would find an all-sufficient liberty. That idea was not original with them; they borrowed it from Mr. Lowell, when he said and sung in his sonnet upon the reformers:

Who yet have not the one great lesson learned

That grows in leaves,

Tides in the mighty seas,

And in the stars eternally hath burned,

That only full obedience is free.

The only other incident in the history of the year is the successful effort that has been made in digging out the history of John Harvard; and about that, the President of the college will tell you in good timewho he was, whence he came, and where he got the fortune and the library which he contributed, along with his melodious name, to the college. He gave half of all he had, gentlemen, and out of that modest fountain what vast results have flowed! May no red-handed vandal of an undergraduate ever desecrate his statue that stands at the head of the park. [Applause.] Now, brethren, would you have your statue crowned? Would you, too, become immortal? Would you identify your homes with the glory of the college? The way is open and easy. Follow exactly the example of the founder; give one equal half of all you are worth to the college, and if you wish to enjoy your own immortality, do it to-morrow, while you are alive. [Applause and laughter.] If you shrink from that, die at once and give it to them. [Laughter.] Other people, possibly, will rise up and call you blessed, whatever your own may do [laughter]; so you will relieve the President of more than half the labors of his office.

Gentlemen, I did want to say a word about another matter, the elective system, but President Eliot tells me I had better not. He says that the Board of Overseers of the college are incubating on that question, and that there is no telling what they may hatch out. Now don't let us disturb them, gentlemen; at any rate, while they are on the nest; we might crack the shell, and then the whole work would have to be done. over again. And so, gentlemen, as you now seem to be in good mood, let me say one word more about this elective system. I don't care how they settle it; I hope they will give us the means of sustaining and fortifying their decision when they make it. We alumni at a distance from the college are often stung to indignation by the attacks that are made upon us by the representatives of other colleges. One would think, by the way they talk down there at Princeton, that Harvard was going to the everlasting bow-wows; that the fountains of learning were being undermined and broken up; that, as Mr. Lowell said again:

"The Anglo-Saxondom's idee's abreakin' 'em to pieces,

An' thet idee's thet every man doos jest wut he damn pleases."

I suppose that the truth about the elective system is that the world moves on and the college moves with it. In Cotton Mather's time, when he said that the sole object of the foundation of a college was to furnish a good supply of godly ministers for the provinces, it was well enough to feed them on Latin and Greek only. Now that young men when they go out into the world have everything to do about taking part in all the activities of life, I for one say let them have the chance to learn here anything they can possibly want to learn. [Applause.] And I hope that our President will persevere in one direction, at least until he can say truly that whatever is worth learning can be taught well at Harvard. This is well expressed again in an idea of Mr. Lowell's, who always has ideas enough, if divided, to go around even among us:

"New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth; They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of truth."

Gentlemen, let me say a single word before I sit down. I hope you will be very patient with all the other speakers. I advise them, as the hour is late and the afternoon is short and there are a great many of them in number, each to put a good deal of shortening in his cake. That is a rule that never is applied to the presiding officer, and I am afraid that it never will be.

Now, gentlemen, I give you the health of President Eliot; long life to him. [Applause.]

$ 54

IRELAND

By Chauncey M. Depew

(Speech at a complimentary dinner given to Justin McCarthy by the Irish Parliamentary Fund Association at New York, October 2, 1886.)

MR. CHAIRMAN: The first of my ancestors reached this country about 250 years ago. Many of them came afterward. [Great laughter.] The result is I am selected to stand in the presence of every nationality as one of American blood. [Renewed laughter.] One of my ancestors. left Ireland over 125 years ago, and I left it three weeks ago. [Laughter

CHAUNCEY MITCHELL DEPEW. Born Peekskill, N. Y., April 23, 1834; graduated from Yale in 1856; Secretary of State of New York, 1863; United States Senator from New York, 1899-1911.

and applause.] He never returned, but I expect to take my seat in the strangers' gallery of the Irish Parliament. [A voice: "There will be no strangers' gallery in the Irish Parliament."] Unless I should be elected a member from County Cork. [Great laughter and applause.]

It affords me unusual pleasure to begin the festive exercises of the winter by joining in a welcome to our distinguished guest to-night. In his versatility, his marvelous capacity to move in many directions, and all acceptable to himself and his friends, he seems to me to be more than any man on the other side peculiarly an American. [Laughter.] He has impressed himself upon the American people as a literary man by possessing that facility which alone secures from them a reading. In his romances he seems to be reciting history, and his histories are romances. [Great laughter.] But we welcome him to-night, not because he has touched the chord which is responded to by every cultivated American-and every American is cultivated [laughter and applause]-but because he represents a principle with which every American agrees with him. [Applause.] In England, during the recent canvass and elections, a Tory member of Parliament said to me: “Does anybody in America take any interest in the question which Mr. Gladstone has precipitated upon us except the Irish?" I said to him: "There are no cross-roads in the United States where the question is not watched with the same eagerness with which we watch a Presidential canvass and election. There is no cross-roads hamlet, village or city in America where the Irish question is not talked about day by day, and the only difference between an ordinary Presidential election with us and this election is, that our voices and our votes are all on one side." [Long-continued applause.] "Well," he said, "that is because you are not informed." I said to him: "It is because we are educated on that question, and England proper is not." The principle of Home Rule starts from the town meeting, starts from the village caucus, starts from the ward gathering, reaches the County Supervisors, stops at the State Legislature, and delegates imperial power only to Congress. [Great applause.] The whole genius and spirit of American liberty is Home Rule in the locality where it best understands what it needs, and it is only on general matters that the general government controls. [Applause.]

