MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY OF BROOKLYN:--I have been accustomed to the City of New York, and have been accustomed to the estimate which the people of New York make of the people of Brooklyn. [Laughter.] I now come to make some trial of the estimate which the people of Brooklyn put upon the people of New York. [Applause.] In one distinct feature of the City of New York--I mean in its population--and in one distinct feature of the City of Brooklyn--in its population--you will see the secret of your vast superiority to us. [Laughter.] In the City of New York there are more Irishmen than there are in Dublin. [Applause.] In the City of Brooklyn there are more Bostonians than there are in Boston. [Laughter.] We have always felt it as a reproach, however little we relish the satire, that our New England festivals--mean in New York--were little in keeping with the poverty and frugality, and perhaps with the virtues, of our ancestors. But here I see exactly such a company, and exactly such a feast, as in the first years of the emigration, our ancestors would have sat down to. [Laughter.] We honor our fathers with loud praises, you, by noble and self-denying example. [Laughter.] The Republic, which is the theme I am to speak to, is the Republic which has grown from the seed that was planted in New England. It has gained as the oak has gained in its growth, from the soil, and from the air; so in the body and the strength, and the numbers and the wealth of the Republic, it has gained by the accretions of other races, and the incoming population from many shores. But the oak, nevertheless, is an oak, because the seed which was planted was the seed of an oak. [Loud applause.] Now, our Pilgrim Fathers seem to have been frustrated by Providence a good deal, in many of their plans. They came with the purpose, it is said, of occupying the pleasant seat of all this wealth and prosperity which these great cities enjoy. But the point was to plant them in New England, where they might grow, but would never stay. One of the first letters which I received after taking charge of the Department over which I preside was an extremely well-written one from a western State, asking for a Consulate, and beginning in this wise: "I have no excuse for intruding on your busy occupations except a pardonable desire to live elsewhere." [Laughter.] Now that has been the mainspring of New Englanders ever since they were seated by Providence on its barren shores, a pardonable desire to live elsewhere. [Laughter.] If they had been planted here--if they had been seated in the luxurious climate and with the fertile soil of the South, they would have had no desire, pardonable or otherwise, to live elsewhere. Though they might have grown and lived they never would have proved the seed that was to make the Great Republic as it now is. [Applause.]