soldier Captain Miles Standish, who, being sent to England for
assistance--not military, but financial--(God save the mark!) succeeded
in borrowing--how much do you suppose?--£150 sterling. Something in the
way of help; and the historian adds, "tho at fifty per cent. interest."
So much for a valiant soldier on a financial expedition. A later agent,
Allerton, was able to borrow for the colony £200 at a reduced interest
of thirty per cent. Plainly, the money-sharks of our day may trace an
undoubted pedigree to these London merchants. But I know not if any son
of New England, opprest by exorbitant interest, will be consoled by the
thought that the Pilgrims paid the same.

And yet this small people--so obscure and outcast in condition--so
slender in numbers and in means--so entirely unknown to the proud and
great--so absolutely without name in contemporary records--whose
departure from the Old World took little more than the breath of their
bodies--are now illustrious beyond the lot of men; and the _Mayflower_
is immortal beyond the Grecian _Argo_, or the stately ship of any
victorious admiral. Tho this was little foreseen in their day, it is
plain now how it has come to pass. The highest greatness surviving time
and storm is that which proceeds from the soul of man. Monarchs and
cabinets, generals and admirals, with the pomp of courts and the
circumstance of war, in the gradual lapse of time disappear from sight;
but the pioneers of truth, tho poor and lowly, especially those whose
example elevates human nature and teaches the rights of man, so that
government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not
perish from the earth, such harbingers can never be forgotten, and their
renown spreads co-extensive with the cause they served.

I know not if any whom I now have the honor of addressing have thought
to recall the great in rank and power filling the gaze of the world as