Model Speeches for Practise, Grenville Kleiser [readict books .TXT] 📗

years every byway and highway in New England leads to New York. New York has become the capital of New England, and within her limits are more Yankees than in any three New England States combined. The boy who is to-day ploughing the stony hillside in New England, who is boarding around and teaching school, and who is to be the future merchant-prince or great lawyer, or wise statesman, looks not now to Boston, but to New York, as the El Dorado of his hopes. And how generously, sons of New England, have we treated you? We have put you in the best offices; we have made you our merchant-princes. Where is the city or village in our State where you do not own the best houses, run the largest manufactories, and control the principal industries? We have several times made one of your number Governor of the State, and we have placed you in positions where you honor us while we honor you. New York's choice in the National Cabinet is the distinguished Secretary of State, whose pure Yankee blood renders him none the less a most fit and most eminent representative of the Empire State.

But while we have done our best to satisfy the Yankee, there is one thing we have never been able to do. We can meet his ambition and fill his purse, but we never can satisfy his stomach. When the President stated to-night that Plymouth Rock celebrated this anniversary on the 21st, whilst we here did so on the 22d, he did not state the true reason. It is not as he said, a dispute about dates. The pork and beans of Plymouth are insufficient for the cravings of the Yankee appetite, and they chose the 21st, in order that, by the night train, they may get to New York on the 22d, to have once a year a square meal. From 1620 down to the opening of New York to their settlement, a constantly increasing void was growing inside the Yankee diaphragm, and even now the native and imported Yankee finds the best-appointed restaurant in the world sufficient for his wants; and he has migrated to this house, that he may annually have the sensation of sufficiency in the largest hotel in the United States.

My friend, Mr. Curtis, has eloquently stated, in the beginning of his address, the Dutchman's idea of the old Puritan. He has stated, at the close of his address, the modern opinion of the old Puritan. He was an uncomfortable man to live with, but two hundred years off a grand historic figure. If any one of you, gentlemen, was compelled to leave this festive board, and go back two hundred years and live with your ancestor of that day, eat his fare, drink his drink, and listen to his talk, what a time would be there, my countrymen! Before the Puritan was fitted to accomplish the work he did, with all the great opportunities that were in him, it was necessary that he should spend two years in Leyden and learn from the Dutch the important lesson of religious toleration, and the other fundamental lesson, that a common school education lies at the foundation of all civil and religious liberty. If the Dutchman had conquered Boston, it would have been a misfortune to this land, and to the world. It would have been like Diedrich Knickerbocker wrestling with an electric battery.

But when the Yankee conquered New York, his union with the Dutch formed those sterling elements which have made the Republic what it is. Yankee ideas prevailed in this land in the grandest contest in the Senate of the United States which has ever taken place, or ever will, in the victory of Nationalism over Sectionalism by the ponderous eloquence of that great defender of the Constitution, Daniel Webster. And when failing in the forum, Sectionalism took the field, Yankee ideas conquered again in that historic meeting when Lee gave up his sword to Grant. And when, in the disturbance of credit and industry which followed, the twin heresies Expansion and Repudiation stalked abroad, Yankee ideas conquered again in the policy of our distinguished guest, the Secretary of the Treasury. So great a triumph has never been won by any financial officer of the government before, as in the funding of our national debt at four per cent., and the restoration of the national credit, giving an impulse to our prosperity and industry that can neither be stayed nor stopt.

When Henry Hudson sailed up the great harbor of New York, and saw with prophetic vision its magnificent opportunities, he could only emphasize his thought, with true Dutch significance, in one sentence—"See here!" When the Yankee came and settled in New York, he emphasized his coming with another sentence—"Sit here!"—and he sat down upon the Dutchman with such force that he squeezed him out of his cabbage-patch, and upon it he built his warehouse and his residence. He found this city laid out in a beautiful labyrinth of cow-patches, with the inhabitants and the houses all standing with their gable-ends to the street, and he turned them all to the avenue, and made New York a parallelogram of palaces; and he has multiplied to such an extent that now he fills every nook of our great State, and we recognize here to-night that, with no tariff, and free trade between New England and New York, the native specimen is an improvement upon the imported article. Gentlemen, I beg leave to say, as a native New Yorker of many generations, that by the influence, the hospitality, the liberal spirit, and the cosmopolitan influences of this great State, from the unlovable Puritan of two hundred years ago you have become the most agreeable and companionable of men.

New York to-day, the Empire State of all the great States of the Commonwealth, brings in through her grand avenue to the sea eighty per cent. of all the imports, and sends forth a majority of all the exports, of the Republic. She collects and pays four-fifths of the taxes which carry on the government of the country. In the close competition to secure the great Western commerce which is to-day feeding the world and seeking an outlet along three thousand miles of coast, she holds by her commercial prestige and enterprise more than all the ports from New Orleans to Portland combined. Let us, whether native or adopted New Yorkers, be true to the past, to the present, to the future, of this commercial and financial metropolis. Let us enlarge our terminal facilities and bring the rail and the steamship close together. Let us do away with the burdens that make New York the dearest, and make her the cheapest, port on the continent; and let us impress our commercial ideas upon the national legislature, so that the navigation laws, which have driven the merchant marine of the Republic from the seas, shall be repealed, and the breezes of every clime shall unfurl, and the waves of every sea reflect, the flag of the Republic.