192 A SAGA OF THE SEAS 
was scarcely anything done by the government of this country 
to remedy the gross and scandalous inequalities of taxation, 
and to adopt a better system in apportioning the necessary 
burdens of the state upon the various classes of people. But 
since 1841, as we all know, we have seen a revolution in this 
country in regard to taxation and finance, and I need not re- 
mind you that this has been mainly produced by the teaching 
of one who is not with us tonight, but who would have re- 
joiced, as we now rejoice, over the great event which we are 
here to celebrate, whose spirit and whose mind will, I be- 
lieve, for generations yet to come stimulate and elevate the 
minds of multitudes of his countrymen. . . . I conclude that 
such a nation as the United States—such a people, so free and 
so instructed—will not be twenty-five years before they rem- 
edy the evils and the blunders and the unequal burdens of 
their taxation and their tariff. They will discover, in much 
less time than we have discovered it, that a great nation is ad- 
vanced by freedom of industry and of commerce. . . . For, 
after all that can be said of invention and of science, and of 
capital, it required the unmatched energy and perseverance 
and faith of Cyrus Field to bring to one grand completion the 
mightiest achievement which the human intellect, in my 
opinion, has ever accomplished.” 
This was grand praise indeed. Bright thoroughly admired 
Field and longed for better exchanges between nations. His 
ringing words in favor of lower tariffs and reduced taxes after 
a costly war are appropriate even today. In another part of 
his speech, Bright referred to Columbus, as follows: ‘““When 
that cable was laid, when the iron hand grasped in the almost 
fathomless recesses of the ocean the lost and broken cable, if 
it be given to the spirits of great men in the eternal world, in 
their eternal life, to behold the great actions of our lives, how 
must the spirit of that grand old Genoese have rejoiced at the 
triumph of that hour, and at the new tie which bound the 
world he had discovered.” 
