"I cannot propose the next toast, gentlemen, so intimately connected with the last, without adverting to the distinguished honor and pleasure we this day enjoy above the thousands, and I may say hundreds of thousands, of our countrymen who are at this moment celebrating this great national festival--the honor and pleasure of having at our board our venerable guest on my right hand, the hero whom two worlds claim as their own. Yes, gentlemen, he belongs to America as well as to Europe. He is our fellow citizen, and the universal voice of our country would cry out against us did we not manifest our nation's interest in his person and character. "With the mazes of European politics we have nothing to do; to changing schemes of good or bad government we cannot make ourselves a party; with the success or defeat of this or that faction we can have no sympathy; but with the great principles of rational liberty, of civil and religious liberty, those principles for which our guest fought by the side of our fathers, and which he has steadily maintained for a long life, 'through good report and evil report,' we do sympathize. We should not be Americans if we did not sympathize with them, nor can we compromise one of these principles and preserve our self-respect as loyal American citizens. They are the principles of order and good government, of obedience to law; the principles which, under Providence, have made our country unparalleled in prosperity; principles which rest, not in visionary theory, but are made palpable by the sure test of experiment and time. "But, gentlemen, we honor our guest as the stanch, undeviating defender of these principles, of our principles, of American principles. Has he ever deserted them? Has he ever been known to waver? Gentlemen, there are some men, some, too, who would wish to direct public opinion, who are like the buoys upon tide-water. They float up and down as the current sets this way or that. If you ask at an emergency where they are, we cannot tell you; we must first consult the almanac; we must know the quarter of the moon, the way of the wind, the time of the tide, and then we may guess where you will find them. "But, gentlemen, our guest is not of this fickle class. He is a tower amid the waters, his foundation is upon a rock, he moves not with the ebb and flow of the stream. The storm may gather, the waters may rise and even dash above his head, or they may subside at his feet, still he stands unmoved. We know his site and his bearings, and with the fullest confidence we point to where he stood six-and-fifty years ago. He stands there now. The winds have swept by him, the waves have dashed around him, the snows of winter have lighted upon him, but still he is there. "I ask you, therefore, gentlemen, to drink with me in honor of General Lafayette."