I can assure you that all my countrymen reciprocate the feeling which has been expressed; that they desire, as you do, that the cordial relationship should continue, and that they have toward the United States of America nothing but feelings of good will and a desire for its welfare and progress. [Applause.] I have said--all my countrymen. I ought, perhaps, not to have been so bold. There are some fools in all lands. [Laughter.] They are the product of every soil. No nation has a monopoly of them. [Laughter.] But with these exceptions, I can speak, I think, for all my countrymen. The echoes of those now distant events of a century and a quarter ago, which left much soreness behind them, have died away in England. [Applause.] We can rejoice as much as you rejoice to-day, in the fact that you are one of the leading nations of the world. [Applause.] And there is to me a peculiar interest in the fact that I, who have had the honor to fill the office of Lord Chancellor, should be here as the representative of my country engaged in negotiations between Great Britain and the United States. A century and a quarter ago or more, a predecessor of mine in that high office made a most unfortunately foolish prediction. He said, with reference to these (at that time) colonies: "If they withdraw their allegiance, we shall withdraw our protection; and then they will soon be overrun by the little States of Genoa and San Marino." [Laughter.] I am happy to say--I must say it for the credit of the office--that there was even then a distinguished lawyer who was to succeed the Lord Chancellor to whom I have referred, who made a speech at which to-day neither I nor any one else need blush. But I could not help thinking of those words when I reflected that I was here negotiating with the representatives of a mighty nation of seventy millions of people, who have not been overrun by the little Republics of Genoa and San Marino [laughter], although undoubtedly, in a sense very different from that which the speaker intended, you may have been overrun by the natives of some of the Italian towns. [Laughter.] Gentlemen, there is to-day in my country, as in yours, a pride in the United States. We cannot forget that if you won your independence, if you achieved your liberties, if you laid the foundations of your constitution, if you prepared for such a nation as exists here to-day, you were at that time colonists of Great Britain. The men who laid the foundation stones of the United States, in which you to-day glory, were those who had gone out from amongst us, who had in the country of my birth imbibed for the most part their traditions of liberty, and their desire and determination to achieve it; and, therefore, with no misgiving, with nothing but a feeling of pride, we may rejoice in your success and in your progress. We long ago admitted the follies and the wrong-doings of those times, as freely as you could insist upon them yourselves. [Applause.]