[Speech of William H. Seward at a banquet held at Plymouth, Mass., December 21, 1855.  Preceding this banquet Mr. Seward delivered an oration on “The Pilgrims and Liberty.”  The speech here given is his response to the toast proposed at the banquet, “The Orator of the Day, eloquent in his tribute to the virtues of the Pilgrims; faithful, in his life, to the lessons they taught.”]

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:—­The Puritans were Protestants, but they were not protestants against everybody and everything, right or wrong.  They did not protest indiscriminately against everything they found in England.  On the other hand, we have abundant indications in the works of genius and art which they left behind them that they had a reverence for all that is good and true; while they protested against everything that was false and vicious.  They had a reverence for the good taste and the literature, science, eloquence, and poetry of England, and so I trust it is with their successors in this once bleak and inhospitable, but now rich and prosperous land.  They could appreciate poetry, as well as good sense and good taste, and so I call to your recollection the language of a poet who had not loomed up at the time of the Puritans as he has since.  It was addressed to his steed, after an ill-starred journey to Islingtontown.  The poet said:—­

  “’Twas for your pleasure you came here,
  You shall go back for mine.”

Being a candid and frank man, as one ought to be who addresses the descendants of the Puritans, I may say that it was not at all for your pleasure that I came here.  Though I may go back to gratify you, yet I came here for my own purposes.  The time has passed away when I could make a distant journey from a mild climate to a cold though fair region, without inconvenience; but there was one wish, I might almost say there was only one wish of my heart that I was anxious should be gratified.  I had been favored with many occasions to see the seats of empire in this western world, and had never omitted occasions to see where the seats of empire were planted, and how they prospered.  I had visited the capital of my own and of many other American States.  I had regarded with admiration the capital of this great Republic, in whose destinies, in common with you all, I feel an interest which can never die.  I had seen the capitals of the British Empire, and of many foreign empires, and had endeavored to study for myself the principles which have prevailed in the foundation of states and empires.  With that view I had beheld a city standing where a migration from the Netherlands planted an empire on the bay of New York, at Manhattan, or perhaps more properly at Fort Orange.  They sought to plant a commercial empire, and they did not fail; but in New York now, although they celebrate the memories and virtues of fatherland, there is no day dedicated to the colonization of New York by the original settlers, the immigrants from Holland.  I have visited Wilmington, on Christina Creek, in Delaware, where a colony was planted by the Swedes, about the time of the settlement of Plymouth, and though the old church built by the colonists still stands there, I learned that there did not remain in the whole State a family capable of speaking the language, or conscious of bearing the name of one of the thirty-one original colonists.