a city, as was happily and

to welcome you to Geneva gracefully said by the Chairman in his opening remarks, where an anniversary of liberty may be most fitly celebrated. The history of this city is full of interest for patriots. Suffer me to call your attention to some parts of it and to some things you will not find in the guide-books.

The earliest government of Geneva was by a catholic bishop, chosen by the people, and afterwards consecrated at Rome. It happened in the course of time that the Pope visited Geneva when the bishopric was vacant and he appointed a bishop. The people not only acquiesced but felicitated themselves that so great a magnate as the Pope should interest himself in their affairs, but the precedent was fatal, for the bishops were thenceforth appointed from among the House of Savoy whose Duke had long coveted the sovereignty of Geneva, which was then in the midst of their territorial possessions. The people struggled nobly against this usurpation.

There is an old tower at the end of one of the bridges here which cross the Rhone, a tower of the middle ages, (which you may know by three clocks near the top of it, giving the time at Berne, Geneva and Paris) in which there is a mural tablet with an inscription to the memory of Philibert Berthelier. Berthelier was the first martyr of liberty here. The second was Levrier, who was a judge in the bishop's court and who denied an appeal from his court to the Duke.

Both these heroes were beheaded, but not at the ordinary place of execution, for the Duke feared a rescue by

the people. Levrier wrote upon the wall of his prison, after he knew his sentence, these latin lines:

Quid mihi mors nocuit? Virtus post fata virescit!

Nec cruce, nec sævi gladio perit illa tyranni.

(What harmed me death? Virtue then grows without decay! Nor cross, nor tyrant's sword can take her life away.)

The people never doubted their right to freedom after it was sealed by the blood of these men, and after long years of heroic sufferings, they oftained it, but not until with it they took in the reformed religion and thus rid themselves of bishop as well as duke. Not long after, as you know, Calvin came here, and his history is identified with that of Geneva. I confess to have had great prejudices against this great man until I investigated the history of his time and labours. Most of the Genevese are still prejudiced against him, but I hope the time will come when they will do him justice at present there is no monument or statue here to preserve his memory. But Molière, to whom, living, the French Academy had refused an election, was honoured a century after his death by their bringing his bust in their midst with this inscription « Nothing was wanting to his glory - he was wanting to ours.» The time will come, I think when the Genevese will do the like, justice to themselves and to John Calvin. (Applause.)

The second regular toast was then announced:

« The United States of America and the Confederation of Switzerland, the twin Republics of the Old and the

New World, in whose organisation is so happily blended the Unity of the Nation with the Liberty of the citizen. »>

Music Hail Columbia and Ranz des Vaches. This was responded to, by Parke Godwin, Esq. editor of the NewYork Evening-Post.

Mr Godwin's Speech.

M. President, and Gentlemen and Ladies.

The place, the time, the circumstances, so felicitously blended in your toast, are all calculated to excite in the mind the profoundest thoughts, and to fill the heart with the noblest emotions.

This is Geneva-the little city of the Lake - from which, more than any other city of Europe, have gone forth those voices which have controlled the sublime marches of human thought. Thence emanated that grand principle of the Divine Sovereignty, which is now the creed of the churches, and of no churches more than our own. Here, by a singular and yet not unnatural contrast, was first heard that solitary, wild, plaintive cry, in behalf of the equality and rights of man, which, at the end of the last century, grew into the lion's roar: and is now the authoritative utterance of the whole people.

Most fitly, M. President, have you coupled the name of Switzerland with that of the United States, twin republics of the old and new worlds, -the vanguard and rearalike devoted to the same beneficent

guard of liberty,

mission of upholding freedom among the nations, and alike unconquerable in that devotion. Ah! of old has liberty dwelt among these hills, robed in the verdure of their beautiful valleys, pure as the snow of their summits,-immoveable as the rocks at their base. Our distinguished and venerable Bryant has said of the mountains that

they proclaim,

The everlasting creed of liberty,

That creed is written on the untrampled snow;
Thundered by torrents, which no power can hold.
Save that of God, when he sends forth his cold,

Where then, so well as in Switzerland, the land of the mountain and the torrent, as in this nation of political unity and popular rights, as in this city of intellectual activity and religious independence, where so well can we Americans celebrate our natal day? This is our other home: this is our second country: no walls of aristocratic seclu sion frown upon us when we approach these picturesque and lovely cities no insolent and angry waves roll back upon us an insular arrogance: no palace-guards, the embroidered and gilded minions of tyranny, bid us wait but we come to the Swiss as to our own their hospitable hands strike ours with a brother's grasp and, while around us everywhere we see, the signs of man's domination over man, overbearing rule, dynastic oppression, mily arrogance, selfish caste,-in short, the few trampling upon the many until the many grovel in mire and igno

fa

rance, and poverty and squalor,

body, have cast their fetters off, recognised that truth of truths,

here the spirit and the

here, as with us, is substance of all Chris

tianity, all philosophy, all human hope, that man was not

made for governments, that he was not even made for society, but that all governments and all societies were made for man. (Cheers.) In other words he is the end and they the means their supreme function their sole and exclusive reason for being their only justification, is the good which they minister to him and when they have other aims, when they are perverted to more partial or selfish uses, they cease to be legitimate, rightful, useful: and they are a curse and a nuisance to the earth. (Cheers.)

--

That, I repeat, is at bottom the peculiarity of the American and Swiss systems of political organisation that is their excellence that is their glory. They make man himself, the individual as the universal man, each one of us and every one of us, our development, our happiness, our progress, our mastery of the resources of nature and of the facilities and blessings of the social state, the high, the final, the exclusive object of political and civil organisation! Elsewhere we hear a wretched jargon about the divine right of certain dynasties; about the historic preeminence of certain families, about the legitimate priviledges of certain classes, their authority to control and govern other classes: not only to control and govern, but to own to own all the property, to hold all the trusts, to direct even the education of all minds, to say, what thoughts they shall think, what truths they may believe; and, most impious