Volume Ii Part 4 (1/2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THOMAS C. EWING

OHIO AND THE NORTH-WEST

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

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

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

We need more social intercourse between the Northern and Southern men, and we need, above all, a clearer and manlier understanding of each other, in order that the recollections of the war may cease to check the growing accord between us.

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

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

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

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

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

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

FREDERIC WILLIAM FARRAR

POET AND PAINTER

[Speech of Frederic W. Farrar, D.D., at the banquet of the Royal Academy, London, May 3, 1884. He was at that time Canon and Archdeacon of Westminster, and in 1895 became Dean of Canterbury. The President, Sir Frederic Leighton, in introducing the speaker said: ”In literature as in science a different side of our subject is each year brought into prominence according to the guest who does us the honor to respond to it. To-night I have the pleasure to call on an accomplished and eloquent divine, a writer whose sentences are pictures and his language rich with color and who is known to you not only by his books on the most sacred subjects, but also by the valuable chapters which he has contributed to the study of language, the venerable Archdeacon Farrar.”]

MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN:--I have no pretension to be regarded as an adequate representative of English Literature, but the toast itself is one which could never be omitted at any banquet of the Royal Academy.

The artist and the man of letters, though they differ in their gifts and in their methods, are essentially united in feeling and in purpose. They appeal to the same emotions; they enforce the same lessons; they ill.u.s.trate the same truths; they labor for the same objects. The common aim of both is the emanc.i.p.ation and free development of our spiritual nature. The humblest artist as he reads the great works written by men of genius in all ages,--the humblest man of letters as year after year he has the delight of gazing on these splendidly illuminated walls--may claim that he belongs to one and the same great brotherhood--the brotherhood of those who have consistently labored to cheer, to bless and to elevate mankind. Turner called himself the ”author” not the artist of his pictures; and indeed, writing and painting are but different forms of that one eternal language of which not even Babel could confound the significance. There is hardly a single work in this Exhibition which does not ill.u.s.trate the close connection between literature and art.