188 A SAGA OF THE SEAS 
o'clock he wrote a note to Field, who received it just before 
the dinner began. The note was as follows: 
House of Commons, March 10, 1868, 7 P. M. 
My dear Sir,—I have cherished to the last the hope of coming 
to see you, but unhappily it is now arranged that Lord Mayo will 
not speak until after dinner, and I therefore fear that my pres- 
ence at the only time of the evening when it would have been of 
use will be impossible. I should have much enjoyed, and I had 
greatly coveted, the opportunity your kindness offered—speaking 
a word of good-will to your country—but I am detained here by a 
higher duty; for there is, in my judgment, no duty for public men 
in England which at this juncture is so high, so sacred, as that of 
studying the case of Ireland, and applying the remedies which I 
believe it admits. 
We shall be here until midnight, but not without thoughts of 
your festival and of the greatness of the country with which it is 
connected. You are called upon to encounter difficulties and to 
sustain struggles which some years ago I should have said were 
beyond human strength. But I have learned to be more cautious 
in taking the measure of American possibilities; and, looking to 
your past, there is nothing which we may not hope of your future. 
I remain, my dear sir, most faithfully yours, 
W. E. Gladstone. 
Cyrus W. Field, Esq. 
The high point of the evening came when Field suggested a 
toast to the memory of the lamented idealist, Richard Cob- 
den, ‘‘who proposed to the late Prince Consort that the profits 
of the exhibition of 1851 should be devoted to the establish- 
ment of telegraphic communication between England and 
America, and who, later, desired that the English government 
should supply one-half of the capital necessary to establish 
telegraphic communication across the Atlantic. . . . If the 
government had followed his advice they would today be re- 
ceiving half the dividends on the Anglo-American and Atlan- 
tic telegraph stocks. I hope this consideration may lead them 
to pursue a liberal policy in regard to the extension of the 
telegraph to India, China, and Australia.” All present rose 
