You, till yesterday, were the great Slave Power. And England, with all her faults and shortcomings, was the great enemy of slavery. Therefore the slave-owners who had gained possession of your Government hated her, insulted her, tried to embroil you with her. They represented her, and I trust not without truth, as restlessly conspiring against the existence of their great institution. They labored, not in vain, to excite your jealousy of her maritime ambition, when, in enforcing the right of search and striving to put down the slave-trade, she was really obeying her conscience and the conscience of mankind. They bore themselves towards her in these controversies as they bore themselves towards you,--as their character compels them to bear themselves towards all whom they have to deal. Living in their own homes above law, the proclaimed doctrines of lawless aggression which alarmed and offended not England alone, but every civilized nation. And this, as I trust and believe, has been the main cause of the estrangement between us, so far as it has been an estrangement between the nations, not merely between certain sections and classes. It is a cause which will henceforth operate no more. A Scandinavian hero, as the Norse legend tells, waged a terrible combat through a whole night with the dead body of his brother-in-arms, animated by a Demon; but with the morning the Demon fled.
Other thoughts crowd upon my mind,--thoughts of what the two nations have been to each other in the past, thoughts of what they may yet be to each other in the future. But these thoughts will rise in other minds as well as in mine, if they are not stifled by the passion of the hour. If there is any question to be settled between us, let us settle it without disparagement to the just claims or the honor of either party, yet, if possible, as kindred nations. For if we do not, our posterity will curse us. A century hence, the passions which caused the quarrel will be dead, the black record of the quarrel will survive and be detested. Do what we will now, we shall not cancel the tie of blood, nor prevent it from hereafter asserting its undying power. The Englishmen of this day will not prevent those who come after them from being proud of England's grandest achievement, the sum of all her noblest victories,--the foundation of this the great Commonwealth of the New World. And you will not prevent the hearts of your children's children from turning to the birth-place of their nation, the land of their history and of their early greatness, the land which holds the august monuments of your ancient race, the works of your illustrious fathers, and their graves.