Our Pilgrims were few and poor. The whole outfit of this historic voyage, including £1,700 of trading-stock, was only £2,400;[233] and how little was required for their succor appears in the experience of the soldier Captain Miles Standish, who, being sent to England for assistance,--not military, but financial (God save the mark!),--succeeded in borrowing (how much do you suppose?) £150 sterling. (_Laughter._) Something in the way of help; and the historian adds, “though at fifty per cent” interest.[234] So much for a valiant soldier on a financial expedition. (_Laughter, in which General Sherman and the company joined._) A later agent, Allerton, was able to borrow for the Colony £200 at a reduced interest of thirty per cent.[235] Plainly, the money-sharks of our day may trace an undoubted pedigree to these London merchants. (_Laughter._) But I know not if any son of New England, oppressed by exorbitant interest, will be consoled by the thought that the Pilgrims paid the same. And yet this small people,--so obscure and outcast in condition,--so slender in numbers and in means,--so entirely unknown to the proud and great,--so absolutely without name in contemporary records,--whose departure from the Old World took little more than the breath of their bodies,--are now illustrious beyond the lot of men; and the Mayflower is immortal beyond the Grecian Argo, or the stately ship of any victorious admiral. Though this was little foreseen in their day, it is plain now how it has come to pass. The highest greatness, surviving time and storm, is that which proceeds from the soul of man. (_Applause._) Monarchs and cabinets, generals and admirals, with the pomp of courts and the circumstance of war, in the gradual lapse of time disappear from sight; but the pioneers of Truth, though poor and lowly, especially those whose example elevates human nature and teaches the rights of man, so that Government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth (_great applause_),--such harbingers can never be forgotten, and their renown spreads coëxtensive with the cause they served.