 whose advancement no advancement can take
place anywhere. Nor am I, believe me, so arrogant as to suppose that in five and
twenty years there have been no changes in me, and that I had nothing to learn
and no extreme impressions to correct when I was here first. And this brings me
to a point on which I have, ever since I landed in the United States last
November, observed a strict silence, though sometimes tempted to break it, but
in reference to which I will, with your good leave, take you into my confidence
now. Even the Press, being human, may be sometimes mistaken or misinformed, and
I rather think that I have in one or two rare instances observed its information
to be not strictly accurate with reference to myself. Indeed, I have, now and
again, been more surprised by printed news that I have read of myself, than by
any printed news that I have ever read in my present state of existence. Thus,
the vigour and perseverance with which I have for some months past been
collecting materials for, and hammering away at, a new book on America has much
astonished me; seeing that all that time my declaration has been perfectly well
known to my publishers on both sides of the Atlantic, that no consideration on
earth would induce me to write one. But what I have intended, what I have
resolved upon (and this is the confidence I seek to place in you) is, on my
return to England, in my own person, in my own Journal, to bear, for the behoof
of my countrymen, such testimony to the gigantic changes in this country as I
have hinted at to-night. Also, to record that wherever I have been, in the
smallest places equally with the largest, I have been received with
unsurpassable politeness, delicacy, sweet temper, hospitality, consideration,
and with unsurpassable respect for the privacy daily enforced upon me by the
nature of my avocation here and the state of my health. This testimony, so long
as I live, and so long as my descendants have any legal right in my books, I
shall cause to be republished, as an appendix to every copy of those two books
of mine in which I have referred to America. And this I will do and cause to be
done, not in mere love and thankfulness, but because I regard it as an act of
plain justice and honour.«
    I said these words with the greatest earnestness that I could lay upon them,
and I repeat them in print here with equal earnestness. So long as this
