o accomplish some great good for his beloved country, to
raise her in the estimation of the rest of the world.

On the 4th of July, 1832, he was called on to preside at the banquet
given by the Americans resident in Paris, with Mr. Cooper as
vice-president. General Lafayette was the guest of honor, and the
American Minister Hon. William C. Rives, G.W. Haven, and many others were
present.

Morse, in proposing the toast to General Lafayette, spoke as follows:--

"I cannot propose the next toast, gentlemen, so intimately connected with
the last, without adverting to the distinguished honor and pleasure we
this day enjoy above the thousands, and I may say hundreds of thousands,
of our countrymen who are at this moment celebrating this great national
festival--the honor and pleasure of having at our board our venerable
guest on my right hand, the hero whom two worlds claim as their own. Yes,
gentlemen, he belongs to America as well as to Europe. He is our fellow
citizen, and the universal voice of our country would cry out against us
did we not manifest our nation's interest in his person and character.

"With the mazes of European politics we have nothing to do; to changing
schemes of good or bad government we cannot make ourselves a party; with
the success or defeat of this or that faction we can have no sympathy;
but with the great principles of rational liberty, of civil and religious
liberty, those principles for which our guest fought by the side of our
fathers, and which he has steadily maintained for a long life, 'through
good report and evil report,' we do sympathize. We should not be
Americans if we did not sympathize with them, nor can we compromise one
of these principles and preserve our self-respect as loyal American
citizens. They are the principles of order and good government, of
obedience to law; the principles which, under Providence, have made our
country unparalleled in prosperity; principles which rest, not in
visionary theory, but are made palpable by the sure test of experiment
and time.

"But, gentlemen, we honor our guest as the stanch, undeviating defender
of these principles, of our principles, of American principles. Has he
ever deserted them? Has he ever been known to waver? Gentlemen, there are
some men, some, too, who would wish to direct public opinion, who are
like the buoys upon tide-water. They float up and down as the current
sets this way or that. If you ask at an emergency where the