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ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 AND OTHER ADDRESSES 
 
 IN ENGLAND 
 
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ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 AND OTHER ADDRESSES 
 IN ENGLAND 
 
 BY 
 
 JOSEPH H. CHOATE 
 
 NEW YORK 
 THE CENTURY CO 
 1910 
 

 Copyright, 1910, by 
 The Century Co. 
 
 Published, October, 1910 
 
 Electrotyped and Printed by 
 C. H. Simonds & Co., Boston 
 
 ICU273919 
 
PREFACE 
 
 TOURING my long residence in London as Am- 
 -■-^ bassador of the United States, it was my\ 
 good fortune to be brought into close contact with 
 the British people, which gave me a unique oppor- 
 tunity to study their habits and characteristics, 
 and their social and political institutions. My one 
 instruction from President McKinley, when he 
 handed me my letter of credence, was to promote 
 the welfare of both countries by cultivating the 
 most friendly relations between them. To this 
 end I visited many parts of Great Britain, and 
 wherever I went I found this message of good 
 will most cordially reciprocated. I thought that 
 one effective way of carrying out this instruction 
 was to do what I could to make the people better 
 acquainted with the United States, its history, its 
 institutions and its great men, which would show 
 them that there is no radical difference between 
 us, and that under different Constitutional forms 
 we maintain with equal fidelity the same great 
 causes of liberty and justice and human progress. 
 The addresses which are contained in this vol- 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Time are selected from many which were delivered 
 in pursuit of this general object. 
 
 The four great Americans whom I selected for 
 illustration in this way, Lincoln, Franklin, Hamil- 
 ton and Emerson, were certainly no better known 
 to the average Englishman, than the leading public 
 men of Great Britain of corresponding periods are 
 known to the average American, but great interest 
 was manifested in hearing about them. 
 
 Lincoln, who had been the subject of much 
 hostility and abuse in his lifetime, was glorified 
 in England as in all other countries after his 
 death as the great martyr and emancipator. 
 But the marvellous story of his life, with its 
 strange vicissitudes and tragical incidents, was 
 not at all familiar. It was hardly possible under 
 the EnglisTi system of government that such a 
 character and career could be developed, but none 
 the less were they eager to hear everything about 
 a man whose record seemed little short of mirac- 
 ulous. When they realized the fact that the 
 emancipation of four million slaves, as the only 
 means of preserving the existence of the nation, 
 was all his work, their enthusiasm for him knew 
 no bounds, and as English history affords no 
 parallel example of a man rising by his own ef- 
 forts, and the events of his time, from such 
 humble beginnings to such a pinnacle of lasting 
 
 vi 
 
PEEFACE 
 
 fame, they were proud to claim him as one of 
 the great treasures of the English-speaking race. 
 
 I found no little prejudice still existing against 
 Franklin, a survival, I suppose, of the bitterness 
 of our revolutionary struggle, in which he came 
 into much closer contact with England both before 
 and during the war than any other American ; — 
 and then the transmission and publication of the 
 Hutchinson letters had never been quite forgiven 
 or forgotten. But as I believed that their trans- 
 mission was, as he declared himself, one of the 
 best actions of his life, and their publication was 
 in violation of his injunctions, I was glad to have 
 an opportunity in speaking of him at Birmingham 
 to develope at length his wonderful career, as 
 first, a most stalwart champion of the British 
 Empire, and afterwards, when peace and union 
 were no longer possible, as one of the greatest of 
 American citizens. 
 
 Hamilton was comparatively unknown, except 
 to lawyers, scholars and great readers. There 
 had been a recent rehabilitation of his fame in a 
 fascinating work of fiction, which had been widely 
 read in England as in America, but the real facts 
 of the great work of that surpassing genius, in 
 upholding the arms of Washington in the war, in 
 bringing about the Convention of 1787 which made 
 the Federal Constitution, in securing its adoption 
 
 vii 
 
PREFACE 
 
 by the people, and in organizing our government 
 under it were not widely known, and it was a great 
 pleasure to tell this wonderful story to the stu- 
 dents of the University of Edinburgh. 
 
 Emerson is a general favorite among all read- 
 ing and thinking people in Great Britain, and his 
 reputation as poet and philosopher is well recog- 
 nized and established, but I do not think that the 
 extent and power of his influence on public ques- 
 tions in great crises was fully appreciated, and 
 it was a source of pride and satisfaction to set 
 forth some of his most thrilling utterances in the 
 days of the slavery agitation and the war, when 
 in clarion tones he appealed to the conscience of 
 his countrymen. 
 
 No subject relating to America interested Eng- 
 lish and Scotch people more than the Supreme 
 Court of the United States and its place in the 
 Constitution. Even learned lawyers and jurists 
 found it difficult to understand how two distinct 
 and independent governments could coexist over 
 the same people and the same territory without 
 clashing, until the power of the Supreme Court 
 to adjust all differences between State and Fed- 
 eral jurisdictions was taken into consideration; 
 and nowhere is greater credit given to the wisdom 
 of the framers of the Federal Constitution with 
 all its safeguards for property and liberty, than 
 
 viii 
 
PREFACE 
 
 by Englishmen, who nevertheless recognize the 
 omnipotence of Parliament as the cardinal prin- 
 ciple of their own political system. 
 
 Education in America is a subject not only of 
 great curiosity but of profound interest where the 
 general subject of education is being constantly 
 agitated, and in respect to which each country has 
 much to learn from others. The Board of Educa- 
 tion in Great Britain had recently published two 
 large volumes devoted to its condition and prog- 
 ress in America — a very great international com- 
 pliment — and when the opportunity came to me 
 to speak at the opening of the Summer Schools at 
 Oxford on the same theme I gladly availed myself 
 of it. 
 
 It was also a satisfaction to demonstrate to the 
 Sir Walter Scott Club of Edinburgh the love and 
 respect in which that great writer is held through- 
 out America, and what an elevating and educa- 
 tional influence he has exercised there. 
 
 The Centenary of the British and Foreign Bible 
 Society was an important international event in 
 which it was my privilege to participate both as 
 Ambassador and as Special Delegate of the Amer- 
 ican Bible Society. 
 
 The address at Lincoln's Inn on the occasion of 
 the dinner tendered to me by the Bench and Bar 
 of England, and my farewell address at the Man- 
 
 ix 
 
PREFACE 
 
 sion House at the Lord Mayor's Banquet gave me 
 opportunities, which I gladly embraced, to ex- 
 press, on my own behalf and that of all my coun- 
 trymen, gratitude for the generous hospitality 
 and cordial welcome which had been always ex- 
 tended to me as their representative. 
 
 As a loyal son of Harvard it was an immense 
 gratification to leave behind me Mr. LaFarge's 
 window in Southwark Cathedral as a memorial 
 of John Harvard, and to enjoy the assistance in 
 the ceremony of His Grace the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, the Bishop of Southwark and of Mr. 
 Bryce, who was so soon to come to us as His 
 Majesty's brilliant and popular Ambassador, 
 
 In the hope that these efforts have done some- 
 thing, however little, in the language of President 
 McKinley, * ' to promote the welfare of both coun- 
 tries " I dedicate the volume to my friends on 
 both sides of the water. 
 
 Stockbridge, September, 1910. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGK 
 
 Preface v 
 
 Abraham Lincoln 3 
 
 Address delivered before the Edinburgh Philosophical 
 Institution, November \Wi, 1900 
 
 Benjamin Franklin 47 
 
 Inaugural address, October 23rd, 1903, before the Bir- 
 mingham and Midland Institute. 
 
 Alexander Hamilton 97 
 
 Inaugural address March 19th, 1904, before the Associated 
 Societies of the University of Edinburgh 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson 141 
 
 Address at the Passmore Edwards Institute, June 15th, 
 1903 
 
 The Supreme Court op the United States . 157 
 Address delivered before the Political and Social Education 
 League, May 13th, 1903. 
 
 Education in America 199 
 
 Inaugural address, August 1st, 1903, at the opening of 
 the summer meeting at Oxford. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott 231 
 
 Address before the Edinburgh Sir Walter Scott Club, Novem- 
 ber nth, 1899. 
 
 The English Bible 243 
 
 Address at the Centenary of the British and Foreign Bible 
 Society, London, May, 1904. 
 
 Address at Dinner given to Mr. Choate by the 
 Bench and Bar op England .... 257 
 At Lincoln's Inn, April lAth, 1905 
 
 xi 
 
xii CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Farewell 273 
 
 Address at the Farewell Banquet given to Mr. Choate, by 
 the Lord Mayor at the Mansion House May 5th, 1905 
 
 John Harvard 289 
 
 Address at the unveiling of the Harvard Memorial Win- 
 dow presented by Mr. Choate to the Dean and Chapter of 
 St. Saviour's Church {Southwark Cathedral), May 
 23rd, 1905. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Address delivered be/ore the Edinburgh Philosophical 
 Institution, November 13th, 1900. 
 
 WHEN you asked me to deliver the Inaugural 
 Address on this occasion, I recognized that 
 I owed this compliment to the fact that I was the 
 official representative of America — and in select- 
 ing a subject I ventured to think that I might in- 
 terest you for an hour in a brief study in popular 
 Government, as illustrated by the life of the most 
 American of all Americans. I therefore offer no 
 apology for asking your attention to Abraham 
 Lincoln — to his unique character and the part 
 he bore in two important achievements of modern 
 history: the preservation of the integrity of the 
 American Union and the Emancipation of the 
 colored race. 
 
 During his brief term of power, he was prob- 
 ably the object of more abuse, vilification and 
 ridicule than any other man in the world; but 
 when he fell by the hand of an assassin, at the 
 very moment of his stupendous victory, all the 
 nations of the earth vied with one another in 
 paying homage to his character; and the thirty- 
 five years that have since elapsed have established 
 his place in history as one of the great benefactors 
 not of his own country alone, but of the human 
 race. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 One of many noble utterances upon tlie occasion 
 of his death was that in which '' Punch " made 
 its magnanimous recantation of the spirit with 
 which it had pursued him : — 
 
 ' * Beside this corpse that bears for winding sheet 
 The stars and stripes he hved to rear anew, 
 Between the mourners at his head and feet 
 Say, scurrile jester, is there room for you? 
 
 Yes, he had Hved to shame me from my sneer 
 To lame my pencil, and confute my pen — 
 
 To make me own this hind — of princes peer. 
 This rail-splitter — a true born king of men. ' ' 
 
 Fiction can furnish no match for the romance of 
 his life, and biography will be searched in vain 
 for such startling vicissitudes of fortune, so great 
 power and glory won out of such humble begin- 
 nings and adverse circumstances. 
 
 Doubtless, you are all familiar with the salient 
 points of his extraordinary career. In the zenith 
 of his fame he was the wise, patient, courageous, 
 successful ruler of men; exercising more power 
 than any monarch of his time, not for himself, 
 but for the good of the people who had placed it 
 in his hands ; commander-in-chief of a vast mili- 
 tary power, which waged with ultimate success 
 the greatest war of the century; the triumphant 
 champion of popular G-overnment, the deliverer 
 of four millions of his fellow men from bondage ; 
 honored by mankind as Statesman, President and 
 Liberator. 
 
 4 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Let us glance now at the first half of the brief 
 life, of which this was the glorious and happy 
 consummation. Nothing could be more squalid 
 and miserable than the home in which Abraham 
 Lincoln was born — a one-roomed cabin without 
 floor or window in what was then the wilderness 
 of Kentucky, in the heart of that frontier life 
 which swiftly moved westward from the Alle- 
 ghanies to the Mississippi, always in advance of 
 schools and churches, of books and money, of 
 railroads and newspapers, of all things which are 
 generally regarded as the comforts and even 
 necessaries of life. His father, ignorant, needy 
 and thriftless, content if he could keep soul and 
 body together for himself and his family, was 
 ever seeking, without success, to better his un- 
 happy condition by moving on from one such 
 scene of dreary desolation to another. The rude 
 society which surrounded them was not much 
 better. The struggle for existence was hard, and 
 absorbed all their energies. They were fighting 
 the forest, the wild beast and the retreating sav- 
 age. From the time when he could barely handle 
 tools until he attained his majority, Lincoln's 
 life was that of a simple farm laborer, poorly 
 clad, housed and fed, at work either on his father's 
 wretched farm, or hired out to neighboring 
 farmers. But in spite, or perhaps by means, of 
 this rude environment, he grew to be a stalwart 
 giant, reaching six feet four at nineteen, and 
 fabulous stories are told of his feats of strength. 
 With the growth of this mighty frame began that 
 
 5 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 strange education which in his ripening years 
 was to qualify him for the great destiny that 
 awaited him, and the development of those mental 
 faculties and moral endowments, which, by the 
 time he reached middle life, were to make him the 
 sagacious, patient and triumphant leader of a 
 great nation in the crisis of its fate. His whole 
 schooling, obtained during such odd times as 
 could be spared from grinding labor, did not 
 amount in all to as much as one year, and the 
 quality of the teaching was of the lowest possible 
 grade, including only the elements of reading, 
 writing and ciphering. But out of these simple 
 elements, when rightly used by the right man, 
 education is achieved; and Lincoln knew how to 
 use them. As so often happens, he seemed to 
 take warning from his father's unfortunate ex- 
 ample. Untiring industry, an insatiable thirst 
 for knowledge, and an ever-growing desire to rise 
 above his surroundings, were early manifesta- 
 tions of his character. 
 
 Books were almost unknown in that community, 
 but the Bible was in every house, and somehow 
 or other Pilgrim's Progress, ^sop's Fables, a 
 History of the United States, and a Life of Wash- 
 ington fell into his hands. He trudged on foot 
 many miles through the wilderness to borrow an 
 English Grammar, and is said to have devoured 
 greedily the contents of the Statutes of Indiana 
 that fell in his way. These few volumes he read 
 and re-read — and his power of assimilation was 
 great. To be shut in with a few books and 
 
 6 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 to master them thoroughly sometimes does more 
 for the development of mind and character, than 
 freedom to range at large, in a cursory and indis- 
 criminate way, through wide domains of litera- 
 ture. This youth's mind, at any rate, was thor- 
 oughly saturated with Biblical knowledge and 
 Biblical language, which, in after life, he used 
 with great readiness and effect. But it was the 
 constant use of the little knowledge which he had 
 that developed and exercised his mental powers. 
 After the hard day 's work was done, while others 
 slept, he toiled on, always reading or writing. 
 From an early age he did his own thinking and 
 made up his own mind — invaluable traits in the 
 future President. Paper was such a scarce com- 
 modity that, by the evening firelight, he would 
 write and cipher on the back of a wooden shovel, 
 and then shave it off to make room for more. 
 By-and-by, as he approached manhood, he began 
 speaking in the rude gatherings of the neighbor- 
 hood, and so laid the foundation of that art of 
 persuading his fellow men, which was one rich 
 result of his education, and one great secret of 
 his subsequent success. 
 
 Accustomed as we are in these days of steam 
 and telegraphs to have every intelligent boy sur- 
 vey the whole world each morning before break- 
 fast, and inform himself as to what is going on 
 in every nation, it is hardly possible to conceive 
 how benighted and isolated was the condition of 
 the community at Pigeon Creek in Indiana, of 
 which the family of Lincoln's father formed a 
 
 7 
 
ABEAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 part, or how eagerly an ambitious and high- 
 spirited boy, such as he, must have yearned to 
 escape. The first glimpse that he ever got of 
 any world beyond the narrow confines of his 
 home was in 1828, at the age of nineteen, when a 
 neighbor employed him to accompany his son 
 down the river to New Orleans to dispose of a 
 flat boat of produce — a commission which he 
 discharged with great success. 
 
 Shortly after his return from this first ex- 
 cursion into the outer world, his father, tired 
 of failure in Indiana, packed his family and 
 all his worldly goods into a single wagon drawn 
 by two yoke of oxen, and after a fourteen 
 days' tramp through the wilderness, pitched his 
 camp once more in Illinois. Here Abraham, hav- 
 ing come of age and being now his own master, 
 rendered the last service of his minority by 
 ploughing the fifteen acre lot and splitting from 
 the tall walnut trees of the primeval forest enough 
 rails to surround the little clearing with a fence. 
 Such was the meagre outfit of this coming leader 
 of men, at the age when the future British Prime 
 Minister or Statesman emerges from the Univer- 
 sity as a double first or senior wrangler, with 
 every advantage that high training and broad cul- 
 ture and association with the wisest and the best 
 of men and women can give, and enters upon some 
 form of public service on the road to usefulness 
 and honor, the University course being only the 
 first stage of the public training. So Lincoln, at 
 twenty-one, had just begun his preparation for 
 
 8 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 the public life to which he soon began to aspire. 
 For some years yet he must continue to earn his 
 daily bread by the sweat of his brow, having ab- 
 solutely no means, no home, no friend to consult. 
 More farm work as a hired hand, a clerkship in 
 a village store, the running of a mill, another 
 trip to New Orleans on a flat boat of his own con- 
 triving, a pilot's berth on the river: these were 
 the means by which he subsisted until, in the 
 summer of 1832, when he was twenty-tliree years 
 of age, an event occurred which gave him public 
 recognition. 
 
 The Black Hawk War broke out, and the 
 Governor of Illinois calling for volunteers to 
 repel the band of savages whose leader bore that 
 name, Lincoln enlisted and was elected captain 
 by his comrades, among whom he had already 
 established his supremacy by signal feats of 
 strength and more than one successful single 
 combat. During the brief hostilities he was en- 
 gaged in no battle and won no military glory, but 
 his local leadership was established. The same 
 year he offered himself as a candidate for the 
 Legislature of Illinois, but failed at the polls. 
 Yet his vast popularity with those who knew him 
 was manifest. The District consisted of several 
 counties, but the unanimous vote of the people 
 of his own county was for Lincoln. Another 
 unsuccessful attempt at store-keeping was fol- 
 lowed by better luck at survejang, until his horse 
 and instruments were levied upon under execu- 
 tion for the debts of his business adventure. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 I have been thus detailed in sketching his early- 
 years because upon these strange foundations the 
 structure of his great fame and service was built. 
 In the place of a school and university training 
 fortune substituted these trials, hardships and 
 struggles as a preparation for the great work 
 which he had to do. It turned out to be exactly 
 what the emergency required. Ten years instead 
 at the public school and the University certainly 
 never could have fitted this man for the unique 
 work which was to be thrown upon him. Some 
 other Moses would have had to lead us to our 
 Jordan, to the sight of our promised land of 
 liberty. 
 
 At the age of twenty-five he became a member 
 of the Legislature of Illinois, and so continued 
 for eight years, and, in the meantime, qualified 
 himself by reading such law books as he could 
 borrow at random — for he was too poor to buy 
 any — to be called to the Bar. For his second 
 quarter of a century — during which a single 
 term in Congress introduced him into the arena 
 of national questions — he gave himself up to 
 law and politics. In spite of his soaring ambition, 
 his two years in Congress gave him no premoni- 
 tion of the great destiny that awaited him, and 
 at its close, in 1849, we find him an unsuccessful 
 applicant to the President for appointment as 
 Commissioner of the General Land Office — a 
 purely administrative Bureau; a fortunate es- 
 cape for himself and for his country. Year by 
 year his knowledge and power, his experience and 
 
 10 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 reputation extended, and his mental faculties 
 seemed to grow by what they fed on. His power 
 of persuasion, which had always been marked, 
 was developed to an extraordinary degree, now 
 that he became engaged in congenial questions 
 and subjects. Little by little he rose to promi- 
 nence at the Bar, and became the most effective 
 public speaker in the West. Not that he possessed 
 any of the graces of the orator ; but his logic was 
 invincible, and his clearness and force of state- 
 ment impressed upon his hearers the convictions 
 of his honest mind, while his broad sympathies 
 and sparkling and genial humor made him a 
 universal favorite as far and as fast as his 
 acquaintance extended. 
 
 These twenty years that elapsed from the time 
 of his establishment as a lawyer and legislator 
 in Springfield, the new capital of Illinois, fur- 
 nished a fitting theatre for the development and 
 display of his great faculties, and, with his new 
 and enlarged opportunities, he obviously grew in 
 mental stature in this second period of his career, 
 as if to compensate for the absolute lack of ad- 
 vantages under which he had suffered in youth. 
 As his powers enlarged, his reputation extended, 
 for he was always before the people, felt a warm 
 sympathy with all that concerned them, took a 
 zealous part in the discussion of every public 
 question, and made his personal influence ever 
 more widely and deeply felt. 
 
 My brethren of the legal profession will natu- 
 rally ask me, how could this rough backwoodsman, 
 
 11 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 whose youth had been spent in the forest or on 
 the farm and the flat boat, without culture or 
 training, education or study, by the random read- 
 ing, on the wing, of a few miscellaneous law books, 
 become a learned and accomplished lawyer 1 Well, 
 he never did. He never would have earned his 
 salt as a Writer for the Signet, nor have won 
 a place as advocate in the Court of Session, where 
 the technique of the profession has reached its 
 highest perfection, and centuries of learning and 
 precedent are involved in the equipment of a 
 lawyer. Dr. Holmes, when asked by an anxious 
 young mother, '^ When should the education of 
 a child begin? " replied, '' Madam, at least two 
 centuries before it is born! " and so I am sure 
 it is with the Scots lawyer. 
 
 But not so in Illinois in 1840. Between 1830 
 and 1880, its population increased twenty-fold, 
 and when Lincoln began practising law in Spring- 
 field in 1837, life in Illinois was very crude and 
 simple, and so were the Courts and the admin- 
 istration of justice. Books and libraries were 
 scarce. But the people loved justice, upheld the 
 law and followed the Courts, and soon found their 
 favorites among the advocates. The fundamental 
 principles of the Common Law, as set forth by 
 Blackstone and Chitty, were not so difficult to 
 acquire ; and brains, common sense, force of char- 
 acter, tenacity of purpose, ready wit and power 
 of speech did the rest, and supplied all the defi- 
 ciencies of learning. 
 
 The lawsuits of those days were extremely 
 
 12 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 simple, and the principles of natural justice were 
 mainly relied on to dispose of them at the Bar 
 and on the Bench, without resort to technical 
 learning. Eailroads, corporations absorbing the 
 chief business of the community; combined and 
 inherited wealth, with all the subtle and intricate 
 questions they breed, had not yet come in — and 
 so the professional agents and the equipment 
 which they require were not needed. But there 
 were many highly educated and powerful men at 
 the Bar of Illinois, even in those early days, whom 
 the spirit of enterprise had carried there in 
 search of fame and fortune. It was by constant 
 contact and conflict with these that Lincoln ac- 
 quired professional strength and skill. Every 
 community and every age creates its own Bar, 
 entirely adequate for its present uses and neces- 
 sities. So in Illinois, as the population and wealth 
 of the State kept on doubling and quadrupling, its 
 Bar presented a growing abundance of learning 
 and science and technical skill. The early practi- 
 tioners grew with its growth and mastered the 
 requisite knowledge, Chicago soon grew to be 
 one of the largest and richest and certainly the 
 most intensely active city on the Continent, and 
 if any of my professional friends here had gone 
 there in Lincoln's later years, to try or argue a 
 cause, or transact other business, with any idea 
 that Edinburgh or London had a monopoly of 
 legal learning, science or subtlety, they would 
 certainly have found their mistake. 
 In those early days in the West, every lawyer, 
 
 13 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 especially every Court lawyer, was necessarily a 
 politician, constantly engaged in the public dis- 
 cussion of the many questions evolved from the 
 rapid development of town, county, State and 
 Federal affairs. Then and there, in this regard, 
 public discussion supplied the place which the 
 universal activity of the Press has since monopo- 
 lized, and the public speaker who, by clearness, 
 force, earnestness and wit, could make himself 
 felt on the questions of the day, would rapidly 
 come to the front. In the absence of that im- 
 mense variety of popular entertainments which 
 now feed the public taste and appetite, the people 
 found their chief amusement in frequenting the 
 Courts and public and political assemblies. In 
 either place, he who impressed, entertained and 
 amused them most was the hero of the hour. 
 They did not discriminate very carefully between 
 the eloquence of the forum and the eloquence of 
 the hustings. Human nature ruled in both alike, 
 and he who was the most effective speaker in a 
 political harangue was often retained as most 
 likely to win in a cause to be tried or argued. 
 And I have no doubt in this way many retainers 
 came to Lincoln. Fees, money in any form, had 
 no charms for him — in his eager pursuit of 
 fame, he could not afford to make money. He 
 was ambitious to distinguish himself by some 
 great service to mankind, and this ambition for 
 fame and real public service left no room for ava- 
 rice in his composition. However much he earned, 
 he seems to have ended every year hardly richer 
 
 14 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 tlian lie began it, and yet as the years passed, 
 fees came to him freely. One of £1,000 is re- 
 corded — a very large professional fee at that 
 time, even in any part of America, the paradise 
 of lawyers. I lay great stress on Lincoln's career 
 as a lawyer — much more than his biographers 
 do — because in America a state of things exists 
 wholly different from that which prevails in 
 Great Britain. The profession of the law always 
 has been — and is to this day — the principal 
 avenue to public life; and I am sure that his 
 training and experience in the Courts had much 
 to do with the development of those forces of 
 intellect and character which he soon displayed 
 on a broader arena. 
 
 It was in political controversy, of course, that 
 he acquired his wide reputation, and made his 
 deep and lasting impression upon the people of 
 what had now become the powerful State of Illi- 
 nois, and upon the people of the G-reat West, to 
 whom the political power and control of the 
 United States were already surely and swiftly 
 passing from the older Eastern States. It was 
 this reputation and this impression and the 
 familiar knowledge of his character which had 
 come to them from his local leadership, that hap- 
 pily inspired the people of the West to present 
 him as their candidate, and to press him upon the 
 Republican Convention of 1860, as the fit and 
 necessary leader in the struggle for life which 
 was before the Nation. 
 
 That struggle, as you all know, arose out of 
 
 15 
 
ABEAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 the terrible question of Slavery — and I must 
 trust to your general knowledge of the history of 
 that question to make intelligible the attitude 
 and leadership of Lincoln as the champion of the 
 hosts of freedom in the final contest. Negro 
 slavery had been firmly established in the South- 
 ern States from an early period of their history. 
 In 1619, the year before the ' ' Mayflower ' ' landed 
 our Pilgrim Fathers upon Plymouth Rock, a 
 Dutch ship had discharged a cargo of African 
 slaves at Jamestown in Virginia. All through the 
 colonial period their importation had continued. 
 A few had found their way into the Northern 
 States, but in none of them in sufficient numbers 
 to constitute danger or to afford a basis for polit- 
 ical power. At the time of the adoption of the 
 Federal Constitution, there is no doubt that the 
 principal members of the Convention not only 
 condemned slavery as a moral, social and polit- 
 ical evil — but believed that by the suppression 
 of the slave trade it was in the course of gradual 
 extinction in the South, as it certainly was in the 
 North. Washington, in his will, provided for the 
 emancipation of his own slaves, and said to Jeffer- 
 son that it ** was among his first wishes to see 
 some plan adopted by which slavery in his country 
 might be abolished. ' ' Jefferson said, referring to 
 the institution, ** I tremble for my country when 
 I think that God is just; that His justice cannot 
 sleep for ever ' ' — and Franklin, Adams, Hamil- 
 ton and Patrick Henry were all utterly opposed to 
 it. But it was made the subject of a fatal com- 
 
 16 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 promise in tlie Federal Constitution, whereby its 
 existence was recognized in tlie States as a basis 
 of representation, the prohibition of the importa- 
 tion of slaves was postponed for twenty years, 
 and the return of fugitive slaves provided for. 
 But no imminent danger was apprehended from 
 it till, by the invention of the cotton gin in 1792, 
 cotton culture by negro labor became at once and 
 for ever the leading industry of the South, and 
 gave a new impetus to the importation of slaves, 
 so that in 1808, when the constitutional prohibi- 
 tion took effect, their numbers had vastly in- 
 creased. From that time forward, slavery became 
 the basis of a great political power, and the 
 Southern States, under all circumstances and at 
 every opportunity, carried on a brave and unre- 
 lenting struggle for its maintenance and exten- 
 sion. 
 
 The conscience of the North was slow to rise 
 against it, though bitter controversies from time 
 to time took place. The Southern leaders threat- 
 ened disunion if their demands were not complied 
 with. To save the Union, compromise after com- 
 promise was made; but each one in the end was 
 broken. The Missouri Compromise, made in 
 1820 upon the occasion of the admission of 
 Missouri into the Union as a Slave State — 
 whereby, in consideration of such admission, 
 slavery was for ever excluded from the North- 
 west Territory — was ruthlessly repealed in 1854, 
 by a Congress elected in the interests of the slave 
 power, the intent being to force slavery into that 
 
 17 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 vast territory which had so long been dedicated 
 to freedom. This challenge at last aroused the 
 slumbering conscience and passion of the North, 
 and led to the formation of the Eepublican party 
 for the avowed purpose of preventing, by consti- 
 tutional methods, the further extension of slavery. 
 In its first campaign in 1856, though it failed 
 to elect its candidates, it received a surprising 
 vote and carried many of the States. No one 
 could any longer doubt that the North had made 
 up its mind that no threats of disunion should 
 deter it from pressing its cherished purpose and 
 performing its long neglected duty. From the 
 outset, Lincoln was one of the most active and 
 effective leaders and speakers of the new party, 
 and the great debates between Lincoln and Doug- 
 las in 1858, as the respective champions of the 
 restriction and extension of slavery, attracted the 
 attention of the whole country. Lincoln's power- 
 ful arguments carried conviction everywhere. His 
 moral nature was thoroughly aroused — his con- 
 science was stirred to the quick. Unless slavery 
 was wrong, nothing was wrong. Was each man, 
 of whatever color, entitled to the fruits of his 
 own labor, or could one man live in idle luxury 
 by the sweat of another's brow, whose skin was 
 darker ? He was an implicit believer in that prin- 
 ciple of the Declaration of Independence that all 
 men are vested with certain inalienable rights — 
 the equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
 happiness. On this doctrine, he staked his case 
 and carried it. We have time only for one or 
 
 18 
 
ABBAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 two sentences in which he struck the keynote of 
 the contest : — 
 
 * ' The real issue in this country is the eternal struggle 
 between these two principles — right and wrong — 
 throughout the world. They are the two principles that 
 have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and 
 will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common 
 right of humanity, and the other the divine right of 
 kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it 
 develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, ' You 
 work and toil and earn bread and I'll eat it.' " 
 
 He foresaw with unerring vision that the con- 
 flict was inevitable and irrepressible — that one 
 or the other, the right or the wrong, freedom or 
 slavery, must ultimately prevail, and wholly pre- 
 vail, throughout the country; and this was the 
 principle that carried the war, once begun, to 
 a fijiish. 
 
 One sentence of his is immortal — 
 
 ** Under the operation of the policy of compromise, 
 the slavery agitation has not only not ceased, but has 
 constantly augmented. In my opinion it will not cease 
 until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. * A 
 house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe 
 this Government cannot endure permanently half slave 
 and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dis- 
 solved. I do not expect the house to fall — but I do 
 expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one 
 thing or all the other — either the opponents of slavery 
 will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where 
 the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the 
 
 19 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push 
 it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the 
 States, old as well as new, North as well as South." 
 
 During the entire decade, from 1850 to 1860, 
 the agitation of the slavery question was at the 
 boiling point, and events which have become his- 
 torical continually indicated the near approach 
 of the overwhelming storm. No sooner had the 
 Compromise Acts of 1850 resulted in a temporary 
 peace, which everybody said must be final and 
 perpetual, than new outbreaks came. The forcible 
 carrying away of fugitive slaves by Federal 
 Troops from Boston agitated that ancient strong- 
 hold of freedom to its foundations. The publica- 
 tion of " Uncle Tom's Cabin," which truly ex- 
 posed the frightful possibilities of the slave sys- 
 tem ; the reckless attempts by force and fraud to 
 establish it in Kansas against the will of the vast 
 majority of the settlers; the beating of Sumner 
 in the Senate Chamber for words spoken in de- 
 bate; the Dred Scott decision in the Supreme 
 Court, which made the nation realize that the 
 slave power had at last reached the fountain of 
 Federal justice; and finally the execution of 
 John Brown, for his wild raid into Virginia, to 
 invite the slaves to Y£il\y to the standard of free- 
 dom which he unfurled : all these events tend to 
 illustrate and confirm Lincoln's contention that 
 the nation could not permanently continue half 
 slave and half free, but must become all one thing 
 or all the other. When John Brown lay under 
 
 20 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 sentence of death, he declared that now he was 
 sure that slavery must be wiped out in blood ; but 
 neither he nor his executioners dreamt that 
 within four years a million soldiers would be 
 marching across the country for its final extirpa- 
 tion, to the music of the war-song of the great 
 conflict : — 
 
 ** John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave, 
 But his soul is marching on. ' ' 
 
 And now, at the age of fifty-one, this child of 
 the wilderness, this farm laborer, rail-splitter, 
 flat-boatman — this surveyor, lawyer, orator, 
 statesman and patriot found himself elected by 
 the great party which was pledged to prevent at 
 all hazards the further extension of slavery, as 
 the chief magistrate of the Republic, bound to 
 carry out that purpose, to be the leader and ruler 
 of the nation in its most trying hour. 
 
