I congratulate you, gentlemen, on the continued attractions of the annual entertainment you offer us; above all, I congratulate you on having given us the great pleasure of meeting once more and seeing seated together at your table the first four citizens of the metropolis of the Empire State:  Charles O’Conor, Peter Cooper, William Cullen Bryant, and John A. Dix.  I thank you for the courtesy of your remembrance of the Press; and so to one and all, good-night. [Applause.]

* * * * *

GLADSTONE, ENGLAND’S GREATEST LEADER

[Speech of Whitelaw Reid at a dinner given by the Irish-Americans to Justin McCarthy, New York City, October 2, 1886.  Judge Edward Browne presided.  Mr. Reid was called upon to speak to the toast, “Gladstone, England’s Greatest Leader.”]

GENTLEMEN:—­I am pleased to see that since this toast was sent me by your committee, it has been proof-read.  As it came to me, it describes Mr. Gladstone as England’s greatest Liberal leader.  I thought you might well say that and more.  It delights me to find that you have said more—­that you have justly described him as England’s greatest leader. ["Hear!  Hear!”] I do not forget that other, always remembered when Gladstone is mentioned, who educated his party till it captured its opponents’ place by first disguising and then adopting their measures.  That was in its way as brilliant party leadership as the century has seen, and it placed an alien adventurer in the British peerage and enshrined his name in the grateful memory of a great party that vainly looks for Disraeli’s successor. [Applause.] I do not forget a younger statesman, never to be forgotten henceforth by Irishmen, who revived an impoverished and exhausted people, stilled their dissensions, harmonized their conflicting plans, consolidated their chaotic forces, conducted a peaceful Parliamentary struggle in their behalf with incomparable pertinacity, coolness, and resources; and through storms and rough weather has held steadily on till even his enemies see now, in the very flush of their own temporary success, that in the end the victory of Parnell is sure. [Loud applause.] Great leaders both; great historic figures whom our grandchildren will study and analyze and admire.

But this man whom your toast honors, after a career that might have filled any man’s ambition, became the head of the Empire whose mourning drum-beat heralds the rising sun on its journey round the world.  That place he risked and lost, and risked again to give to an ill-treated powerless section of the Empire, not even friendly to his sway, Church Reform, Educational Reform, Land Reform, Liberty! [Cheers.] It was no sudden impulse and it is no short or recent record.  It is more than seventeen years since Mr. Gladstone secured for Ireland the boon of disestablishment.  It is nearly as long since he carried the first bill recognizing and seriously endeavoring to remedy the evils of Irish land tenure.