My friend, who has taken his seat, spoke in his own right as a political exile from Ireland, a country than which none has more deeply suffered from the woes of foreign domination. I speak here by no such title. And yet if any man may without presumption claim to speak in behalf of the political exiles and rebels against tyranny, of several nations, of all nations, indeed it is an American. For he is not only himself the heir of a nation of rebels, but his whole lineage is cosmopolitan, and he may boast that he is akin to all the races of Europe. We have no exclusive origin, thank God! In the veins of our country there flows the blood of a thousand tribes, just as our language is made up of a thousand idioms. We hear a good deal from certain quarters about the greatness of races, the practical energy of this race, the artistic genius of the other, and the great intellectual qualities of another. America disproves of all these dogmas, and establishes in their stead the higher principle that all races are capable of a noble development under noble institutions. Give freedom to the Celt, the Slavon, or the Italian, or whatever other people; give them freedom and independence; establish among them the great principle of _local self-government_, and the earth does not more surely revolve in its orbit than they will in due time ripen into all the excellence and all the dignity of humanity. Men make and control institutions, but institutions in their turn make men. And if a people under Providence are endowed with institutions that have given free play and healthy growth to the most useful and admirable powers of man, it is not for that people to boast of its race as better than other races, and thank God, like the Pharisee, that it is not as other men. No, it is for that people to see the cause of its good fortune in its institutions, and to remember that it has responsibilities, and that it owes a helping hand to others that honestly struggle for such benefits. Especially is this the case with the American people, made up as they are from all races, and absorbing yearly as they do so much of the best blood of all. America has thriven and grown strong upon the misfortunes of Europe. Our toast specially refers to the political exiles of Europe, but the truth is, that all the exiles of that continent are political. Every shipload of emigrants that seeks our shores has been banished by political causes; for had the institutions of their country been such as to secure to them freedom and the prosperity of freedom, do you think they would have forsaken their homes and the homes of their fathers to seek new homes beyond the ocean? We owe then to Europe a debt for all this population and power that it has flung upon our shores, and how else can we pay it except by doing what we can to help the European nations to gain their freedom and form institutions under which there will be no political exiles? For one I go for paying that debt, according to our