 Those who believe* that there is a living Provi- 
 dence that over-rules and conducts the affairs of 
 nations, find in. the elevation of this plain man to 
 this extraordinary fortune and to this great duty 
 which he so fitly discharged, a signal vindication 
 of their faith. Perhaps to this Philosophical 
 Institution the judgment of our philosopher 
 Emerson will commend itself as a just estimate 
 of Lincoln's historical place: — 
 
 " His occupying the Chair of State was a triumph of 
 the good sense of mankind and of the public conscience. 
 He grew according to the need ; his mind mastered the 
 
 21 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 problem of the day : and as the problem grew, so did his 
 comprehension of it. In the war there was no place for 
 holiday magistrate, nor fair weather sailor. The new 
 pilot was hurried to the helm in a tornado. In four 
 years — four years of battle days — his endurance, his 
 fertility of resource, his magnanimity, were sorely tried, 
 and never found wanting. There, by his courage, his 
 justice, his even temper, his fertile counsel, his human- 
 ity, he stood a heroic figure in the centre of a heroic 
 epoch. He is the true history of the American people in 
 his time, the true representative of this continent — 
 father of his country, the pulse of twenty millions throb- 
 bing in his heart, the thought of their mind articulated 
 in his tongue." 
 
 He was born great, as distinguished from those 
 who achieve greatness or have it thrust upon 
 them, and his inherent capacity, mental, moral, 
 and physical, having been recognized by the edu- 
 cated intelligence of a free people, they happily 
 chose him for their ruler in a day of deadly peril. 
 
 It is now forty years since I first saw and 
 heard Abraham Lincoln, but the impression which 
 he left on my mind is ineffaceable. After his 
 great successes in the West he came to New York 
 to make a political address. He appeared in every 
 sense of the word like one of the plain people 
 among whom he loved to be counted. At first 
 sight there was nothing impressive or imposing 
 about him — except that his great stature singled 
 him out from the crowd; his clothes hung awk- 
 wardly on his giant frame, his face was of a 
 dark pallor, without the slightest tinge of color; 
 
 22 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 his seamed and rugged features bore the furrows 
 of hardship and struggle; his deep-set eyes 
 looked sad and anxious; his countenance in re- 
 pose gave little evidence of that brain power 
 which had raised him from the lowest to the 
 highest station among his countrymen; as he 
 talked to me before the meeting, he seemed ill 
 at ease, with that sort of apprehension which 
 a young man might feel before presenting him- 
 self to a new and strange audience, whose critical 
 disposition he dreaded. It was a great audience, 
 including all the noted men — all the learned and 
 cultured — of his party in New York : editors, 
 clergymen, statesmen, lawyers, merchants, critics. 
 They were all very curious to hear him. His 
 fame as a powerful speaker had preceded him, 
 and exaggerated rumor of his wit — the worst 
 forerunner of an orator — had reached the East. 
 When Mr. Bryant presented him, on the high 
 platform of the Cooper Institute, a vast sea of 
 eager upturned faces greeted him, full of intense 
 curiosity to see what this rude child of the people 
 was like. He was equal to the occasion. "When 
 he spoke he was transformed; his eye kindled, 
 his voice rang, his face shone and seemed to light 
 up the whole assembly. For an hour and a half 
 he held his audience in the hollow of his hand. 
 His style of speech and manner of delivery were 
 severely simple. What Lowell called ** The 
 grand simplicities of the Bible," with which he 
 was so familiar, were reflected in his discourse. 
 With no attempt at ornament or rhetoric, without 
 
 23 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 parade or pretence, he spoke straiglit to the point. 
 If any came expecting the turgid eloquence or the 
 ribaldry of the frontier, they must have been 
 startled at the earnest and sincere purity of his 
 utterances. It was marvellous to see how this 
 untutored man, by mere self discipline and 
 the chastening of his own spirit, had outgrown 
 all meretricious arts, and found his own way 
 to the grandeur and strength of absolute sim- 
 plicity. 
 
 He spoke upon the theme which he had mas- 
 tered so thoroughly. He demonstrated by copi- 
 ous historical proofs and masterly logic, that the 
 Fathers who created the Constitution in order to 
 form a more perfect union, to establish justice, 
 and to secure the blessings of liberty to themselves 
 and their posterity, intended to empower the 
 Federal Government to exclude slavery from the 
 territories. In the kindliest spirit, he protested 
 against the avowed threat of the Southern States 
 to destroy the Union if, in order to secure free- 
 dom in those vast regions, out of which future 
 States were to be carved, a Republican President 
 were elected. He closed with an appeal to his 
 audience, spoken with all the fire of his aroused 
 and kindling conscience, with a full outpouring 
 of his love of justice and liberty, to maintain their 
 political purpose on that lofty and unassailable 
 issue of right and wrong which alone could jus- 
 tify it, and not to be intimidated from their high 
 resolve and sacred duty by any threats of destruc- 
 tion to the Government or of ruin to themselves. 
 
 24 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 He concluded with this telling sentence, which 
 drove the whole argument home to all our hearts : 
 " Let us have faith that right makes might, and 
 in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty 
 as we understand it. ' ' That night the great hall, 
 and the next day the whole city, rang with de- 
 lighted applause and congratulations, and he who 
 had come as a stranger departed with the laurels 
 of a great triumph. 
 
 Alas ! in five years from that exulting night, I 
 saw him again, for the last time, in the same city, 
 borne in his coffin through its draped streets. 
 With tears and lamentations a heart-broken peo- 
 ple accompanied him from Washington, the scene 
 of his martyrdom, to his last resting place in the 
 young city of the West, where he had worked his 
 way to fame. 
 
 Never was a new ruler in a more desperate 
 plight than Lincoln when he entered office on the 
 4th of March, 1861, four months after his election, 
 and took his oath to support the Constitution and 
 the Union. The intervening time had been busily 
 employed by the Southern States in carrying out 
 their threat of disunion in the event of his elec- 
 tion. As soon as that fact was ascertained, seven 
 of them had seceded and had seized upon the forts, 
 arsenals, navy yards and other public property of 
 the United States within their boundaries, and 
 were making every preparation for war. In the 
 meantime the retiring President, who had been 
 elected by the slave power, and who thought the 
 seceding States could not lawfully be coerced, had 
 
 25 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 done absolutely nothing. Lincoln found himself, 
 by the Constitution, Commander-in-Chief of the 
 Army and Navy of the United States, but with 
 only a remnant of either at hand. Each was to 
 be created on a great scale out of the unknown 
 resources of a nation untried in war. 
 
 In his mild and conciliatory inaugural address, 
 while appealing to the seceding States to return 
 to their allegiance, he avowed his purpose to keep 
 the solemn oath he had taken that day, to see that 
 the laws of the Union were faithfully executed, 
 and to use the troops to recover the forts, navy 
 yards, and other property belonging to the Gov- 
 ernment. It is probable, however, that neither 
 side actually realized that war was inevitable, and 
 that the other was determined to fight, until the 
 assault on Fort Sumter presented the South as 
 the first aggressor and roused the North to use 
 every possible resource to maintain the Govern- 
 ment and the imperilled Union, and to vindicate 
 the supremacy of the flag over every inch of the 
 territory of the United States. The fact that Lin- 
 coln's first Proclamation called for only 75,000 
 troops, to serve for three months, shows how in- 
 adequate was even his idea of what the future had 
 in store. But from that moment Lincoln and his 
 loyal supporters never faltered in their purpose. 
 They knew they could win, that it was their duty 
 to win, and that for America the whole hope of 
 the future depended upon their winning, for now 
 by the acts of the seceding States the issue of the 
 Election — to secure or prevent the extension of 
 
 26 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 slavery — stood transformed into a struggle to 
 preserve or to destroy the Union. 
 
 We cannot follow this contest. You know its 
 gigantic proportions; that it lasted four years 
 instead of three months; that in its progress 
 instead of 75,000 men, more than 2,000,000 were 
 enrolled on the side of the Government alone ; that 
 the aggregate cost and loss to the nation approx- 
 imated to 2,000,000,000 pounds sterling, and that 
 not less than 300,000 brave and precious lives were 
 sacrificed on each side. History has recorded how 
 Lincoln bore himself during these four frightful 
 years; that he was the real President, the re- 
 sponsible and actual head of the Government 
 through it all ; that he listened to all advice, heard 
 all parties, and then, always realizing his respon- 
 sibility to God and the nation, decided every great 
 executive question for himself. His absolute hon- 
 esty had become proverbial long before he was 
 President. ** Honest Abe Lincoln " was the name 
 by which he had been known for years. His every 
 act attested it. 
 
 In all the grandeur of the vast power that he 
 wielded, he never ceased to be one of the plain 
 people, as he always called them, never lost or 
 impaired his perfect sympathy with them, was 
 always in perfect touch with them and open to 
 their appeals ; and here lay the very secret of his 
 personality and of his power, for the people in 
 turn gave him their absolute confidence. His cour- 
 age, his fortitude, his patience, his hopefulness, 
 were sorely tried but never exhausted. 
 
 27 
 
ABEAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 He was true as steel to his Generals, but had 
 frequent occasion to change them, as he found 
 them inadequate. This serious and painful duty 
 rested wholly on him, and was perhaps his most 
 important function as Commander-in-Chief; but 
 when, at last, he recognized in General Grant the 
 master of the situation, the man who could and 
 would bring the war to a triumphant end, he gave 
 it all over to him, and upheld him with all his 
 might. Amid all the pressure and distress that 
 the burdens of office brought upon him, his unfail- 
 ing sense of humor saved him — probably it made 
 it possible for him to live under the burden. He 
 had always been the great story-teller of the West, 
 and he used and cultivated this faculty to relieve 
 the weight of the load he bore. 
 
 It enabled him to keep the wonderful record of 
 never having lost his temper, no matter what 
 agony he had to bear. A whole night might be 
 spent in recounting the stories of his wit, humor, 
 and harmless sarcasm. But I will recall only two 
 of his sayings, both about General Grant, who' 
 always found plenty of enemies and critics to urge 
 the President to oust him from his command. 
 One, I am sure, will interest all Scotchmen. They 
 repeated with malicious intent the gossip that 
 Grant drank. '' What does he drink? " asked 
 Lincoln. '* Whiskey " was, of course, the an- 
 swer; doubtless you can guess the brand. 
 " Well," said the President, " just find out what 
 particular kind he uses and I'll send a barrel to 
 each of my other Generals," The other must be 
 
 28 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 as pleasing to the British as to the American ear. 
 "When pressed again on other grounds to get rid 
 of Grant, he declared, ^' I can't spare that man, 
 he fights ! ' ' 
 
 He was tender-hearted to a fault, and never 
 could resist the appeals of wives and mothers of 
 soldiers who had got into trouble and were under 
 sentence of death for their offences. His Secre- 
 tary of War and other officials complained that 
 they never could get deserters shot. As surely 
 as the women of the culprit's family could get at 
 him, he always gave way. Certainly you will all 
 appreciate his exquisite sympathy with the suffer- 
 ing relatives of those who had fallen in battle. 
 His heart bled with theirs. Never was there a 
 more gentle and tender utterance than his letter, 
 to a mother who had given all her sons to her 
 country, written at a time when the angel of death 
 had visited almost every household in the land, 
 and was already hovering over him. 
 
 '' I have been shown," he says, " in the files 
 of the War Department a statement that you are 
 the mother of five sons who have died gloriously 
 on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruit- 
 less must be any words of mine which should at- 
 tempt to beguile you from your grief for a loss 
 so overwhelming — but I cannot refrain from ten- 
 dering to you the consolation which may be found 
 in the thanks of the Eepublic they died to save. 
 I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the 
 anguish of your bereavement and leave you only 
 the cherished memory of the loved and the lost, 
 
 29 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 and the solemn pride that must be yours to have 
 laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of free- 
 dom. ' ' 
 
 Hardly could your illustrious Sovereign, 
 from the depths of her queenly and womanly 
 heart, have spoken words more touching and 
 tender to soothe the stricken mothers of her own 
 soldiers. 
 
 The Emancipation Proclamation, with which 
 Mr. Lincoln delighted the country and the world 
 on the first of January, 1863, will doubtless secure 
 for him a foremost place in history among the 
 philanthropists and benefactors of the race, as it 
 rescued, from hopeless and degrading slavery, 
 so many millions of his fellow beings described 
 in the law and existing in fact as '' chattels-per- 
 sonal, in the hands of their owners and posses- 
 sors, to all intents, constructions and purposes 
 whatsoever." Rarely does the happy fortune 
 come to one man to render such a service to his 
 kind — to proclaim liberty throughout the land 
 unto all the inhabitants thereof. 
 
 Ideas rule the world, and never was there a 
 more signal instance of this triumph of an idea 
 than here. William Lloyd Garrison, who thirty 
 years before had begun his crusade for the aboli- 
 tion of slavery, and had lived to see this glorious 
 and unexpected consummation of the hopeless 
 cause to which he had devoted his life, well de- 
 scribed the Proclamation as a " great historic 
 event, sublime in its magnitude, momentous and 
 beneficent in its far-reaching consequences, and 
 
 30 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 eminently just and right alike to the oppressor 
 and the oppressed. ' ' 
 
 Lincoln had been always heart and soul opposed 
 to slavery. Tradition says that on the trip on the 
 flat boat to New Orleans, he formed his first and 
 last opinion of slavery at the sight of negroes 
 chained and scourged, and that then and there the 
 iron entered into his soul. No boy could grow to 
 manhood in those days as a poor white in Ken- 
 tucky and Indiana, in close contact with slavery 
 or in its neighborhood, without a growing con- 
 sciousness of its blighting effects on free labor, 
 as well of its frightful injustice and cruelty. In 
 the Legislature of Illinois, where the public senti- 
 ment was all for upholding the institution and 
 violently against every movement for its abolition 
 or restriction, upon the passage of resolutions to 
 that effect, he had the courage with one compan- 
 ion to put on record his protest, '' believing that 
 the institution of slavery is founded both in injus- 
 tice and bad policy. ' ' No great demonstration of 
 courage, you will say ; but that was at a time when 
 Garrison, for his abolition utterances, had been 
 dragged by an angry mob through the streets of 
 Boston with a rope around his body, and in the 
 very year that Love joy in the same State of Illi- 
 nois was slain by rioters while defending his press, 
 from which he had printed anti-slavery appeals. 
 
 In Congress, he brought in a Bill for gradual 
 abolition in the District of Columbia, with com- 
 pensation to the owners — for until they raised 
 treasonable hands against the life of the nation, 
 
 31 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 he always maintained that the property of the 
 slave-holders, into which they had come by two 
 centuries of descent, without fault on their part, 
 ought not to be taken away from them without just 
 compensation. He used to say that, one way or 
 another, he had voted forty-two times for the 
 Wilmot proviso, which Mr. Wilmot of Pennsyl- 
 vania moved as an addition to every Bill which 
 affected United States territory — ' ' That neither 
 slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist 
 in any part of the said territory, ' ' — and it is evi- 
 dent that his condemnation of the system, on 
 moral grounds as a crime against the human race, 
 and on political grounds as a cancer that was sap- 
 ping the vitals of the nation, and must master its 
 whole being or be itself extirpated, grew steadily 
 upon him until it culminated in his great speeches 
 in the Illinois debate. 
 
 By the mere election of Lincoln to the Presi- 
 dency, the further extension of slavery into the 
 territories was rendered for ever impossible — 
 Vox populi, vox Dei. Revolutions never go back- 
 ward, and when founded on a great moral senti- 
 ment stirring the heart of an indignant people, 
 their edicts are irresistible and final. Had the 
 slave power acquiesced in that election, had the 
 Southern States remained under the Constitution 
 and within the Union, and relied upon their con- 
 stitutional and legal rights, their favorite insti- 
 tution, immoral as it was, blighting and fatal as 
 it was, might have endured for another century. 
 The great party that had elected him, unalterably 
 
 32 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 determined against its extension, was nevertlie- 
 less pledged not to interfere with its continuance 
 in the States where it already existed. Of course, 
 when new regions were for ever closed against it, 
 from its very nature it must have begun to shrink 
 and to dwindle; and probably gradual and 
 compensated emancipation, which appealed very 
 strongly to the new President's sense of justice 
 and expediency, would, in the progress of time, 
 by a reversion to the ideas of the Founders of the 
 Republic, have found a safe outlet for both mas- 
 ters and slaves. But whom the gods wish to 
 destroy they first make mad, and when seven 
 States, afterwards increased to eleven, openly 
 seceded from the Union, when they declared and 
 began the war upon the nation, and challenged its 
 mighty power to the desperate and protracted 
 struggle for its life, and for the maintenance of 
 its authority as a nation over its territory, they 
 gave to Lincoln and to freedom the sublime oppor- 
 tunity of history. 
 
 In his first inaugural address, when as yet not 
 a drop of precious blood had been shed, while he 
 held out to them the olive branch in one hand, in 
 the other he presented the guarantees of the Con- 
 stitution, and after reciting the emphatic resolu- 
 tion of the Convention that nominated him, that 
 the maintenance inviolate of the ** rights of the 
 States, and especially the right of each State to 
 order and control its own domestic institutions 
 according to its own judgment exclusively, is es- 
 sential to that balance of power on which the per- 
 
 33 
 
ABEAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 fection and endurance of our political fabric de- 
 pend," lie reiterated this sentiment and declared 
 with no mental reservation, '' that all the protec- 
 tion which, consistently with the Constitution and 
 the laws can be ^ven, will be cheerfully given to 
 all the States when lawfully demanded for what- 
 ever cause — as cheerfully to one section as to 
 another. ' ' 
 
 When, however, these magnanimous overtures 
 for peace and re-union were rejected; when the 
 seceding States defied the Constitution and every 
 clause and principle of it ; when they persisted in 
 staying out of the Union from which they had se- 
 ceded, and proceeded to carve out of its territory 
 a new and hostile empire based on slavery; when 
 they flew at the throat of the nation and plunged 
 it into the bloodiest war of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury — the tables were turned, and the belief grad- 
 ually came to the mind of the President that if 
 the Eebellion was not soon subdued by force of 
 arms, if the war must be fought out to the bitter 
 end, then to reach that end the salvation of the 
 nation itself might require the destruction of sla- 
 very wherever it existed ; that if the war was to 
 continue on one side for Disunion, for no other 
 purpose than to preserve slavery, it must continue 
 on the other side for the Union, to destroy slavery. 
 
 As he said, * ' Events control me ; I cannot con- 
 trol events," and as the dreadful war progressed, 
 and became more deadly and dangerous, the un- 
 alterable conviction was forced upon him that, in 
 order that the frightful sacrifice of life and treas- 
 
 34 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 ure on both sides might not be all in vain, it had 
 become his duty as Commander-in-Chief of the 
 Army, as a necessary war measure, to strike a 
 blow at the Rebellion which, all others failing, 
 would inevitably lead to its annihilation, by anni- 
 hilating the very thing for which it was contend- 
 ing. His own words are the best : — 
 
 ' ' I understood that my oath to preserve the Constitu- 
 tion to the best of my ability imposed upon me the duty 
 of preserving by every indispensable means that Gov- 
 ernment — that Nation, of which that Constitution was 
 the organic law. Was it possible to lose the Nation and 
 yet preserve the Constitution? By general law, life 
 and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be 
 amputated to save a life ; but a life is never wisely given 
 to save a limb. I felt that measures otherwise uncon- 
 stitutional might become lawful by becoming indispens- 
 able to the preservation of the Constitution through the 
 preservation of the Nation. Right or wrong, I assumed 
 this ground and now avow it. I could not feel that, to 
 the best of my ability, I had ever tried to preserve the 
 Constitution if to save slavery or any minor matter, I 
 should permit the wreck of Government, Country and 
 Constitution all together." 
 
 And so, at last, when in his judgment the indis- 
 pensable necessity had come, he struck the fatal 
 blow, and signed the Proclamation which has made 
 his name immortal. By it, the President, as Com- 
 mander-in-Chief in time of actual armed rebellion, 
 and as a fit and necessary war measure for sup- 
 pressing the rebellion, proclaimed all persons held 
 
 35 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 as slaves in the States and parts of States then 
 in rebellion to be thenceforward free, and declared 
 that the executive, with the Army and Navy, would 
 recognize and maintain their freedom. 
 
 In the other great steps of the Government, 
 which led to the triumphant prosecution of the 
 war, he necessarily shared the responsibility and 
 the credit with the great statesmen who stayed up 
 his hands in his Cabinet — with Seward, Chase 
 and Stanton and the rest, and with his generals 
 and admirals, his soldiers and sailors — but this 
 great act was absolutely his own. The conception 
 and execution were exclusively his. He laid it 
 before his Cabinet as a measure on which his mind 
 was made up and could not be changed, asking 
 them only for suggestions as to details. He chose 
 the time and the circumstances -under which the 
 Emancipation should be proclaimed and when it 
 should take effect. 
 
 It came not an hour too soon ; but public opin- 
 ion in the North would not have sustained it ear- 
 lier. In the first eighteen months of the war its 
 ravages had extended from the Atlantic to beyond 
 the Mississippi. Many victories in the West had 
 been balanced and paralyzed by inaction and dis- 
 asters in Virginia, only partially redeemed by the 
 bloody and indecisive battle of Antietam ; a reac- 
 tion had set in from the general enthusiasm which 
 had swept the Northern States after the assault 
 upon Sumter. It could not truly be said that they 
 had lost heart, but faction was raising its head. 
 Heard through the land like the blast of a bugle, 
 
 36 
 
ABEAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 the Proclamation rallied the patriotism of the 
 comitry to fresh sacrifices and renewed ardor. It 
 was a step that could not be revoked. It relieved 
 the conscience of the nation from an incubus that 
 had oppressed it from its birth. The United 
 States were rescued from the false predicament 
 in which they had been from the beginning, and 
 the great popular heart leaped with new enthusi- 
 asm for ' ' Liberty and LTnion, henceforth and for- 
 ever, one and inseparable." It brought not only 
 moral but material support to the cause of the 
 Government, for within two years 120,000 colored 
 troops were enlisted in the military service and 
 following the national flag, supported by all the 
 loyalty of the North, and led by its choicest spirits. 
 One mother said, when her son was offered the 
 command of the first colored regiment, *' If he 
 accepts it I shall be as proud as if I had heard 
 that he was shot. ' ' He was shot heading a gallant 
 charge of his regiment. The Confederates replied 
 to a request of his friends for his body that they 
 ' ' had buried him under a layer of his niggers ' ' ; 
 but that mother has lived to enjoy thirty-six years 
 of his glory, and Boston has erected its noblest 
 monument to his memory. 
 
 The effect of the Proclamation upon the actual 
 progress of the war was not immediate, but wher- 
 ever the Federal armies advanced they carried 
 freedom with them, and when the summer came 
 round the new spirit and force which had animated 
 the heart of the Government and people were man- 
 ifest. In the first week of July, the decisive battle 
 
 37 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 of Gettysburg turned the tide of war, and the fall 
 of Vicksburg made the great river free from its 
 source to the Gulf. 
 
 On foreign nations the influence of the Procla- 
 mation and of these new victories was of great 
 importance. In those days, when there was no 
 cable, it was not easy for foreign observers to 
 appreciate what was really going on; they could 
 not see clearly the true state of affairs, as in the 
 last year of the nineteenth century we have been 
 able, by our new electric vision, to watch every 
 event at the antipodes and observe its effect. The 
 rebel emissaries, sent over to solicit intervention, 
 spared no pains to impress upon the minds of 
 public and private men and upon the press their 
 own views of the character of the contest. The 
 prospects of the Confederacy were always better 
 abroad than at home. The Stock Markets of the 
 world gambled upon its chances, and its bonds at 
 one time were in high favor. 
 
 Such ideas as these were seriously held: that 
 the North was fighting for empire, and the South 
 for independence; that the Southern States, in- 
 stead of being the grossest oligarchies, essentially 
 despotisms, founded on the right of one man to 
 appropriate the fruit of other men's toil and to 
 exclude them from equal rights, were real repub- 
 lics, feebler to be sure than their Northern rivals, 
 but representing the same idea of freedom, and 
 that the mighty strength of the nation was being 
 put forth to crush them ; that Jefferson Davis and 
 the Southern leaders had created a nation; that 
 
 38 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 the republican experiment had failed, and the 
 Union had ceased to exist. But the crowning ar- 
 gument to foreign minds was that it was an utter 
 impossibility for the Government to win in the 
 contest; that the success of the Southern States, 
 so far as separation was concerned, was as cer- 
 tain as any event yet future and contingent could 
 be; that the subjugation of the South by the 
 North, even if it could be accomplished, would 
 prove a calamity to the United States and the 
 world, and especially calamitous to the negro race ; 
 and that such a victory would necessarily leave 
 the people of the South for many generations 
 cherishing deadly hostility against the Govern- 
 ment and the North, and plotting always to re- 
 cover their independence. 
 
 When Lincoln issued his Proclamation, he knew 
 that all these ideas were founded in error; that 
 the national resources were inexhaustible; that 
 the Government could and would win, and that if 
 slavery were once finally disposed of, the only 
 cause of difference being out of the way, the North 
 and South would come together again and, by- 
 and-by, be as good friends as ever. In many quar- 
 ters abroad the Proclamation was welcomed with 
 enthusiasm by the friends of America ; but I think 
 the demonstrations in its favor that brought more 
 gladness to Lincoln's heart than any other, were 
 the meetings held in the manufacturing centres by 
 the very operatives upon whom the war bore the 
 hardest, expressing the most enthusiastic sympa- 
 thy with the Proclamation, while they bore with 
 
 39 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 heroic fortitude the grievous privations which the 
 war entailed upon them. Mr. Lincoln's expecta- 
 tion when he announced to the world that all 
 slaves in all States then in rebellion were set free, 
 must have been that the avowed position of his 
 Government, that the continuance of the war now 
 meant the annihilation of slavery, would make 
 intervention impossible for any foreign nation 
 whose people were lovers of liberty, — and so the 
 result proved. 
 
 The growth and development of Lincoln's men- 
 tal power and moral force, of his intense and mag- 
 netic personality, after the vast responsibilities 
 of Grovernment were thrown upon him at the age 
 of fifty-two, furnish a rare and striking illustra- 
 tion of the marvellous capacity and adaptability 
 of the human intellect — of the sound mind in the 
 sound body. He came to the discharge of the 
 great duties of the Presidency with absolutely no 
 experience in the administration of Government, 
 or of the vastly varied and complicated questions 
 of foreign and domestic policy which immediately 
 arose, and continued to press upon him during the 
 rest of his life ; but he mastered each as it came, 
 apparently with the facility of a trained and expe- 
 rienced ruler. As Clarendon said of Cromwell — 
 " His parts seemed to be raised by the demands 
 of great station. ' ' His life through it all was one 
 of intense labor, anxiety and distress, without one 
 hour of peaceful repose from first to last. But he 
 rose to every occasion. He led public opinion, 
 but did not march so far in advance of it as to 
 
 40 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 fail of its effective support in every great emer- 
 gency. He knew the heart and thought of the 
 people, as no man not in constant and absolute 
 sympathy with them could have known it, and so, 
 holding their confidence, he triumphed through 
 and with them. Not only was there this steady 
 growth of intellect, but the infinite delicacy of his 
 nature and its capacity for refinement developed 
 also, as exhibited in the purity and perfection of 
 his language and style of speech. The rough back- 
 woodsman, who had never seen the inside of a Uni- 
 versity, became in the end, by self -training and 
 the exercise of hi*s own powers of mind, heart and 
 soul, a master of style — and some of his utter- 
 ances will rank with the best, the most perfectly 
 adapted to the occasion which produced them. 
 
 Have you time to listen to his two minutes' 
 speech at Gettysburg, at the dedication of the Sol- 
 diers ' Cemetery? His whole soul was in it : 
 
 ' ' Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought 
 forth on this continent a new nation conceived in Uberty 
 and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created 
 equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing 
 whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so 
 dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great 
 battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a 
 portion of that field as a final resting place for those 
 who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It 
 is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. 
 But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate — we cannot 
 consecrate — we cannot hallow this ground. The brave 
 men, living and dead, who struggled here have conse- 
 
 41 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 crated it far above our poor power to add or detract. 
 The world will little note, nor long remember, what we 
 say here — but it can never forget what they did here. 
 It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the 
 unfinished work which they who fought here have thus 
 far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here 
 dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that 
 from these honored dead we take increased devotion to 
 that cause for which they gave the last full measure of 
 devotion — that we here highly resolve, that these dead 
 shall not have died in vain — that this nation under God 
 shall have a new birth of freedom — and that govern- 
 ment of the people, by the people and for the people, 
 shall not perish from the earth." 
 
 He lived to see his work indorsed by an over- 
 whelming majority of his countrymen. In his sec- 
 ond Inangnral Address, pronounced just forty 
 days before his death, there is a single passage 
 which well displays his indomitable will and at 
 the same time his deep religious feeling, his sub- 
 lime charity to the enemies of his country and his 
 broad and Catholic liumanity : 
 
 " If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of 
 those offences which in the Providence of God must needs 
 come, but which having continued through the appointed 
 time. He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both 
 North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to 
 those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein 
 any departure from those di^^ne attributes which the 
 believers in a living God always ascribe to Him ? Fondly 
 do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty 
 scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God 
 
 42 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 wills, that it continue until all the wealth piled by the 
 bondsmen's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited 
 toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn 
 with the lash, shall be paid with another drawn by the 
 sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it 
 must be said, ' The judgments of the Lord are true and 
 righteous altogether. ' ' ' 
 
 * ' With malice toward none, with charity for all ; with 
 firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right — 
 let us strive on to finish the work we are in ; to bind up 
 the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have 
 borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan — to 
 do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting 
 peace among ourselves, and with all nations." 
 
 His prayer was answered. The forty days of 
 life that remained to him were crowded with great 
 historic events. He lived to see his Proclamation 
 of Emancipation embodied in an amendment of 
 the Constitution, adopted by Congress and sub- 
 mitted to the States for ratification. The mighty 
 scourge of war did speedily pass away, for it was 
 given him to witness the surrender of the Rebel 
 army and the fall of their capital, and the starry 
 flag that he loved, waving in triumph over the 
 national soil. "When he died by the madman's 
 hand in the supreme hour of victory, the van- 
 quished lost their best friend, and the human race 
 one of its noblest examples; and all the friends 
 of freedom and justice, in whose cause he lived 
 and died, joined hands as mourners at his grave. 
 
 43 
 
BENJAMIN FRANEXIN 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 Inaugural address, October SSrd, 1903, before the Birmingham and 
 Midland Institute. 
 
 EDUCATION is now in all civilized countries 
 the question of the hour, and the unsolved 
 problems of secondary, technical, and university 
 education are engaging universal attention. As 
 a diversion from this general discussion, it may 
 not be uninteresting to study the lives of those 
 great and rare men who, without any of these 
 extraneous aids, achieve undying fame and confer 
 priceless blessings on mankind. For them schools, 
 colleges, and universities are of little account, 
 and are not required for their development. The 
 world is their school, and necessity is often their 
 only teacher, but their lives are the world's treas- 
 ures. It is in this view that I ask your attention 
 for a brief hour to the life, character, and achieve- 
 ments of Benjamin Franklin of Philadelphia. 
 
 His whole career has been summed up by the 
 great French statesman who was one of his per- 
 sonal friends and correspondents in six words, 
 Latin words of course : — 
 
 '* Eripuit coelo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis," 
 which, unfortunately for our language, cannot be 
 translated into English in less than twelve : — 
 
 ' * He snatched the lightning from the skies and 
 the sceptre from tyrants.'* 
 
 47 
 
BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 
 
 Surely the briefest and most brilliant biog- 
 raphy ever written. He enlarged the boundaries 
 of human knowledge by discovering laws and 
 facts of Nature unknown before, and applying 
 them to the use and service of man, and that 
 entitles him to lasting fame. But his other serv- 
 ice to mankind differed from this only in kind, 
 and was quite equal in degree. For he stands 
 second only to Washington in the list of heroic 
 patriots who on both sides of the Atlantic stood 
 for those fundamental principles of English lib- 
 erty, which culminated in the independence of the 
 United States, and have ever since been shared 
 by the English-speaking race the world over. 
 