With all our English-speaking race, whatever may be its origin or its commingling with other races, there is at the bottom a savage spirit, a brutal spirit, by which we seek to gain what is necessary to our power or our pelf by might, and to hold it no matter what may be the right. Under the impetus of that spirit, the English-speaking race have trodden upon rights and liberties and secured privileges until they virtually

circle and control the globe. We ourselves, in our own country, are no strangers to the spirit in the manner in which for a century we trampled upon the rights of the slave, and in the manner in which we to-day trample upon the rights of the Indian. [Applause.] But, thank God! in the evolution of the moral principle of human nature, in the enlightenment which belongs to the race of which we are so proud, in the exercise and in the power of the Church within and without, there has grown up in our race a conscience to which an appeal can be successfully made. [Applause.] It is the appeal to that conscience which came within seventy-five thousand votes of carrying the election for Home Rule in Ireland. The middle-class Englishman, whatever may be the prejudices against him in Ireland and in this country, is a hard-hearted, but conscientious, moral, and family-loving man. plause.] All he needs is to be educated to a realization of what is right and what is wrong, and he will rise to the emergency. [Applause.] He had followed Gladstone for a quarter of a century, and when Gladstone said this is the right road, believing it not to be the right, he followed Gladstone. [Applause.] When Gladstone and those who are behind him have educated him, within two years from to-night he will turn around and say to the Tory government, to Union-Liberal government, to Liberal government, to Radical government: "Justice to Ireland, or you cannot stay in power." [Great applause.]

[Ap

Now, I thought I would talk to these people. The Yankee doesn't amount to much unless he asks questions-and I am a Yankee-that is, an Irish Yankee. I said to a Tory of some note: "Why do you oppose Mr. Gladstone's bill?" "Why," said he, "because it would confiscate, by the Irish Parliament, every bit of property there is in Ireland, and the Protestant minority would be crushed out and driven from the face of the earth." I said to the Union-Liberal: "Why do you oppose Home Rule?" He said: "Because it would lead to the disruption of the British Empire-the same question you had to contend with in America." I said to the English manufacturer: "Why don't you help Ireland by taking over your capital and developing her capacities?" He said: "Because the beggars won't work." I said to the English squire, who is alive to-day, but who is simply the mummied representative of his ancestors of the fourteenth century: "Why are you opposed to Gladstone and Home Rule for Ireland?" "Why," said he, "because the Irish are children and must have a firm hand to govern them."

Well, gentlemen, all those questions are answered successfully either in America or Ireland to-day. The fact that among the noblest, the most brilliant, the most magnificent contributions to the forces of human

liberty, not only in Ireland but in the world, which have been given in the last century, have come from the Protestant minority in Ireland, answers the question of Irish bigotry. Through that ancestor who left Ireland a hundred and twenty-five years ago, I come from that same Presbyterian stock which is represented to-day by Parnell, and which dared to take its chances with Home Rule among its fellow-citizens. What have the Irishmen in this country done? Whenever they are freed from the distressing and oppressing influences which have borne them down for centuries in their country, they do work. They have built our great public works; they have constructed our vast system of railways; they have done more than that; they have risen to places of power and eminence in every walk of industry and in every avenue which is open to brains and to pluck. The only complaint we have against them is, that they show too much genius for government and get all the offices. I have some ambitions myself, and I am for Home Rule in Ireland, because I want these fellows to go back to give me a chance. I read in one of the leading papers this morning-I shall not state which for fear of exciting an irruption here on this platform, but it was the leading paper-that the Prime Minister of Austria [Count Taaffe], who was a member of the Irish Peerage, under some name which I now forget, had been engaged through his agent in evicting some hundreds of his tenants. It seemed to me to preach the most pregnant lesson of Irish difficulty and Irish relief. The Prime Minister of Austria, as all the world knows, is a man of preeminent ability, of extraordinary power in the management of international questions, of profound and magnificent patriotism-to Austria. But engrossed as he is in the great question of how the peace of Europe is to be preserved with the position of Russia on one hand and Germany on the other, how is he to perform his part as an Irish citizen toward the people who are dependent upon him for support or encouragement, for that sympathy which should flow between him who holds the land and him. who tills it for a price? The world has come to recognize that property has its obligations as well as labor. The world has come to recognize that he who has, if he would enjoy, must reciprocate with those who have not, and with those who are dependent upon him. But as all wealth springs from the earth, and as all national prosperity comes. from the soil, if there is in any country-as thank God there is not in ours a system by which the tenant's title goes down from generation. to generation, unless the lord is there in his castle, so that between the castle and the cottage there is an indissoluble tie, in sickness and in health, in poverty and prosperity, each sympathizing with the other's woes, each sharing the other's joys-he has no place in that land, and