We rejoice in the progress of English manufactures, which extracts every force from each ounce of coal, and pounds or weaves the English iron into nearly everything for human use except boots and brown-bread [laughter]; in the commerce which spreads its sails on all seas; in the wealth and splendor that are assembled in her cities; but we rejoice more than all in the constant progress of those liberal ideas to which such an impulse was given by this victory of Yorktown. [Cheers.] You remember that Fox is said to have heard of it "with a wild delight"; and even he may not have anticipated its full future outcome. You remember the hissing hate with which he was often assailed, as when the tradesman of Westminster whose vote he had solicited, flung back at him the answer: "I have nothing for you, sir, but a halter," to which Fox, by the way, with instant wit and imperturbable good-nature, smilingly responded: "I could not think, my dear sir, of depriving you of such an interesting family relic." [Laughter.] Look back to that time and then see the prodigious advance of liberal ideas in England, the changed political condition of the workingman. Look at the position of that great Commoner, who now regulates the English policy, who equals Fox in his liberal principles and surpasses him in his eloquence—Mr. Gladstone. [Cheers.] The English troops marched out of Yorktown, after their surrender, to that singularly appropriate tune, as they thought it, "The World Turned Upside Down." [Laughter.] But that vast disturbance of the old equilibrium which had balanced a King against a Nation, has given to England the treasures of statesmanship, the treasures of eloquence, a vast part of the splendor and the power which are now collected under the reign of that one royal woman in the world, to whom every American heart pays its eager and unforced fealty—Queen Victoria. [Loud applause.]
We know what an impulse was given to the same spirit in Germany. Mr. Schurz will tell us of it in eloquent words. But no discourse that he can utter, however brilliant in rhetoric; no analysis, however lucid; no clear and comprehensive sweep of his thought, though expressed in words which ring in our ears and live in our memories, can so fully and fittingly illustrate it to us as does the man himself, in his character and career—an Old World citizen of the American Republic whose marvellous mastery of our tough English tongue is still surpassed by his more marvellous mastery over the judgments and the hearts of those who hear him use it. [Cheers.]
What an impulse was given to the same spirit in France we know. At first, it fell upon a people not altogether prepared to receive it. There was, therefore, a passionate effervescence, a fierce ebullition into popular violence and popular outrage which darkened for the time the world's annals. But we know that the spirit never died; and through all the winding and bloody paths in which it has marched, it has brought France the fair consummation of its present power and wealth and renown. [Cheers.] We rejoice in its multiform manufactures, which weave the woollen or silken fibre into every form and tissue of fabric; in the delicate, dainty skill which keeps the time of all creation with its watchwork and clockwork; which ornaments beauty with its jewelry, and furnishes science with its finest instruments; we rejoice in the 14,000 miles of railway there constructed, almost all of it within forty years; we rejoice in the riches there accumulated; we rejoice in the expansion of the population from the twenty-three millions of the day of Yorktown to the thirty-eight millions of the present; but we rejoice more than all in the liberal spirit evermore there advancing, which has built the fifteen universities, and gathered the 41,000 students into them; which builds libraries and higher seminaries, and multiplies common schools: which gives liberty if not license to the press. [Cheers.]
We rejoice in the universal suffrage which puts the 532 deputies into the Chamber and which combines the Chamber of Deputies with the Senate into a National Assembly to elect the President of the Republic. We rejoice in the rapid political education now and always going on in France, and that she is to be hereafter a noble leader in Europe, in illustrating the security and commending the benefits of Republican institutions. [Applause.]
France has been foremost in many things; she was foremost in chivalry, and the most magnificent spectacles and examples which that institution ever furnished were on her fields. She was foremost in the Crusades and the volcanic country around Auvergne was not more full of latent fire than was the spirit of her people at the Council of Clermont or before the appeal of Peter the Hermit and St. Bernard. She led the march of philosophical discussion in the Middle Ages. She has been foremost in many achievements of science and art. She is foremost to-day in piercing with tunnels the mountain-chains, that the wheels of trade may roll unobstructed through rocky barriers, and cutting canals through the great isthmuses that the keels of commerce may sweep unhindered across the seas. But she has never yet had an office so illustrious as that which falls to her now—to show Europe how Republican institutions stimulate industry, guarantee order, promote all progress in enterprise and in thought, and are the best and surest security for a nation's grandest advancement.
That enthusiasm which has led her always to champion ideas, which led her soldiers to say in the first Revolution: "With bread and iron we will march to China," entering now into fulfilment of this great office, will carry her influence to China and beyond it; her peaceful influence on behalf of the liberty for which she fought with us at Yorktown, and for which she has bled and struggled with a pathetic and lofty stubbornness ever since. [Cheers.]
I do not look back merely then from this evening; I see illustrated at Yorktown the lesson of that hour; that colonies maturing into great commonwealths, and peoples combining for common liberties are the best pledges of the world's future, but I look forward as well and see France in Europe, a Republic, the United States on this continent, a Republic, standing again in the future as before, shoulder to shoulder, expecting with tranquil and exultant spirit the grander victory yet to come, the outcome of which shall be liberty to all the peoples of the world, and that benign and divine peace which is the sure and sovereign fruit of such a liberty. [Applause.]