But what I have intended, what I
have resolved upon (and this is the confidence I seek to place in
you) is, on my return to England, in my own person, to bear, for
the behoof of my countrymen, such testimony to the gigantic changes
in this country as I have hinted at to-night. Also, to record that
wherever I have been, in the smallest places equally with the
largest, I have been received with unsurpassable politeness,
delicacy, sweet temper, hospitality, consideration, and with
unsurpassable respect for the privacy daily enforced upon me by the
nature of my avocation here, and the state of my health. This
testimony, so long as I live, and so long as my descendants have
any legal right in my books, I shall cause to be re-published, as
an appendix to every copy of those two books of mine in which I
have referred to America. And this I will do and cause to be done,
not in mere love and thankfulness, but because I regard it as an
act of plain justice and honour.
Gentlemen, the transition from my own feelings towards and interest
in America to those of the mass of my countrymen seems to be a
natural one; but, whether or no, I make it with an express object.
I was asked in this very city, about last Christmas time, whether
an American was not at some disadvantage in England as a foreigner.
The notion of an American being regarded in England as a foreigner
at all, of his ever being thought of or spoken of in that
character, was so uncommonly incongruous and absurd to me, that my
gravity was, for the moment, quite overpowered.
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