Mr. Henry Headly Parish
Mr. Parish to the American citizens in Rome, read at the American chapel.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Brethren and Sisters in Christ: With the kind permission of your excellent representatives, and as having enjoyed as a diplomatic guest the hospitality of the United States during four years, more than forty years ago, I hope I may not be thought presumptuous in mingling [Page 529] with your sacred grief an expression from the old country, the land of our grandsires, being myself wholly unconnected with politics.
If my fellow-countrymen at Rome are not present with you this day to manifest their horror at the event which has deprived you of the Chief Magistrate of your choice, of that conscientious spirit who lived and toiled and died that all his fellow-citizens might be united in peace, be assured that the motives of their absence must be reluctance to intrude, uninvited, into the grave of your domestic affections. The profound sympathy of our own sovereign and of her royal family, so often bursting forth in the days of your heavy trials, must guarantee to you the love at such a moment of the many millions who, within so many horizons, own her sway. But while we are all here in spirit to denounce the most odious of crimes, let us acknowledge how hopeful is the dawn of your future life, when he who now rules in the shrine of the pious Washington has given the impress of his power and of the happiness of every transatlantic soul in his first inaugural words, “I am in the hands of God.” Thus may we be all “of one accord” in every place, united in Christ, one in God, and God in us.