supj^ort. 
 Some of the most progressive and eloquent German 
 representatives in the old Reichsrath have seats in 
 the "West Cabinet. 
 
 Still more significant are the abolition of the Con- 
 cordat and the liberation of education and marriage 
 from the exclusive control of the Catholic priest- 
 hood or of any priesthood.
 
 56 
 
 " The law of last December establishes free liber- 
 ty for all opinions, liberty of marriage, liberty of 
 education, liberty of the press, liberty of faith, no 
 matter of what confession or doctrine. It grants to 
 the members of each confession the rights of estab- 
 lishing public schools and colleges, and members of 
 every confession are allowed to be admitted on the 
 same footing with the sanction of the state."'^' 
 
 On the 25th of May of the present year, a 
 law on education was passed, " which suppresses 
 all the influence of the Catholic Church or of any 
 church over education, decreeing that the whole su- 
 perior' supervision of education, literature, and sci- 
 ence, as also the inspection of schools, belongs to 
 the state, which finally decrees that religious teach- 
 ing in the public schools must be placed in the 
 hands of members of each separate confession; that 
 any religious society may open private or special 
 schools for the youth of its faith; that these schools 
 shall also be sul)ject to the supreme inspection of 
 the state, and that the school-books shall be sub- 
 ject to the approval of the civil authorities, with 
 the exception, however, of such books as are meant 
 for religious instruction, which must l)e submitted 
 
 * The quotation is from tlic Papal allocution, in which the measures are 
 described in order to be denounced.
 
 57 
 
 to tlie approval of the competent antliorities of eacli 
 confession."* 
 
 More just, enlightened, progressive legislation than 
 this, on such vital subjects, could not be expected 
 in our ov^n land — in New- York, Ohio, Massachusetts 
 — where you will. 
 
 An ecclesiastical convention has been held in the 
 Tyi'ol for the avowed purpose of " restoring the 
 Lord God to his rights," invaded by this legislation 
 of the Reichsrath on education and marriage. The 
 twenty-five bishops of the empire addressed a pas- 
 sionate appeal to the emperor on the subject of the 
 Concordat and of these new laws, and received from 
 liis Majesty a stern rej^ly that such matters were in 
 the hands of his responsible advisers, and that the 
 duty of the church was to assist government in this 
 grave national crisis rather than to add to its diffi- 
 culties by inflammatory and seditious language. 
 
 This autograph letter of the emperor was read in 
 the Keichsrath amid tumultuous cheers ; tlie whole 
 assembly rising to their feet. 
 
 E plurihus duo is established. The attempt to 
 square the political circle has a fair prospect of suc- 
 cess. To assist the separate nationalities in moving 
 off from each other in all directions, to cultivate 
 
 * From the Papal allocution.
 
 58 
 
 separation of language, literature, tradition, costume, 
 habit, law — disintegration, in short — would be to 
 remand the empire into Absolutism or Chaos. The 
 cause of human progress is benefited by the experi- 
 ment now making in Austria, and the friends of 
 civilization and freedom should wish it Godspeed. 
 A double ministry, out of which a third one is evol- 
 ved 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 con- 
 joined and dependent on each other, especially on 
 the two great departments of war and foreign affairs. 
 
 Thus do we find signs of healthful progress in 
 many parts of Euro^^e toward free institutions. So 
 far has the democratic principle, ever glowing amid 
 heaj^s of scoriae, forced itself above the superincum- 
 bent crust. 
 
 Happy this single great nation on earth, where 
 that principle is recognized as the legitimate source 
 of life and heat, not dreaded as flame from the 
 lowest pit to devastate and consume ! 
 
 But alas ! progress must be fettered and halting 
 everywhere, under the military rule prevailing over 
 continental Europe.
 
 59 
 
 Reflect upon tliese little figures in simple arith- 
 metic : 
 
 France has 1,200,000 soldiers. 
 Italy has 500,000. 
 Prussia about one million. 
 Austria, 800,000. 
 Russia nearly a million. 
 
