[Speech of Edwin P. Whipple at the banquet given by the City of Boston, August 21, 1868, to the Hon. Anson Burlingame, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary from China, and his associates, Chih Ta-jin and Sun Ta-jin, of the Chinese Embassy to the United States and the European powers.  Mr. Whipple responded to the toast, “The Press.”]

MR. MAYOR:—­One cannot attempt to respond here for the Press, without being reminded that the Press and the Chinese Embassy have been on singularly good terms from the start.  To record the progress, applaud the object, extend the influence, and cordially eulogize the members of that Embassy, have been for months no inconsiderable part of the business of all newspapers; and if China anticipated us, by some five hundred years, in the invention of printing, our Chinese guests will still admit that, in the minute account we have given both of what they have, and of what they have not, said and done, since they arrived in the country, we have carried the invention to a perfection of which they never dreamed—­having not only invented printing, but invented a great deal of what we print.

But, apart from the rich material they have furnished the press in the way of news, there is something strangely alluring and inspiring to the editorial imagination in the comprehensive purpose which has prompted their mission to the civilized nations of the West.  That purpose is doubly peaceful, for it includes a two-fold commerce of material products and of immaterial ideas.  Probably the vastest conception which ever entered into the mind of a conqueror was that which was profoundly meditated, and, in its initial steps, practically carried out, by Alexander the Great.  He was engaged in a clearly defined project of assimilating the populations of Europe and Asia, when, at the early age of thirty-three, he was killed—­I tremble to state it here—­by a too eager indulgence in an altogether too munificent public dinner!  Alexander’s weapon was force, but it was at least the force of genius, and it was exerted in the service of a magnificent idea.  His successors in modern times have but too often availed themselves of force divested of all ideas, except the idea of bullying or outwitting the Asiatics in a trade.

As to China, this conduct aroused an insurrection of Chinese conceit against European conceit.  The Chinese were guilty of the offence of calling the representatives of the proudest and most supercilious of all civilizations, “outside barbarians”; illustrating in this that too common conservative weakness of human nature, of holding fixedly to an opinion long after the facts which justified it have changed or passed away.  It certainly cannot be questioned that at a period which, when compared with the long date of Chinese annals, may be called recent, we were outside barbarians as contrasted with that highly civilized and ingenious people.  At the time when our European ancestors were squalid, swinish,