 You must all be familiar with the principal 
 facts in Franklin's life. He was born a British 
 subject at Boston in Massachusetts, then a village 
 of about 12,000 inhabitants, in 1706, the year in 
 which Marlborough won the battle of Kamillies 
 and made every New Englander very proud of 
 being a subject of Queen Anne. He was the fif- 
 teenth child in a family of seventeen, a rate of 
 multiplication enough to frighten the life out of 
 Malthus, and more than sufficient to satisfy the 
 extreme demands of President Roosevelt. His 
 father, born at Ecton in Northamptonshire, came 
 of that ancient and sturdy Saxon yeomanry which 
 has done so much for the making of England. 
 Having followed the trade of a dyer for some 
 years at Banbury, he emigrated in 1685 to Boston, 
 where, finding little encouragement for his old 
 trade, he engaged in the business of tallow chan- 
 
 48 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 dler and soap boiler. The boy could never re- 
 member when he learned to read and write, and 
 at eight years old he was sent to the Boston Gram- 
 mar School, one of those free common schools 
 then and ever since the pride of the Colony and 
 the State. But in two years, at the age of ten, 
 his school days were over for ever. His father 
 finding that with the heavy burden of his great 
 family he could afford him no more education, 
 took the child home to assist in his business, and 
 the next two years the future philosopher and 
 diplomatist spent in cutting candle wicks, filling 
 moulds, tending the shop and running errands. 
 
 That he highly valued the little schooling that 
 he had, meagre as it must have been, appears 
 from his last will made sixty-two years after- 
 wards, in which he says that he owed his first in- 
 struction in literature to the free grammar schools 
 of his native town of Boston, and leaves to the 
 town one hundred pounds sterling, the annual 
 interest to be laid out in silver medals to be dis- 
 tributed as honorary rewards in those schools, 
 and to this day the Franklin Medals are striven 
 for and valued as the most honorable prize that 
 a Boston boy can win. 
 
 But how did this particular boy, without an 
 hour's tuition of any kind after he was ten years 
 old, come to be the most famous American of his 
 time, and win his place in the front rank of the 
 world's scientists, diplomatists, statesmen, men 
 of letters, and men of affairs'? It was by sheer 
 force of brains, character, severe self-discipline, 
 
 49 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 untiring industry and mother-wit. His predom- 
 inant trait was practical common sense amounting 
 to genius. God gave him the sound mind in the 
 sound body, and he did the rest himself. He soon 
 revolted at the vulgar duties of his father's busi- 
 ness, and at the age of thirteen was apprenticed 
 till his majority to his elder brother, who was a 
 printer and bookseller, and the publisher of the 
 New England Courant, one of the earliest news- 
 papers in the Colonies, 
 
 From this time forward the printing office was 
 his school and his university, and probably did 
 more for him than Oxford or Harvard could then 
 have done. With a raging thirst for knowledge 
 he developed a keen and unfailing observation of 
 things and of men, and, above all, a constant study 
 of himself, of which he was a very rare example. 
 He denied himself every pleasure but reading, 
 and robbed his body of food and sleep that he 
 might find time and food for his mind, reading 
 every good book on which he could lay his hands. 
 He soon mastered the art of printing as it was 
 then known, and very early developed a faculty 
 for the use of his pen which gave his brain a 
 vent. He began with two ballads — * ' The Light- 
 house Tragedy " and '' Blackboard the Pirate " 
 — and hawked them about the town. The first, 
 he says, sold wonderfully, but his father dis- 
 couraged him by ridiculing his performances, and 
 telling him verse makers were generally beggars, 
 and ^' So," he says, '' I escaped being a poet; 
 most probably a very bad one." 
 
 50 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 So precocious was his literary faculty that very 
 soon he began contributing leading articles to the 
 Courant, and when he was sixteen, his brother 
 having been placed under an interdict for criti- 
 cizing the authorities, he became himself the pub- 
 lisher and editor, and of course the circulation 
 increased. But he was still only an apprentice, 
 and his manly and independent spirit found it 
 as hard to brook the indignities and blows to 
 which his master, though he was his brother, sub- 
 jected him, as he had found it before to ladle the 
 tallow and fill the moulds in his father's shop, 
 and so at seventeen he took to his heels, shook the 
 dust of Boston from his feet, and ran away to 
 Philadelphia, 
 
 He landed in the Quaker City with but one dol- 
 lar in his pocket, and as he had often dined on 
 bread, he bought three rolls, and marched up 
 Market Street, his pockets stuffed with shirts and 
 stockings, eating one roll and with another under 
 each arm. His future wife saw him in this guise 
 as he passed her father's door, and thought he 
 presented a ridiculous appearance, as he certainly 
 did. But he had thoroughly learned his trade, 
 and soon found employment as a journeyman 
 printer. He would have gone on very well had 
 he not been sent to London by the Governor of 
 the Province on a promise of business which to- 
 tally failed. He found himself in that great city 
 without a friend, and with little money in his 
 pocket. But he soon found employment at good 
 wages in the best printing offices at thirty shil- 
 
 51 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 lings a week, lodged in Little Britain at three and 
 sixpence, and so managed to keep his head above 
 water for eighteen months, but lived an aimless 
 and somewhat irregular life. 
 
 However, he worked hard at his trade, and 
 made some ingenious acquaintances, among them 
 Sir Hans Sloane, the founder of the British Mu- 
 seum, and Sir William Wyndham, once Chancel- 
 lor of the Exchequer — the former by selling him 
 a curiosity which he had brought from America ; 
 the latter by his skill in swimming, in which he 
 had from boyhood been a great expert. His own 
 account of this last acquaintance is not a little 
 diverting. He had visited Chelsea with a party 
 of friends, and on the return by water was in- 
 duced to give them an exhibition of his skill in 
 this manly art. He swam all the way from Chel- 
 sea to Blackf riars, performing many feats of agil- 
 ity both upon and under water that surprised and 
 pleased the spectators. Sir William, hearing of 
 this, sent for him, and offered if he would teach 
 his two sons to swim to set him up in that busi- 
 ness, and so he might have spent his life in Lon- 
 don as the head of a swimming school, and never 
 have lived to snatch the lightning from the clouds 
 or the sceptre from tyrants, or to change the map 
 of the world. 
 
 Before leaving London he accepted from a rep- 
 utable merchant who was returning to Philadel- 
 phia an offer of a clerkship, and in a few months, 
 he learned much of the business, but was thrown 
 out of it by the death of his employer, and by a 
 
 52 
 
BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 
 
 terrible illness, from which he barely recovered. 
 Referring to this illness he wrote his own epitaph, 
 which, fortunately for the world, there was no 
 occasion to use : — 
 
 The Body 
 
 of 
 
 Benjamin Franklin 
 
 (Like the cover of an old book, 
 
 Its contents torn out 
 
 and stripped of its lettering and binding), 
 
 Lies here, food for worms. 
 
 Yet the work itself shall not be lost, 
 
 For it will, as he believed, appear once more 
 
 In a new 
 
 And more beautiful Edition, 
 
 Corrected and Amended 
 
 By 
 
 The Author. 
 
 Soon after this illness he turned over a new 
 leaf, with firm resolve to train himself for a suc- 
 cessful and honorable life by the practice of 
 every virtue. He returned to his old business of 
 printing, which for twenty years he followed with 
 the utmost diligence, and became very prosperous. 
 
 About this time he conceived the bold and ardu- 
 ous project of arriving at moral perfection, and 
 rigidly schooled himself in the virtues of temper- 
 ance, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sin- 
 cerity, moderation, and cleanliness. By constant 
 reading, study, and observation he made the very 
 best of the great mental capacity with which he 
 had been endowed by Nature. He set to work 
 
 53 
 
 & 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 deliberately and with conscientious fidelity to im- 
 prove to the best advantage all his faculties, not 
 for his own good and happiness only, but for the 
 benefit of the community to which he belonged. 
 From an odd volume of the Spectator which fell 
 into his hands he modelled his style, training him- 
 self more rigorously than any school could have 
 trained him, and thus acquired very early in life 
 that power of clear and lucid expression which 
 made all his subsequent writings so effective. 
 
 A brilliant modern writer, Hugh Black, has said 
 that " culture is the conscious training in which 
 a man makes use of every educational means 
 within his reach, feeding his inner life by every 
 vital force in history and experience, and so ad- 
 justing himself to his environment that he shall 
 absorb the best products of the life of his time, 
 thus making his personality rich and deep." 
 
 It was this self-culture that Franklin sought to 
 attain, and he never lost sight of his object. Self- 
 control once achieved, enabled him in large meas- 
 ure to control others. No wonder, then, that in 
 Philadelphia, at that time already a large city, he 
 not only rapidly achieved success in his business, 
 but became before long a marked figure in Penn- 
 sylvania and throughout the thirteen Colonies. 
 He never wasted time, and so time never wasted 
 him, and at the age of forty- two he was able to 
 withdraw from the active management of his 
 business, and to devote himself to public affairs 
 and to scientific studies in which his soul de- 
 lighted. 
 
 54 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 In the meantime, and always in the way of busi- 
 ness, he had engaged in two literary ventures, 
 which at the same time exercised his active brains, 
 and extended his reputation very widely. He 
 purchased the Pennsylvania Gazette when it was 
 on the verge of ruin and collapse, and it became 
 under his editorship the best newspaper in Amer- 
 ica, and by means of it he exercised vast power 
 and influence throughout the Colonies. And Poor 
 Richard's Almanac, which he started when he was 
 twenty-six years old, and continued to publish for 
 twenty-five years, proved to be a splendid vehicle 
 for the exercise of his wonderful common-sense, 
 lively wit, and keen interest in all sorts of affairs. 
 He was very human, and nothing human escaped 
 his searching interest. It was an almanac de- 
 signed for the general diffusion of knowledge 
 among the people. "Wliere there were few or no 
 books, it found its way with the Bible into every 
 household in the land. Every number was full of 
 worldly wisdom, proverbial philosophy, inculcat- 
 ing the practice of all the homely virtues, such as 
 honesty, frugality, industry, temperance, and 
 thrift as the sure guides to success and happiness, 
 and with all this a generous sprinkling of the live- 
 liest wit and fun. Its circulation rapidly multi- 
 plied, and Poor Eichard, as a pseudonym of Ben- 
 jamin Franklin, made him and his personal traits, 
 which it so fitly displayed, familiar in every 
 household, and the influence which he wielded by 
 it was simply unbounded. 
 In later years he published *' Father Abra- 
 
 55 
 
BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 
 
 ham's Speech," which was a comprehensive sum- 
 ming up of all Poor Eichard's good things, ran- 
 sacking all literature for proverbs of wit and 
 wisdom and inventing many of his own, touching 
 the conduct of life at all points, so far as utility 
 and worldly advantage are concerned. The world 
 greedily seized it and still cherishes it, for it may 
 now be read, not in English only, but in French, 
 German, Spanish, Italian, Eussian, Dutch, Bohe- 
 mian, Modern Greek, Gaelic, and Portuguese. 
 Under the title '' Science du Bonhomme Eich- 
 ard " it has been thirty times printed in French 
 and twice in Italian, and as " The Way to 
 Wealth " twenty-seven times in English in pam- 
 phlet form, and innumerable times as a broad- 
 side. It is by far the most famous piece the Col- 
 onies ever produced. No wonder, for if any man 
 would follow its precepts as faithfully as Frank- 
 lin did himself, he was sure to become healthy, 
 wealthy, and wise. A cheerful temperament that 
 was worth millions, and irresistible good humor, 
 pervaded all he wrote. Sydney Smith, another 
 example of the same traits, by way of playful 
 menace, said to his daughter '' I will disinherit 
 you, if you do not admire everything written by 
 Franklin." 
 
 From the time that his circumstances permitted 
 him to do anything but work solely for daily 
 bread, Franklin manifested and cultivated a con- 
 stant interest in public affairs, and his unerring 
 instinct for public service was as keen as if he had 
 been specially trained to that end at Oxford or at 
 
 56 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 Cambridge. His fellow citizens, recognizing his 
 capacity and efficiency, eagerly availed themselves 
 of his leadership in every public movement. Thus 
 he became the founder or promoter of the first 
 debating society for mutual culture and improve- 
 ment in Philadelphia, the first subscription 
 library, the first fire club, of the American Philo- 
 sophical Society, and of what finally became the 
 University of Pennsylvania, which still holds a 
 deservedly high rank among institutions of learn- 
 ing. Under his inspiring lead Philadelphia be- 
 came better lighted, better paved, better policed, 
 and better read than any other city on the con- 
 tinent. As Clerk, and for many years a Member 
 of the Assembly, Postmaster of Philadelphia, and 
 Deputy Postmaster-General for the Continent, he 
 rendered great service, and came to know the 
 affairs of his own and the other Colonies, and 
 thus became known himself better than any other 
 man in the land. 
 
 In 1754 he was the leading spirit in the Con- 
 vention held at Albany, to form a plan for the 
 common defence of the Colonies and the Empire 
 against the French and Indians. It was Frank- 
 lin who devised the broad and comprehensive 
 scheme which the Convention adopted, many 
 features of which subsequently appeared in the 
 Constitution of the United States. But it was 
 rejected by the Colonies because it gave too much 
 power to the Crown, and by the British Govern- 
 ment because it gave too much power to the 
 Colonies — a sure proof of that wise moderation 
 
 57 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 which always characterized its author. In the fol- 
 lowing year he rendered great services to General 
 Braddock, who had entered on his ill-fated expe- 
 dition for the capture of Fort Duquesne without 
 proper supplies or means of transportation, and 
 after his calamitous defeat Franklin actually took 
 the field with a considerable military force, and 
 commanded on the frontier, building stockades 
 and forts, and protecting the panic-stricken 
 Colonists from the threatened onset of the enemy. 
 Carlyle thus describes Franklin's services to 
 Braddock : — 
 
 " About New Year's Day, 1755, Braddock with his two 
 regiments and completed apparatus got to sea; arrived 
 20th February at Williamsburg, Virginia; found now 
 that this was not the place to arrive at; that he would 
 lose six weeks of marching by not having landed in 
 Pennsylvania instead; found that his stores had been 
 mispacked at Cork; that this had happened and also 
 that — and, in short, found that chaos had been very 
 considerably prevalent in this adventure of his, and 
 did still in all that now lay round it prevail. Poor 
 Braddock took the Colonial militia regiments; Colonel 
 Washington, as aide-de-camp, took the Indians and ap- 
 pendages. Colonel Chaos much presiding ; and, after in- 
 finite delays and confused hagglings, got on march — 
 2,000 regulars, and of all sorts say 4,000 strong. 
 
 " Got on march, sprawled and haggled up the AUe- 
 ghanies — such a commissariat, such a wagon service as 
 was seldom seen before. Poor General and Army, he 
 was like to be starved outright at one time, had not a 
 certain Mr. Franklin come to him with charitable oxen 
 with £500 worth provisions, live and dead, subscribed 
 
 58 
 
BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 
 
 for at Philadelphia. Mr. Benjamin Franklin, since 
 celebrated over all the world, who did not much admire 
 this iron tempered general with the pipe-clay brain. ' ' 
 
 Thus, by the time he reached middle life, Frank- 
 lin had become the best known and most impor- 
 tant man in the Colonies ; but with all his varied 
 work he had never lost sight of science and its 
 practical application to the service of man, which 
 was really his first love. His vast reading had 
 made him a living encyclopsedia, and he had man- 
 aged to acquire some knowledge of French, 
 Italian, Spanish, and Latin, which then and after- 
 wards stood hun in great stead. His inventive 
 genius was called into constant play, and he made 
 from time to time many new and useful inven- 
 tions, for no one of which would he ever take a 
 patent or any personal advantage to himself, for 
 he said that as we enjoy great advantages from 
 the inventions of others, we should be glad to give 
 the world the benefit of our own. 
 
 But his discoveries and inventions finally cul- 
 minated in his studies and experiments in elec- 
 tricity, and their startling and marvellous result 
 made him as famous in all other countries as he 
 already was in his own, and placed him in the 
 very front rank of living men. The story of 
 Franklin and his kite drawing the lightning from 
 the clouds, and making positive practical proof of 
 its identity with electricity, has been too often 
 told to need to be repeated here. It was no lucky 
 accident. It was seven years since the Leyden 
 
 59 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 Jar, the first storage battery of electricity, was 
 made, and during the whole interval Franklin and 
 all the other scientists in the world interested in 
 the subject had been studying and experimenting 
 to find out what this mysterious substance was. 
 He had been writing from 1747 to 1751 the results 
 of his investigations to his friend Collinson in 
 London, by whom they were read at the Royal 
 Society, at first, as he says, only to be ignored or 
 laughed at. 
 
 In May, 1751, came Franklin's masterly but 
 very modest paper declaring the identity of elec- 
 tricity and lightning, and suggesting how by 
 pointed iron electricity might be actually drawn 
 from a storm cloud, and buildings and ships pro- 
 tected from its danger. It was soon translated 
 into French, German, and Latin, had great sales, 
 and made a tremendous sensation. But Frank- 
 lin's fame reached the highest point when D'Ali- 
 bard, a French philosopher, following the sugges- 
 tions in his pamphlet, constructed an apparatus 
 exactly as Franklin had directed, and made actual 
 demonstration of the truth of his theory, a month 
 before the great discoverer himself flew his kite 
 in his garden in Philadelphia. 
 
 Franklin took the universal applause that fol- 
 lowed as quietly and modestly as he had put forth 
 his suggestions. It was all fun to him from the 
 beginning. Dr. Priestley says that at the close of 
 the first summer of his experiments, when it grew 
 too hot to continue them, the Philosopher had a 
 party on the banks of the Schuylkill, at which 
 
 60 
 
BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 
 
 spirits were first fired by a spark seiit_,from side 
 to side through the river without any other con- 
 ductor than the water, a turkey was killed for 
 their dinner by the electrical shock and roasted 
 by the electrical jack, before a fire kindled by the 
 electrified bottle, when the health of all the 
 famous electricians in England, Holland, France, 
 and Germany was drunk in electrified bumpers 
 under a discharge of guns from the electrical bat- 
 tery. Honors and distinctions now crowded 
 upon him : the Royal Society, as if to make quick 
 amends for its previous neglect, by a unanimous 
 vote made him a member, exempting him from 
 the payment of all dues, and the next year with 
 every circumstance of distinction awarded him 
 the Copley Medal, and Yale and Harvard con- 
 ferred their honorary degrees upon him. 
 
 However much the people of Pennsylvania ap- 
 preciated and enjoyed his growing fame, they 
 were not willing to give him up to science, but en- 
 listed his services and insisted upon his leader- 
 ship in every great political question. When the 
 dispute between the Penns as Proprietors and 
 the people of Pennsylvania, on the claim of the 
 former that their estates should be exempt from 
 taxation, reached a crisis in 1756, the Provincial 
 Assembly decided to appeal to the King in Coun- 
 cil for a redress of their grievances, and who but 
 Franklin should go to represent them? 
 
 This vexatious business, finally ending in a com- 
 promise which was on the whole satisfactory to 
 his constituents, detained him in England for up- 
 
 61 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 wards of five years — from the summer of 1757 
 till 1762. Times and the man had changed since 
 the stranded journeyman printer took lodgings 
 in Little Britain at three and sixpence a week, and 
 won his chief distinction by swimming in the 
 Thames from Chelsea to the City. 
 
 The houses of the great were now thrown wide 
 open to him, and the modest house in Craven 
 Street, where he took up his residence, and which 
 is still marked by a tablet to commemorate the 
 fact as one of the notable reminiscences of Lon- 
 don, was thronged by great scientists to congratu- 
 late him on his triumphs, and to witness at his 
 own hands his scientific experiments. Congratu- 
 latory letters reached him from all parts of Eu- 
 rope. He made the acquaintance and friendship 
 of such men as Priestley, Fothergill, Garrick, 
 Lord Shelburne, Lord Stanhope, Edmund Burke, 
 Adam Smith and David Hume, Dr. Robertson, 
 Lord Karnes and David Hartley, with all of whom 
 he enjoyed delightful intercourse. He witnessed 
 the Coronation of George the Third, and revelled 
 in the meetings of the Royal Society, where his 
 welcome was very warm. Pitt, who had vastly 
 weightier things upon his mind than Franklin's 
 errand — Pitt, who afterwards as Lord Chatham 
 was, as we shall see, one of his staunchest friends 
 and admirers, he found inaccessible. 
 
 At this time Franklin was a most intensely 
 loyal British subject, and gloried in the anticipa- 
 tion of the future greatness and power of the 
 British Empire, of which the Colonies formed no 
 
 62 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 mean part. In this respect, the Colonists whom 
 he represented were all of the same mind. Green, 
 in his '' History of the English People," says of 
 them at this time : ' ' From the thought of separa- 
 tion almost every American turned as yet with 
 horror. The Colonists still looked to England as 
 their home. They prided themselves on their 
 loyalty, and they regarded the difficulties which 
 hindered complete sympathy between the settle- 
 ments and the mother country as obstacles which 
 time and good sense could remove." 
 
 He freely lent the aid of his powerful pen while 
 in England to the maintenance of British inter- 
 ests. In his pamphlet, to which great praise was 
 awarded, on the question whether Canada or the 
 sugar islands of Guadeloupe, both of which had 
 been conquered, should be restored to France in 
 the event of peace, and in which he stoutly main- 
 tained the retention of Canada, he declared that 
 a union of the Colonies to rebel against the mother 
 country was impossible. " But," he added, 
 *' when I say such a union is impossible, I mean 
 without the most grievous tyranny and oppres- 
 sion. People who have property in a country 
 which they may lose, and privileges which they 
 may endanger, are generally disposed to be quiet, 
 and even to bear much rather than to hazard all. 
 While the Government is mild and just, while im- 
 portant civil and religious rights are secure, such 
 subjects will be dutiful and obedient. The waves 
 do not rise but when the winds blow. ^Vliat such 
 an administration as the Duke of Alva's in the 
 
 63 
 
BENJAMIN FBANKLIN 
 
 Netherlands might produce I know not, but this 
 I think I have a right to deem impossible." When 
 Mr. Pratt, afterwards Lord Camden, a stalwart 
 friend of America through all her troubles, said 
 to him, ' ' For all that you Americans say of your 
 loyalty and all that, I know that you will one day 
 throw off your dependence on this country, and 
 notwithstanding your boasted affection for it, you 
 will set up for independence," he answered, 
 '' No such idea was ever entertained by the 
 Americans, nor will any such ever enter their 
 heads unless you grossly abuse them." ** Very 
 true," replied Pratt, " that is one of the main 
 causes I see will happen, and will produce the 
 event." 
 
 But Franklin was more than a staunch loyalist. 
 He was an Imperialist in the most stalwart sense 
 of the word, and on a very broad gauge. His 
 biographer, Parton, truly says : * * It was one of 
 Franklin's most cherished opinions that the great- 
 ness of England and the happiness of America 
 depended chiefly upon their being cordially united. 
 The ' country ' which Franklin loved was not 
 England nor America, but the great and glorious 
 Empire which these two united to form." 
 
 And Franklin himself wrote to Lord Kames on 
 this visit: " No one can more sincerely rejoice 
 than I do on the reduction of Canada, and this is 
 not merely as I am a Colonist but as I am a 
 Briton. I have long been of opinion that the 
 foundations of the future grandeur and stability 
 of the British Empire lie in America ; and though, 
 
 64 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 like other foundations, they are low and little 
 now, they are nevertheless broad and strong 
 enough to support the greatest political structure 
 that human wisdom ever yet erected. I am, there- 
 fore, by no means for restoring Canada. If we 
 keep it, all the country from the St. Lawrence to 
 the Mississippi will in another century be filled 
 with British people. Britain itself will become 
 vastly more populous by the immense increase of 
 its commerce; the Atlantic Sea will be covered 
 with your trading ships, and your naval power 
 thence continually increasing will extend your in- 
 fluence round the whole globe and awe the world. ' ' 
 
 Again he wrote, in 1774 : " It has long appeared 
 to me that the only true British policy was that 
 which aimed at the good of the whole British Em- 
 pire, not that which sought the advantage of one 
 part in the disadvantage of the others ; therefore, 
 all measures of procuring gain to the Mother 
 Country arising from loss to her Colonies, and all 
 of gain to the Colonies arising from or occasion- 
 ing loss to Britain, especially where the gain was 
 small and the loss great. ... I in my own mind 
 condemned as improper, partial, unjust, and mis- 
 chievous, tending to create dissensions, and 
 weaken that Union on which the strength, solidity, 
 and duration of the Empire greatly depended; 
 and I opposed, as far as my little powers went, 
 all proceedings, either here or in America, that in 
 my opinion had such tendency. ' ' 
 
 This first protracted stay in England was evi- 
 dently one of the happiest periods of his long and 
 
 65 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 useful life. For the first time he enjoyed abun- 
 dant leisure, and the opportunity to indulge to the 
 full among congenial and sympathetic friends his 
 joyous social disposition and love of the best com- 
 pany. He made many delightful country visits, 
 and excursions to Scotland, France, and Holland, 
 and greatly enjoyed the recognition he received 
 in the degrees of LL. D. at Edinburgh, and 
 D. C. L. at Oxford. He sought out the humble 
 birthplace of his father at Ecton, and worshipped 
 in the ancient church around which his rude fore- 
 fathers slept. In 1762 he returned to America 
 with regret, apparently almost wishing to come 
 back and spend the rest of his days here. For not 
 long after his return he wrote to Mr. Strahan, 
 one of the friends he left behind him : " No friend 
 can wish me more in England than I do myself. 
 But before I go everything I am concerned in 
 must be so settled here as to make another return 
 to America unnecessary; " and again, '' I own 
 that I sometimes suspect my love to England and 
 my friends there seduces me a little, and makes 
 my own reasons for going over appear very good 
 ones." 
 
 So there was at least a possibility that he might 
 become a resident of England for the rest of his 
 life, and thus the wheels of Time might have been 
 set back awhile, in fixing the date of the final sepa- 
 ration of the American Colonies from Great 
 Britain, which sooner or later was obviously in- 
 evitable. 
 
 But, wholly unexpectedly to himself, Franklin 
 
 66 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 was destined to spend ten years more in England, 
 years equally momentous to himself, to the Col- 
 onies which he represented, and to the Mother 
 Country of which he was so loyal and devoted a 
 son. 
 
 Hardly had he reached Philadelphia on his re- 
 turn from his five years' sojourn here, when there 
 was a new outbreak of the old trouble between the 
 people of the Province and the Penns as Pro- 
 prietaries of Pennsylvania as to their claim to 
 exemption of their property from taxation. 
 Worse still, the ominous news came from London 
 that George Grenville had determined upon the 
 passage of the dreaded Stamp Act, and thereby 
 to impose taxes upon the Colonies by Act of Par- 
 liament, in defiance of what they claimed as their 
 immemorial right and usage to pay only such in- 
 ternal taxes as their own provincial governments 
 should impose. They did not dispute or seek to 
 shirk their obligations to grant aid to the King, 
 and make their just contribution to the common 
 cause, but insisted upon their right to do it in 
 what they claimed to be the only constitutional 
 way, by the vote of their own representatives, and 
 that taxation without representation — ^without 
 their consent — was an injustice to which they 
 would not submit. 
 
 No sooner did these dismal tidings reach Penn- 
 sylvania, than Franklin was again dispatched to 
 London to do the best he i30uld to prevent the dis- 
 astrous measure. And what was now of much less 
 importance, to present to the King the petition 
 
 67 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 of the people of Pennsylvania, that he would take 
 the government of that Province into his own 
 hands, they making such compensation to the 
 Penns as should be just. But of course the ques- 
 tion of the injustice of taxation without repre- 
 sentation and contrary to ancient usage, which 
 affected all the Colonies alike, swallowed up all 
 local issues. Franklin arrived only in time to find 
 that the immediate passage of the odious measure 
 was inevitable. He joined with the agents of the 
 other Colonies in an appeal to Grenville, but all 
 their efforts were fruitless. " We might," said 
 Franklin, '' as well have hindered the sun's set- 
 ting. Less resistance was made to the Act in the 
 House of Commons than to a common turnpike 
 Bill, and the affair passed with so little noise that 
 in town they scarcely knew the nature of what was 
 doing. ' ' 
 
 Having done all that he could to prevent the 
 passage of the Act, Franklin was inclined to coun- 
 sel submission. But public opinion in the Colonies 
 was obstinate, and by unanimous action they re- 
 fused to obey it, or to take the stamped paper on 
 any terms. To the great disgust of his constitu- 
 ents, by whom he was denounced as a traitor, he 
 went so far, at the request of the Government, as 
 to nominate a stamp distributor under the Act for 
 Pennsylvania. But he and all the other officials 
 under the Act were compelled by the anger of the 
 colonists to decline or resign. Agreements were 
 signed everywhere not to buy any British goods 
 imported, and English trade fell off to such a 
 
 68 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 degree that the new Administration under Lord 
 Rockingham, who had opposed the Act, very 
 quickly considered its repeal. 
 
 One of the most celebrated incidents of Frank- 
 lin's career was his examination by a Committee 
 of the House of Commons, which was considering 
 the question of repeal. He was summoned before 
 it to give evidence respecting the state of affairs 
 in America — a subject on which he was better in- 
 formed than any other man in the world. 
 
 Without passion, with perfect coolness and ab- 
 solute knowledge, he demonstrated that the Act 
 was unjust, inexpedient, and impossible of execu- 
 tion, and gave convincing proof that it should be 
 immediately repealed. 
 
 His testimony is one of the most memorable 
 pieces of evidence in the English language, and 
 some of his answers can never be forgotten. Be- 
 ing asked what was the temper of America 
 towards Great Britain before 1763 — (it will be 
 remembered that the Stamp Act was passed in 
 1765)— he said: 
 
 ** The best in the world. They submitted willingly 
 to the Government of the Crown, and paid in their 
 Courts obedience to the Acts of Parliament. They had 
 not only a respect but an affection for Great Britain, 
 for its laws, its customs, and manners, and even a fond- 
 ness for its fashions that greatly increased the commerce. 
 Natives of Britain were always treated with particular 
 regard. To be an Old England Man was of itself a 
 character of some respect, and gave a kind of rank 
 among us. . . . They considered the Parliament as the 
 
 69 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 great bulwark of their liberties and privileges, and al- 
 ways spoke of it with the utmost respect and veneration. 
 Arbitrary Ministers, they thought, might possibly at 
 times attempt to oppress them, but they relied on it 
 that Parliament on application would always give 
 redress. ' ' 
 
 *' Q. Can anything less than a military force carry 
 the Stamp Act into execution? 
 
 ''A. I do not see how a military force can be applied 
 to that purpose. 
 
 '' Q. Why may it not? 
 
 '' A. Suppose a military force sent into America they 
 will find nobody in arms. What are they then to do? 
 They cannot force a man to take stamps who chooses to 
 do without them. They will not find a rebellion: they 
 may indeed make one. 
 
 '^ Q. If the Act is not repealed, what do you think 
 will be the consequences? 
 
 " A. A total loss of the respect and affection the 
 people of America bear to this Country, and of all the 
 commerce that depends on that respect and affection. 
 
 '^ Q. If the Stamp Act should be repealed, and the 
 Crown should make a requisition to the Colonies for a 
 sura of money, would they grant it? 
 
 '* A. I believe they would. 
 
 '' Q. Why do you think so? 
 
 '' A. 1 can speak for the Colony I live in. I had it in 
 instruction from the Assembly to assure the Ministry, 
 that as they had always done, so they should always 
 think it their duty to grant such aids to the Crown as 
 were suitable to their circumstances and abilities, when- 
 ever called upon for that purpose in the usual constitu- 
 tional manner. 
 
 *' Q. Would they do this for a British concern, as 
 
 70 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 suppose a war in some part of Europe that did not 
 affect them? 
 
 '' A. Yes, for anything that concerned the general 
 interest. They consider themselves a part of the whole. 
 
 ** Q. Don't you know that there is in the Pennsyl- 
 vania Charter an express reservation of the right of 
 Parliament to lay taxes there ? 
 
 " A. 1 know there is a clause in the Charter by which 
 the King grants that he will levy no taxes on the in- 
 habitants unless it be with the consent of the Assembly 
 or by Act of Parliament. 
 
 " Q. How then could the Assembly of Pennsylvania 
 assert that laying a tax on them by the Stamp Act was 
 an infringement of their right? 
 