 Thus merely the Pentarchy of the continent, its 
 five leading powers alone — not counting the middle 
 and lesser powers, of which almost the least have 
 larger armies than the present forces of the United 
 States — keep nearly five millions of men perj^etu- 
 ally on foot, while this great Republic has about 
 40,000 men. 
 
 No epigram could l)e terser. We know from 
 recent experience how much it costs to keep up 
 great armies. And we have proved to the world 
 that ^vliere 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 enno- 
 bled by their military experience, and even better 
 citizens than before. 
 
 But here is the heart of life taken systemati-
 
 60 
 
 cally out of all these citizens iu 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 civiliza- 
 tion to decide which nation shall have the most 
 populous armies and the biggest guns ? 
 
 Before the infinity of the universe and the great 
 laws of motion were known, historical disquisition 
 was but a meagre and discomforting pursuit. But 
 now — standing on this bank and shoal of time — we 
 are able at least to hazard dim glances into those 
 infinite sj)aces which we call the Past and the 
 Future, and to guess at some of those laws of in- 
 tellectual motion which we call Progress. 
 
 Nor is a contemplation of the conditions of any 
 nation inspiring or suggestive, unless the presence 
 of that electric chain is felt by which all humanity 
 is darkly bound. It is impossible for one nation 
 to acquire without accpiiring for all — for one great 
 member of the human family to advance or to re- 
 trograde without hastening or retarding the gene- 
 ral march of humanity. And it is for this reason
 
 61 
 
 that I liave called your attention to-night to a sii- 
 j)erficial and most inadequate view of human j)ro- 
 gress through innumerable ages, and especially to 
 the influence exerted upon that progress and upon 
 the fortunes of man by the example and the fiite 
 of this Republic. 
 
 I have dwelt long, by way of illustration, on 
 recent events in Central Europe. I should have 
 liked to say something of Spain, of Italy, of France, 
 but time fails me, and perhaj)s one or two exam- 
 ples are as useful as a score. 
 
 It is im2:)ossible, however, not to make a passing 
 allusion to the presidential election which has just oc- 
 curred in Great Britain almost simultaneously with 
 our own. I say presidential election — because on the 
 vote just taken it has been decided that Mr. Glad- 
 stone, and not Mr. Disraeli, is to preside over aftairs 
 in England for the next political term, be it long 
 or short — as conclusively as if their names had 
 been voted for on general ticket. There the First 
 Lord of the Treasury is Prime Minister for Her 
 Majesty the Queen. Here the President is Prime 
 Minister for His Majesty the People. 
 
 Who can doubt that among the indirect results 
 of the success of the Union in the late war was 
 the passage of a reform bill by a Tory govern-
 
 62 
 
 ment, establishing something nearly approaching to 
 universal suffrage in England ? A vast revolution 
 has been accomplished in that great country, which 
 is destined to place her — where she ought ever to 
 be — side by side, in full friendship and in generous 
 rivalry of freedom and the arts of peace with this 
 Republic — both children of the ancient German 
 mother. 
 
 The British Parliament, which governs thirty 
 millions of citizens, and one hundred and fifty 
 millions of subjects, which by a statute passed 
 at any moment can change the constitution, alter 
 the succession to the croA^^l, convert the monarchy 
 into a commonwealth or a despotism, prescribe the 
 creed of the CJuu*ch — has been hitherto a represen- 
 tative 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, within five minutes' walk of all 
 the public ofiices, and with the privilege of go- 
 verning a splendid empire into the bargain, it is no 
 wonder that men were willing to pay well in times 
 past 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
 
 63 
 
 old times are gone for ever when boroughs com- 
 fortably 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 plea- 
 sure of less than two hundred landholders — about 
 two members on an average for each landholder, 
 It is certainly to the credit of the British peoj^le, 
 and proof of their indomitable love of liberty, that 
 they have moved steadily forward, and, without civil 
 war, have achieved such trium2:)hs as Catholic eman- 
 cipation, the corn law repeal, the reform bill of 1830, 
 and the reform bill just coming into operation. 
 
