(Extract)

 

Let me ask you to imagine that the contest, in which the United States asserted

their independence of Great Britain, had been unsuccessful; that our armies,

through treason or a league of tyrants against us, had been broken and

scattered; that the great men who led them, and who swayed our councils--our

Washington, our Franklin, and the venerable president of the American

Congress--had been driven forth as exiles. If there had existed at that day, in

any part of the civilized world, a powerful Republic, with institutions resting

on the same foundations of liberty which our own countrymen sought to establish,

would there have been in that Republic any hospitality too cordial, any sympathy

too deep, any zeal for their glorious but unfortunate cause, too fervent or too

active to be shown toward these illustrious fugitives? Gentlemen, the case I

have supposed is before you. The Washingtons, the Franklins, the Hancocks of

Hungary, driven out by a far worse tyranny than was ever endured here, are

wanderers in foreign lands. Some of them have sought a refuge in our

country--one sits with this company our guest to-night--and we must measure the

duty we owe them by the same standard which we would have had history apply, if

our ancestors had met with a fate like theirs.

 

--WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

 

_THE INFLUENCE OF UNIVERSITIES_