 "A. They understand it thus — By the same Charter 
 and otherwise, they are entitled to all the privileges and 
 liberties of Englishmen. They find in the Great 
 Charters and the Petition and Declaration of Rights 
 that one of the privileges of English subjects is that they 
 are not to be taxed but by their common consent. They 
 have, therefore, relied upon it from the first settlement 
 of the Province that the Parliament never would, nor 
 could, by color of that clause in the Charter, assume a 
 right of taxing them till it had qualified itself by admit- 
 ting representatives from the people to be taxed, who 
 ought to make a part of that common consent." 
 
 So clear, convincing, and irresistible was 
 Franklin's testimony, that the repeal of the Stamp 
 Act followed immediately. His evidence before 
 the Committee closed on the 13th of February. 
 On the 21st, General Conway moved for leave to 
 introduce in the House of Commons a Bill to Re- 
 peal — which was carried. The Bill took its third 
 
 71 .' 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 reading in that House on the 5th of March. It 
 passed the House of Lords on the 17th, and on 
 the 18th of March, only five weeks after Franklin 
 had been heard, the King signed the Bill. 
 
 The debates on that critical occasion, which 
 promised for the moment to reconcile England 
 and her Colonies forever, have been but scantily 
 reported, but Pitt, in support of the repeal, in one 
 of his last speeches as the Great Commoner, is 
 said to have surpassed his own great fame ; and 
 Burke's renown as a Parliamentary orator was 
 established. Macaulay says: '* Two great orators 
 and statesmen belonging to two different genera- 
 tions repeatedly put forth all their powers in de- 
 fence of the Bill (for repeal). The House of 
 Commons heard Pitt for the last time and Burke 
 for the first time, and was in doubt to which of 
 them the palm of eloquence should be assigned. 
 It was indeed a splendid sunset and a splendid 
 dawn, ' ' 
 
 Franklin's own personal way of celebrating the 
 joyous event of the Repeal of the Stamp Act was 
 peculiarly characteristic of that spirit of fun and 
 good humor which pervaded his whole life. He 
 made it the occasion of sending a new gown to 
 his wife. He wrote her : ' ' As the Stamp Act is 
 at length repealed, I am willing you should have 
 a new gown, which you may suppose I did not 
 send sooner, as I knew you would not like to be 
 finer than your neighbours unless in a gown of 
 your own spinning. Had the trade between the 
 two countries totally ceased, it was a comfort to 
 
 72 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 me to recollect, that I had once been clothed from 
 head to foot in woollen and linen of my wife's 
 manufacture, that I never was prouder of any 
 dress in my life, and that she and her daughter 
 might do it again if it was necessary. I told the 
 Parliament, that it was my opinion, before the 
 old clothes of the Americans were worn out, they 
 might have new ones of their own making. I have 
 sent you a fine piece of Pompadour satin, fourteen 
 yards, cost eleven shillings a yard, a silk negligee 
 and petticoat of brocaded lute-string for my dear 
 Sally, with two dozen gloves, four bottles of lav- 
 ender water, and two little reels. The reels are 
 to screw on the edge of the table when she would 
 wind silk or thread." 
 
 The repeal, following so closely as it did on the 
 close of Franklin's examination as its necessary 
 sequence, raised to a very high point his reputa- 
 tion in England, where he already commanded 
 universal respect and esteem, and roused the 
 Colonies to the wildest enthusiasm over his name. 
 His constituents in Philadelphia, quite ashamed of 
 their recent criticism upon him, gave him the 
 whole credit of the great result. 
 
 Everybody on both sides of the water, except 
 the King and the " household troops," as Burke 
 called them, hoped with him that '* that day's 
 danger and honor would have been a bond to 
 hold us all together forever. But alas! that, 
 with other pleasing visions is long since van- 
 ished." 
 
 The attempt to impose taxation by Act of Par- 
 
 73 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 liament on the Colonies was almost immediately 
 renewed, and usliered in that long and unhappy 
 controversy which finally resulted in the accumu- 
 lation of oppressive measures on the one side, and 
 acts of resistance on the other, that brought the 
 Colonists to an appeal to arms in defence of what 
 they deemed to be their rights and liberties. 
 
 We will not undertake to rake over the ashes 
 of the memorable contest, to measure out praise 
 or blame to one side or the other. Historians 
 are now happily agreed that the leaders on both 
 sides in the great struggle were actuated by hon- 
 est intentions and patriotic motives. It was im- 
 possible for them to see in the same light the 
 great questions of right and of policy which di- 
 vided them, and which nothing but the final sepa- 
 ration of the Colonies from the Crown could 
 solve. 
 
 It might be claimed with some show of reason 
 that, at the outset at least, it was not a contest 
 between the English people and the American 
 people, but between the King with a submissive 
 Ministry and Parliament here and his subjects 
 beyond the sea, and that a great part of the Eng- 
 lish people had very little to do with it. If we 
 may accept the statements of your own most ap- 
 proved historians, large portions of the English 
 people were no more represented in the Parlia- 
 ment than the Colonists themselves. 
 
 I may be permitted to quote once more in this 
 connection from Green's " History of the English 
 People." He is speaking of Parliament between 
 
 74 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 1760 and 1767, the very time we have been con- 
 sidering : — 
 
 " Great towns like Manchester and Birmingham re- 
 mained without a member, while members still sat for 
 boroughs which, like Old Sarum, had actually vanished 
 from the face of the earth. , . . Some boroughs were 
 * the King's boroughs,' others obediently returned nom- 
 inees of the Ministry of the day, others were ' close 
 boroughs ' in the hands of jobbers like the Duke of New- 
 castle, who at one time returned a third of all the 
 borough members in the House. . . . Even in the 
 counties the suffrage was ridiculously limited and un- 
 equal. Out of a population of eight millions of English 
 people, only a hundred and sixty thousand were electors 
 at all! " 
 
 What would be thought to-day of great ques- 
 tions of national policy being decided by a House 
 of Commons in which neither Birmingham nor 
 Manchester had a representative, and in the elec- 
 tion of whose members only one person out of 
 fifty of the English people had a vote ! 
 
 At any rate, we may, I think, exchange con- 
 gratulations to-night, that with our great struggle 
 the good people of Birmingham had literally 
 nothing to do, and at least a considerable portion 
 of the people of England hardly more. 
 
 But you get an idea of the vast difficulties with 
 which Franklin, who gallantly remained at his 
 post in London through all those weary years 
 from 1766 to 1775, had to contend, as the repre- 
 sentative of the United Colonies, for, besides 
 
 75 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 Pennsylvania, he was presently made tlie agent of 
 Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Georgia. '' His 
 great powers," says John Fiske, " were earnestly 
 devoted to preventing a separation between Eng- 
 land and America. His methods were eminently 
 conciliatory, but the independence of character 
 with which he told unwelcome truths made him 
 an object of intense dislike to the King and his 
 friends, who regarded him as aiming to under- 
 mine the Royal authority in America." But it is 
 not to be forgotten that Chatham, Burke, Fox, 
 Barre, and Conway, all champions of the cause 
 of the Colonists, were regarded in the same light 
 by the same party. 
 
 And strange to say, down to this time Franklin 
 had no suspicion that the obnoxious measures of 
 the Ministry had their origin or chief backing in 
 the Royal closet. " I hope nothing that has hap- 
 pened or may happen," he wrote in the spring 
 of 1769, '' will diminish in the least our loyalty 
 to our Sovereign, or affection for this nation in 
 general. I can scarcely conceive a King of better 
 dispositions, of more exemplary virtues, or more 
 truly desirous of promoting the welfare of his 
 subjects." '' The body of this people, too, is of 
 a noble and generous nature, loving and honor- 
 ing the spirit of liberty, and hating arbitrary 
 power of all sorts. We have many, very many, 
 friends among them." 
 
 No doubt, however, he did in the end incur the 
 King's hearty displeasure; and a story that has 
 long been current would seem to indicate that the 
 
 76 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 royal mind at last opposed even his views on 
 electricity, of which it might have been supposed 
 that Franklin was himself king. The substance 
 of Franklin's discovery was that sharp points of 
 iron would draw electricity from the clouds, and 
 he recommended lightning rods with such sharp 
 points. The story is that in the heat of his ani- 
 mosity against the Americans and Franklin the 
 King insisted, on political grounds, that on Kew 
 Palace they should have blunt knobs instead of 
 sharp points. The question between sharps and 
 blunts became a Court question, the Courtiers 
 siding with the King, their adversaries with 
 Franklin. The King called upon Sir John Prin- 
 gle, President of the Royal Society, for an opinion 
 on his side in favour of the knobs, but Pringle 
 hinted in reply that the laws of Nature were not 
 changeable at the Royal pleasure. How far the 
 story in detail is true can only now be guessed 
 from a well-known epigram that was actually 
 current : — 
 
 " While you, great George, for safety hunt, 
 And sharp conductors change for blunt, 
 
 The empire's out of joint. 
 Franklin a wiser course pursues, 
 And all your thunder fearless views, 
 
 By keeping to the point. ' ' 
 
 During these ten years in London Franklin 
 kept up a lively fire of pamphlets and communi- 
 cations to the newspapers, advocating with all the 
 resources of his wisdom, wit, and satire the integ- 
 
 77 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 rity of the Empire and the cause of the Colonists. 
 Two of these — ' ' Rules for reducing a great 
 Empire to a small one," and " An Edict of the 
 King of Prussia " — had a tremendous circula- 
 tion, and became, and continued for many years, 
 very famous. He continued his philosophical in- 
 vestigations, and was also the most popular 
 diner-out in London, where the charms of his 
 conversation made him a universal favourite. He 
 maintained his intimate association with the most 
 distinguished men of science and learning, and a 
 most loving and constant correspondence with his 
 wife, daughter, and sister, from whom his pro- 
 tracted separation was to his great and tender 
 heart a source of constant anxiety and privation. 
 But at last, as the prolonged contest waxed 
 hotter and hotter, as the representative of all the 
 Colonies he became the very storm centre round 
 which all the elements of discord and growing 
 hatred gathered in full force, and was often the 
 target for the attacks of both sides. In England 
 the Ministry regarded him as too much of an 
 American, and the most ardent patriots at home 
 as too much of an Englishman. He evidently 
 thought that both sides were in fault. Here he 
 constantly exerted all his great powers to justify 
 his countrymen and uphold their cause. To them 
 by every mail he urged patience and moderation, 
 begging them to give the Ministry no ground 
 against them. As Mr. Parton truly says, '' His 
 entire influence and all the resources of his mind 
 were employed from the beginning of the contro- 
 
 78 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 versy in 1765 to the first conflict in 1775, to the 
 one object of healing the breach and preventing 
 the separation," 
 
 But at such times, when the air is charged with 
 mutual suspicion and hatred, when forebodings 
 of war are agitating the public mind, what Hamlet 
 says is more true than ever: 
 
 ** Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt 
 not escape calumny. ' ' 
 
 The Court party professed to regard him as the 
 embodiment of all the alleged sins and offences 
 which they imputed to the entire body of Colo- 
 nists, and they determined at all hazards to make 
 an end of him. The news was on the way of the 
 famous Boston tea party, in which a body of lead- 
 ing citizens of the New England capital in dis- 
 guise boarded the ships that brought the tea, on 
 which the obnoxious duty had been imposed, and 
 emptied it all into salt water. The whole harbor 
 of Boston became a seething cauldron of East 
 India Company's tea on which no duty had been 
 paid. Passive resistance was at last breaking 
 out into open rebellion. Probably the frenzy of 
 excitement on both sides had never reached such 
 fever heat — and in January, 1774, the storm 
 burst on the head of the devoted Franklin. 
 
 I shall not attempt to describe the scene in the 
 Cockpit at the meeting of the Committee of Lords 
 of the Privy Council, met to pass upon the Peti- 
 tion of the Assembly of Massachusetts Bay 
 
 79 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 for the removal of the Governor and Lieutenant- 
 Governor. Franklin had transmitted to the 
 Speaker of the Assembly, as in duty bound, their 
 letters showing, as he believed, a studied purpose 
 on the part of the colonial Royal officers to bring 
 down more stringent measures upon the Colonists 
 and to abridge their liberties, and he had sent 
 them, as he was expressly authorized to do, for 
 the avowed purpose of mitigating the wrath of 
 the Colonists against the Government at home 
 which, as they believed, had initiated and was 
 solely responsible for those measures. 
 
 The hearing before the Committee of the Privy 
 Council, on the petition of the people of Massa- 
 chusetts to remove these officers because of the 
 letters, was made the occasion of a ferocious at- 
 tack upon Franklin, who had presented the Peti- 
 tion. The Solicitor-General overwhelmed him 
 with vituperation, while the Lords of the Com- 
 mittee applauded with jeers, and cheers, an attack 
 universally condemned ever since. His calm self- 
 command and unruffled dignity, as he stood for 
 an hour to receive the pitiless storm of calumny, 
 in such marked contrast to the conduct of his 
 assailant and his titled applauders, is striking 
 evidence of his conscious innocence. Upon the 
 canvas of history he stands out from that ignoble 
 scene a heroic figure, bearing silent testimony to 
 the cause of the Colonists for whose sake he suf- 
 fered — not a muscle moved, not a heartbeat 
 quickened — and casting into the shade of lasting 
 oblivion all those who joined in the assault upon 
 
 80 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 him. He said to Dr. Priestley next day that ' * he 
 had never before been so sensible of the power 
 of a good conscience ; for that, if he had not con- 
 sidered the thing for which he had been so much 
 insulted as one of the best actions of his life, and 
 what he should certainly do again in the same cir- 
 sumstances, he could not have supported it." An 
 eye-witness who watched him closely says, " He 
 stood conspicuously erect without the smallest 
 movement of any part of his body. The muscles 
 of his face had been previously composed so as 
 to afford a tranquil expression of countenance, 
 and he did not suffer the slightest alteration of 
 it to appear during the continuance of the 
 speech. ' ' 
 
 He has been blamed by several writers of high 
 repute, but on what exact ground is not definitely 
 specified. From whose hands he received the let- 
 ters is not known. He did receive them confiden- 
 tially " from a gentleman of character and dis- 
 tinction," but who he was was a secret which, at 
 any cost to himself, Franklin was bound to keep, 
 and he carried it to the grave with him at the cost 
 of all the dust and obloquy that has been thrown 
 about the matter. Having come honorably into 
 possession of the letters, he could not have with- 
 held the knowledge of them from the leaders of 
 the Colony to whom he was responsible for his 
 conduct, without a breach of trust towards them, 
 and his countrymen, who justly regarded the as- 
 sault upon him as an affront to themselves, ac- 
 cepted his own view and statement of the matter. 
 
 81 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 There is no doubt that the powerful invectives 
 of Wedderburn, which were extremely eloquent 
 and ingenious, and became the talk of the town, 
 did seriously impair the prestige of Franklin dur- 
 ing the rest of his stay in London. On the follow- 
 ing day he was summarily dismissed from his 
 office of Deputy Postmaster-General. But all this 
 did not deprive him of the respect and esteem of 
 the distinguished friends whom his character and 
 commanding abilities had gathered about him. 
 
 * ' I do not find, ' ' he wrote a fortnight after the 
 assault, " that I have lost a single friend on the 
 occasion. All have visited me repeatedly with 
 affectionate assurances of their unaltered respect 
 and affection, and many of distinction, with whom 
 I had before but slight acquaintance. ' ' 
 
 In demonstration of his own fidelity to Frank- 
 lin, Lord Chatham not long afterwards, on the 
 occasion of a great debate on American affairs 
 in the House of Lords, invited him to attend in 
 the House, being sure that his presence in that 
 day's debate would be of more service to America 
 than his own, and later, in reply to a fling of Lord 
 Sandwich at Franklin, he took occasion to declare 
 " that if he were the first Minister of this country, 
 and had the care of settling this momentous busi- 
 ness, he should not be ashamed of publicly calling 
 to his assistance a person so perfectly acquainted 
 with the whole of American affairs as the gentle- 
 man alluded to, and so injuriously reflected on: 
 one, whom all Europe held in high estimation for 
 his knowledge and wisdom, and ranked with our 
 
 82 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 Boyles and Newtons; who was an honor not to 
 the English nation only, but to human nature. ' ' 
 
 Franklin continued his efforts at conciliation as 
 long as he remained in London. He actually ad- 
 vised Massachusetts to pay for the tea which had 
 been destroyed, for which again he was rudely 
 blamed by the leaders in Boston. He even offered, 
 without orders to do so, at his own risk, and with- 
 out knowing whether his action would be sustained 
 at home, to pay the whole damage of destroying 
 the tea in Boston, provided the Acts against that 
 Province were repealed, and to his last hour in 
 London he labored without ceasing to heal the 
 growing breach. Hostile critics have insinuated 
 doubts of his sincerity in all his efforts for peace 
 and union, but the evidence of his fidelity is over- 
 whelming. 
 
 Speaking of Franklin in London from 1764 to 
 1774, The EncyclopcBdia Britannica says, '' He 
 remitted no effort to find some middle ground of 
 conciliation. . . . With a social influence never 
 possessed probably by any other American rep- 
 resentative at the English Court he would doubt- 
 less have prevented the final alienation of the 
 Colonies, if such a result under the circumstances 
 had been possible. But it was not. ' ' 
 
 Let me cite another witness out of a host that 
 might be called: the Annual Register for 1790 
 announcing Franklin's death says ^' Previous to 
 this period (the affair at the Cockpit) it is a testi- 
 mony to truth and bare justice to his memory to 
 observe that he used his utmost endeavor to 
 
 83 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 prevent a breach between Great Britain and 
 America. ' ' 
 
 Dr. Priestley, who spent with him the whole of 
 his last day in England, says of the conversation, 
 * ' The unity of the British Empire in all its parts 
 was a favorite idea of his. He used to compare 
 it to a beautiful china vase, which if ever broken 
 could never be put together again, and so great 
 an admirer was he of the British Constitution that 
 he said he saw no inconvenience from its being 
 extended over a great part of the globe." 
 
 Professor Tyler, in his Literary History of the 
 American Revolution, describes Franklin at the 
 date of the Battle of Lexington as " a man who 
 having been resident in England during the pre- 
 vious ten years had there put all his genius, all 
 his energy of heart and will, all his tact and 
 shrewdness, all his powers of fascination, into the 
 effort to keep the peace between these two kindred 
 peoples, to save from disruption their glorious 
 and already planetary empire, and especially to 
 avert the very appeal to force that had at last 
 been made." 
 
 But Franklin's efforts were of no avail. His 
 mission of mediation and conciliation had failed, 
 his dream of an imperial and perpetual union of 
 England and the Colonies, as an Empire, one and 
 inseparable, had vanished. The measures taken 
 on both sides rendered any reconciliation impos- 
 sible, and in March, 1775, he sailed for home, to 
 throw in his lot with his own countrymen — ar- 
 riving at Philadelphia two weeks after they had 
 
 84 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 drawn the sword and thrown away the scabbard, 
 and the Battle of Lexington had begun the actual 
 "War of Independence. 
 
 I have now brought Franklin to the great part- 
 ing of the ways, to the point where he ceased to 
 be a British subject and became an American 
 citizen, bound now to secure and maintain the 
 cause of the Colonies with all his might, and as 
 loyally as he had thus far sought to reconcile the 
 Colonies and the Mother Country, 
 
 I may not on this occasion pursue further the 
 narrative of his life, except to indicate how clearly 
 it displayed his astounding abilities and capacity 
 for public service, his enlightened patriotism and 
 his rare devotion to duty. No sooner had he ar- 
 rived in Philadelphia after his ten years' absence 
 than his fellow citizens deeming him more than 
 ever the indispensable man, made him a member 
 of the Continental Congress, where he was one of 
 the Committee of five appointed by the Congress 
 to prepare the famous Declaration of Independ- 
 ence, the other four members being Jefferson, 
 John Adams, Sherman, and Livingston. The 
 declaration drawn by Jefferson was only slightly 
 amended by Franklin, who signed it with the other 
 members of Congress. It will presently be seen 
 that eleven years afterwards he also signed the 
 Constitution of the United States, which he had a 
 hand in making. To have signed both of these 
 historical instruments is equivalent in American 
 history to the highest patent of nobility, only five 
 others sharing the honor with Franklin. 
 
 85 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 But, in spite of the Declaration of Independence, 
 the cause of the Colonists was in danger of be- 
 coming hardly better than hopeless unless they 
 could secure foreign aid and alliances — and, who 
 again but Franklin, the printer's apprentice, the 
 veteran diplomatist, the scientist of world-wide 
 fame, the accomplished linguist, the one man 
 of letters whose works had been translated into 
 many languages, and the most experienced man of 
 affairs on the Continent, could be chosen for that 
 arduous and delicate service? He was almost im- 
 mediately dispatched to Paris for that purpose. 
 Although he had now passed his seventieth year, 
 and was already beginning to feel the infirmities 
 of age, he consented to serve, and there for nine 
 years more of exile he discharged his diplomatic 
 duties with such wisdom, energy, pertinacity, and 
 tact, and such marvellous shrewdness that the 
 much needed supplies of money and military 
 stores were from time to time obtained and the 
 Colonists enabled to maintain their footing in the 
 field. After the Battle of Saratoga, which has 
 been justly described as one of the decisive battles 
 of history, the Treaties of Commerce and Alliance 
 were signed which powerfully assisted the Colo- 
 nists to make good their Declaration. 
 
 This brilliant achievement was chiefly due to 
 the skill and sagacity of Franklin, and it was 
 largely aided by his marvellous personal popular- 
 ity among all classes of the French people. His 
 arrival in Paris was the signal for a tremendous 
 outburst of popular enthusiasm, which met with 
 
 86 
 
BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 
 
 a hearty response througliout Europe, and it ex- 
 tended at once to tlie fashionable world and to the 
 philosophers and scholars as well as to the popu- 
 lace. 
 
 '' His virtues and renown," says Lacretelle, 
 *' negotiated for him; and before the second year 
 of his mission had expired no one conceived it 
 possible to refuse fleets and armies to the country- 
 men of Franklin," 
 
 The German, Schlosser, says : — 
 
 ** Franklin's appearance in the Paris Salons, even 
 before he began to negotiate was an event of great im- 
 portance to the whole of Europe. Paris at that time set 
 the fashion for the civilized world, and the admiration 
 qf Franklin carried to a degree approaching folly pro- 
 duced a remarkable effect on the fashionable circles of 
 Paris. His dress, the simplicity of his external appear- 
 ance, the friendly meekness of the old man, and the ap- 
 parent humility of the Quaker procured for freedom a 
 mass of votaries among the court circles ..." 
 
 Pictures of him appeared in every window, and 
 portraits, busts, medallions, medals, bearing his 
 familiar head were in every house and every hand. 
 
 A French writer of the day, in his description 
 of Franklin at the Court, says : ' ' Franklin ap- 
 peared at Court in the dress of an American cul- 
 tivator. His straight unpowdered hair, his round 
 hat, his brown coat formed a contrast with the 
 laced and embroidered coats, and the powdered 
 and perfumed heads of the courtiers of Ver- 
 
 87 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 sailles. This novelty turned the enthusiastic 
 heads of the French women. Elegant entertain- 
 ments were given to Dr. Franklin, who to the 
 reputation of a philosopher added the patriotic 
 virtues which had invested him with the noble 
 character of an Apostle of Liberty. I was present 
 at one of these entertainments when the most 
 beautiful woman of three hundred was selected 
 to place a crown of laurels upon the white head 
 of the American philosopher, and two kisses upon 
 his cheeks." 
 
 An American Ambassador of to-day still aif ects 
 similar simplicity of dress by Act of Congress, 
 but he would hardly know how to take such a 
 reception as was thus accorded to the venerable 
 philosopher. 
 
 But all this incense did not turn his head, which 
 he kept level for the important affairs that he had 
 in hand. 
 
 The amount and variety of business which fell 
 upon him would have taxed the energies and 
 capacity of the strongest man in middle life, and 
 his health was already beginning to decline. He 
 was obliged to act not only as Ambassador, but in 
 lieu of a Board of War, Board of Treasury, Prize 
 Court, Commissary of Prisoners, Consul, and 
 dealer in cargoes which came from America. 
 When Peace happily returned he took an active 
 and important part in negotiating the final Treaty 
 with Great Britain, and no one in the world re- 
 joiced more heartily than he in the restoration 
 of friendly relations between Great Britain and 
 
BENJAMIN FKANKLIN 
 
 the United States. It would be impossible to de- 
 scribe in anything short of a volume the activity, 
 the brilliancy, and the success of his long years in 
 Paris. 
 
 It was exceedingly fortunate for both countries 
 at this time, that in spite of the intervening con- 
 test of so many years, Franklin in his important 
 post of Ambassador in Paris still retained the 
 esteem and friendship of many distinguished 
 Englishmen whose acquaintance he had made dur- 
 ing his fifteen years' residence in London. To 
 two of these — Lord Shelburne and David Hart- 
 ley — are posterity indebted for much of the wis- 
 dom, moderation and statesmanship on the part 
 of Great Britain which contributed so largely to 
 the Treaty of Peace. The first overtures came 
 from Franklin to Lord Shelburne, afterwards the 
 first Marquis of Lansdowne, Minister of the Col- 
 onies, who responded by sending a confidential 
 mission to Franklin, with a letter which concluded, 
 *' I wish to retain the same simplicity and good 
 faith which subsisted between us in transactions 
 of less importance." 
 
 Presently Mr. Fox, as Minister of Foreign 
 Aifairs, sent Thomas Grenville over to represent 
 him in the negotiations. Great Britain then had 
 no diplomatic representative at the French Court, 
 and so it came about, as Bancroft says, that 
 Franklin, the Deputy Postmaster-General, who 
 had been dismissed in disgrace in 1774, now as the 
 envoy of the rebel Colonies at the request of Great 
 Britain introduced the son of the author of the 
 
 89 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 Stamp Act to the representative of the Bourbon 
 King. 
 
 The final negotiations of the Treaty on the part 
 of England were entrusted to Franklin's lifelong 
 friend, Mr, David Hartley, in whose apartments 
 in the Hotel de York the definitive Treaty was 
 signed. The credit and honor of the negotiation 
 on the American side must be divided between 
 Franklin, Jay, and Adams, to whom, for this great 
 service, their countrymen owe an incalculable debt 
 of gratitude. 
 
 At the signing of one of the Treaties in Paris 
 Franklin is said to have worn the same old suit of 
 spotted Manchester velvet which he had last worn 
 on the fatal day at the Cockpit years before, when 
 Wedderburn attacked him, showing how deeply, 
 on that occasion, the iron had entered into his 
 soul. 
 
 In view of his fifteen years ' service in England 
 and ten in France, of the immense obstacles and 
 difficulties which he had to overcome, of the art 
 and wisdom which he displayed and the incalcul- 
 able value to the country of the Treaties which he 
 negotiated, he still stands as by far the greatest 
 of American diplomatists. 
 
 In his eightieth year, quite worn out by his 
 labors and infirmities, he returned to his '' dear 
 Philadelphia " to spend the brief remnant of his 
 days, as he hoped, in rest and retirement, but that 
 was not to be. He was immediately elected Presi- 
 dent of Pennsylvania — an office of great respon- 
 sibility, in which he continued for three years, 
 
 90 
 
BENJAMIN . FEANKLIN 
 
 ** I had not firmness enough," he said, " to resist the 
 unanimous desire of my country folks; and I find my- 
 self harnessed again in their service for another year. 
 They engrossed the prime of my life. They have eaten 
 ray flesh, and seem resolved now to pick my bones. ' ' 
 
 In 1787, at the age of 81, he was a member of 
 that remarkable body of men who met to frame 
 the Constitution of the United States, and it was 
 most fortunate for the nation that he was so. In 
 spite of his great age, he attended all the sessions 
 five hours a day for four months, and took an 
 active part in the discussions and committees. He 
 it was who proposed the amendment by means of 
 which the States came together to form a more 
 perfect union. The small States had been con- 
 tending most vehemently and persistently for ab- 
 solute and entire equality. The large States were 
 equally tenacious for a proportional representa- 
 tion. Agreement seemed impossible until Frank- 
 lin in Committee proposed the simple compromise, 
 which was adopted, and on which the Constitution 
 has thus far safely rested, that in the Senate all 
 States, great and small, should have an equal vote, 
 but in the House of Eepresentatives each State 
 should have a representation proportioned to its 
 population, and that all Bills to raise or expend 
 money must originate there. 
 
 He gave close attention to all the great questions 
 discussed in the Convention, which sat in secrei 
 session. As he was too infirm to stand and speak 
 he was permitted to write out what he had to say 
 
 91 
 
BENJAMIN FEANKLIN 
 
 to be read for him by a fellow member, and so it 
 came about that liis are the only speeches reported 
 entire, and they are very brief and pithy. On one 
 occasion, when there seemed no prospect of any 
 further progress because of hopeless dissensions, 
 he moved that prayer be resorted to at each day's 
 opening of the Convention as the only remedy. 
 
 " I have lived, Sir, a long time," he said, " and the 
 longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this 
 truth : that God governs in the affairs of men. And if 
 a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, 
 is it probable that an Empire can rise without His aid? 
 We have been assured. Sir, in the sacred writings that 
 ' except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain 
 that build it. ' I firmly believe this ; and I also believe, 
 that without His concurring aid we shall succeed in this 
 political building no better than the building of Babel. ' ' 
 
 When the great Compact of Concessions and 
 Compromises was finished it probably suited no 
 member exactly, so much had each been obliged 
 to yield of his own cherished opinions in the cause 
 of harmony. But Franklin threw the whole 
 weight of his influence in favor of an uncondi- 
 tional signature of the great instrument by all the 
 delegates. 
 
 " I consent, Sir, to this Constitution," he said, " be- 
 cause I expect no better, and because I am not sure that 
 it is not the best. The opinions I have had of its errors 
 I sacrifice to the public good. I have never whispered 
 a syllable of them abroad. Within these walls they were 
 born and here they shall die." 
 
 92 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 He carried his point and all the members signed. 
 
 It can hardly be doubted that it was the com- 
 bined personal weight and influence of "Washing- 
 ton and Franklin that prevailed with the people 
 in all the thirteen States in favor of the adoption 
 of the famous Constitution, which they had done 
 so much to devise and perfect. 
 
 He lived to see Washington, who had been his 
 close friend and fellow laborer since the days of 
 the Braddock disaster, elected unanimously the 
 first President of the United States, and to see 
 the new Nation, which he had been so potent to 
 create, fairly launched upon its great career. He 
 lived long enough to see the youthful Hamilton at 
 the age of thirty-two installed as Secretary of the 
 Treasury, and to read the first report of that mar- 
 vellous genius on the Public Credit of the newborn 
 Nation. His last public act only twenty-four 
 days before his death, was a powerful appeal for 
 the abolition of slavery, full of his old wisdom, 
 wit, and satire, and of the spirit which animated 
 the sublime proclamation of Lincoln three quar- 
 ters of a century later. And then at last, utterly 
 worn out by his long years of public service, but 
 rejoicing in their grand result, he " wrapped the 
 drapery of his couch about him and lay down to 
 pleasant dreams." 
 
 His grateful country honors his memory and 
 cherishes his evergrowing fame as one of its 
 noblest treasures, and transmits from generation 
 to generation the story of his matchless services. 
 His autobiography, written near the end of his 
 
 93 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 wonderful career, is valued by all readers of the 
 English language as one of the most fascinating 
 contributions to its literature. And the lessons 
 of honesty, temperance, thrift, industry, and 
 economy, which he inculcated and practised with 
 such brilliant success in his own person, have been 
 of priceless value to his countrymen, and con- 
 tributed very largely to their social, material, and 
 intellectual well-being. So that, taking him for all 
 in all, by general consent they class him with 
 Washington and Hamilton and Lincoln in the list 
 of illustrious Americans. 
 
 94 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 Inaugural address March 19th, 1904, before the Associated Societies 
 of the University of Edinburgh.. 
 
 REVOLUTIONARY periods produce, if they 
 do not create, men of genius whom the ex- 
 igencies of the times demand. Whether they are 
 bred out of the conditions which create the Revo- 
 lution, or always exist in every community, wait- 
 ing for the supreme summons to call them forth, 
 seems little to the purpose to inquire. The ap- 
 pointed hour strikes and the man appears. 
 
 Napoleon, the most consummate individual 
 force in modern history, evolved out of years of 
 terror and anarchy to rescue a great nation from 
 chaos, will occur to every one as the most striking 
 example. Lincoln, of happier destiny, rising 
 above the bloody carnage of civil war to save his 
 divided Country, by striking the shackles from 
 four millions of slaves, and so converting the 
 doubtful war for Empire into a sublime and tri- 
 umphant contest for Freedom, seems to have 
 been providentially created for that awful crisis. 
 Going back to the very beginning of our young 
 Republic when, after all hope of conciliation with 
 the Mother Country was abandoned, the Con- 
 tinental Congress appointed Washington as the 
 Commander-in-Chief of the American Army, to 
 
 97 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 withstand the overwhehning power of the mighti- 
 est of nations, and by his matchless patience, skill, 
 and valor, to achieve the Independence of the 
 Colonies, they appear to have found and selected 
 the one man in all 'history best qualified for that 
 most critical task. 
 
