It is, I am sorry to say, now going on for twenty-one years since I visited our large North American Colonies. Still, though I was very young at the time, the remembrance of that visit is as deeply imprinted upon my memory now as it was at that time. I shall never forget the public receptions which were accorded to me in Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island, and if it were possible for me at any time to repeat that visit, I need not tell you gentlemen, who now represent here those great North American Colonies, of the great pleasure it would give me to do so. It affords me great gratification to see an old friend, Sir John Macdonald, the Premier of Canada, here this evening.

It was a most pressing invitation, certainly, that I received two years ago to visit the great Australasian Colonies, and though at the time I was unable to give an answer in the affirmative or in the negative, still it soon became apparent that my many duties here in England, would prevent my accomplishing what would have been a long, though a most interesting voyage. I regret that such has been the case, and that I was not able to accept the kind invitation I received to visit the Exhibitions at Sydney and at Melbourne. I am glad, however, to know that they have proved a great success, as has been testified to me only this evening by the noble Duke [Manchester] by my side, who has so lately returned. Though, my lords and gentlemen, I have, as I said before, not had the opportunity of seeing these great Australasian Colonies, which every day and every year are making such immense development, still, at the International Exhibitions of London, Paris, and Vienna, I had not only an opportunity of seeing their various products there exhibited, but I had the pleasure of making the personal acquaintance of many colonists-a fact which has been a matter of great importance and great benefit to myself.

It is now thirty years since the first International Exhibition took place in London, and then for the first time Colonial exhibits were shown to the world. Since that time, from the Exhibitions which have followed our first great gathering in 1851, the improvements that have been made are manifest. That in itself is a clear proof of the way in which the Colonies have been exerting themselves to make

their vast territories of the great importance that they are at the present moment. But though, my Lord Mayor, I have not been to Australasia, as you have mentioned, I have sent my two sons on a visit there; and it has been a matter of great gratification, not only to myself, but to the Queen, to hear of the kindly reception they have met with everywhere. They are but young, but I feel confident that their visit to the Antipodes will do them an incalculable amount of good. On their way out they visited a Colony in which, unfortunately, the condition of affairs was not quite as satisfactory as we could wish, and as a consequence they did not extend their visits in that part of South Africa quite so far inland as might otherwise have been the case.

I must thank you once more, my Lord Mayor, for the kind way in which you have proposed this toast. I thank you in the name of the Princess and the other members of the Royal Family, for the kind reception their names have met with from all here to-night, and I beg again to assure you most cordially and heartily of the great pleasure it has given me to be present here among so many distinguished Colonists and gentlemen connected with the Colonies, and to have had an opportunity of meeting your distinguished guest, the King of the Sandwich Islands. If your lordship's visit to his dominions remains impressed on your mind, I think your lordship's kindly reception of his Majesty here to-night is not likely soon to be forgotten by him.

HUGH C. WALLACE

THE SOUTHERNER IN THE WEST

No

[Speech of Hugh C. Wallace at the fifth annual banquet of the New York Southern Society, February 21, 1891. The President, Hugh R. Garden, occupied the chair. In introducing Mr. Wallace, he said: "It was said of old that the Southerner was wanting in that energy and fixedness of purpose which make a successful American. broader field has existed for the exercise of those qualities than the great region west of the Rocky Mountains. We are fortunate in the presence of a gentleman whose young life is already a successful refutation of that opinion, and I turn with confidence to 'The Southerner of the Pacific Slope,' and invite Mr. Hugh C. Wallace, of the State of Washington, to respond."]

