d,
this great-hearted, venerable old mother of the race, you gave us our
Fourths of July that we love and that we honor and revere, you gave us
the Declaration of Independence, which is the Charter of our rights,
you, the venerable Mother of Liberties, the Protector of Anglo-Saxon
Freedom--you gave us these things, and we do most honestly thank you for
them.

AMERICANS AND THE ENGLISH

ADDRESS AT A GATHERING OF AMERICANS IN LONDON, JULY 4, 1872

MR. CHAIRMAN AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--I thank you for the compliment
which has just been tendered me, and to show my appreciation of it I
will not afflict you with many words. It is pleasant to celebrate in
this peaceful way, upon this old mother soil, the anniversary of an
experiment which was born of war with this same land so long ago, and
wrought out to a successful issue by the devotion of our ancestors. It
has taken nearly a hundred years to bring the English and Americans into
kindly and mutually appreciative relations, but I believe it has
been accomplished at last. It was a great step when the two last
misunderstandings were settled by arbitration instead of cannon. It
is another great step when England adopts our sewing-machines without
claiming the invention--as usual. It was another when they imported one
of our sleeping-cars the other day. And it warmed my heart more than,
I can tell, yesterday, when I witnessed the spectacle of an Englishman,
ordering an American sherry cobbler of his own free will and accord--and
not only that but with a great brain and a level head reminding the
barkeeper not to forget the strawberries. With a common origin, a common
language, a common literature, a common religion, and--common drinks,
what is longer needful to the cementing of the two nations together in a
permanent bond of brotherhood?

This is an age of progress, and ours is a progressive land. A great and
glorious land, too--a land which has developed a Washington, a Franklin,
a Wm. M. Tweed, a Longfellow, a Motley, a Jay Gould, a Samuel C.
Pomeroy, a recent Congress which has never had its equal (in some
respects), and a United States Army which conquered sixty Indians in
eight months by tiring them out which is much better than uncivilized
slaughter, God knows. We have a criminal jury system which is superior
to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty
of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read.