k, as they are in the Episcopal Consistorial Court
in London, and they tell the entire story.

But that is but part. The thing that I wish to impress upon you, and
upon my fellow countrymen throughout the United States, is that this is
an act of courtesy and friendship by another government--the government
of what we once called our "mother country"--to the entire people of the
United States.

You cannot limit it to the Governor of this Commonwealth; nor to the
Legislature; nor even to the citizens of this Commonwealth. It extends
in its courtesy, its kindness and comity to the entire people of the
United States. From first to last there was the ready response of
courtesy and kindness to the request for the restoration of this
manuscript record.

I may say to you that there has been nothing that I have sought more
earnestly than to place the affairs of these two great nations in the
atmosphere of mutual confidence and respect and good-will. If it be a
sin to long for the honor of one's country, for the safety and strength
of one's country, then I have been a great sinner, for I have striven to
advance the honor and the safety and the welfare of my country, and
believed it was best accomplished by treating all with justice and
courtesy, and doing those things to others which we would ask to have
done to ourselves.

When the Chancellor pronounced his decree in March last, he cited
certain precedents to justify him in restoring this volume to
Massachusetts. One precedent which powerfully controlled his decision,
and which in the closing portion of his judgment he emphasizes, was an
act of generous liberality upon the part of the American Library Society
in Philadelphia in voluntarily returning to the British government some
volumes of original manuscript of the period of James the First, which
by some means not very clearly explained had found their way among the
books of that institution.

Those books were received by a distinguished man, Lord Romilly, Master
of the Rolls, who took occasion to speak of the liberality and kindness
which dictated the action of the Philadelphia library. Gentlemen, I am
one of those who believe that a generous and kindly act is never unwise
between individuals or nations.

The return of this book to you is an echo of the kindly act of your
countrymen in the city of Philadelphia in 1866.

It is that, not, as Mr. Hoar has said, any influence or special effort
of mine; but it is interna