 In the subsequent making of the new nation, 
 which the success of Washington and his com- 
 panions-in-arms at last rendered possible, there 
 appeared a considerable body of statesmen, 
 trained in political discussion, tried by seven 
 years of war, aroused by the four years of an- 
 archy that succeeded, whose combined wisdom 
 and foresight framed the Constitution of the 
 United States, and set in motion the Government 
 which it called into being, in a way that to-day 
 challenges the admiration and approval of all 
 thinking men. Foremost among these in intellec- 
 tual brilliancy, individual force, constructive 
 capacity, and personal influence was Alexander 
 Hamilton, to whose character and achievements 
 I would briefly invite your attention. 
 
 Just a hundred years ago, in the full career 
 and triumph of vigorous middle life, he was wan- 
 tonly slain in a duel that was forced upon him, 
 and which he accepted in the spirit of false chiv- 
 alry that then prevailed; but the work of his 
 hands and his brain has all the time been growing 
 and his fame has steadily advanced, until to-day 
 he stands, as I think, next to Washington and 
 Franklin among the celebrated Founders of the 
 American Republic. At last even fiction has been 
 
 98 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 busy with his name, as if by a sort of mystical 
 birth a miraculous genius had been created to be 
 a conqueror among the men of his time. But 
 truth is stranger than fiction, and the plain facts 
 of his life constitute a romance almost as thrill- 
 ing and fascinating as the pen of the novelist has 
 ever painted. 
 
 I shall not attempt a biography of this extraor- 
 dinary man — only a brief series of biographs, 
 rapidly shifting, within the limits of the pre- 
 scribed hour. Nor shall I try to solve the myste- 
 rious problem of his birth and pedigree. We 
 know that he was born in the little West India 
 island of Nevis, and that his father was a Scotch 
 merchant who soon fell into bankruptcy, and had 
 little part in his training. His mother was a 
 brilliant Creole lady of Huguenot descent, noted 
 for her beauty and wit, who died in his early 
 childhood. Whatever their own misfortunes, 
 their union was blest by the birth of this son, 
 whose nature combined the national characteris- 
 tics of both most felicitously blended — a keen 
 and powerful intellect, of marvellous precocity, 
 a tropical and fiery energy which sustained a 
 soaring ambition, and an endless and untiring 
 capacity for labor. 
 
 His early training and education were most 
 accidental and desultory, and at the age of twelve 
 he found himself working for his daily bread as 
 clerk in a local counting house. But his talents 
 were not to be thus hidden under a bushel. They 
 were discovered and known to a few friends of 
 
 99 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 his family, who provided the means for sending 
 him to New York to be educated in a way worthy 
 of his high promise — and so he was rescued from 
 the threatened doom of obscurity in a remote 
 corner of the world, and transferred to what was 
 soon to be the theatre of great events, a fit arena 
 for the exercise of his marvellous faculties. 
 
 At King's College, known to-day as Columbia 
 University, he more than made up for all past 
 deficiencies by intense application and prodigious 
 labor, and, at the same time, he studied the 
 course of passing events, quite as ardently as the 
 prescribed curriculum. It was a day of stirring 
 action; the prelude of a historic political drama. 
 The quarrel between the American Colonies and 
 the Mother Country was reaching its crisis. The 
 destruction of the taxed tea in Boston Harbor 
 had been quickly followed by the Act of Parlia- 
 ment closing the Port of Boston, and the other 
 punitive measures designed to bring to terms 
 the rebellious State of Massachusetts. These 
 measures had the directly contrary effect, to 
 rouse and unite all the Colonies in a determined 
 rally to the defence of their distressed brethren 
 in Boston. New York alone held back; her as- 
 sembly controlled by the Tories and by the home 
 Government, declined to send delegates to the first 
 Continental Congress, and the patriots, as we now 
 justly call them, convened a great meeting in the 
 fields near the City to give voice to the popular 
 sentiments. It was the first opportunity for 
 Hamilton, a stripling in the middle of his eight- 
 
 100 
 
ALEXANDEE HAMILTON 
 
 eenth year, and lie seized it with startling avidity. 
 A handsome youth of comely figure and of clas- 
 sical countenance, intensely absorbed in the ques- 
 tion of the hour, he listened in the crowd with 
 breathless attention, and as the meeting drew 
 towards its close, leaving untouched the thoughts 
 that were burning within him for utterance, he 
 mounted the platform amid the inquiring glances 
 of its occupants, who wondered who this bold 
 young stranger might be. He proceeded at first 
 with faltering voice, but with ever growing cour- 
 age and ardor to address the excited audience, 
 who soon recognized him with shouts as " the 
 Collegian ! the Collegian! " and listened with 
 constantly increasing attention and delight to his 
 bold and eloquent exposition of the rights and 
 grievances of the Colonies, of which he had made 
 a special study. When that meeting adjourned, 
 the young West Indian, utterly obscure and un- 
 known before, was head and shoulders above his 
 fellows, already famous, and marked as a future 
 leader of the Colonial Cause. 
 
 From this time he lost no opportunity to hold 
 and increase the advantage he had gained, and 
 to impress himself upon the anxious and inter- 
 ested community. In the following year he wrote 
 and published anonymously two political tracts: 
 ** A full Vindication of the Congress " and '' The 
 Farmer Refuted," dealing with the great ques- 
 tions of the day, and in reply to a distinguished 
 Tory pamphleteer, to whom he administered tell- 
 ing blows and a signal defeat. His style was so 
 
 101 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 clear and forcible, his grasp of the principles in- 
 volved so comprehensive, and his modes of 
 thought so mature, that the pamphlets were at- 
 tributed to various members of the Colonial 
 party, most eminent for wisdom, experience and 
 commanding authority. When it came out that 
 they were really the work of young Hamilton who 
 had so recently made the famous speech at the 
 meeting in the fields, the impression of that first 
 l^erformance was greatly strengthened, and men's 
 minds turned to him as a leader already. These 
 papers showed much knowledge of history and 
 of the true principles of Colonial Government, 
 and are worth reading to-day by the students of 
 political science. 
 
 The actual outbreak of hostilities in 1775 found 
 him already a devoted student of the military art, 
 and the Captain of an Artillery Company, which 
 he drilled with such success as soon to attract the 
 attention of leading generals to his capacity in 
 this new direction. Before long he came within 
 the observation of Washington himself, who made 
 him one of his own Aides-de-Camp, his Private 
 Secretary, and a member of his military family, 
 and so for the four years from March, 1777, to 
 February, 1781, which covered a very decisive 
 period of our great struggle, he was in daily and 
 hourly contact with Washington as the most 
 trusted member of his staff. 
 
 I know of nothing more ennobling, more in- 
 spiring, more precious for an ambitious and as- 
 piring youth, in the formative and still plastic 
 
 102 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 period of life from twenty to twenty-four, than 
 such constant and intimate personal association 
 with a truly great man ; and when the young man 
 was the ablest of his time, and his master the 
 greatest man of the age, perhaps of many ages, 
 the conjunction was supremely fortunate, and 
 here Hamilton acquired a training, discipline, 
 and education, such as no University could ever 
 give. He was in close touch with every important 
 event of the period. He enjoyed the entire con- 
 fidence and shared in large measure the designs, 
 anxieties, and hopes of his great master, and 
 especially his broad, comprehensive, and far-see- 
 ing view of the future of the Colonies in the 
 event of success. 
 
 We may not linger on his military record, which 
 was highly creditable. One incident of it cannot 
 be omitted. He was on the spot at the time of 
 Arnold's treasonable attempt to surrender West 
 Point, and took part in the hopeless pursuit. He 
 was brought into close contact with that accom- 
 plished soldier John Andre, the unfortunate vic- 
 tim of Arnold's perfidy, and exhibited the most 
 touching and tender sympathy with his unhappy 
 fate, laboring in vain to the last moment to miti- 
 gate the dread severity of his sentence. At the 
 time of his death Hamilton wrote of him: 
 " Among the extraordinary circumstances that 
 attended him, in the midst of his enemies, he died 
 universally esteemed and universally regretted," 
 a sentiment echoed by many of Hamilton's coun- 
 trymen to-day at the sight of his tomb in West- 
 
 103 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 minster Abbey, where lie sleeps among brave and 
 great Englishmen. His latest biographer well 
 says : ' ' A sadder tragedy was never enacted, but 
 it was inevitable, and no reproach rests upon any 
 person concerned except Arnold." Andre dis- 
 played the truly chivalric spirit of self-sacrifice 
 in the message .that he sent in his last hours 
 through Hamilton, that even in the presence of 
 death, he could not bear the thought, that his be- 
 loved Commander-in-Chief, Sir Henry Clinton, 
 to whom he was bound by every obligation and 
 tie of affection, should reproach himself, or that 
 others should reproach him on the supposition of 
 his having conceived himself obliged by Clinton's 
 instructions to run the fatal risk he did. 
 
 Hamilton's close connection with Washington 
 came to an abrupt and untimely end. Like his 
 great chief he was a man of towering passion, 
 generally held under strict control, but on one 
 unhappy occasion the sorely tried commander ad- 
 ministered a sharp reproof for some real or sup- 
 posed delinquency, which the inflammable temper 
 of the subordinate resented, and on the spot he 
 resigned his appointment, declining the courteous 
 overtures of Washington to re-enter his personal 
 service. But he continued in the army and served 
 with distinction to the end of the war, conducting 
 with great gallantry and success one of the prin- 
 cipal assaults at Yorktown, which won him con- 
 spicuous honor. Nothing shows more grandly 
 the superior magnanimity of Washington than his 
 treatment of Hamilton after the ill-judged con- 
 
 104 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 duct of the latter at the time of their quarrel. 
 He had thoroughly studied the masterly character 
 and great qualities of the young man, who was 
 less than half his own age at the time, and had 
 learned to rely upon him with absolute trust, 
 which he continued ever afterwards to do, look- 
 ing always to him more than to any other for 
 political counsel and support, in all the great 
 duties and responsibilities which were heaped 
 upon him. 
 
 And now the war which had lasted for seven 
 years was over. The Independence of the United 
 States was achieved. But never was a great 
 nation, with boundless resources and possibilities 
 of wealth and power, in such a hopeless and help- 
 less condition — and all for the want of a strong 
 and stable Government, fit to command obedience 
 at home and confidence and respect abroad. The 
 loose-jointed and inefficient Confederation of the 
 States, which had held together under the pres- 
 sure of war, and had managed to conduct it to 
 a triumphant issue, was found when peace re- 
 turned to be little better than no Government at 
 all. It was represented by a Congress of dele- 
 gates without definite powers, without an Execu- 
 tive, without a Judiciary, and without authority 
 to collect a dollar of taxes or raise a single sol- 
 dier. It could only make requests of the States, 
 each one of which might at its pleasure or con- 
 venience disregard the- demands of their common 
 agent. 
 
 For the five years that preceded the adoption 
 
 105 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 of the Federal Constitution the whole country was 
 drifting surely and swiftly towards anarchy. The 
 thirteen States freed from foreign dominion 
 claimed, and began to exercise, each an inde- 
 pendent Sovereignty, levying duties against each 
 other and in many ways interfering with each 
 other's trade. European nations finding that 
 Congress had no power to protect American 
 trade, proceeded to impose fatal restrictions upon 
 it. They also refused to enter into treaties with 
 the United States because they could not tell 
 whether they were dealing with thirteen nations 
 or with one. This only was sure, that Congress 
 could carry no treaty into effect. Commerce was 
 completely paralyzed. Paper money had done its 
 worst and most perfect work by driving specie 
 out of the country, and then had itself become 
 worthless. The people, impoverished by long 
 years of war, were subjected to cruel sufferings, 
 and were taking the law into their own hands, 
 closing the courts by mob violence, and at times 
 defying all constituted authority. American 
 ships were being burned by Barbary pirates, and 
 their crews sold into slavery, for the want of a 
 Government that commanded respect on the high 
 seas. 
 
 " It is clear to me as A, B, C,*' said Washing- 
 ton, who, from his retirement at Mount Vernon, 
 watched the course of affairs with the utmost 
 anxiety, ** that an extension of Federal Powers 
 would make us one of the most happy, wealthy, 
 respectable, and powerful nations that ever in- 
 
 106 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 habited the terrestrial globe. Without them we 
 shall soon be everything that is the direct reverse. 
 I predict the worst consequences from a half- 
 starved, limping Government, always moving 
 upon crutches and tottering at every step." And 
 as yet the States and State Governments, jealous 
 of each other and of any central authority, hesi- 
 tated and refused to confer any adequate power 
 upon Congress, which remained without the 
 means of paying even the interest on the loans 
 due to its generous allies, and bankruptcy, public 
 and private, threatened to fall like a blight on the 
 whole land. The national resources were ample, 
 but there was no power to call them into action, 
 and American credit was dead. 
 
 Meanwhile Hamilton had married the daughter 
 of General Schuyler, of New York, and had vastly 
 bettered his position by this alliance with one of 
 the oldest and most distinguished families of the 
 country. He had studied law, and had been called 
 to the Bar, always in America the recognized 
 nursery of Statesmen. With his known abilities, 
 and aided by the personal distinction he had al- 
 ready acquired, he was making rapid advance- 
 ment in his chosen profession and in civil life, 
 where his courage was as conspicuous as it had 
 been in the field. A signal instance of this oc- 
 curred in his early professional career. The leg- 
 islature had passed some severe laws against 
 those who had remained loyal to the British 
 Crown, among others a law, giving a right of 
 action to those whose property, abandoned by its 
 
 107 
 
AI.EXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 owners, had been in the occupation of loyalists 
 during the war, under the authority of the British 
 Commander. A great part of the city of New York 
 had been so occupied for many years. Under this 
 statute suit was brought by a widow, who had been 
 ruined by the war, against a rich merchant who 
 had occupied her house during British domina- 
 tion, and Hamilton, amidst the most tumultuoue 
 clamor for the widow's cause, took a brief for 
 the defence, and threw himself into it with all 
 the ardor and ability at his command. He placed 
 his case on the broad ground of public law and 
 the faith of Treaties, and fairly persuaded the 
 conscience of the Court, against the tremendous 
 weight of popular pressure, to set the Act aside. 
 In spite of the temporary odium which this manly 
 act brought upon him, his forensic triumph placed 
 him in the front rank of the profession — and 
 there he remained to the end of his life. 
 
 But no other interests could keep his active and 
 patriotic mind from political thought, and from 
 the day of his first association with Washington 
 they had both been of but one opinion, that noth- 
 ing but a powerful Federal Government, with all 
 the sanction of National Sovereignty, could save 
 the afflicted people from the fearful dangers that 
 menaced them. He lost no chance by voice, pen 
 or personal influence to inculcate this fundamental 
 truth, and many a fierce battle he fought in de- 
 fence of it. 
 
 At last his great opportunity came, in 1786, 
 when Virginia called a Conference of her sister 
 
 108 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 States to meet at Annapolis to consider the com- 
 mercial situation. Only five of the thirteen States 
 responded, but Hamilton with a single colleague 
 was there from New York, and, although the im- 
 mediate object of the Conference failed, the real 
 business done by this little band of delegates was 
 to issue an address written by Hamilton, and sent 
 to all the States, strongly setting forth the exist- 
 ing mischiefs and the only remedy. It urged that 
 Commissioners be appointed by all the States to 
 meet in Convention at Philadelphia in May, 1787, 
 '* to devise such further provisions as shall ap- 
 pear to them necessary, to render the Constitution 
 of the Federal Government adequate to the exi- 
 gencies of the Union." 
 
 Thus this young and untried Statesman, in his 
 thirtieth year, was foremost in the propitious 
 movement for assembling that remarkable body 
 of men, who met at Philadelphia to rescue their 
 country from the terrible and almost hopeless 
 evils by which it was encompassed, and who ac- 
 complished this great result by framing and 
 adopting the Constitution of the United States. 
 It has been well described as '' one of the most 
 memorable assemblies the world has ever seen," 
 and of its work Mr. Gladstone, a not too friendly 
 critic, has said that '* as the British Constitution 
 is the most subtle organism which has proceeded 
 from progressive history, so the American Con- 
 stitution is the most wonderful work ever struck 
 off at a given time by the brain and purpose of 
 man." 
 
 109 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 The States responded to the call with varying 
 degrees of alacrity. Virginia led the way by ap- 
 pointing delegates with "Washington at their head, 
 which in itself went far to secure the success of 
 the movement. After a severe struggle, which 
 was carried in favor of the Convention by his 
 own overwhelming energy and persuasive power, 
 Hamilton was returned by the reluctant State of 
 New York. But he was handicapped by two col- 
 leagues who were hostile to the whole purpose of 
 the Convention, and as the vote there was by 
 States, each State casting a single vote by the 
 majority of its delegates, his voting power was 
 nullified. 
 
 Although Hamilton's work in the Convention 
 was limited, it was of a most interesting and im- 
 portant character. He formulated and proposed 
 a scheme of Government, which in many details 
 was followed in the plan actually adopted, but 
 which in two important features differed radi- 
 cally from that. 
 
 He proposed a scheme much more closely assim- 
 ilated to the British Constitution, which he de- 
 clared to be the best model then in existence. In 
 the place of a Constitutional Monarchy he would 
 have had a republic indeed, but an aristocratic 
 republic based upon the property of the country, 
 and would have made it supreme over the States 
 to the extent of a practical extinction of their 
 Sovereignty. The course of events since the close 
 of the war had given him a great distrust of pure 
 democracy, and a settled conviction that a contin- 
 
 110 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 uanee of the independent Sovereignty of the 
 States, to whose jealousy he attributed a large 
 share of the impending disasters, would be incon- 
 sistent with the creation of a strong central Gov- 
 ernment adequate to maintain the dignity and 
 safety of the nation. 
 
 To this end he proposed that the Congress 
 should have power to pass any laws it thought 
 necessary fo-r the general welfare, that the Presi- 
 dent, who was to have an absolute veto, and the 
 members of the Senate, should be elected by the 
 votes of property owners only, and should hold 
 their offices for life or during good behavior, 
 being removable only by conviction upon an im- 
 peachment for some crime or misdemeanor, and 
 that the governor of each State should be ap- 
 pointed under the authority of the United States, 
 and have a veto upon all laws passed by the State. 
 
 This novel scheme he supported in a powerful 
 address. With all his logic and eloquence, how- 
 ever, he won no support for the special features 
 of his plan. Probably he did not expect to do so, 
 but undoubtedly his earnest appeal did much to 
 confirm his associates in the determination to 
 develope a strong and stable Executive and a 
 Federal Government which, in all affairs that con- 
 cerned the common welfare, should be actually 
 independent of the State Governments. His 
 scheme would, however, have annihilated the 
 Sovereignty of the States, the preservation of 
 which within its proper limits was an object very 
 precious in the sight of the Convention. The 
 
 111 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 moral effect upon his associates of his appeal for 
 a strong and self-sufficient government was un- 
 doubtedly great. Indeed, Guizot says of him that, 
 *' there is not in the Constitution of the United 
 States an element of order, of force, of duration, 
 which he did not powerfully contribute to intro- 
 duce into it, and to cause to predominate." And 
 the Cambridge History of the United States, the 
 latest authority, truly says, '' Every great under- 
 taking has its master-spirit, the Master-Spirit of 
 the Convention that framed the Constitution and 
 of all that led to it was Alexander Hamilton. 
 There were other strong leaders who played a 
 greater part in the long series of debates, but 
 Hamilton, present or absent, was chief among 
 them. Hamilton had already thought out the idea 
 of a Constitution, clear, definite, and strong to 
 withstand domestic feuds and foreign greed. He 
 had thought out, and he laid before the Conven- 
 tion, a form of instrument which he considered 
 better than any likely to be adopted; but if he 
 knew that the mark was too high, it was still to 
 be the mark. A Nation was to be created and 
 established, created of jarring Commonwealths, 
 and established on the highest level of right." 
 
 The Constitution as it was adopted by the Con- 
 vention, has safely stood the test of a century, 
 and was the happy result of four months ' hot dis- 
 cussions behind closed doors, and of successive 
 great compromises between sections, States and 
 individuals. Hamilton, in his enthusiasm for a 
 powerful centralized Government which should 
 
 112 
 
ALEXANDEE HAMILTON 
 
 dominate the States, had pronounced the Execu- 
 tive too weak, and had declared that two sover- 
 eignties could not possibly co-exist within the 
 same limits; but the combined wisdom of the 
 whole body proved greater than that of any one 
 member. The Executive created by the Constitu- 
 tion has proved to be strong enough for every 
 emergency, and exercises in times of foreign war 
 or civil strife an actual power quite as great and 
 efficient as that of Kings or Emperors in monar- 
 chical states. A dual sovereignty was success- 
 fully established, by means of which the Federal 
 Government within its sphere is supreme and 
 absolute in all Federal matters, and for those 
 purposes able to reach by its own arm without 
 aid or interference from the States every man, 
 every dollar, and every foot of soil within the 
 wide domains of the Republic, leaving each State 
 still supreme, still vested with complete and per- 
 fect dominion over all matters domestic within its 
 boundaries. Harmony between the two indepen- 
 dent sovereignties is absolutely secured by the 
 judicial power vested in the United States Su- 
 preme Court, to keep each within its proper orbit 
 by declaring void, in cases properly brought be- 
 fore it, all State Laws which invade the federal 
 jurisdiction, and all Acts of Congress which tres- 
 pass upon the Constitutional rights of the States. 
 But Hamilton, like Washington and Franklin, 
 and all the other great patriots of the Convention, 
 subordinated his own views to the united judg- 
 ment of his colleagues, and accepted the result as 
 
 113 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 the best that could possibly be got. Although as 
 he said, '* No man's views were more remote 
 from the plan than his own were known to be, 
 yet it was not possible to deliberate between 
 anarchy and convulsion on one side, and the 
 chance of good to be expected from the plan on 
 the other." Franklin urged the same thing with 
 equal earnestness, and with success. So that when 
 the doors were opened, and the members reap- 
 peared with the instrument which was the result 
 of their long labors, signed by all, it appeared 
 as their unanimous act, supported by the com- 
 bined influence and character of all, while all the 
 heated and angry discussions and differences out 
 of which it had grown were left behind and not 
 disclosed for half-a-century afterwards, all the 
 members having been sworn to secrecy as to what 
 took place within the walls of Independence Hall. 
 It was one thing, however, for the Convention 
 to frame and recommend the Constitution, and 
 quite another to secure its adoption by the people 
 of the several States, which were called upon to 
 surrender so much of their power to the Federal 
 Government for the general welfare of all, for it 
 was to be the Act of the people of the whole 
 United States. Its preamble, which is said to 
 have been written by Hamilton and is the best 
 statement of the objects of free government to 
 be found in any language, declares " We, the 
 people of the United States, in order to form a 
 more perfect Union, establish justice, insure 
 domestic tranquillity, provide for the common 
 
 114 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 defence, promote the general welfare, and secure 
 the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our pos- 
 terity, do ordain and establish this Constitution 
 for the United States of America." 
 
 It was in this business of con\'incing and con- 
 verting a reluctant people to the acceptance and 
 support of the new plan of Government, that 
 Hamilton performed those prodigious services, 
 and displayed that surpassing genius, which es- 
 tablished his fame as the greatest Constitutional 
 Lawyer and Statesman of that eventful era, and 
 commanded the everlasting gratitude of his coun- 
 try and of mankind. For to him, more than to 
 any other one man, we owe the grand result of 
 the adoption of the Constitution, which brought 
 our young Republic into being with organized 
 powers and internal resources, that have enabled 
 her to take the place which she now occupies in 
 the family of nations. The immense weight of 
 character of Washington and Franklin inclined 
 public opinion to the support of the measure 
 which they had helped to frame, but the voice and 
 pen of Hamilton carried home to the hearts and 
 consciences of the people the conviction that the 
 adoption of the new Constitution was necessary to 
 their welfare. 
 
 When the plan of Government proposed by the 
 Convention was announced, the general sentiment 
 of the people was against it, and a hostile majority 
 in many of the States was outspoken. It encoun- 
 tered the fixed prejudice in favor of State Sover- 
 eignty and against any external government, as it 
 
 115 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 was called, which in the case of British dominion 
 had proved so unpopular and disastrous. Men's 
 passions as well as their interests were appealed 
 to, and a bitter and violent anti-federalist party 
 was organized in every State, pledged to defeat 
 the Constitution by all honorable means if pos- 
 sible. New York, though only the fourth or fifth 
 State in wealth and population, was by its posi- 
 tion, which completely separated New England 
 from the Southern States, absolutely indispen- 
 sable to the new Union, and her people, led by a 
 Governor ^' with consummate talents for popu- 
 larity," were more emphatically opposed to it 
 than those of any other State. 
 
 But the choline was between the new Constitu- 
 tion and anarchy, and Hamilton conceived the idea 
 of a regularly organized campaign of education, 
 to open the minds and to instruct the consciences 
 of the people on the great question which involved 
 their rights and liberties as well as their interests. 
 This should be done by a consecutive and inces- 
 sant series of papers addressed to the people, 
 presenting the general constitutional principles 
 involved, discussing and analyzing the new Con- 
 stitution, chapter by chapter, clause by clause, 
 and pointing out, as to each, the defects of the 
 existing confederation, the consequent evils and 
 mischiefs under which they were laboring, and 
 the remedies offered by the work of the Conven- 
 tion. 
 
 He enlisted the willing and sympathetic aid of 
 Madison, who had had much more to do than him- 
 
 116 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 self with the framing of the plan proposed, and 
 of Jay, the acknowledged leader among American 
 jurists, who afterwards became the first Chief 
 Justice of the United States. They contributed 
 many of the papers, and their reputation, charac- 
 ter, and experience gave great authority to the 
 work, but a major portion of it was indisputably 
 from Hamilton's own pen. The combined result 
 is known as ' ' The Federalist, ' ' the book which is 
 thought by many competent authorities to be the 
 greatest book that America has given to the 
 world, and which certainly ranks very high among 
 works on constitutional law and principles the 
 world over. It remains to this day the highest 
 authority in the Courts of the United States, and 
 of other countries, on the construction and mean- 
 ing of the Constitution, and the intentions of its 
 framers, and should be read by every student who 
 wishes to understand the principles which lie at 
 the foundation of popular government. 
 
 Hamilton wrote the first paper by the light of 
 a candle, while floating down from Albany to New 
 York in the cabin of the primitive passenger 
 schooner of those days, and the other numbers 
 followed in quick succession, one in every two or 
 three days. They covered the whole field of con- 
 stitutional and public law, and the meaning and 
 purpose of every clause was made clear to the 
 people. The writers spoke from full minds and 
 full hearts. The papers were widely circulated 
 and universally read, and are pronounced by com- 
 petent historians to have had more to do than 
 
 117 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 any other cause with convincing the people 
 throughout the country that their safety and wel- 
 fare depended upon the adoption of the new form 
 of Government proposed. For clear and cogent 
 reasoning, plainness and simplicity of thought, 
 earnestness of purpose, and purity of diction and 
 literary style, I know of no American book that 
 surpasses " The Federalist," and no student of 
 constitutional or public law can do without it. 
 The chief credit of the work, for its origin, its 
 successful prosecution and its great merit may, 
 without any detraction from the valuable contri- 
 bution of his associates, be awarded to Hamilton. 
 
 The Edinburgh Revieiv, No. 24, says: — " The 
 Federalist, written principally by Hamilton, ex- 
 hibits an extent and precision of information, a 
 profundity of research, and an accurateness of 
 understanding, which would have done honor to 
 the most illustrious statesmen of ancient or mod- 
 ern times." 
 
 But New York, his own State, still hung back, 
 and New York was still the pivot on which the 
 whole of this political enterprise turned, and there 
 the chances seemed desperate indeed. The Oppo- 
 sition Party supported by the most formidable 
 interests were in a large majority, and determined 
 to defeat it at all hazards. They preferred that 
 New York should stand alone, and enjoy, to the 
 exclusion of its sister States, the immense advan- 
 tages of its splendid harbor and its prospective 
 commerce. Hamilton and Jay and their associ- 
 ates succeeded in forcing the calling of a Conven- 
 
 118 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 tion to consider the matter. But when it met 
 forty-six out of the sixty-five members present 
 were pronounced anti-federalists, with the stal- 
 wart and hard-headed Governor at their head, and 
 in the chair. Hamilton, leading the forlornly 
 hopeless minority of nineteen, had an opportunity 
 to show his points as a debater, and after a pro- 
 tracted struggle he won a parliamentary victory 
 such as has rarely been heard of in the annals of 
 any legislative body. Day after day and week 
 after week, he maintained the contest almost sin- 
 gle handed. He was superbly equipped for such 
 a hand-to-hand fight. His experience with Wash- 
 ington, and subsequently in Congress, in the two 
 Conventions, in the legislature and at the Bar, his 
 strong and penetrating intellect, his fiery energy 
 and absolute conviction, made him an irresistible 
 champion at close quarters. Clearness, force, and 
 earnestness were the characteristics of his elo- 
 quence; he had an answer for every objection, 
 and made every blow tell. And at last he carried 
 the enemy's works by assault, just as he had 
 stormed the battery at Yorktown. 
 
 The leader of the Governor's party ran up the 
 white flag, and announced on the floor of the 
 House that Hamilton's arguments had convinced 
 him, and the victory was won — the Convention 
 ratifying the Constitution by a vote of 30 to 27. 
 Thus New York was the eleventh State to ratify, 
 nine only being required. By this time the whole 
 country was convinced, for nothing succeeds like 
 success. Rejoicing was universal, and Hamilton's 
 
 119 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 name was on every tongue. In the great proces- 
 sion in New York to celebrate the glad event, the 
 great Ship of State, the emblematic Federal Ship, 
 which was drawn through the streets, was em- 
 blazoned all over with the name of '' Hamilton " 
 in his honor. This universal recognition of his 
 service and triumph must have made him the 
 happiest and proudest man in America, and he 
 was still but thirty years old. 
 
 Great as was the service rendered by Hamilton 
 in securing the adoption of the Constitution, it 
 was, however, equalled in importance by the part 
 which he took in organizing the new Government 
 under it, in restoring the public credit, and in 
 devising the policy which was to shape the future 
 fortunes of the infant nation, and here he devel- 
 oped a versatility of talent, and a constructive 
 capacity, almost without a precedent. 
 
 The first Presidential election had resulted in 
 the unanimous election of Washington, " first in 
 war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his 
 countrymen." No greater responsibility ever 
 rested upon any ruler than that of organizing the 
 machinery of the new administration, so as to 
 secure success to the novel experiment of free 
 government. Of all the famous statesmen in the 
 land, whom should he choose as his most confiden- 
 tial adviser and chief assistant in this arduous 
 work? Whom but the still youthful Hamilton, 
 who, at the age of thirty- two, was made the first 
 Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, 
 with the approval of the whole country, for his 
 
 120 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 thorough fitness in character, capacity, power of 
 sustained labor and generous enthusiasm were 
 universally recognized. The appointment was 
 more than justified, for he still stands by far our 
 greatest Finance Minister, with whom we may 
 safely challenge any comparison. It was not mere 
 language of rhetoric, but literal truth when Web- 
 ster, borrowing the imagery of two famous mira- 
 cles, said of him, '^ He smote the rock of our 
 national resources and abundant streams of rev- 
 enue gushed forth. He touched the dead corpse 
 of public credit and it sprang upon its feet." 
 
 The labors of Hercules were light in compari- 
 son with those that fell upon the new Secretary. 
 He came to an empty Treasury, with literally not 
 a penny in the till. There was no credit, public 
 or private. There were as yet no laws providing 
 for the exercise of the powers conferred by the 
 Constitution. There had been no attempt as yet 
 to develope the resources of the country, which 
 have since proved to be so inexhaustible — busi- 
 ness was at a standstill waiting upon events. 
 Above all, and casting a heavy cloud, a fearful 
 incubus upon the hopes and prospects of the new 
 Government just struggling into life, there was 
 a vast national debt of eighty million dollars — 
 an insignificant sum to our modern view, but then 
 of appalling dimensions, and there were no means 
 at hand with which to pay the principal or even 
 the interest upon it. 
 
 After organizing the necessary financial ma- 
 chinery of the Treasury, in a way that has lasted 
 
 121 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 to the present time, he produced in rapid succes- 
 sion his three able reports on Public Credit, on 
 National Banking and on Manufactures, and 
 thereby laid the deep and solid foundations, upon 
 which the public credit, the financial system, and 
 the public and private prosperity of the United 
 States were built up. They contained the germs 
 from which have been developed our distinctive 
 American method of government, which still bears 
 the stamp of Hamilton's strong intellect and per- 
 sonality. 
 
