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. [Laughter.] 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, by 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, stopped 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 more 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.

On the day we celebrate, the sun for the first time in his course looked down upon a different scene, begun and continued under a different inspiration.  A few conscientious Englishmen, in obedience to the monitor within, and that they might be free to worship God according to their own sense of duty, set sail for the unknown wilds of the North American continent.  After a voyage of sixty-four days in the ship Mayflower, with Liberty at the prow and Conscience at the helm [applause], they sighted the white sandbanks of Cape Cod, and soon thereafter in the small cabin framed that brief compact, forever memorable, which is the first written constitution of government in human history, and the very corner-stone of the American Republic; and then these Pilgrims landed.

This compact was not only foremost in time, it was also august in character, and worthy of perpetual example.  Never before had the object of the “civil body public” been announced as “to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices from time to time as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony.”  How lofty! how true!  Undoubtedly, these were the grandest words of government with the largest promise of any at that time uttered.