and wider significance.  We celebrate in it the union of two nations.  While I ask you to return your thanks to our chairman I think I may venture also to ask of our guest a boon which he will not refuse us.  We have a great message to send, and we have here a messenger worthy to bear it.  I will ask Mr. Garrison to carry back to his home the prayer of this assembly and of this nation that there may be forever and forever peace and good will between England and America.  For the good will of America and England is nothing less than the evangel of liberty and of peace.  And who more worthy to preside over such a gospel than the chairman to whom I ask you to return your thanks to-day?  I beg to propose that the thanks of the meeting be given to Mr. Bright.

FOOTNOTE: 

[2] Speech at breakfast held in London in honor of Mr. Garrison, June 29, 1867.

THE QUALITIES THAT WIN

BY CHARLES SUMNER

Mr. President and Brothers of New England:—­For the first time in my life I have the good fortune to enjoy this famous anniversary festival.  Tho often honored by your most tempting invitation, and longing to celebrate the day in this goodly company of which all have heard so much, I could never excuse myself from duties in another place.  If now I yield to well-known attractions, and journey from Washington for my first holiday during a protracted public service, it is because all was enhanced by the appeal of your excellent president, to whom I am bound by the friendship of many years in Boston, in New York, and in a foreign land.  It is much to be a brother of New England, but it is more to be a friend, and this tie I have pleasure in confessing to-night.

It is with much doubt and humility that I venture to answer for the Senate of the United States, and I believe the least I say on this head will be the most prudent.  But I shall be entirely safe in expressing my doubt if there is a single Senator who would not be glad of a seat at this generous banquet.  What is the Senate?  It is a component part of the National Government.  But we celebrate to-day more than any component part of any government.  We celebrate an epoch in the history of mankind—­not only never to be forgotten, but to grow in grandeur as the world appreciates the elements of true greatness.  Of mankind I say—­for the landing on Plymouth Rock, on December 22, 1620, marks the origin of a new order of ages, which the whole human family will be elevated.  Then and there was the great beginning.

Throughout all time, from the dawn of history, men have swarmed to found new homes in distant lands.  The Tyrians, skirting Northern Africa, stopt at Carthage; Carthaginians dotted Spain and even the distant coasts of Britain and Ireland; Greeks gemmed Italy and Sicily with art-loving settlements; Rome carried multitudinous colonies with her conquering eagles.  Saxons, Danes, and Normans violently mingled with the original Britons.  And in modern times, Venice, Genoa, Portugal, Spain, France, and England, all sent forth emigrants to people foreign shores.  But in these various expeditions, trade or war was the impelling motive.  Too often commerce and conquest moved hand in hand, and the colony was incarnadined with blood.