 He based his scheme of public credit upon abso- 
 lute good faith, upon a punctual performance of 
 every obligation, on which alone he insisted the 
 prosperity of the Nation could safely rest. 
 '^ States, like individuals," he said, " who re- 
 spect their engagements are respected and trusted, 
 while the reverse is true of those who pursue an 
 opposite conduct." And he stated the object of 
 his policy to be: ''To justify and preserve the 
 confidence of the most enlightened friends of good 
 government; to promote the increasing respect- 
 ability of the American name ; to answer the calls 
 of justice; to restore landed property to its due 
 value; to furnish new resources both to agricul- 
 ture and commerce; to cement more closely the 
 Union of the States; to add to their security 
 against foreign attack; to establish public order 
 on the basis of an upright and liberal policy." 
 
 For these sacred purposes he insisted upon 
 sufficient revenue by taxation to provide for the 
 prompt payment of all public obligations, and to 
 
 122 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 furnish an adequate currency — upon a Funding 
 System which should embrace the whole of the 
 existing debt, recognized as to be paid in full how- 
 ever depreciated, to the lawful holders — and 
 upon the assumption by the Nation, of all the 
 debts that had been incurred by the States in 
 carrying on the war which brought the Nation 
 into being. 
 
 These important measures were not carried 
 without violent and formidable opposition, and 
 required the exertion by Hamilton of all his power 
 and influence, both as Minister and politician. 
 The public debt, which was large, and had been 
 accumulating from the beginning of the War of 
 the Revolution, was of three classes. First, that 
 which was due to Foreign Nations — to France, 
 Spain, and Holland, for loans and advances. 
 This it was generally agreed must be paid in full, 
 principal and interest. Second, that which was 
 due to domestic creditors, represented by bills or 
 obligations issued from time to time, and which 
 had greatly depreciated, as the paper money had 
 done. So that the first taker, who had received 
 it from the Government at its face value, had 
 parted with it at a discount, and the last taker, 
 who was the present holder, had paid but a small 
 percentage of its par value. As to these there 
 was a violent controversy, the opponents of Ham- 
 ilton's plan insisting that the present holder 
 should be paid only what he gave for it, and any 
 further payments go to the previous holders. 
 But Hamilton stoutly and successfully insisted 
 
 123 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 that as the agreement of the Government in each 
 case had been to pay the whole amount to the 
 first taker or his assignees, the credit of the Na- 
 tion required that this agreement should be kept 
 in the strictest good faith and the actual holder 
 receive the whole. 
 
 On the question of the assumption by the new 
 Nation of the outstanding debts of the States 
 there was a still more bitter controversy, which 
 involved the jealousy existing between the 
 States ; — but Hamilton, who believed that the 
 stability of the new Government depended very 
 much upon enlisting the capital and the capitalists 
 of the country in its support, insisted successfully 
 upon Assumption, and by this and the previous 
 measure he rallied to the support of the Govern- 
 ment those who, as he believed, could render it 
 the most efficient aid and influence, and established 
 its credit on a lasting foundation. Its new funded 
 debt, into which these obligations were converted, 
 rose to par and more, and was always met at 
 maturity. 
 
 In his report on Banking, which was a very 
 great and powerful constitutional and legal argu- 
 ment, he laid the foundations upon which have 
 safely rested all the plans of National Banks that 
 have from time to time been adopted by Congress, 
 and our present excellent system of National 
 Banks, so stable and uniform in its operation in 
 all parts of the Union. Here, too, he rendered 
 a still more broad and signal service, in first set- 
 ting forth in clear and convincing terms the theory 
 
 124 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 of implied powers and residting powers vested in 
 the National Government under the Constitu- 
 tion — the theory that every power clearly given 
 involves necessarily the right in Congress to use 
 every necessary and proper means to carry that 
 power into execution. In other words, he was the 
 author of the doctrine of liberal construction, 
 which has enabled the Supreme Court from time 
 to time to adopt and apply the general provisions 
 of the Constitution, as its framers intended, to 
 successive national exigencies as they arose, 
 whereby that venerated instrument has grown 
 with the growth of the nation, instead of being 
 left behind and discarded as an outworn garment 
 rent asunder at every seam. 
 
 His report on Manufactures, the third of these 
 great State papers, is still more remarkable. 
 Taking the ground that Manufactures were as 
 essential to the prosperity of the whole country 
 as Commerce and Agriculture, and should there- 
 fore be equally encouraged and developed, he 
 presents the whole subject in a broad, compre- 
 hensive and truly National spirit, setting forth 
 both sides of the question as clearly and strongly 
 as possible, and evincing a deep knowledge of the 
 principles of political economy and of the science 
 of taxation. This paper did not, like the others 
 that have been referred to, result in immediate 
 legislation, but it was in pursuance of his great 
 National purpose that the United States should 
 as rapidly as possible make themselves independ- 
 ent of all foreign control or interference, and it 
 
 125 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 is so full and perfect a presentation of the general 
 subject, that it will always be worthy of careful 
 study, from whatever side the question may be 
 approached. It is safe to say that not much has 
 been added to the argument on either side since 
 this Report was published. 
 
 These great subjects, important and fundamen- 
 tal as they were, were not the only ones that 
 engaged the attention of the youthful Secretary 
 at the outset of the new Government. Congress, 
 earnestly devoted to the study of the legislation 
 necessary for calling into effective action the vast 
 and varied powers conferred by the Constitution, 
 was continually calling upon him for advice and 
 reports, which he gave with wonderful ease and 
 versatility, on a great variety of subjects, within 
 and without his own department. He was also 
 during the first five years of the Administration 
 of Washington, the chief political adviser of the 
 President, who relied upon him in every emer- 
 gency, and whose arms he upheld, on every great 
 question of public policy. 
 
 The aim of Hamilton's efforts from first to 
 last was to create a strong and independent Gov- 
 ernment, in full possession of all the powers that 
 by reasonable construction it could derive from 
 the Constitution; to establish the credit of the 
 Nation upon the impregnable basis of absolute 
 good faith, to develope all its resources as rapidly 
 as possible, and to hold fast to its support, 
 through a strong spirit of Nationality, all the 
 strongest men and most powerful interests in the 
 
 126 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 land. By his untiring labors, and by the com- 
 manding influence which he acquired and exer- 
 cised to these noble ends, he stamped the impress 
 of his character and personality upon the National 
 history, and is entitled to a full share of that glory 
 which mankind awards to the founders of great 
 States. As the Republic which he helped so ef- 
 ficiently to bring into being and to place upon its 
 feet, expands and grows, his fame grows with it, 
 and will last as long as the Nation endures. His 
 name will be always identified with the strength, 
 the splendor, and the purity of Washington's 
 Administration. 
 
 Senator Lodge, his biographer, has truly said 
 of him: '* As time has gone on, Hamilton's fame 
 has grown, and he stands to-day as the most 
 brilliant statesman we have produced. His con- 
 structive mind and far reaching intellect are vis- 
 ible in every part of our system of government 
 which is the best and noblest monument of his 
 genius. ' ' 
 
 It is quite impossible to form a just estimate 
 of the value and efficiency of Hamilton's ideas and 
 labors in promoting th« adoption of the Consti- 
 tution, and in the legislation of Washington's 
 Administration, without taking a general view of 
 the condition of affairs at the close of that period, 
 and contrasting it with that which existed, as we 
 have seen, at its commencement. 
 
 Instead of a powerless league of States, held 
 together by Articles of Confederation which have 
 been aptly described as " a rope of sand," a 
 
 127 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 young, vigorous and ambitious Nation had been 
 created, with a Government fully organized, 
 armed and equipped for all national purposes, 
 with the most illustrious man in the world at its 
 head, whose character commanded universal re- 
 spect, confidence and admiration, at home and 
 abroad. In its hands had been placed full and 
 adequate powers of taxation, by which every form 
 of property, occupation, and industry could be 
 reached, and compelled to contribute to all those 
 purposes which involved the general welfare of 
 the people of all the States ; to internal adminis- 
 tration and the support of a judicial establish- 
 ment; to foreign relations; to the building of a 
 Navy; to the organizing and equipment of 
 Armies; to the regulation of Commerce; and to 
 carrying out the provisions of Treaties. The 
 Nation could now, if need be, without aid from 
 the States, draw into its military service every 
 able-bodied man within the bounds of the Repub- 
 lic. 
 
 It left untouched all those powers of the 
 States, which were essential to the proper conduct 
 of domestic affairs, and at the same time effec- 
 tually restrained them from the exercise of those 
 which would interfere with the independence and 
 efficiency of the general government. They could 
 no longer levy imposts upon imports from abroad 
 or from any of the other States. The citizens of 
 each State were secured the enjoyment of all the 
 privileges and immunities of citizens in every 
 other State. Absolute freedom of trade within 
 
 128 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 the Republic was established, which, in connection 
 with the unlimited power to regulate Commerce 
 with foreign nations and the absolute control of 
 all external relations, has vastly contributed to 
 the general prosperity of the Nation. The States 
 were also prohibited from passing any laws im- 
 pairing the obligation of contracts, a provision 
 which gave great security and stability both to 
 property and business. It put an end for ever 
 to interference between creditor and debtor, of 
 which some of the States had been guilty, and 
 has done much to maintain the sanctity of con- 
 tracts and of property. 
 
 With such a Government the new born Nation 
 could meet and confront other Nations on equal 
 terms. It could make Treaties, with the assur- 
 ance to itself and to the other party that the 
 terms of the Treaty would be faithfully executed. 
 It was no longer looked upon with contempt, or 
 even with indifference, by other Powers as it had 
 been before, but took its place as an equal in the 
 family of Nations. 
 
 The people gradually learned to outgrow the 
 feeling of pupilage and dependence upon a foreign 
 nation and on foreign opinion, which had charac- 
 terized them as Colonists. In its place they ac- 
 quired a new spirit of Nationality, proud of their 
 new liberties and rejoicing in the strength of a 
 Union, which, as they believed, was destined to 
 be perpetual. Confidence and Commerce revived, 
 and the busy hum of Industry was everywhere 
 heard. An ample revenue flowed into the public 
 
 129 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 coffers, and the public funds and the national 
 currency were placed upon a firm basis. The 
 great national domain extending from the Al- 
 leghanies to the Mississippi was thrown open to 
 immigration, and a resistless and incessant tide 
 of life began to flow through every mountain pass 
 and along every river bed, eager to possess and 
 subdue the forest and the wilderness, and convert 
 them into one great garden of plenty. 
 
 I doubt whether in such narrow limits of time, 
 a change in the form of Government and the 
 adoption of a new system of Administration ever 
 wrought such magical effects. A wholly new 
 people entered upon the great and untried ex- 
 periment of Self Government, with the most buoy- 
 ant hopes and sanguine expectations. 
 
 An opportunity soon came for testing the 
 power of the new Government against domestic 
 turbulence and disorder, and of trying the work- 
 ing order of the new machinery in critical emer- 
 gencies. The breaking out of the French Revolu- 
 tion created, as might have been expected, a tre- 
 mendous sensation and universal enthusiasm 
 throughout the United States, in which doubtless 
 "Washington and Hamilton at first sympathized, 
 welcoming the hope of constitutional liberty aris- 
 ing upon the ruins of despotism. But when the 
 true nature and inevitable tendency of that awful 
 conflict revealed itself; ''when," as Mr. Lodge 
 finely says, '' reform became revolution, revolu- 
 tion anarchy, and redress revenge — when hot- 
 blooded killings in the streets changed to cold- 
 
 130 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 blooded massacre and cowardly murder in the 
 palace and the prison, culminating at last in the 
 execution of the King and the daily slaughter of 
 the guillotine — then public opinion in America 
 shifted, ' ' and the conservative elements of society, 
 headed by Washington and Hamilton, raised 
 formidable and successful barriers against the 
 tide of Jacobin sentiment, which even the Atlantic 
 was not wide enough to keep out of the land. 
 
 When the news arrived of the outbreak of war 
 between England and France, the President, on 
 a careful study of the situation, declared for ab- 
 solute and strict neutrality between the contend- 
 ing Powers, and determined that our previous 
 relations of alliance and friendship with France 
 should not entangle us in any way in the seething 
 turmoil of French madness. He issued his famous 
 proclamation of neutrality, treating both parties 
 to the war on terms of strict and impartial equal- 
 ity, which established for the future our uniform 
 relation to all foreign wars. 
 
 This proclamation of neutrality was, under the 
 circumstances, a magnificent exhibition by Wash- 
 ington of those great qualities of wisdom, firm- 
 ness and integrity of mind for which he was so 
 remarkable. The drift of popular feeling in 
 America was strongly on the side of France. 
 We were bound to her by ties of gratitude for 
 the timely, efficient, and generous aid she had then 
 so recently given us in the very crisis of our fate, 
 and which had enabled us so soon to secure our 
 independence. We were also bound by the terms 
 
 131 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 of tlie defensive Treaty of Alliance, which Frank- 
 lin had won so much fame by negotiating. On 
 the other hand there still lingered in the hearts 
 of the people much of that bitterness of feeling 
 against England, which the recent contest had 
 necessarily excited, and which new causes of dif- 
 ference arising since the war had not permitted 
 to subside. After patiently hearing all sides, 
 Washington concluded that our National interests 
 and National honor alike required us to abstain 
 from all part in the war, and the Proclamation 
 went forth in the most emphatic terms. 
 
 When a representative of the Convention ar- 
 rived as Minister from the French Republic, and 
 endeavored by all sorts of intrigue and plot to 
 embroil us — when Jacobin clubs were estab- 
 lished, and a great party was formed in support 
 of so-called French principles, Washington en- 
 forced to the utmost of his ability the doctrine of 
 the proclamation, counteracting and defeating all 
 the dangerous efforts of this turbulent emissary 
 and his American supporters, and finally insisted 
 peremptorily upon his recall. The performances 
 of this emissary of the French Revolutionary Gov- 
 ernment, from the day he landed on our shores 
 until his recall, were most remarkable. Landing 
 at Charleston on the very day of the issue of the 
 proclamation, he persistently defied its provisions. 
 He issued commissions and fitted out privateers to 
 prey upon British commerce, appointed consuls 
 and instructed them to act as prize courts on our 
 neutral territory, and made triumphal processions 
 
 132 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 through the States. He made our soil the base of 
 warlike operations, and did his best to drag us 
 into the war, and, as a last act of temerity, he had 
 the assurance to appeal from the President to the 
 People, whom he had done his best to convert 
 into French Propagandists. During this stirring 
 period Hamilton, in the Cabinet and the press, 
 rallied mightily to the support of his chief, and 
 impressed himself and his ideas most indelibly, 
 not only upon the great Federalist party, of which 
 he was the acknowledged chief, but upon the 
 future policy of the country for generations. 
 
 Another occasion arose to test the firmness and 
 efficiency of the new Government. When the 
 growing necessities of the organized service called 
 for enlarged taxation, and an increased excise 
 was imposed by Congress upon distilled spirits, 
 what was known as the " Wliiskey Rebellion " 
 broke out in the mountains of Pennsylvania, in 
 armed resistance to the process and officers of 
 the United States — and a wide-spread indulgence 
 in disorder and outrage. Great forces of armed 
 men in open defiance of the law occupied broad 
 tracts of country, and the practical question arose, 
 whether we had a government capable of dealing 
 with such a crisis or not. This was the first time 
 that the new Government had had to resort to 
 force against popular violence, and it was now to 
 be determined whether it had the power and the 
 nerve to enforce obedience to its own laws. 
 
 Washington, firmly supported by his stalwart 
 Secretary, who liked nothing better than a fight, 
 
 133 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 soon called an army of fifteen thousand men into 
 the field which marched under the general direc- 
 tion of Hamilton, into the disturbed districts, put 
 a speedy end to what threatened to be an obstinate 
 revolution, and set an example of how the Federal 
 Government could and should deal with insurrec- 
 tion. All this was in striking contrast to what 
 had happened in Massachusetts just before the 
 Federal Convention met, when a debtors ' rebellion 
 had taken possession of the State and closed all 
 the Courts of Justice, and the Government of the 
 Confederation had not been able to lift a finger 
 to aid the State in its suppression. 
 
 I shall not ask you to follow Hamilton through 
 the ten years that remained to him after his re- 
 tirement from public life, which was compelled by 
 the necessity of providing for a large and grow- 
 ing family. His ardent interest and inspiring in- 
 fluence in public affairs never slackened. Although 
 no longer in the Cabinet, he was frequently called 
 upon by Washington for advice and assistance, 
 and freely gave his opinion and counsel on impor- 
 tant public questions. He was the acknowledged 
 head of the historic Federal Party, to whose con- 
 tinual conflicts, alike in victory and defeat, his 
 fiery zeal and passionate nature lent always a 
 glowing heat. Apart from these excursions into 
 politics, his later years were spent in the enjoy- 
 ment of a most felicitous domestic life, and in 
 the honorable pursuit in a large way of the pro- 
 fession which he loved and ennobled, and in which 
 he was easily foremost. 
 
 134 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 It is in that honorable calling which he always 
 magnified and adorned, that I love to contemplate 
 him, devoting the marvellous force of his char- 
 acter, intellect, and will to the service of the com- 
 munity, in those great forensic contests to which 
 he was naturally called. Chancellor Kent, whose 
 authority on that subject is conclusive, says of 
 him : ' * Among his brethren Hamilton was indis- 
 putably pre-eminent. This was universally con- 
 ceded. He rose at once to the loftiest heights of 
 professional eminence by his profound penetra- 
 tion, his power of analysis, the comprehensive 
 grasp and strength of his understanding, and the 
 firmness, frankness and integrity of his charac- 
 ter." The same qualities it will be noted made 
 him so nearly supreme in political and public life. 
 
 I would not have you believe that I am present- 
 ing Hamilton as a hero without spot or blemish. 
 He had many and glaring faults, but they were 
 m Sstly the result of that passionate and impetu- 
 ous nature which was a striking feature of his 
 personality. An intrigue in private life, which 
 his enemies seized upon as a means of defa- 
 ming his public character, by the pretence that 
 he had spent upon its object public moneys, 
 compelled him to an elaborate vindication of his 
 official conduct. He not only silenced but con- 
 vinced his slanderers, although at the expense of 
 a humiliating confession on his own part which 
 marred the sanctity of his private life. His po- 
 litical conflicts, even within the party of which he 
 was the acknowledged head, were often marked 
 
 135 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 by fierce outbreaks of temper and vindictive pas- 
 sion. These involved him in personal quarrels 
 which sadly interfered with the plans and the 
 policy of the Federalists, and one of which directly 
 led to their overthrow. But his commanding tal- 
 ents and weight of character were so transcendent, 
 his genius for public service so unfailing, his po- 
 litical vision so clear, and his devotion to public 
 duty so constant, that even these great faults have 
 hardly diminished the lustre of his fame, or the 
 gratitude of his countrymen for his matchless 
 services in laying the foundations of the Republic. 
 He scorned all mercenary ideas and motives, all 
 low ambitions, and his integrity was so absolute, 
 and his patriotism so unselfish and exalted, that 
 his name and career are a cherished national 
 treasure. 
 
 The tragical death of Hamilton has done much 
 to embalm his name in the memory of his country- 
 men. Great as we have seen him to be, he was 
 not great enough to rise above the barbarous and 
 brutal theory and practice of that age, which 
 sanctioned and compelled a resort to the duel as 
 the honorable mode of settling personal disputes, 
 but to which the cruel sacrifice of his precious life 
 put an end, at least in the Northern States. Two 
 years before, he had followed to the grave his 
 eldest son, a victim to the same senseless code of 
 honor, and now, still in the very prime of his own 
 life, at the age of forty-seven, in the midst of a 
 great career of usefulness, crowned with all the 
 laurels which his grateful country could bestow, 
 
 136 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 he was called to meet his own untimely fate. He 
 accepted the challenge, forced upon him by his 
 most dangerous and unscrupulous political adver- 
 sary, with whom he had had many bitter contests, 
 and who was at last determined to be rid of him. 
 One glorious July morning, on the heights of Wee- 
 hawken, overlooking the Hudson and in sight of 
 his own happy home in New York — whose idol 
 he had been — they met for the last and mortal 
 combat. Hamilton fell fatally wounded at the 
 first shot of his adversary, having fired his own 
 pistol in the air, and so unhappily and unworthily 
 ended the life of one of the noblest, manliest and 
 most useful men of whom we have any record — 
 the trusted friend and companion of Washing- 
 ton — and one of the best gifts of God to the 
 Nation which they labored together to found. 
 
 137 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
 Address at the Passmore Edwards Institute, 
 June 15th, 1903. 
 
 WE come to-day, in these congenial sur- 
 roundings of the Passmore Edwards 
 Settlement, to unveil the bust of a great Amer- 
 ican, certainly one of the greatest of them all, 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson, the centenary of whose 
 birth, on the 25th of May last, was celebrated with 
 reverence and enthusiasm throughout his own 
 country and in many distant lands. Hundreds of 
 speakers and writers have been discussing his 
 merits, and I have absolutely nothing new to offer 
 on a subject so freshly familiar. I would much 
 rather set him before you in his own words than 
 in any of my own. 
 
 His claims to distinction as poet, philosopher 
 and prophet have been warmly advanced by his 
 disciples, and as freely contested by the critics, 
 but whatever controversy there is about him 
 seems to me to be really a war of words and a 
 contest of definitions. It is generally agreed that 
 he was one of the great intellectual lights of the 
 nineteenth century; that, as a result of his forty 
 years of wide and almost universal reading, pro- 
 found contemplation, brilliant writing, and en- 
 larged discourse, he came to be recognized as one 
 
 141 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
 of the wisest of men, a great and efficient teacher 
 of his own generation, and of that which came 
 after it, and far in advance of his age on many 
 important questions. 
 
 He certainly had a vivid and fertile imagina- 
 tion, a wonderful power of idealizing the facts of 
 nature and the events of life, and a quick sympa- 
 thy with all that concerned and interested human- 
 ity, which enabled him to produce some poems 
 which still live after half a century, and which are 
 likely to find many readers in coming generations. 
 
 His neighbors assembled at Concord Bridge to 
 celebrate the comj)letion of the monument which 
 marked the spot where the plain farmers of New 
 England offered the first armed resistance to 
 British troops. There bloodshed on both sides 
 began the long conflict which divided the British 
 Empire into two independent nations, — nations 
 which now at last happily vie with each other in 
 words and acts of mutual friendship, and in ef- 
 forts to advance the best interests of mankind. 
 In a single stanza he told the thrilling story in 
 words that still echo like the sound of a trumpet : 
 
 " By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 
 Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, 
 Here once the embattled farmers stood, 
 
 And fired the shot heard round the World." 
 
 Recalling his visit to Rome, and what he had 
 seen of the work of Michael Angelo, as an archi- 
 tect, upon the great cathedral with its soaring 
 
 142 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
 dome, he apostrophized architecture as the Divine 
 Art, directly illuminated by the Spirit of God, in 
 words that ought to be immortal : — 
 
 * * The hand that rounded Peter 's Dome, 
 And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, 
 Wrought in a sad sincerity ; 
 Himself from God he could not free ; 
 He builded better than he knew : 
 The conscious stone to beauty grew. ' ' 
 
 He had absolute faith in the close relation 
 between the living God and the spirit of the indi- 
 vidual man, and in the boundless possibilities of 
 human nature as its direct result. 
 
 Listen to another single verse which ought to 
 live as long as the language lasts, expressing this 
 idea. He was showing how noble youth, brought 
 up, it may be, in luxury and ease, in sport and 
 idling, prove to be heroes when the trumpet 
 sounds and their names are called; and turning 
 their backs on all they have prized before, on 
 home and love itself, risk life and limb and happi- 
 ness to save or serve the cause of their country: 
 
 ** So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 
 So near is God to man, 
 Wlien Duty whispers low ' Thou must, * 
 The youth replies, * I can.' " 
 
 Nor are these utterances isolated and excep- 
 tional in their style and character. Much of his 
 
 143 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
 poetry breathes the same lofty spirit, the same 
 living imagery. And sometimes he was master of 
 a lighter vein, full of sparkling wit and genial 
 fun. 
 
 Witness his fable of the quarrel between the 
 squirrel and the mountain: 
 
 " The Mountain and the Squirrel had a quarrel, 
 
 And the former called the latter ' little Prig. ' 
 
 Bun replied: 
 ' You are doubtless very big, 
 
 But all sorts of things and weather 
 
 Must be taken in together 
 
 To make up a year 
 
 And a sphere, 
 
 And I think it no disgrace 
 
 To occupy my place. 
 
 If I'm not so large as you. 
 
 You are not so small as I, 
 
 And not half so spry. 
 
 I'll not deny you make 
 
 A very pretty squirrel track. 
 
 Talents differ : all is well and wisely put, 
 
 If I cannot carry forests on my back 
 
 Neither can you crack a nut. ' " 
 
 Whether he is justly to be called a great poet 
 or is destined to an immortality of centuries or 
 not, he gave us much delightful poetry, and the 
 lovers of poetry, who form but a small part of 
 the readers of the English language, will always 
 find much to cherish in what he has written. 
 
 You all know the main facts of his simple and 
 uneventful life. He was a Puritan of the Puri- 
 
 144 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
 tans, or if there be sucli a thing as a Puritan of 
 the Puritans of the Puritans, he was exactly that. 
 He was descended from a long line of dissenting 
 clergymen, beginning with the original immigrant 
 who had fled from persecution at the hands of 
 Archbishop Laud. Being silenced for Non-con- 
 formity he had escaped to New England, and 
 founded a church at Concord, the little village 
 fifteen miles from Boston, which was to be Emer- 
 son's home for life. 
 
 Graduating at Harvard College at the age of 
 18, Emerson studied theology, and, under the in- 
 fluence of Dr. Channing, he became a Unitarian 
 minister, a Protestant of the Protestants, and 
 soon found himself the pastor of a church in 
 Boston ; but even the gentle trammels of that mild 
 communion could not long contain his independent 
 soul. He gave up the sacred office, and all the 
 difficulties which it involved for his gentle spirit, 
 and retired to his ancestral village of Concord, 
 where for forty years he devoted himself to plain 
 living and high thinking, to deep reading and 
 writing and lecturing, by which he obtained his 
 livelihood, for he had been born and bred in pov- 
 erty and received nothing by inheritance. 
 
 To two successive generations of his country- 
 men, in his lectures, addresses and published wri- 
 tings, he gave, from time to time, the rich fruits 
 of his reading, study, and contemplation. He 
 read everything good, but Shakespeare, Plato, 
 Plutarch, Goethe, Bacon, Swedenborg and Mon- 
 taigne seem to have been his favorite authors. 
 
 145 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
 He remembered what he read as few people do, 
 and made notes of whatever impressed him, which 
 furnished the material for those copious and apt 
 illustrations of which his works are full. 
 
 Though he severed his connection with the 
 churches he certainly had a religion of his own 
 which exalted and spiritualized him. Dr. Holmes, 
 who Imew him well and is one of his most appre- 
 ciative biographers, says : " His creed was a brief 
 one, but he carried it everywhere with him. In 
 all he did, in all he said, and, so far as all out- 
 ward signs could show, in all his thoughts, the 
 indwelling spirit was his light and guide : through 
 all nature he looked up to Nature's God; and if 
 he did not worship the man Christ Jesus as the 
 Churches of Christendom have done, he followed 
 His footsteps so nearly that our good Methodist, 
 Father Taylor, spoke of him as more like Christ 
 than any man he had known." 
 
 The great influence which, by his wisdom and 
 spotless life, he rapidly acquired and maintained 
 to the end, certainly had a marked effect in miti- 
 gating the rigid tone of dogmatism from which he 
 revolted. Dean Stanley, on his return from Amer- 
 ica, is said to have reported that '' religion had 
 there passed through an evolution from Edwards 
 to Emerson, and that the genial atmosphere which 
 Emerson had done so much to promote is shared 
 by all the churches equally." 
 
 The same Father Taylor, a great apostle of 
 Methodism, was so impressed by his pure and 
 exalted spirit, that when some of his Methodist 
 
 146 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
 friends took him to task for maintaining his 
 friendship with Emerson, on the ground that, 
 being a Unitarian, he must go to a place not to 
 be mentioned in good society, he replied, ' ' It does 
 look so, but I am sure of one thing; if Emerson 
 does go to — that place — he will change the 
 climate there, and emigration will set that 
 way. ' ' 
 
 Of his prose writings, how is it possible to say 
 more than was said by Matthew Arnold, who 
 judged him very critically, and cannot be said to 
 have exaggerated anything in his favor? What 
 he says is this : 
 
 " As Wordsworth's poetry is in my judgment 
 the most important work done in verse in our lan- 
 guage during the present century " (the nine- 
 teenth, of course), '' so Emerson's Essays are, I 
 think, the most important work done in prose." 
 
 His busy brain was never still, his driving pen 
 was never idle, his eloquent voice, in lectures, and 
 discourses, profound, entertaining and instruct- 
 ive, was heard by his countrymen with ever in- 
 creasing delight and satisfaction. Self-reliance, 
 absolute trust in his own conscience and convic- 
 tions, and a fearless following of these in conduct 
 and action, wherever they might lead, were the 
 constant guides of his own life; and he never 
 failed to urge upon his hearers and readers to 
 pursue the same path. 
 
 He appealed always to the higher, the highest, 
 motives, instincts, passions of our nature, moral, 
 intellectual and spiritual, and was never content 
 
 147 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
 to discover and repeat what other men had said 
 and thought on the subject in hand, except to 
 illustrate his own thoughts and conclusions, which 
 he evolved fearlessly from his own inner light, 
 to which alone he looked for inspiration. The 
 wide scope of subjects which he treated embraced 
 the whole range of human life, conduct and as- 
 pirations. His mission was to arouse, to stimu- 
 late and elevate the public and private life of 
 America to a higher and nobler plane. 
 
 He began to answer Sydney Smith's cynical 
 question " In the four quarters of the globe who 
 reads an American book? " and led the way in 
 rescuing American literature from the sluggish 
 and torpid stream in which it had long been con- 
 fined. He lived to see it flowing in a broad and 
 ever widening current, which refreshed and ani- 
 mated the whole of our national life. It was his 
 peculiar gift and function to stimulate and inspire 
 those who labored with him or followed after 
 him in the field of letters, and before he died the 
 real question came to be '' In the four quarters 
 of the globe, who does not read American books 
 and recognize American ideas'? '* 
 
 As time went on his books found many sympa- 
 thetic and admiring readers among thoughtful 
 men and women in England, and in foreign coun- 
 tries into whose many languages they were trans- 
 lated, and the Emerson cult became very widely 
 spread. Herman Grimm wrote to him from Ber- 
 lin: '' Wlienever I think of America I think of 
 you," and I have no doubt that to many serious 
 
 148 
 
EALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
 and earnest souls in many lands, the name of our 
 young Republic suggests first the image of this 
 profound thinker and stimulating teacher. 
 
 I confess that of all the authors with whom I 
 have become familiar, I turn always first to him 
 for light and leading, and find him more suggest- 
 ive, more instructive, more awakening than any 
 other ; there are but few subjects dealing with the 
 conduct of life, or the duties of man, or the study 
 of nature, of which he has not treated more or 
 less directly ; and anyone who has to take up such 
 a subject for the first time, cannot begin better 
 than by turning to his pages to see what he has 
 said about it. 
 
 President Eliot, of Harvard, in a carefully pre- 
 pared essay, quite worthy of Emerson himself, 
 read in Boston on the centennial of his birth, has 
 demonstrated that Mr. Emerson was far in ad- 
 vance of his time on many moral, social, and polit- 
 ical questions, and that he indicated, with singular 
 sagacity and foresight, the course of their future 
 development — as the same actually occurred — 
 so that although the ranks of the prophets are 
 closed against him, we may well describe him as 
 the forerunner of American thought. 
 
 He rarely took part in any controversies, al- 
 though many were raised in the path of his ad- 
 vancing progress, but left them to be fought out 
 by others, while he kept the even tenor of his 
 way, thinking and teaching still. He cherished 
 with unfaltering hope and confidence the noblest 
 aspirations for his country, and uniformly pre- 
 
 149 
 
EALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
 dieted its ultimate success and triumph in those 
 better things that constitute true civilization; 
 but he never hesitated to scourge his countrymen 
 for their shortcomings, which stood in the way 
 of their reaching the final goal of his high ideal. 
 This he could always do with effect and authority, 
 because he stood aside from politics, and because 
 his courage and virtue commanded universal 
 reverence. 
 