 After all, the English household suffrage l)ill is 
 the fruit of the Appomattox apple-tree. Who im- 
 agined in 1863 that power would be transferred, 
 in England, so soon from land to people, with- 
 out bloodshed, and that it would be done by 
 Tories ? 
 
 Meantime Land is likely to hold its own for a 
 season lons^er in its race ag^ainst Man ; but Man 
 must be the winner at last, and will soon learn 
 the meaning of the revolution which has been 
 accomplished. 
 
 England is a landed aristocracy. Twenty million 
 men live in England, thirty thousand men own 
 England. The pyramid stands on its apex.
 
 64 
 
 In America is a landed democracy. Every man 
 votes, and every man may l^e a landholder who is 
 willing to go West for a homestead. Our experi- 
 ment has often been pronounced a new and a bold 
 one. It is an experiment, but scarcely a bold 
 one. It is 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 go- 
 vernment could have resisted such a shock as was 
 dealt to our fabric. 
 
 Over the whole surface of Europe there are symp- 
 toms of human progress. There are few people so 
 benighted as to be incapable of imagining light; as 
 in caverns where the sun never shone, naturalists 
 tell us of organized beings, insects, re2:)tiles, fishes, 
 with at least the rudiments of eyes and wings. 
 
 There is movement 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, Infallil)ility, charters to 
 the people instead of charters from the people; uni- 
 versal suffrage combined with universal bayonets ; 
 above all, the magnificent platitude that government 
 always exists with full consent of the governed. 
 
 America stands upon the firm land toward which
 
 65 
 
 other nations are slowly making their way through 
 revolutions or without them. If she does not now 
 start on an upward progress, intellectual and moral, 
 such as was never known before, she commits a 
 crime ao^ainst mankind. 
 
 The European emigrant, the forlorn outcast it may 
 be of older civilizations, finds already accomj)lished 
 here the revolution which he has " dreaded Tmt 
 dwelt uj^on" as the darkest of crimes. But that 
 emigi'ation, amounting to three millions of Euro- 
 peans every ten or twelve years, has been always 
 in one direction and on a comparatively limited 
 scale. 
 
 Two centuries before the Christian era, manj^ 
 millions of men were occupied — as we have all 
 read in the School Books — ten years long in building 
 a wall. That wall, although decaying, stands to this 
 day. It is fifteen hundred miles in length ; it is 
 twenty-five feet high, and so broad that six cavalry- 
 men 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.
 
 6Q 
 
 Tins wall was built — as we all know — by Tsin- 
 Sliee-Hwang-Tee, founder of the dynasty of Tsin, as 
 protection against tlie incursions of the Tartars. 
 
 But what is this stupendous piece of mason 
 work, bristling with ' armed men, "which has done its 
 best for two thousand years to protect one third of 
 the human race from the invasion of their fellow-crea- 
 tures, 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 the Appalachian 
 mountains — from the gulf to the Arctic, and con- 
 taining, below the forty-fifth parallel, a surface of 
 unexampled fertility of a million and a half square 
 miles in extent. There are coal-fields, too, larger 
 than the whole surface of Great Britain. Farther 
 on, there are gold mines which in twenty years 
 have produced more of the precious metal than 
 had the mines of Mexico and Peru, after they 
 had trebled the prices of commodities and revolu- 
 tionized the commerce of the world. There is no 
 feudal system, no state church to prescril>e or pro- 
 scribe his religious creed and prohibit the education
 
 67 
 
 of his children. The most commodious buikling in 
 every town is usually the school-house, in which 
 his children are gratuitously educated in common 
 with those of the richest citizens, and 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 admired and beloved by those of 
 their own faith than hj those of a difterent 
 church. 
 
