emen, you will receive him with all the honors."]

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN:--Speaking in this place and at this
time I am seriously embarrassed; for when charges have been made upon
the American people on account of municipal mismanagement in this city,
now happily past, we have constantly heard the statement made that
American institutions are not responsible for it; that New York is not
an American city. [Applause.] I must confess that when very hard pressed
I have myself taken refuge in this statement.

But now it comes back to plague me, for on looking over the general
instructions furnished me by the State Department I find it laid down
that American Ministers on the way to their posts are strictly forbidden
to make speeches in any foreign city, save in the country to which they
are accredited. You will pardon me, then, if I proceed very slowly and
cautiously in discussing the sentiment allotted to me.

No one, I think, will dispute the statement that commerce has become a
leading agency among men in the maintenance of peace. [Applause.]
Commercial interests have become so vast that they embrace all the
world, and so minute that they permeate every hamlet of every nation.
War interferes with these interests and thwarts them. Hence commerce
more and more tends to make war difficult. [Applause.] As to the fact
then, involved in your toast, it needs no argument in its support. We
all concede it. Were we to erect a statue of Commerce in the midst of
this great commercial metropolis, we should doubtless place in her hand,
as an emblem, a ship-like shuttle and represent her as weaving a web
between the great nations of the earth tending every day to fasten them
more securely and more permanently in lasting peace. [Applause.]

Nor, I think, will the other part of the sentiment be disputed by any
thoughtful person. Of course much may be said upon the solemn nothings
which have occupied diplomatists; much historic truth may be adduced to
show that diplomats have often proved to be what Carlyle calls "solemnly
constituted impostors." But after all, I think no one can look over the
history of mankind without feeling that it was a vast step when four
centuries ago the great modern powers began to maintain resident
representatives at the centres of government; and from that day to this
these men have proved themselves, with all their weaknesses, worth far
more than all their cost in warding off or mitigating the horrors