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It has given to the people of the Netherlands a larger share of liberty than any other European nation has enjoyed, and secured to the darker races of the Dutch colonies a prosperity and contentment that no other subject people ever attained.

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen:

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HEN your representative, Judge Van Hoesen, called upon me he told me that I might speak upon any subject on earth, and I told him that I had, I believed, spoken already upon every subject on earth. It is getting late in the banqueting season and I have been at it nearly every night. "Now," he said, "it is a sort of cosmopolitan gathering. How would it suit you to speak about the English? I said, "Not much." Then he said, "Will you not try it on the Boer side?" "Oh, no!" said I. "One fellow has tried that already this winter." At a gathering like this, one is like the man in the Civil War when he got between the lines. The first time he was caught, the party who captured him said, "What side are you on?" "Well," said he, looking

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at their blue coats and gray trousers, "I am a Union man." Whereupon they said, "You are, are you? We want everything you have; we are Confederates." Soon afterwards he met a party who wore gray coats and blue trousers, and they asked him what side he was on. He thought he would strike it right this time, and replied that he was a Confederate, whereupon they, being Union scouts, looted him. The third time he encountered a party,

What side are you on?" said they. Looking at them for a long time, he at last exclaimed: "Come now, boys, stop your foolishness; what side are you on?"

Looking over the lists of guests I made some suggestions to the Judge and told him I thought I saw the name of a gentleman who would talk for the Boers, pointing out the name of Hogeboom. Then he asked, "Who will talk for the English ?” I said, "Unless we hear some more encouraging news from Buller to-night, Mr. Onderdonk will do very well." Pardon this strained allusion to the under dog!

Well, I was instructed to speak about the influence of Dutch Civilization. In doing so I must steer clear of the present situation as much as possible. I have seen the little fellow tackle the big one before, and know only too well the result. I feel that in this gallant fight, now going on, the ultimate result must be like that which befell the Indian who lassoed the locomotive out West. When the engineer saw him wheeled through space at the rate of forty miles an hour fast to his own lasso, he rested his head upon his hand, and watching from the window said, "Indian, I admire your pluck, but d- your judgment!" You know,

my friends, I am an ex-Confederate and know how it is myself!

So much for frivolity; and now a moment for serious thought. We are all proud of the record of the Dutch. I have a streak of Dutch in me myself, and I am very proud of it. My Dutch ancestor, Cornelis Melyn, received the first patent for Staten Island, and went there and stayed two days, when the Indians drove him off, and he never returned. The better part of valor is discretion, a feature always prominent in the Dutch character.

At your annual dinner you hear described from year to year the important part which the Dutch have played in the civilization of this nation. For three hundred years their influence has been so marked everywhere, and especially in our great nation, that one who studies Dutch character and history never ceases to wonder at the powerful and great and widespread influence of this little nation. I shall delay you but a moment to remind you that we are indebted to the Dutch more than to any other nation for religious liberty, for freedom of conscience, the liberty of the press-which unfortunately is too often the license of the press—and many others of our most cherished institutions. Yet I know nothing which illustrates better the diversity of the Dutch genius than her history as the possessor and governor of colonies and her sagacious management of her dependencies. Within a brief year, in a moment, almost the twinkling of an eye, the whole policy of our nation has been revolutionized concerning colonial possessions in a manner totally unforeseen. For a hundred years we boasted of our isolation, and our utter lack of complication with, or interest in, European policies.

We believed our true destiny was to avoid entanglements with the affairs of other nations. Although for hundreds of years England and Spain and Portugal and Holland and France, and lately Germany, had been gaining in colonial possessions, we had none, and boasted that we wanted nothing. Yet we have leaped right into the midst of the possession of, and responsibility for, colonial dependencies in a way that must, in the nature of the case, revolutionize our whole conduct and change our national course in the future. I am not one of those who are alarmed at this. Our nation has done so many surprising things, and done them so surprisingly well, that I have faith in the power of Americans to do yet another thing well.

But this is what has happened to us: At the opening of the year 1898 England led, and Spain closely followed her, as the largest owner and governor of colonial possessions. This year England still leads, but Spain has dropped out of the list of governments with important colonial possessions, and the United States has moved up to second place among the nations.

Now, shall we perform our self-assumed task well or badly? "Well?" Of course we will. If we do not lose our head and think we know it all at once, we will gain union and glory and wealth by the change, I feel well assured. You have all known instances of people getting into new enterprises and thinking that they know all about them until they find out the contrary, and coming out of them very much crestfallen. Some years ago, when, at the end of the civil strife, the South was reduced to the condition of unreconstructed territories, the

North rushed down there in the pride of its conquest, in the confidence of its power, and undertook to teach the South how to run State governments as they never had been run before. The North knew so much about it that before it finished the task it found it did n't know anything! For example, they came to the State of Virginia, where there is about a man to a mile, and enacted a constitution which put the State under the township system of New England, and continued many other features that experience has proved to be not only worthless but foolish. They revolutionized suffrage, and in the effort to cut down the representation of the rebels, by giving suffrage to the negroes, they doubled the representation, and so fixed it that one old rebel to-day votes as many times as twenty loyal Northern men. They stayed with us long enough to show us how to run their wonderful machine, and while they made the name "Carpetbagger" immortal, nobody has ever considered him a model ruler. The Northern man also thought he knew all about farming in the South, and went down there after the war and said, "Stand aside, natives, and let us show you how to farm your Southern lands!" They took their capital with them, and they had indeed more energy than the Southerner. They promised to make the South blossom like a rose with their superior methods. How did it all turn out? Why, ten years after that, ninety-nine per cent. of the men who tried thus to inject Northern ideas and Northern methods into Southern farming had lost everything they put into the South.

And it all came, political and economic failure, from foolish pride and empiricism, and from

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