 But the most tempting, semi-tropical region, pro- 
 ducing 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 re- 
 gion three times as large as France — which might 
 yield that precious 2")lant in profusion, feed and 
 clothe untold millions and maintain empires. The 
 cotton crop has languished ±ar behind its j^ossibili- 
 ties because, while there was no limit to the de- 
 mand, an increase to the suj^ply of labor was sternly 
 forbidden ; few emi2:rants darino^ to cross that awful 
 barrier. 
 
 We stand on the threshold of great events. A 
 change in tlie conditions of mankind is impend-
 
 68 
 
 " A multitude like which the populous North 
 Poured never from her frozen loins to pass 
 Rliene or the Danaw when her barbarous sons 
 Came lilce a deluge on the South," 
 
 is gradually collecting in distant regions. Is it 
 possible tliat tliose vast and fruitful plains, which 
 have so long been panting in vain for culture are 
 to lie fallow still when the famishing labor of the 
 world is anxious for a summons ? 
 
 No country ever prospered long where labor was 
 dishonored. Look at Spain, where, two and a half 
 centuries ago, the most effective j)opulation in the land 
 — five hundred thousand 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, Car- 
 dinal Richelieu, afterwards 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, IVloravian, 
 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. Dowai among: dismal coal-mines in various 
 parts of Europe, men, women, and children are
 
 69 
 
 banislied, weeks and inontlis long, from "the warm 
 precincts of tlie cheerful day," from home affections, 
 from education, from civilization ; companions of the 
 fossilized reptiles which perished hundreds of thou- 
 sand-years ago, overshadowed and begrimed by the 
 charred and carbonized forests of the j^rimeval world ; 
 moiling from childhood to old age foi* 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 livino; burial. Is it to be imao-ined 
 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 con- 
 verted from gnomes and cobolds into men, so soon 
 as the long trance has been broken there, labor 
 raised from degradation, and the great law of De- 
 mocracy accepted ? 
 
 The inestimable blessing of the abolition of slav- 
 ery to the cause of progress, above all to the 
 South itself, can never be exao-o-erated. The fetters 
 have fallen not from the black alone, but from the 
 white, from all mankind. The standing reproach to 
 Democracy is removed at last, and the basis of 
 our national institutions has become an everlasting 
 truth.
 
 70 
 
 Tlius far I liave trespassed on your patience, 
 wliile dimly endeavoring 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 
 Avelfare of this Kepublic, in proportion to her con- 
 formity to that law, is absolute. That all mankind 
 are capable of progress I as devoutly believe. 
 None can be deljarred from the inalienable right 
 to intellectual and moral development, which is the 
 true meaning of the pursuit of hap2)iness, as pro- 
 claimed in our great statute. And hope may come 
 to all. In some of the Western j^ortions 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 balked by dis- 
 sembling 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, one thousand or fifteen hundred 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,
 
 71 
 
 flowing as they do tLrougli picturesque mountain 
 scenery, stately forest or enamelled meadow, amid 
 towered cities or cultivated fields. And wlien the 
 shaft has reached that imprisoned river, and the 
 rent for the first time has been made throuo-h its 
 dungeon wall, the waters, remembering the august 
 source on fixr distant mountain toj^s Avhence ages 
 ago they fell, leap upward to the light with ter- 
 rible energy, rising in an instant far above the 
 surface of the earth and 230uring forth their health- 
 ful and fertilizing current to delight and refresh 
 Mankind. And with even such an awakeninc: are 
 we gladdened when halfforgotten 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 intellec- 
 tual 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 Rej^ublic, 
 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 con- 
 querors.
 
 PROCEEDINGS, ETC. 
 