 He lent the generous and telling influence of his 
 character and opinion to the cause of reform, but 
 sometimes turned rather a cold shoulder to prac- 
 tical reformers, whose rough and tumble methods 
 were at variance with his gentle and retiring 
 spirit. In great crises, however, his soul was 
 stirred, and his voice rang out like a megaphone 
 across the land. 
 
 In his address at Concord in commemoration of 
 Emancipation in the West Indies he concluded 
 with these prophetic words : — 
 
 ** The sentiment of Right, once very low and indis- 
 tinct, but ever more articulate because it is the voice of 
 the Universe, pronounces Freedom. The Power that 
 built this fabric of things affirms it in the heart ; and in 
 the history of the First of August has made a sign to 
 the ages, of His will." 
 
 Within twenty years from that utterance, Lin- 
 coln had signed the proclamation which freed all 
 the slaves in America, and the vast Empire of 
 Russia had no longer a slave within its borders. 
 
 150 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
 When Sumner was struck down in the Senate 
 for words spoken in debate, he declared: 
 
 " The events of the last few years and months and 
 days have taught us the lessons of centuries. I think 
 we must get rid of slavery or we must get rid of free- 
 dom." 
 
 When the attempt was made to force slavery 
 upon Kansas by armed might, he said : 
 
 " I wish we could stop every man who is about to 
 leave the country. Send home every one who is abroad 
 lest they should find no country to return to. Come 
 home and stay at home while there is a country to save. 
 When it is lost, it will be time enough for any who are 
 luckless enough to remain alive, to gather up their 
 clothes and depart to some land where Freedom exists." 
 
 When the Proclamation of Emancipation was 
 actually signed, he said: 
 
 ' ' The first condition of success is secured in putting 
 ourselves right. We have recovered ourselves from our 
 false position and planted ourselves on a law of Nature. ' ' 
 
 " If that fail, 
 The pillared firmament is rottenness, 
 And Earth 's base built on stubble. ' ' 
 
 " The Government has assured itself of the best con- 
 stituency in the world. Every spark of intellect, every 
 virtuous feeling, every religious heart, every man of 
 honor, every poet, every philosopher, the generosity of 
 
 151 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
 the cities, the health of the country, the strong arms of 
 the mechanic, the endurance of farmers, the passionate 
 conscience of women, the sympathy of distant nations, 
 all rally to its support." 
 
 When Lincoln was struck down he said of him : 
 
 ' ' By his courage, his justice, his even temper, his fer- 
 tile counsel, his humanity, he stood a heroic figure in the 
 centre of a heroic epoch. He is the true history of the 
 American people in his time. Step by step he walked 
 before them ; slow with their slowness ; quickening his 
 march by theirs; the true representative of this con- 
 tinent, an entirely public man, father of his country; 
 the pulse of twenty millions throbbing in his heart, the 
 thought of their minds articulated by his tongue. Only 
 Washington can compare with him in fortune." 
 
 Scouted at first as a mystic and a dreamer, 
 Balph Waldo Emerson lived long enough to re- 
 ceive the general homage of the confidence and 
 affection of his countrymen. They honored him 
 for his dauntless courage, his sublime devotion 
 to what he believed to be the truth and the right, 
 his clear and controlling conscience, his wisdom 
 of which they garnered the ripe fruits, and his 
 life-long endeavor to elevate the standard of 
 their literature, morals, and manners. They ad- 
 mired his unfaltering patriotism, and his ardent 
 sympathy with human nature, which no time could 
 limit and no continent could bound. They loved 
 him for his sweet and simple nature and life, his 
 serene and spotless character, his modest and un- 
 
 152 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
 assuming manners, and, most of all, because he 
 loved them, and spent his life in thinking and 
 working for their highest welfare. Heart and soul 
 he was full of sunshine; he shed its beams all 
 about him and saw and revealed only the bright 
 side. 
 
 I rejoice that this striking image of him has 
 found an abiding-place in this noble building, the 
 home and centre of a great and good work. I 
 congratulate Mr. Passmore Edwards and Mrs. 
 Humphry Ward on acquiring this bust as a fitting 
 ornament of this Institute, on the shelves of 
 whose Library his books will be found. I am sure 
 that they will reach many readers, and know that 
 they will exercise on their minds nothing but a 
 wholesome, elevating and inspiring influence. It 
 all depends on what you read for. If you read 
 only for dissipation of thought, or for oblivious 
 languor, don't touch Emerson. But if you seek 
 for ideas and information, for light and leading, 
 for real inspiration, for love of country, and faith 
 in Grod and faith in man, you will find them all in 
 him. 
 
 Three years ago, when ' ' The Hall of Fame for 
 Great Americans " was established in the Uni- 
 versity of New York by the lavish generosity of 
 a citizen, the name of Emerson came out from the 
 public election, confirmed by the votes of the coun- 
 cil, as the eighth among famous native-born 
 Americans of all the past. The seven who pre- 
 ceded him were Washington, Lincoln, Webster, 
 Franklin, Grant, Marshall, Jefferson, all men of 
 
 153 
 
EALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
 affairs, of the greatest affairs. But Emerson, as 
 a pure man of letters, stood first in the hearts of 
 his countrymen, and there we may be content to 
 leave him to the judgment of posterity. 
 
 154 
 
THE SUPREME COURT OF THE 
 UNITED STATES 
 
 ITS PLACE IN THE CONSTITUTION 
 
THE SUPREME COURT OF 
 THE UNITED STATES 
 
 ITS PLACE IN THE CONSTITUTION 
 
 Address delivered be/ore the Political and Social Education League, 
 May 13th, 1903. 
 
 I INVITE your attention to a brief study of 
 the Supreme Court of the United States, a 
 cardinal feature of our Federal representative 
 Government, balancing and harmonizing all its 
 parts, a tribunal which has received the general 
 approval and admiration of foreign Jurists and 
 Statesmen, and commands the universal respect 
 and confidence of the people for whom it adminis- 
 ters justice. 
 
 The Federal Convention of 1787, which framed 
 our Constitution and created this unique Tri- 
 bunal, was composed mostly of members of the 
 legal profession, which has always in America 
 been the chief nursery of Statesmen ; but Wash- 
 ington, the soldier, presided, and Franklin, the 
 philosopher, advised at every step. The members 
 of the Convention were undoubtedly chosen from 
 the best qualified men that the country could fur- 
 nish for the momentous work which was set 
 before them, and their merits have been so uni- 
 versally recognized that I need not repeat any of 
 
 157 
 
THE SUPREME COURT 
 
 the emphatic tributes which many great English- 
 men have paid to the results of their labors. 
 
 Their work was finished in four months' secret 
 session at Philadelphia, but most of them had 
 been in training for it through twenty long years 
 of trial and trouble. 
 
 From 1765, the time of the passage of the Stamp 
 Act, which was passed through both Houses of 
 Parliament with little opposition, the Colonists, 
 and especially the lawyers of the Colonies, had 
 been careful and earnest students of the princi- 
 ples of free government. 
 
 In 1774, having exhausted in vain all appeals 
 to King and Parliament for a redress of their 
 grievances, they sent delegates to a Continental 
 Congress to deliberate on the state of public af- 
 fairs, and in this Congress, which lasted for seven 
 years, many of the future framers of the Consti- 
 tution who were members of it found a most in- 
 structive school of statesmanship, and constantly 
 devoted themselves to the social and political edu- 
 cation of the Colonists in matters of government 
 and of public law and popular rights. 
 
 In 1776, as the representatives of the United 
 States of America in General Congress assembled, 
 appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for 
 the rectitude of their intentions, they did, '' in the 
 name and by the authority of the good people of 
 the Colonies, solemnly publish and declare that 
 these United Colonies are, and of right ought to 
 be, free and independent States; that they are, 
 and of right ought to be, absolved from all alle- 
 
 158 
 
THE SUPREME COURT 
 
 giance to the British Crown; and that all polit- 
 ical connection between them and the State of 
 Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dis- 
 solved." They declared '' that as free and inde- 
 pendent States they have full power to levy war, 
 conclude peace, contract alliances, establish com- 
 merce, and to do all other acts and things which 
 independent States may of right do," and for the 
 support of this declaration, with a firm reliance 
 on the protection of Divine Providence, they 
 mutually pledged to each other their lives, their 
 fortunes, and their sacred honor. 
 
 From the hour of the Declaration, the men who 
 made it, and all the other Statesmen of the Colo- 
 nies, had to give renewed and constant study to 
 the whole science of government. 
 
 As they proved able by force of arms to make 
 good this declaration, the United Colonies became 
 from its date a new Nation, over which Congress, 
 by general consent and acquiescence, exercised 
 the powers of a general Government, for all the 
 purposes of the very serious exigency which had 
 called it into existence. But it was a Government 
 by Congress only, with feeble and undefined pow- 
 ers, without an Executive and without a Judiciary. 
 While the war lasted it barely sufficed, and af- 
 forded daily object lessons of its own defects, and 
 of what was required for a better Government 
 when better days should come. 
 
 The several individual States, being absolved 
 from the Royal Charters under which they had 
 before practically managed their own affairs, 
 
 159 
 
THE SUPREME COURT 
 
 adopted written Constitutions, based in each case 
 upon the Sovereignty of the People, to take the 
 place of the former dominion of Parliament. An 
 epoch of Constitution making set in, during which 
 the principles of representative popular govern- 
 ment were discussed and understood. Virginia, 
 the largest of the States, the home of Washington, 
 Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, who were to be 
 four out of the first five Presidents of the United 
 States, took a leading part. New Hampshire had 
 already framed a temporary form of government 
 *' during," as they said, *' the unhappy and un- 
 natural contest with Great Britain. ' ' South Caro- 
 lina and New Jersey had followed, but in the case 
 of the former it was expressly declared that the 
 Constitution established was '* established until 
 an accommodation of the unhappy differences 
 between Great Britain and America could be 
 obtained. ' ' 
 
 Massachusetts, in 1780, with the utmost pains 
 and deliberation prepared and adopted a complete 
 Constitution, in which the powers of Government 
 were carefully distributed, with the solemn decla- 
 ration that neither the legislative, executive or 
 judicial department should ever exercise the pow- 
 ers of either of the others ** to the end that it 
 may be a government of laws and not of men." 
 During the war the other colonies were engaged 
 in the same business of founding States upon the 
 principles of civil and religious liberty, embodied 
 in written Constitutions. Rhode Island alone, 
 founded by Roger Williams, the great apostle of 
 
 160 
 
THE SUPREME COURT 
 
 Toleration, having received from Charles the 
 Second in 1663 a Royal Charter, subsisted under 
 it until 1842 without adopting any written Con- 
 stitution. 
 
 But it was not only in the individual States that 
 the Framers of our Constitution were in all those 
 years gathering knowledge and experience in the 
 science of popular government. From the very 
 date of the Declaration, Congress, conscious of 
 the inadequacy of its powers, even for the pur- 
 poses of carrying on war and conducting foreign 
 affairs, entered upon the novel and difficult task 
 of arranging a scheme which should enable it 
 more efficiently to conduct those affairs which 
 were of common interest to all the people of the 
 thirteen States, and which no one of them, nor 
 all of them individually, could control. After two 
 years they adopted and submitted to the States 
 what they styled " Articles of Confederation and 
 perpetual Union," but it was not until March, 
 1781, that the powers of Congress were enlarged 
 by the final ratification of these articles by the 
 delegates of all the States. 
 
 But this attempted bond of union — a crude 
 experiment in the formation of a National Gov- 
 ernment — proved little better than a rope of 
 sand, and utterly failed to accomplish the pur- 
 poses intended. While the war lasted the tremen- 
 dous pressure of their common danger and com- 
 mon distress kept the States together, and made 
 them obedient to the requests of Congress which 
 really had no power to command, but as soon as 
 
 161 
 
THE SUPREME COURT 
 
 this external pressure was taken off, they fell 
 apart, and each asserted its independent sov- 
 ereignty. 
 
 So jealous were the States, which had just es- 
 caped from the dominion of one central power, of 
 anything which should seem to create dominion 
 over them in another, that although upon paper 
 they had laid many restraints upon their own 
 action, and conferred upon Congress extensive 
 powers over their Federal affairs, they had care- 
 fully refrained from giving any sanction to those 
 powers, and from granting to Congress the means 
 of compelling obedience to its enactments. The 
 Articles provided for no Federal Executive and 
 for no Judiciary Department, although they au- 
 thorized Congress to provide for the settlement of 
 boundary disputes between States, and to appoint 
 Courts of prize and for the trial of piracies and 
 felonies on the high seas. Moreover, Congress 
 could not of its own authority raise a dollar of 
 money for revenue, or a single man to recruit its 
 armies. It could only make requisitions for men 
 and money upon individual States, which met 
 them or not as they found it convenient. Nor 
 could it proceed at all in the exercise of the prin- 
 cipal powers nominally conferred upon it until 
 nine States assented to the same. One of the lead- 
 ing writers of the time thus describes the powers 
 of Congress under this Confederation: — 
 
 " By this political compact the United States in Con- 
 gress assembled have exclusive power for the following 
 
 162 
 
THE SUPREME COUET 
 
 purposes, without being able to execute one of them. 
 They may make and conclude Treaties, but can only 
 recommend the observance of them. They may appoint 
 Ambassadors, but cannot defray even the expense of 
 their tables. They may borrow money in their own 
 name on the faith of the Union, but cannot pay a dollar. 
 They may coin money, but they cannot purchase an 
 ounce of bullion. They may make war and determine 
 what number of troops are necessary, but cannot raise 
 a single soldier. In short, they may declare everything, 
 and do nothing." 
 
 Judge Story says that, strong as this language 
 is, it lias no coloring beyond what the naked 
 truth would justify, and even Washington himself 
 wrote: ^' The Confederation appears to me to be 
 little more than a shadow without the substance, 
 and Congress a nugatory body, their ordinances 
 being little attended to." 
 
 Of course, under such a system our national 
 affairs drifted steadily and rapidly from bad to 
 worse. Interest on the public debt could not be 
 paid, nor the ordinary expenses of government 
 be provided for. The treaties which had been 
 made could not be carried out, and foreign nations 
 would not deal in the way of new treaties with 
 the envoys of a body, which had no head and no 
 power to perform what they should agree to in its 
 behalf. Our external commerce was at the mercy 
 of foreign nations, whose laws contrived for its 
 destruction. Congress could do nothing to counter- 
 act. And worst of all, our domestic commerce, 
 which between all the citizens of one nation should 
 
 163 
 
THE SUPREME COURT 
 
 be free and equal, was at the mercy of the caprice 
 or selfishness of each individual State. There 
 were many boundary disputes between States 
 which threatened civil war. Federal laws were a 
 dead letter, without Federal Courts to expound 
 and define their true meaning and operation, or 
 an Executive to see that they were properly exe- 
 cuted. There was a general failure as yet to real- 
 ize in actual enjoyment the advantages we had 
 won by seven years of war, and everything seemed 
 drifting towards bankruptcy, disunion, and an- 
 archy. 
 
 But these very defects of the Confederation, 
 and the evils which resulted from them, demanded 
 the constant exercise of the best brains in all the 
 States to understand and to remedy them, and 
 opened a new school for all our Statesmen in the 
 study of Constitutional Government. When 
 Washington had laid down his sword and sur- 
 rendered his commission to Congress, after the 
 signing of the Treaty of Peace which acknowl- 
 edged the independence of the United States, he 
 exhorted his countrymen by all they held dear to 
 provide for the establishment of a strong and 
 stable government as the only hope of retaining 
 the liberties they had won; and from that hour 
 until the Federal Constitution was made and rati- 
 fied, he and Hamilton, and Franklin and Madison, 
 and all the other great Statesmen who made it 
 or helped to secure its adoption, were engaged in 
 the constant study of the principles of free gov- 
 ernment, and in enforcing them upon the attention 
 
 164 
 
THE SUPREME COURT 
 
 of their fellow citizens, so that they came to the 
 performance of their great duties in the Federal 
 Convention as graduates of the best practical 
 school of Constitutional Law that the world has 
 ever seen. 
 
 Their allotted task was to create a National 
 Government which should reach, for its own 
 proper purposes, by its own power, every man 
 and every foot of territory in the whole United 
 States, and should at the same time leave un- 
 touched and undiminished the complete control by 
 each State of all its internal and domestic af- 
 fairs ; — which should be entirely adequate with- 
 out aid from the States, to govern the people 
 effectively in all matters that involved the general 
 interests of all, to deal with foreign nations with 
 the whole power and resources of the entire people 
 behind it, in all the exigencies of Peace and War, 
 and to accomplish all this with the least possible 
 vesting of arbitrary power in any department or 
 officer of the new Government. 
 
 They differed in opinion and sentiment on many 
 points, but all agreed in a supreme dread of arbi- 
 trary power, whether it should be exercised by 
 the Executive, the Legislative or the Judiciary 
 Department, whether by a single man, or by a 
 majority of all, for they considered that the 
 majority without any restrictions upon its power 
 might become quite as dangerous as any other 
 despot. They did not believe with my Lord Coke 
 that absolute despotic power must in all govern- 
 ments reside somewhere. They carried this dis- 
 
 165 
 
THE SUPREME COURT 
 
 trust of arbitrary power so far that they actually 
 tied the hands of the people, whom they regarded 
 as the source of all political power, and deprived 
 them of the right to consider any amendment of 
 the Constitution, until it should be proposed by 
 a vote of two-thirds of both Houses of Congress 
 or by a Convention called by Congress, on the 
 application of the Legislatures of two-thirds of 
 the States, and deprived them of the power of 
 voting directly upon any amendment, which could 
 only be ratified by the Legislatures or Conven- 
 tions of three-fourths of the States. 
 
 In other words, the People of the United States 
 who ordained the Constitution, deprived them- 
 selves of the power to modify it by the direct vote 
 of a majority or two-thirds or even three-quarters 
 of their own number, whether that number should 
 be three millions or eighty millions. They must 
 act deliberately and indirectly through Con- 
 gresses, Legislatures, and Conventions. Truly a 
 rare instance of political self-restraint at the 
 basis of free popular government. 
 
 One of the best definitions of the objects of such 
 government is contained in the preamble of the 
 Constitution : — 
 
 " We, the People of the United States, in order to 
 form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure 
 domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, 
 promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of 
 liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and 
 establish this Constitution for the United States of 
 America." 
 
 166 
 
THE SUPREME COURT 
 
 It was to " establish justice " for the people of 
 the United States that the Federal Judiciary, 
 with the Supreme Court as its head, was created. 
 It forms the balance wheel by which the affairs 
 of the Nation and its relation to the States are 
 kept in working order, and is itself held in check 
 by the power of the President to appoint its mem- 
 bers as vacancies may occur, and by the power of 
 Congress to impeach them for misconduct, to 
 regulate the measure of its appellate jurisdiction, 
 and to increase or diminish its numbers. The per- 
 manent stability of the judicial power is assured 
 by its being imbedded in the Constitution, with a 
 jurisdiction co-ordinate with that of the Executive 
 and Legislative Departments, by the extreme dif- 
 ficulty in the way of any amendment that would 
 impair it, and by the universal conviction which 
 the experience of a century has produced, that its 
 continued existence with the full enjojTnent of its 
 present functions is absolutely essential to the 
 successful working of our scheme of popular rep- 
 resentative government. 
 
 The great achievement of the framers of the 
 Constitution was so to distribute the powers of 
 government between the States and the Nation as 
 to give the latter supreme control over all subjects 
 that concerned the general interests of all, and 
 reserve to each of the former exclusive control 
 over local affairs which concerned only its own 
 territory and people, and to do this in such a way 
 that the State and Federal Administrations 
 should not clash in actual operation. 
 
 167 
 
THE SUPEEME COURT 
 
 They knew well the importance of a distribution 
 of the powers of government between the three 
 great departments. They created a Congress on 
 which they conferred legislative powers over 
 eighteen enumerated subjects, necessarily involv- 
 ing the general interests of the people of all the 
 States and essential to National Sovereignty, in- 
 cluding the levying and collection of taxes for 
 Federal purposes, the borrowing of money, the 
 regulation of commerce with foreign nations and 
 among the several States, the coining of money, 
 declaring war, raising and supporting armies, and 
 maintaining a navy. 
 
 They placed such limits upon the exercise by 
 Congress of legislative power as should prevent 
 its interference with legitimate local administra- 
 tion by the States, or with the fundamental rights 
 of the citizens, and put such prohibitions upon the 
 legislative power of the States as should prevent 
 their interference with the general powers and 
 functions of the Federal Government. 
 
 They vested the executive power of the Federal 
 Government in the President, who was made Com- 
 mander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy and of the 
 Militia of the States when called into the serv- 
 ice of the United States. He was granted 
 power to pardon offenders against the United 
 States, to make treaties, provided two-thirds of 
 the Senate concur, to have a veto power over acts 
 of Congress, which could be overridden only by a 
 vote of two-thirds on reconsideration. He was 
 also to nominate, with the advice and consent of 
 
 168 
 
THE SUPREME COURT 
 
 the Senate, Ambassadors, Judges, and all the 
 principal officers of the United States, to recom- 
 mend to the consideration of Congress such meas- 
 ures as he should judge necessary and proper, to 
 commission all officers of the United States, and 
 to take care that the laws should be faithfully 
 executed. 
 
 And, finally, to secure the absolute supremacy 
 of the Federal Government over all matters of 
 Federal cognizance, it was expressly provided 
 that ' ' this Constitution and the laws of the United 
 States which shall be passed in pursuance thereof, 
 and all Treaties made under the authority of the 
 United States, shall be the supreme law of the 
 land, and the judges of every State shall be bound 
 thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of 
 any State to the contrary notwithstanding." 
 This making the Federal Constitution and 
 Treaties made, and laws of Congress passed 
 under its authority, the supreme law of the land 
 is the key of our dual system of Government, as 
 the omnipotence of Parliament is the key of the 
 British Constitution. But the Federal Govern- 
 ment, though supreme within the limits pre- 
 scribed, is not omnipotent; it must keep within 
 those limits. 
 
 By the 10th amendment, passed immediately 
 after the adoption of the Constitution, to prevent 
 Congress from meddling with the domestic con- 
 cerns of the States, or exercising powers not 
 granted to them, it was expressly provided that 
 the powers not delegated to the United States by 
 
 169 
 
THE SUPEEME COURT 
 
 the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, 
 are reserved to the States respectively, or to the 
 People. 
 
 Thus the people of the United States created 
 for themselves two separate and distinct govern- 
 ments, each " of the people, by the people, and 
 for the people," each independent and exclusive 
 of the other within its own scope and sphere, and 
 each able, without aid from the other, to reach for 
 its own purposes, by its own authority, every per- 
 son and every foot of land within its territory. 
 Complex as it may appear to people living under 
 other forms of government, this dual system has 
 worked very simply, smoothly, and harmoniously 
 from the beginning until now, except for the single 
 occasion when the terrible question of slavery 
 proved to be too much for all the Departments of 
 Government combined, and could only be settled 
 by our long years of Civil War. 
 
 But how has this marvellous result been accom- 
 plished? How has it been possible for these two 
 Governments, each of prescribed and limited 
 powers, and each department of both similarly 
 defined, to act independently and at the same time 
 harmoniously over the same people? By what 
 magical force has each power. State and Federal, 
 been kept within its own limits? What has pre- 
 vented constant and hopeless conflict between 
 State functions and officials, and Federal func- 
 tions and officials, between State and Nation, and 
 between State and State, originally thirteen in 
 number and now forty-five? How has it been 
 
 170 
 
THE SUPREME COURT 
 
 possible to secure the due protection of the law 
 to the citizens of one State in each of the other 
 States, and the rights of aliens against local 
 prejudice and discrimination in any State, and 
 how has the faith of Treaties been preserved in 
 every locality! 
 
 These, and a thousand other similar questions 
 and doubts as to the successful working of our 
 system, are answered by pointing to the Supreme 
 Court created by the Constitution, and to the 
 Federal Courts inferior to it created by Congress, 
 in which the judicial power of the United States 
 is vested, a power which, as I have said, is co- 
 ordinate and co-extensive with the Executive and 
 Legislative. Over whatever region Congress may 
 attempt to legislate, or the President to execute 
 its laws, there the judicial power extends, to pass, 
 if need be, upon the legality of their acts and the 
 validity of their laws. The Constitution, and 
 each of its provisions, is supreme over President, 
 Congress, Courts, and States, and the valid laws 
 of Congress, and Treaties made under the author- 
 ity of the United States, are the supreme law of 
 the land for all its people, and for the Courts, 
 Legislatures, and Governors of each State. 
 
 The Supreme Court is the final judge of the 
 validity of all laws passed by Congress or by the 
 Legislatures of each of the forty-five States, when 
 brought to the test of the Constitution of the 
 United States, and of the legality of all official 
 acts when brought to the same test. It and the 
 Federal Courts inferior to it furnish the vehicle 
 
 171 
 
THE SUPREME COURT 
 
 by which the judicial power of the United States 
 is carried into the whole of its vast territory, to 
 administer justice within the limits prescribed to 
 it, to enforce the Federal laws and to punish 
 offenders against them. 
 
 The third Article of the Constitution is mar- 
 vellously brief and simple. The Judges, accord- 
 ing to that good old rule which has worked so 
 well in England since the days of William and 
 Mary, are to hold their offices during good be- 
 havior, and can only be removed by impeach- 
 ment, and their compensation shall not be dimin- 
 ished during their continuance in office. The 
 Supreme Court has original jurisdiction only in 
 cases affecting Ambassadors, Public Ministers, 
 and Consuls, and in those in which a State shall 
 be a party. The first branch of this original 
 power has seldom been invoked, but over and over 
 again a great State has been brought to its bar 
 by another State to settle boundary disputes, al- 
 ways the most dangerous to the peace of adjoining 
 States, and in each instance its decree has been 
 submitted to with implicit obedience — a most 
 unique judicial power, and a most convincing ex- 
 ample to persuade all nations to settle these most 
 perilous questions by arbitration. 
 
 It has been well said " that the provision that 
 the judicial power created by the people shall be 
 the arbiter between the States themselves, in all 
 their controversies with each other, marks the 
 highest level ever attained in the progress of 
 representative government." 
 
 172 
 
THE SUPREME COURT 
 
 Tocqueville says : ' ' In the nations of Europe 
 the Courts of Justice are only called upon to try 
 the controversies of private individuals, but the 
 Supreme Court of the United States summons 
 sovereign powers to its bar." 
 
 John Stuart Mill declares it to be *' the first 
 example of what is now one of the most prominent 
 wants of civilized society, a real International 
 Tribunal." 
 
 In all other matters the jurisdiction of the 
 Supreme Court is only appellate. The judicial 
 power extends only to cases as they arise between 
 party and party, and in the Supreme Court as 
 they come to it mostly by appeal from the inferior 
 Federal Courts, or by writ of error to the State 
 Courts. 
 
 The Courts of the United States exercise no 
 supervision over, or interference with, the Presi- 
 dent or Congress, or the Legislatures of the 
 States. They have no veto power. They do not 
 lie in wait for Acts of Congress, to strangle them 
 at their birth. They have no jurisdiction to pro- 
 nounce any Statute, either of a State or of the 
 United States, void because irreconcilable with the 
 Constitution, except as they are called upon to 
 adjudge the legal rights of litigants in actual con- 
 troversies. They simply pass upon the rights of 
 parties as they come before them, and if a pro- 
 vision of the Constitution, or of a Federal Statute, 
 or a Treaty is invoked for or against a right 
 claimed or denied, they interpret the Constitution, 
 the Law, or the Treaty, and determine the right. 
 
 173 
 
THE SUPEEME COURT 
 
 In this way, and in this way only, if an Act of 
 Congress or of a State Legislature is claimed to 
 be invalid, or an official Act is claimed to be illegal 
 under the Constitution of the United States, and 
 the decision of that question is vital and neces- 
 sary to determine the rights of the parties, they 
 perform the ordinary duty of interpretation, and 
 declare the validity or invalidity of the Act, and 
 so determine the right between the parties before 
 them in that particular case, and for no other 
 purpose, and this may happen months or years 
 after the enactment of the Statute. 
 
 The Supreme Court will perform no duties ex- 
 cept judicial duties. So, when in 1793 President 
 Washington requested the opinions of the Judges 
 on the construction of the Treaty with France of 
 1778, they declined to comply, and. when an early 
 Congress enacted that certain pension claims 
 should be considered and passed upon by the 
 Federal Courts, the Supreme Court upheld them 
 in refusing to act under it, upon the ground that 
 the power proposed to be conferred was not ju- 
 dicial power within the meaning of the Constitu- 
 tion. Nor will the Court give a hearing to a fic- 
 titious or collusive case, contrived to raise a ques- 
 tion as to the validity of a Statute. 
 
 Keeping strictly within the limit prescribed to 
 it of exercising only judicial power, the Federal 
 Judiciary has steadily refrained from exercising 
 any political power, which belongs exclusively to 
 Congress and the President, and so it has been 
 brought into no collision with the other depart- 
 
 174 
 
THE SUPREME COURT 
 
 ments. It will not even indulge in discussions, or 
 express opinions upon purely political questions. 
 
 All attempts, for instance, to induce it to inter- 
 fere either to restrain or compel the President in 
 the exercise of his power to see that the laws are 
 faithfully executed have failed. In the case of 
 foreign nations, as well as in that of the Sovereign 
 States of the Union, the Government acknowl- 
 edged by the President, or by the President and 
 Congress, is always recognized by the Supreme 
 Court. In all such questions as are purely polit- 
 ical it holds itself bound by the acts of the other 
 departments. 
 
 So the question whether and upon what condi- 
 tions aliens shall be expelled or excluded from the 
 United States, belonging to the political depart- 
 ments of the Government, the Court refused to 
 express any opinion upon the wisdom, the policy, 
 or the justice of the measures enacted by Con- 
 gress in the exercise of the powers confi(led to it 
 by the Constitution over that subject. Thus it 
 constantly sets the example to each of the other 
 departments of the Government of minding its 
 own business, and keeping strictly within its as- 
 signed province. 
 
 But, careful as the Judges are to confine the 
 exercise of the Federal judicial power to cases 
 as they arise, that power does extend to '' all 
 cases of law and equity arising under the Con- 
 stitution, the laws of the United States, and 
 Treaties made under their authority, to all cases 
 affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers 
 
 175 
 
THE SUPREME COURT 
 
 and Consuls, and to all cases of Admiralty and 
 Maritime jurisdiction; " and whenever any such 
 case does come before the Supreme Court it must 
 take cognizance of it, and it cannot shrink, and 
 never has shrunk, from determining the question 
 of private right so arising. It is under these 
 clauses that its unique and peculiar function 
 of testing the validity of State Laws and Con- 
 stitutions and of Federal Statutes, and the le- 
 gality of the acts of State and Federal oflBcers 
 arises. 
 
 The remainder of the Federal judicial power 
 depends wholly upon the character of the parties 
 to the controversy. It extends '' to controversies 
 to which the United States shall be a party." 
 This enables the Federal Courts to enforce the 
 Acts of Congress, civil and criminal, against all 
 persons within the realm; '' to controversies be- 
 tween two or more States, ' ' the purpose of which 
 I have already indicated, as making the Supreme 
 Court the Arbitrator and Peacemaker between 
 Sovereign States; to ^' controversies between a 
 State and citizens of another State, between citi- 
 zens of different States, between citizens of the 
 same State claiming lands under grants of differ- 
 ent States, and between a State, or the citizens 
 thereof, and foreign States, citizens, or subjects." 
 It was wisely concluded that in all such cases 
 justice would be safer and surer, against State or 
 local interest, prejudice or passion, in Courts 
 representing and vested with the authority of 
 the whole nation, than in the Courts of the State 
 
 176 
 
THE SUPREME COURT 
 
 of an interested party, and that foreigners espe- 
 cially should have the right to have their causes 
 heard and decided by National Tribunals. 
 
 These clauses, which make jurisdiction depend- 
 ent upon the citizenship or character of the par- 
 ties, have been a prolific source of litigation in 
 the Federal Courts, have opened to them the en- 
 tire field of law and equity; have extended their 
 adjudications to the whole body of jurisprudence, 
 and have given to the decisions of the Supreme 
 Court, by reason of the weight and force of char- 
 acter of the Court and its members, a command- 
 ing authority with the State Courts, and persua- 
 sive influence with foreign tribunals. But in this 
 department of its functions the Supreme Court 
 does not differ, in the scope of its powers and 
 duties, from the Courts of last resort of other 
 nafions, and its distinctive and peculiar character 
 is not involved. 
 
 The power of the Court to declare State and 
 Federal Statutes, and the acts of the National and 
 State Executive officers invalid, as being in vio- 
 lation of the Constitution of the United States, 
 naturally attracts the attention of foreign ob- 
 servers. 
 
