Mr. President,--You bid me speak for the Senate of the United States. But I know well that there is another voice here, of classical eloquence, which might more fitly render this service. As one of the humblest members of that body, and associated with the public councils for a brief period only, I should prefer that my distinguished colleague [Mr. EVERETT], whose fame is linked with a long political life, should speak for it. And there is yet another here [Mr. HALE], who, though not at this moment a member of the Senate, has, throughout an active and brilliant career, marked by a rare combination of ability, eloquence, and good-humor, so identified himself with the Senate in the public mind that he might well speak for it always, and when he speaks, all are pleased to listen. But, Sir, you have ordered it otherwise. From the tears and trials at Delft Haven, from the deck of the Mayflower, from the landing on Plymouth Rock, to the Senate of the United States is a mighty contrast, covering whole spaces of history, hardly less than from the wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus to that Roman Senate which on curule chairs swayed Italy and the world. From these obscure beginnings of poverty and weakness, which you now piously commemorate, and on which all our minds naturally rest to-day, you bid us leap to that marble Capitol, where thirty-one powerful republics, bound in common fellowship and welfare, are gathered together in legislative body, constituting One Government, which, stretching from ocean to ocean, and counting millions of people beneath its majestic rule, surpasses far in wealth and might any government of the Old World when the little band of Pilgrims left it, and now promises to be a clasp between Europe and Asia, bringing the most distant places near together, so that there shall be no more Orient or Occident. It were interesting to dwell on the stages of this grand procession; but it is enough, on this occasion, merely to glance at them and pass on. Sir, it is the Pilgrims that we commemorate to-day, not the Senate. For this moment, at least, let us tread under foot all pride of empire, all exultation in our manifold triumphs of industry, science, literature, with all the crowding anticipations of the vast untold Future, that we may reverently bow before the Forefathers. The day is theirs. In the contemplation of their virtue we derive a lesson which, like truth, may judge us sternly, but, if we can really follow it, like truth, shall make us free. For myself, I accept the admonition of the day. It may teach us all, though few in numbers or alone, never, by word or act, to swerve from those primal principles of duty, which, from the landing on Plymouth Rock, have been the life of Massachusetts. Let me briefly unfold the lesson,--though to the discerning soul it unfolds itself.