 At a meeting of the New-York Historical Societj^, lielcl in tlie 
 Academy of Music, in the City of New-York, on AVeclnesday, 
 December 16th, 1868, to celebrate the Sixty-fom-th Anniver- 
 sary of the Fovmding of the Society : 
 
 The President, Mr. Haimilton Fish, after calling the Society to 
 order, said : 
 
 " Ladies and Gentlemei^ : The New-York Historical Society 
 has asked your presence, this evening, to unite with them in com- 
 memorating the Sixty-fourth Anniversary of the foundation of 
 tlieir Society. It will be celebrated by a discourse deliverecl by 
 Mr. John Lotheop Motley, whose name belongs to_ no single 
 ,' country and to no single age. As a statesman, and diplomatist, 
 and patriot, he belongs to America ; as a scholar, to the world of 
 letters ; as a liistorian, all ages will claim him in the future. 
 
 "The exercises of the evening will commence with prayer by 
 the Rev. Dr. DeWitt, the First Vice-President of the Society, 
 after which the Anniversary Discourse will be delivered by 
 Mr. Motley. Subsequently the benediction will be pronounced by 
 the Right Reverend Dr. Potter, Bishop of New-York, and there- 
 after, without formal vote or motion, the meeting Avill stand ad- 
 journed." 
 
 Upon the conclusion of the Address, Mr. Guliajt C. Ver- 
 PLANCK rose, and said : That the pleasing duty of presenting a 
 resolution of thanks to the orator of the evening had been assigned 
 to him, as the senior member of the Society ; but what was thus 
 made his duty he thought he might safely claim as a right, in 
 view of the fact that half a century ago he had delivered an 
 Anniversary Address before the Society. He had been followed 
 on this annual festival by a great number of illustrious names. 
 Mr. Verplanck warmly commended the discom-se to which the 
 audience had just listened ; spoke of the skill with which different 
 periods of history had been contrasted and compared, and the
 
 74 . 
 
 genial and hopeful philosophy which pervaded it ; and concluded 
 by oftering the following resolution : 
 
 llesolved, That the thanks of tliis Society be presented to Mr. 
 Motley for his eloquent and instructive discourse delivered this 
 evening, and that he be requested to furnish a copy for publi- 
 cation. 
 
 Mr. William Cullen Bryant rose, and said : 
 
 " I take great pleasure in seconding the resolution which has 
 just been read. The eminent historian of the Dutch Republic, 
 who lias made the story of its earlier days as interesting as that 
 of Athens and Sparta, and who has infused into the narrative the 
 generous glow of his own genius, has the highest of titles to be 
 heard Avith respectful attention by the citizens of a community 
 Avhich, in its origin, Avas an offshoot of that renowned republic. 
 And cheerfully has that title been recognized, as the vast audience 
 assembled here to-niglit, in spite of the storm, fully testifies ; and 
 well has our illustrious friend spoke of the growtli of civilization 
 and of the improvement in the condition of mankind, both in the 
 Old World — the institutions of which he has so lately observed — 
 and in the country which is proud to claim him as one of her 
 children. It is fitting, also, that my old friend of more than forty 
 years, who in 1818, the exact term of half a century since, delivered 
 before this Society, A\lK'n DeWitt Clijs'ton Avas its President, 
 one of the noblest public discourses tliat Avas ever listened to in 
 this or in any other country — it Avas fitting that one so distinguish- 
 ed sliould rise to express in Avords Avhat Ave all feel in our hearts. 
 
 "Tliis Society, Mr. President, as has just been observed, has 
 often been honored by public addresses from the great men of 
 our Stale. The A^olume of Collections of the Society, Avhich con- 
 tains the magnificent discourse of Mr. Verplanck, contains 
 others from Gouverneur Morris, one of tlie most eloquent men of 
 his day; from Dr. IIosack, eminent in tlie healing art; from the 
 learned Dr. Jarvis, and from Wiieaton, the famed expounder of 
 the laAV of nations. 
 
 "To these honors is now to be added that of tliis evening, and 
 I therefore claim your voices for this ex})ression of acknowledg- 
 ment to the distinguished visitor from another State, Avho has 
 just addressed us, and who from this moment is no longer a 
 stranger in NcAV-York." 
 
 The resolution Avas ado])ted unanimously. 
 
 Extract from the Minutes. 
 
 Andkeav Warner, 
 
 Recording Secretary,
 
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