e Tocqueville found in 1828 was due to the
impressment of American seamen, of whom something like fifteen hundred
were serving on board English ships when at last they were delivered.
These things should be remembered, not with resentment but for
enlightenment. But whatever difficulties occurred between the two
countries, and there may be difficulties that are serious, I do not
think there will be any which good sense and good feeling cannot settle.
[Applause.]

I think I have been told often enough to remember that my countrymen are
apt to think that they are in the right, that they are always in the
right; that they are apt to look at their side of the question only.
Now, this conduces certainly to peace of mind and imperturbability of
judgment, whatever other merits it may have. I am sure I do not know
where we got it. Do you? I also sympathize most heartily with what has
been said by the chairman with regard to the increasing love for England
among my countrymen. I find on inquiry that they stop longer and in
greater numbers every year in the old home, and feel more deeply its
manifold charms. They also are beginning to feel that London is the
centre of the races that speak English, very much in the sense that Rome
was the centre of the ancient world. And I confess that I never think of
London, which I also confess that I love, without thinking of that
palace which David built, sitting in hearing of a hundred
streams--streams of thought, of intelligence, of activity. And one other
thing about London, if I may be allowed to refer to myself, impresses me
beyond any other sound I have ever heard, and that is the low, unceasing
roar that one hears always in the air. It is not a mere accident, like
the tempest or the cataract, but it is impressive because it always
indicates human will and impulse and conscious movement, and I confess
that when I hear it I almost feel that I am listening to the roaring
loom of time. A few words more. I will only say this, that we, as well
as you, have inherited a common trust in the noble language which, in
its subtle compositiveness, is perhaps the most admirable instrument of
human thought and human feeling and cunning that has ever been
unconsciously devised by man. May our rivalries be in fidelity to that
trust. We have also inherited certain traditions, political and moral,
and in doing our duty towards these it seems to me that we shall find
quite enough occupation for our united t