n me the high honour of this national welcome, it is with
profound veneration that I beg leave to express my fervent gratitude for
it.

Were even no principles for the future connected with the honour which I
now enjoy, still the past would be memorable as history, and not fail to
have a beneficial influence, continuously to develop the Spirit of the
Age. Almost every century has had one predominant idea, which imparted a
common direction to the activity of nations. This predominant idea is
the Spirit of the Age, invisible yet omnipresent; impregnable,
all-pervading; scorned, abused, opposed, and yet omnipotent.

The spirit of our age is Democracy. All _for_ the people and all
_by_ the people. Nothing _about_ the people _without_ the
people. That is Democracy, and that is the ruling tendency of the spirit
of our age.

To this spirit is opposed the principle of Despotism, claiming
sovereignty over mankind, and degrading nations from the position of a
self-conscious, self-consistent aim, to the condition of tools
subservient to the authority of ambition.

One of these principles will and must prevail. So far as one
civilization prevails, the destiny of mankind is linked to a common
source of principles, and within the boundaries of a common
civilization community of destinies exists. Hence the warm interest which
the condition of distant nations awakes now-a-days in a manner not yet
recorded in history because humanity never was yet aware of that common
tie as it now is. With this consciousness thus developed, two opposite
principles cannot rule within the same boundaries--Democracy and
Despotism.

In the conflict of these two hostile principles, until now it was not
Right, not Justice, but only Success which met approbation and applause.
Unsuccessful patriotism was stigmatized with the name of crime.
Revolution not crowned by success was styled Anarchy and Revolt, and
the vanquished patriot being dragged to the gallows by victorious
despotism, men did not consider _why_ he died on the gallows; but
the fact itself, that _there_ he died, imparted a stain to his
name.

And though impartial history, now and then, casts the halo of a martyr
over an unsuccessful patriot's grave, yet even this was not always sure.
Tyrants have often perverted history by adulation or by fear. But
whatever that late verdict might have been; for him who dared to
struggle against despotism at the time when he struggled in vain, there
was n