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN:-For more than one hundred years upon this continent a silent army has been marching from the East toward the West. No silken banners have waved above it, and no blare of trumpet or beat of drum has heralded its progress. And yet its conquests have been grander than those of Peru or Mexico, its victories more glorious than those of Marengo, of Friedland, or of Austerlitz. It has subdued an empire richer than the Indies without inflicting the cruelties of Clive, or the exactions of Hastings, and that empire is to-day, Mr. President, a part of your heritage and mine. [Applause.] For more than thirty years past the region in which most of those I see around me first saw the light has lain prostrate, borne down by a Titanic struggle whose blighting force fell wholly upon her. For more than a generation her enterprise has seemed exhausted, her strength wasted, and her glory departed. And yet she has not failed to furnish her full quota to the grand army of conquest to carry to completion the great work which

Boone, Crockett, and Houston, all her sons-began, and which her genius alone made possible. [Applause.]

Turn back with me the pages of time to the beginning of this imposing march and glance for a moment at its resplendent progress. Its beginning was in Virginia. Virginians led by that first of Southerners whose natal day we celebrate to-night and whose fame grows brighter in the lengthening perspective of the years, conquered the savage and his little less than savage European ally, and saved for the Nation then unborn the whole Northwest. The Pinckneys, the Rutledges, and the Gwinetts forced the hand of Spain from the throat of the Mississippi, and left the current of trade free to flow to the Gulf unvexed by foreign influence.

Another Virginian, illustrious through all time as the great vindicator of humanity, doubled the area of the national possession of his time by the Louisiana purchase, and Lewis and Clarke, both sons of the Old Dominion, in 1804 first trod the vast uninhabited wilds of the far Northwest to find a land richer in all the precious products of the East than mortal eyes had yet beheld. So were our borders extended from the Gulf and the Rio Grande to the 49th parallel and from the Atlantic to the Pacific-but for Southern enterprise they might have stopped at Ohio, the Monongahela, and the Niagara. [Applause.]

The empire thus secured remained to be subdued. From the States in which you and I, gentlemen, were born has come a noble wing of the grand army of subjugation, all of whose battles have been victories and all of whose victories have been victories of civilization. Moving first from the old States of the South it took possession of territory along the Gulf and of Tennessee and of Kentucky's "dark and bloody ground." Fame crowned the heroes of these campaigns with the patriot's name, and glorified them as pioneers. As their advance guards swept across the Mississippi and took possession of Missouri, Arkansas, and territory farther north, envy called it invasion, and when their scouts appeared in Nebraska and Kansas they were repelled amid the passion of the hour. Meanwhile, a new element, whose quickening power is scarcely yet appreciated, had joined the grand movement. Early in the forties a South Carolinian

captain of engineers, the Pathfinder, John C. Fremont, had marked the way to the far West coast, and added a new realm to the National domain. [Applause.] It was the domain soon famed for its delightful climate, its wealth of resources, and its combination of every natural advantage that human life desires. The gleaming gold soon after found in the sands of Sutter's Fort spread its fame afar and attracted to it the superb band of men who came from every State to lay firm and sure the foundation of the new commonwealth.

There were only fourteen Southerners in the Constitutional Convention at Monterey, but their genius for government made them a fair working majority in the body of forty-eight members. Not content with building a grand State like this, the united army gathered from the North and South alike turned its face toward the desert and fastnesses of the eternal hills and "continuous woods where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound save his own dashings," and pitched their tents, rolled back the awful silence that through ages had reigned there; and learned the secrets that desolation guarded, alluring to them from their fastnesses a renewed stream of treasure which has resulted in making us the envy of all other nations.

In conspicuous contrast to the attitude and sentiment of the South, the East has never followed to encourage nor sympathize with the West. Whether it be in legislation or politics or finance, the Western idea has ever failed to command the earnest attention to which it is entitled. There is a sentiment which is growing more general and vigorous every day in the far West, that the time is near at hand when it will decline to adhere to the fortunes of any leader or body which recklessly ignores its claims or persistently refuses to it recognition. It is a very significant fact, Mr. President, that this great region, containing one-fourth of the National area, one-seventeenth of the population, and constituting one-seventh of the whole number of States has had up to this time, but one member of the Cabinet. In the present Cabinet, fourteen States (east of the Mississippi and North of the old Mason and Dixon's Line) have seven members and the remaining thirty States have but one. Those thirty States will see to it in the future that the party