 In the one hundred and twelve years of its 
 existence the Court has pronounced twenty-one 
 Acts of Congress, and more than two hundred 
 State Statutes, to be in conflict with the Federal 
 Constitution, and therefore invalid, and in each 
 instance there has been complete and peaceful 
 acquiescence in the decision. So that instead 
 
 177 
 
THE SUPREME COURT 
 
 of being a disturbing element, the exercise of this 
 power confirms the peaceful relations between the 
 States and the Nation, and between the States as 
 among themselves, protects foreign nations from 
 the breach of Treaties, and conserves the rights 
 of property and contract, and the fundamental 
 rights of personal liberty. 
 
 I may not, perhaps, do better than to give you 
 several examples of the exercise of this whole- 
 some, beneficial, and altogether conservative 
 power. 
 \ The Constitution provides that ' ' no State shall 
 pass any law impairing the obligation of con- 
 tracts," and the aid of the Court has often been 
 invoked for protection against the attempts of 
 States to violate this prohibition. 
 
 The framers of the Constitution believed, and 
 the people of the United States, in view of the 
 successful operation of this prohibition for more 
 than a century, believe that the States ought not 
 to be permitted to intervene between the parties 
 to a contract, to destroy or impair the binding 
 force of terms by which they have agreed to be 
 bound, and that such intervention is contrary to 
 [^ the principles of popular government. 
 
 It is true that in the days that tried men*s souls 
 before the adoption of the Federal Constitution 
 many attempts had been made by States to inter- 
 vene for this purpose, which doubtless led to the 
 adoption of this clause. 
 
 Mr. Hamilton, in the " Federalist," classing 
 such laws with Bills of Attainder and Ex post 
 
 178 
 
THE SUPREME COURT 
 
 facto laws, which are prohibited by the same 
 clause, says : — 
 
 " Laws impairing the obligation of contracts are con- 
 trary to the first principles of the social compact, and 
 to every principle of sound legislation. They are pro- 
 hibited by the spirit and scope of the State Constitutions. 
 Our own experience has taught us, nevertheless, that 
 additional fences against these dangers ought not to be 
 omitted. Very properly, therefore, have the Convention 
 added this constitutional bulwark in favor of personal 
 security and private rights. And I am much deceived 
 if they have not, in so doing, as faithfully consulted the 
 genuine sentiments as the undoubted interests of their 
 constituents. The sober people of America are weary 
 of the fluctuating policy which has directed the public 
 councils. They have seen with regret and indignation 
 that sudden changes and legislative interferences in 
 cases affecting personal rights, become jobs in the hands 
 of enterprising and influential speculators, and snares 
 to the more industrious and less informed part of the 
 community. They have seen, too, that one legislative 
 interference is but the first link of a long chain of repeti- 
 tions, every subsequent interference being naturally pro- 
 duced by the effects of the preceding. They very rightly 
 infer, therefore, that some thorough reform is wanting 
 which will banish speculations on public measures, in- 
 spire a general prudence and industry, and give a regu- 
 lar course to the business of Society." 
 
 In the celebrated Dartmouth College case the 
 protection of this clanse was invoked by the 
 Trustees of the College, to recover its property 
 from a person who held it for new Trustees under 
 
 179 
 
THE SUPREME COURT 
 
 the authority of a law of the State of New 
 Hampshire. 
 
 In 1769, King George the Third by Royal Char- 
 ter incorporated twelve persons, therein named 
 as *' The Trustees of Dartmouth College," grant- 
 ing to them and their successors the usual cor- 
 porate privileges and powers, and authorizing the 
 Trustees who were to govern the College to fill 
 up all vacancies which may be created in their 
 own body. The application by the Founder, who 
 had already established the College, was for a 
 Charter to incorporate a religious and literary 
 institution, and stated that large contributions 
 had been made for the object, which would be con- 
 ferred upon the Corporation as soon as it was 
 created, and on the faith of the Charter the prop- 
 erty was conveyed to it. After the revolution, in 
 1816, the Legislature of New Hampshire passed 
 an Act increasing the number of Trustees to 
 twenty-one, giving the appointment of the addi- 
 tional members to the Governor of the State, and 
 creating a Board of Overseers with power to 
 inspect and control the most important acts of 
 the Trustees. 
 
 Admitting that the provision of the Constitu- 
 tion embraced only contracts which respect prop- 
 erty or some object of value, and which confer 
 rights which may be asserted in a Court of Jus- 
 tice, and did not refer to grants of political power 
 or to acts creating institutions to be employed in 
 the administration of Government or of public 
 property, or in which the State as a Government 
 
 180 
 
THE SUPREME COURT 
 
 was alone interested, the Court after most mature 
 consideration reached the conclusion, that the 
 Charter was a contract which secured to the Trus- 
 tees the property and control of the College — a 
 contract made upon valuable consideration — for 
 the security and disposition of property, and on 
 the faith of which real and personal property had 
 been conveyed to the Institution, and therefore a 
 contract, the obligation of which could not be im- 
 paired without a violation of the Constitution of 
 the United States. 
 
 It held that the Statute of New Hampshire did 
 impair it, and was therefore void, and rendered 
 judgment restoring the property and control of 
 the College to the Trustees who represented the 
 Founder. The opinions of Chief Justice Marshall 
 and Judge Story are masterpieces of judicial 
 reasoning, and the principles laid down by them 
 have ever since prevailed. In fifty-six cases de- 
 cided by the Court, Acts of State Legislatures 
 have been declared invalid in accordance with 
 these principles, because they impaired the obli- 
 gation of contracts, and it is not too much to say 
 that, instead of having a disturbing or disinte- 
 grating effect upon civil society, these decisions 
 have done more than any other single cause to 
 inculcate a reverence for the law, and for the sanc- 
 tity of the right of private property which is one 
 of the chief objects of free government. 
 
 It is true that the constitutional prohibition 
 against laws impairing the obligation of contracts 
 does not expressly apply also to Congress. In the 
 
 181 
 
THE SUPREME COURT 
 
 Convention Mr. Gerry, a prominent delegate from 
 Massachusetts, made a motion that Congress 
 ought to be laid under the like prohibition, but 
 found no seconder. But in the amendments 
 which were proposed by Congress at its first ses- 
 sion, almost as conditions on which many of the 
 States had adopted it and which were quickly 
 ratified, other restraints were laid upon Congress 
 which had the like effect. It was expressly de- 
 clared that no person shall be deprived of life, 
 liberty, or property without due process of law, 
 nor shall private property be taken for public 
 use without just compensation, and Congress is 
 bound by these prohibitions. No matter what the 
 emergency, it cannot violate these fundamental 
 principles of personal rights. 
 
 The Court has held that the United States can- 
 not, any more than a State, interfere with private 
 rights except for legitimate governmental pur- 
 poses, that they are as much bound by their con- 
 tracts as are individuals, that if they repudiate 
 their obligations it is as much repudiation, with 
 all the wrong and reproach that term implies, as 
 it would be if the repudiator had been a State, a 
 Municipality, or a citizen. 
 
 But strict and earnest as the Court has been in 
 enforcing this constitutional prohibition against 
 laws impairing the obligation of contracts, it has 
 been ready to recognize and give full force and 
 effect to the Statutes of other nations which im- 
 posed no such prohibition on the law-making 
 power. 
 
 182 
 
THE SUPEEME COURT 
 
 The Canada Soutliern Railway Company, under 
 its Charter granted by the Dominion of Canada, 
 had issued its bonds at a high rate of interest, 
 and had sold them in New York to citizens of 
 the United States, but getting into difficulties the 
 Company devised a scheme of arrangement, which 
 was enacted by the Dominion Parliament, by 
 which the interest on the bonds outstanding was 
 scaled down to a lower rate without the consent 
 of the bondholders, a clear case of impairing the 
 obligation of a contract. The bondholders ap- 
 pealed to the Supreme Court, which held that the 
 '' Arrangement Act " was valid in Canada, and 
 bound non-assenting bondholders there by force 
 of the scheme ; that as it did have that effect in 
 Canada, the Courts of the United States should 
 give it the same effect, even as against citizens 
 of the United States whose rights accrued in the 
 United States before its passage ; that there was 
 no constitutional prohibition in Canada against 
 the passing of laws impairing the obligation of 
 contracts, and that, under these circumstances, 
 the true spirit of international comity required 
 that schemes of this character, legalized at home, 
 should be recognized in other countries. 
 
 The clause of the Constitution giving Congress 
 the power to regulate commerce with foreign 
 nations, and between the States, has been another 
 fruitful source of business in the Supreme Court 
 in the way of testing the validity of State laws. 
 
 At the outset of steam navigation, the State of 
 New York undertook to reward Robert Fulton for 
 
 183 
 
THE SUPREME COURT 
 
 his invention and enterprise by an Act giving 
 him the monopoly of navigating by fire or steam 
 all the waters within the jurisdiction of the State. 
 Under this Act the Assignee of Fulton had com- 
 menced running a line of boats between certain 
 ports of New Jersey and New York, and obtained 
 from the State Courts of New York an injunction 
 to restrain the owners of an opposition line of 
 boats, put on between the same ports, from enter- 
 ing the waters of New York State with their boats. 
 But the Supreme Court held, upon appeal, that 
 the New York enactment was in conflict with the 
 power of Congress to regulate commerce, and 
 with its Acts in relation to commerce, and upon 
 this ground vacated the injunction and established 
 the right of all vessels to enter the port of New 
 York under the authority of Congress. It was 
 held that, by virtue of the constitutional clause 
 referred to, Congress had exclusive authority to 
 regulate commerce in all its forms in all the navi- 
 gable waters of the United States, their bays, 
 rivers, and harbors, and to make navigation free 
 to all without any restraint or interference from 
 any State Legislature. 
 
 By a long series of decisions that followed 
 under the commerce clause the Court, with inflex- 
 ible firmness and far-reaching sagacity, estab- 
 lished the absolute supremacy of the nation over 
 the whole subject of commerce, navigation, travel, 
 and intercourse between the States, which went 
 far to strengthen the power of the Union. At 
 the same time they secured to the citizens of 
 
 184 
 
THE SUPEEME COURT 
 
 every State the full enjoyment of the privileges 
 and immunities of citizens in all the other States, 
 and also that absolute freedom of internal trade 
 throughout the country which has so vastly pro- 
 moted the prosperity of the people. 
 
 The influence of the Court in maintaining the 
 faith of Treaties has been powerful and far 
 reaching. By the Treaty of Peace with Great 
 Britain, in 1783, it was agreed that British cred- 
 itors should ' ' meet with no lawful impediments ' ' 
 in the collection of their claims; and the Consti- 
 tution said that Treaties, like laws, made under 
 its authority, should be the supreme law of the 
 land. Various attempts had been made by sev- 
 eral States, before the adoption of the Constitu- 
 tion, to impede or prevent the collection of such 
 claims. The subject provoked bitter and exciting 
 controversies, but the Court, against the conten- 
 tion of John Marshall himself, then at the Bar, 
 held that the Treaty was supreme, and equal in 
 its effect to the Constitution itself, in overruling 
 all State laws upon the subject, and that its words 
 were as strong as the wit of man could devise to 
 override all obstacles directed against the recov- 
 ery of such debts. Of course, any such law passed 
 by a State after the Treaty contrary to its terms 
 would be void. 
 
 Perhaps the most striking illustration of the 
 power of the Court to declare Acts of Congress 
 itself invalid, as contrary to the Constitution, was 
 the celebrated Income Tax case. Congress in 
 1894 had passed a General Revenue Law, certain 
 
 185 
 
THE SUPEEME COURT 
 
 sections of which imposed an Income Tax upon 
 all incomes exceeding a certain amount named. 
 This tax was levied indiscriminately upon all in- 
 comes alike, from whatever source derived, 
 whether from the rents of real estate, the income 
 of invested personal property, or from earnings. 
 But the Constitution had ordained that direct 
 taxes should be apportioned among the several 
 States according to the numbers of their respect- 
 ive populations, in contradistinction to duties, 
 imposts, and excises, which should be uniform 
 throughout the United States. 
 
 It was contended by those who challenged the 
 validity of the law, that taxes on rent, and taxes 
 on the income derived from invested personal 
 property, were direct taxes within the meaning 
 of the Constitution, and that instead of being 
 levied uniformly, man for man, throughout the 
 United States, they should have been apportioned 
 among the several States according to popula- 
 tion. The difference was very considerable and 
 substantial. The effect of the Act, if sustained, 
 would be to throw the principal burden of the 
 Tax upon a few large States, in which the relative 
 proportion of wealth was in excess of the relative 
 proportion of population, and to exempt the other 
 States proportionally from their constitutional 
 share of the Tax. The opponents of the Income 
 Tax also insisted that any inequality, which 
 should arise from its being apportioned among 
 the States according to population, was an ine- 
 quality contemplated by the framers of the Con- 
 
 186 
 
THE SUPEEME COURT 
 
 stitution, and was intended to prevent an attack 
 upon accumulated property by mere force of 
 numbers. 
 
 The Court, against vehement and powerful op- 
 position at the Bar, and from a formidable mi- 
 nority of the members of the Court itself, took this 
 view, and declared the Tax to have been laid un- 
 constitutionally, so far as it affected incomes 
 from rents and from invested personal property. 
 And as the invalid portions constituted so large a 
 proportion of the whole Income Tax levied by the 
 Act, that Congress could not be deemed to have 
 intended to impose the rest without them, it 
 further adjudged that all the Income Tax pro- 
 visions of the Act, which constituted a single and 
 entire scheme, must be held void. 
 
 There were some popular protests against the 
 decision, and direful prophecies that it would 
 disable the nation in future emergencies from 
 raising the revenue it needed, but no such results 
 have yet appeared. Congress, in its subsequent 
 enactments, has conformed to the decision, and 
 when the war with Spain came on, and an im- 
 mensely enlarged revenue was needed at once, it 
 found no difficulty in imposing taxes constitu- 
 tionally and so successfully that, the year after 
 the war closed, the Treasury was found to be 
 burdened with so great a surplus that the entire 
 body of war taxes had to be repealed at once. 
 
 The same case contains a fine illustration of 
 the power of the Court to protect the States in 
 the exercise of their legitimate power to manage 
 
 187 
 
THE SUPREME COURT 
 
 their own affairs from interference by the Fed- 
 eral Government. The Income Tax was levied 
 also upon income derived from the interest npon 
 bonds issued by Municipal Corporations, which 
 were but civil divisions of the States, and the 
 Court held that as a tax upon the income of 
 Municipal bonds tended to cripple the power of 
 the local authorities to raise money for the pur- 
 poses of local government, it was not within the 
 power of the Federal Government to impose it, 
 any more than it would be constitutional for the 
 States to impair the power of the Federal Gov- 
 ernment to raise money for Federal purposes by 
 taxing its bonds. 
 
 By the adoption of the 14th Amendment, to 
 meet the conditions resulting from the abolition 
 of slavery at the close of the Civil War, new 
 restraints were imposed upon the States, the 
 consideration of which has largely occupied the 
 attention of the Supreme Court. 
 
 It provides that " No State shall make or en- 
 force any law which shall abridge the privileges 
 or immunities of citizens of the United States; 
 nor shall any State deprive any person of life, 
 liberty, or property without due process of law; 
 nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the 
 equal protection of the laws." 
 
 Doubtless this amendment was primarily in- 
 tended for the protection of the newly emanci- 
 pated slaves, especially in the States where they 
 had so long been held in bondage, but in its lan- 
 guage there is no distinction of race or color, 
 
 188 
 
THE SUPREME COURT 
 
 and the Court held that it could make no such 
 distinction in its application, which must be made 
 alike to all cases and subjects that came within 
 the scope of its language in its natural mean- 
 ing. 
 
 It must not be thought, however, from these 
 numerous restraints imposed by the Constitution 
 upon the power of the States, and the very con- 
 siderable number of cases (exceeding two hundred 
 in all) in which the Supreme Court has pro- 
 nounced their Statutes invalid, that the Court is 
 biassed against the States, or inclined unduly to 
 enforce the limits imposed upon them. On the 
 contrary, it has been quite as jealous and careful 
 to uphold and maintain the reserved rights of the 
 States in all matters of local and domestic con- 
 cern, and to protect them from violation by the 
 Federal Government, as it has been to maintain 
 the exclusive province of Congress in national 
 concerns against intrusion by the State Legisla- 
 tures. 
 
 It has endeavored, with success, to maintain 
 the just and exact balance of power between them 
 as prescribed by the Constitution. As against the 
 two hundred cases in which State laws have been 
 invalidated by its judgments, vastly more numer- 
 ous cases will be found, in its reports, in which 
 State laws have been maintained by it against 
 attack on the ground that they involved a violation 
 of the Federal restraints. If, then, it be asked — 
 why has it only pronounced twenty-one Acts of 
 Congress invalid on constitutional grounds, while 
 
 189 
 
THE SUPREME COURT 
 
 two hundred State laws have been condemned? 
 the answer is that there are forty-five States and 
 only one Congress, and that the members and 
 Committees of Congress are much more familiar 
 with the Federal Constitution than those of a 
 State Legislature, who naturally look first to that 
 of their own State. It is notable, too, that the 
 legislators of some States must be much more 
 studious of the Federal Constitution than others, 
 for while Louisiana, which became a State in 1812, 
 and from its French origin has retained the civil 
 law instead of the common law, has had twenty 
 of its laws pronounced invalid for violation of the 
 Constitution, Massachusetts, one of the original 
 thirteen States, has only suffered twice in this 
 .way in her whole history. 
 
 Congress is, of course, in the first instance the 
 judge of the constitutionality of its own Acts, and 
 its members being mostly lawyers, are familiar 
 with the letter and spirit of the Constitution. 
 The cardinal and wholesome rule of the Court has 
 been, not to pronounce either a State or Federal 
 Law invalid on constitutional grounds unless the 
 violation is clearly established, that the presump- 
 tion is in favor of the validity of a Statute, and 
 that this continues until the contrary is plainly 
 demonstrated. 
 
 The Supreme Court has felt that one branch 
 of the Government cannot encroach on the domain 
 of another without danger, and that the safety of 
 our institutions depends in no small degree on a 
 strict observance of this salutary rule. It speaks 
 
 190 
 
THE SUPREME COURT 
 
 volumes for tlie wisdom and caution of the Court 
 which is vested with this remarkable and fascinat- 
 ing power, that in so great a mass of State legis- 
 lation, some of it crude and undigested, consist- 
 ing of thousands of volumes, it has not found it 
 necessary to exercise the power much more fre- 
 quently. 
 
 It has been a source of frequent wonder to 
 foreign observers that a written Constitution, 
 which was framed in the 18th century for thir- 
 teen feeble States, with three millions of people 
 of substantially uniform wealth or poverty, scat- 
 tered along the Atlantic seaboard, and for whose 
 government it was regarded as a precarious ex- 
 periment, should be found to answer as well in the 
 20th century for the needs of a great nation of 
 eighty millions in forty-five States, occupying the 
 breadth of the Continent, with gigantic accumula- 
 tions of individual and corporate property, with 
 conflicting interests and sentiments, and wide 
 differences of social condition. 
 
 There was much debate in the discussions which 
 resulted in the adoption of the Constitution, 
 whether the Government which it called into being 
 could reach and control even a people that was 
 expected to occupy the territory which the Treaty 
 of Peace of 1783 secured to the United States, 
 which extended only from the Atlantic to the 
 Mississippi River, and from the lakes to the 
 northern boundary of Florida. Since that time 
 our territory has expanded to more than four 
 times its original area, and now embraces insular 
 
 191 
 
THE SUPREME COURT 
 
 possessions of vast extent, at enormous distance 
 from the seat of Government and half way round 
 the globe. 
 
 The fundamental difficulties of time and space 
 have been overcome by the triumphs of steam and 
 electricity, wholly unforeseen and unexpected in 
 1787, but which now, in the case of the United 
 States and Great Britain alike, have rendered 
 possible the administration of Government from 
 London or from Washington on any portion of 
 the earth's surface. At the time of the adoption 
 of our Constitution it took about as long to travel 
 the length or breadth of the then United States 
 as it does now to go from New York to Manila, 
 or from London to Pekin, and orders of either 
 Government which then would have taken months 
 to transmit, now reach their destination so as to 
 be put in execution at the other end of the world 
 in a few hours, and sometimes in a few min- 
 utes. 
 
 But in our case, we can account for the fact 
 that a written Constitution, instead of being torn 
 asunder and left by the way as the Nation ex- 
 panded, as new and wholly unexpected conditions 
 arose, has grown with the growth of the Nation, 
 like the hide of an animal from its birth to its 
 maturity, so that it still embraces and covers the 
 whole of our vast national life. We owe it, first, 
 to the wisdom of its framers, who inserted in it 
 only fundamental rules and principles, generally 
 and briefly expressed, leaving it always to Con- 
 gress to fill in and provide for all details; and 
 
 192 
 
THE SUPREME COURT 
 
 secondly, to the vigorous and masterly manner in 
 which the Supreme Court has exercised its essen- 
 tial and lawful function of construction. By this 
 it has applied the whole instrument and each of 
 its parts to new conditions as they arose, and 
 has developed and strongly asserted the inherent 
 powers of sovereignty intended to be vested in 
 the Government of the United States, and neces- 
 sarily resulting from their existence as a Nation. 
 It was our happy fortune that for thirty-four 
 years, in that critical period of our history which 
 was to determine whether we were to be a great 
 and powerful Nation, adequate for all the needs 
 of a first-class Power in the world, or only a league 
 of States like the old Confederation, we had the 
 benefit of the broad and robust intellect of Chief 
 Justice Marshall, to enforce the liberal principles 
 of construction which the genius of Hamilton had 
 laid down. 
 
 In a single paragraph he states the whole the- 
 ory upon which the Court has administered the 
 Constitution, and fitted it to the growing wants 
 and changing conditions of the Nation: — 
 
 ** The Government is aelmowledged by all to be one 
 of enumerated powers. The principle that it can exer- 
 cise only the powers granted to it is now universally ad- 
 mitted. But the question respecting the extent of the 
 powers actually granted is perpetually arising, and will 
 probably continue to arise, as long as our system shall 
 exist. The powers of the Government are limited, and 
 its powers are not to be transcended. But the sound 
 
 193 
 
THE SUPREME COURT 
 
 construction of the Constitution must allow to the 
 National Legislature that discretion with respect to the 
 means by which the powers it confers are to be carried 
 into execution, which will enable that body to perform 
 the high duties assigned to it, in a manner most bene- 
 ficial to the people. Let the end be legitimate, let it be 
 within the scope of the Constitution, and all means which 
 are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, 
 and which are not prohibited, but are consistent with the 
 letter and spirit of the Constitution, are constitutional. ' ' 
 
 Hamilton, in the " Federalist," declared that 
 ** the judiciary is beyond comparison the weakest 
 of the three departments of power; that it can 
 never attack with success either of the other two ; 
 and that all possible care is requisite to enable 
 it to defend itself against their attacks." Mon- 
 tesquieu, whose works, with Blackstone's, were 
 the text-books of constitutional liberty which the 
 framers had constantly in hand, declared that 
 " the judicial power is next to nothing." And it 
 was said by another French publicist, ** It has 
 no guards, palaces, or treasures, no arms but 
 truth and wisdom, and no splendor but the 
 justice and publicity of its judgments." But the 
 Supreme Court, sustained generally by the confi- 
 dence and affection of the people, has more than 
 held its own. Keeping carefully within its own 
 limits, it has for the most part labored to keep 
 the other departments of Government within 
 theirs, and the powers of the States and of the 
 Nation from coming into conflict. In its hands 
 
 194 
 
THE SUPREME COURT 
 
 the judicial power has been the force of gravita- 
 tion which has kept each member of our federal 
 system in its proper orbit, and maintained the 
 essential harmony of the whole. 
 
 The closing scene in the Federal Convention, 
 which made the Court in a way the guardian of 
 the Constitution, will be ever memorable. After 
 months of discussion, sometimes violent, more 
 than once approaching the very brink of dissolu- 
 tion, in hopeless despair of coming to any agree- 
 ment, at last the grand triumph of compromise 
 and mutual concession was accomplished, and the 
 members met to affix their names to the instru- 
 ment. Hamilton, one of the youngest, acted as 
 scribe, and after Washington had signed first as 
 *^ President and Deputy from Virginia," in- 
 scribed on the great sheet of parchment the name 
 of each State, as the delegates came forward in 
 geographical order to add their names. When 
 all had signed, Franklin, the oldest and most 
 famous of them all, pointing to the sun embla- 
 zoned behind the chair in which Washington had 
 presided through the whole struggle, said to those 
 about him : ' ' In the vicissitudes of hope and fear, 
 I was not able to tell whether it was rising or 
 setting. Now, I know that it is the rising sun." 
 After more than a century's trial of their work, 
 the sun which Franklin saw is not yet near the 
 Zenith. Much has been done, but vastly more 
 remains to be accomplished, and it is still morn- 
 ing with our young Republic. 
 
 195 
 
EDUCATION IN AMERICA 
 
EDUCATION IN AMERICA 
 
 Inaugural Address, Augtist 1st, 1903, at the opening of the summer 
 meeting at Oxford. 
 
 IN responding to the flattering invitation of the 
 Vice-Chancellor to open this Course of Sum- 
 mer Lectures by an Inaugural Address, it was 
 with no presumption on my part that I could say 
 anything that would instruct the instructors, or 
 educate the educators. He would be a vain man 
 indeed who would dare to come to Oxford with 
 any such idea as that. The only service that I 
 can render is to open the way for those public 
 spirited and self-denying teachers, who for the 
 coming month will guide your studies by unfold- 
 ing the rich stores of their ample learnitig. 
 
 In casting about for a subject — if I required a 
 subject for this occasion — I appealed to the tried 
 experience of the Secretary, who kindly suggested 
 that as the principal course of the season was to 
 be upon the Middle Ages, I should take that vast 
 subject for my theme. But America has no place 
 in the Middle Ages. I see by the programme that 
 the year 1485 is assigned as the terminus of that 
 period of modified darkness, but surely there must 
 be a mistake of seven years, for Columbus did not 
 discover America till 1492. Then it was that 
 there was a new creation — a new adjustment of 
 
 199 
 
EDUCATION IN AMERICA 
 
 the little world which we inhabit. Up to that time 
 one half of the earth was still waste and void. 
 It had been lost since the beginning of time. It 
 was buried in that darkness which was upon the 
 face of the deep; but the spirit of God moved 
 upon the face of the waters, and opened the new 
 hemisphere to the yearning eyes of the brave 
 Genoese — and again He said Let there be Light, 
 and there was Light. 
 
 But however you may bound the Middle Ages, 
 America contributes nothing to the studies and 
 discussions which await you. I have carefully 
 examined your programme and find not the re- 
 motest allusion to the Western Hemisphere. 
 From ocean to ocean, from the North Pole to the 
 South, it was — except for the barbaric civiliza- 
 tion of Mexico and Peru — a trackless wilderness, 
 whose wild inhabitants afforded no lessons for 
 modern society, unless indeed it be for that very 
 minute section of it, on either side of the water, 
 the mere sportsmen — who do nothing but 
 sport — for they spent their whole lives through 
 the entire Middle Ages in hunting, shooting, fish- 
 ing and canoeing. There never was such splendid 
 sport, although nothing ever came of it but more 
 sport. They were indeed our leisure class, the 
 only leisure class America ever had — dating back 
 to an unknown antiquity, certainly before the 
 Conquest, perhaps before the Flood. Possibly 
 our Pilgrim and Puritan Fathers took warning 
 from their example when they resolved to found 
 a new civil society which should consist, like 
 
 200 
 
EDUCATION IN AMERICA 
 
 More's Utopia, of working classes only, and es- 
 tablished the Commonwealth on the gospel of 
 hard work, as it continues to this day. And so, 
 perhaps, after all, America in the Middle Ages 
 has contributed something to the sources of mod- 
 ern history. 
 
 I will therefore, if you will allow me, confine 
 myself to the very modest endeavor to give you 
 a mere glimpse of Education, of Universities, and 
 University Extension in America, which may sug- 
 gest to you their relation to the same great things 
 in this country, without exposing me to the peril 
 of commenting at all upon matters purely domes- 
 tic here. A breeze from the West may sometimes 
 be at least refreshing. 
 
 For 130 years from the great Discovery, while 
 England was advancing by leaps and bounds, 
 while Erasmus and Colet and More were doing 
 their momentous work for the revival of learning 
 in England, while Elizabeth's marvellous reign 
 was perfecting the English language and litera- 
 ture, culminating in Shakespeare and Bacon — 
 the whole Western Hemisphere remained undis- 
 turbed and undeveloped, except as the boundless 
 enterprise and ambition of Spain invaded its trop- 
 ical regions, and the energetic rivalry of Jacques 
 Cartier and his successors led them to explore 
 the St. Lawrence as the Pioneers of New France. 
 
 The first great act of the English Colonists 
 after the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers at Plym- 
 outh in 1620, and the more important Puritan 
 Emigration under Endicott and Winthrop in 
 
 201 
 
EDUCATION IN AMERICA 
 
 1628-9, was the first and a very signal example 
 of University Extension — the foundation of 
 Harvard College as a nursery of godly ministers 
 for the service of the Colonies. The new College 
 was the direct child of Cambridge: the leaders 
 of the Colony were Cambridge men, with a very 
 little Oxford leaven, and John Harvard, born in 
 Southwark, and baptized in St. Saviour's Church, 
 who gave his name, his library, and the half of 
 his fortune to the new foundation, was a graduate 
 of Emmanuel, the distinctly Puritan College at 
 Cambridge. Its nurture and discipline were all 
 drawn from Cambridge sources, and for the first 
 few decades it was a small counterpart, but in 
 extreme poverty and littleness, of one of the Col- 
 leges of the ancient University from which it 
 sprang. 
 
 While the Colonies still formed an integral part 
 of the British Empire, eight more Colleges were 
 founded after the same type, of which Yale, Penn- 
 sylvania, Princeton, and Columbia, still maintain 
 their ascendancy. As their limited and very 
 scanty endowments would permit, these all fol- 
 lowed the English types exemplified in Oxford 
 and Cambridge. They rendered great service 
 to the Colonies and the Empire by training men, 
 according to the approved classical and scholastic 
 model, for the learned professions and for public 
 life, and adequately answered the very moderate 
 demands of the community for higher education. 
 
 It was nearly two centuries from the founda- 
 tion of Harvard in 1636, before the inadequacy 
 
 202 
 
EDUCATION IN AMERICA 
 
 of the Universities to supply the intellectual needs 
 of the world, and to lead its advancing movements, 
 was suspected, and another generation still before 
 it was fully found out and exposed. So long as 
 they were only expected to furnish for the service 
 of the nation the necessary supply of lawyers, 
 doctors and ministers, of teachers, scholars and 
 public men, and to lead and promote the growth 
 of its literature, the old routine, the old curricu- 
 lum of the Colleges and Universities embracing 
 Latin, Greek and Mathematics, with a little philos- 
 ophy, metaphysics and history, were supposed to 
 constitute the essential elements of the higher 
 education which had sufficed for many genera- 
 tions. 
 
 But a new era was at hand. Probably there 
 never has been such a revolution in social and 
 civil life, as was produced by the application of 
 steam and electricity to the practical use and serv- 
 ice of man, which began in the lifetime of men 
 standing here to-night, and ushered in an epoch 
 of material development and progress such as the 
 world never witnessed before, and which has by 
 no means reached its culmination yet. The growth 
 of the population of the United States from ten 
 millions to eighty millions, the reduction of a 
 virgin Continent to their use, the creation of a 
 vast system of transportation by railroads that 
 occupied every corner and reached every town in 
 the country, the adaptation of all the applied arts 
 to the construction, equipment and decoration of 
 public and private buildings, the rapid advance 
 
 203 
 
EDUCATION IN AMERICA 
 
 of science, the multiplication of inventions, the 
 unparalleled growth of manufactures, and the 
 consequent extension of commerce and trade, — 
 all combined to create a new and enlarged civiliza- 
 tion, which had outgrown the old Colleges and 
 Universities, and threatened to leave them out, 
 or at any rate far behind. This rapid and un- 
 bounded material and intellectual progress de- 
 manded and employed an amount and variety of 
 education and brain power, which neither their 
 numbers, their resources, or their system of train- 
 ing enabled the old Universities to furnish. Prob- 
 ably a very small proportion of this mighty work, 
 which characterized and marked the 19th Century, 
 had been done or devised by the graduates of 
 our old institutions of learning. While they had 
 been filling the professions, the halls of legisla- 
 tion, the great public offices, the chairs of the 
 teachers and men of letters, the nation had looked 
 for and found a great army of men of brains and 
 men of action to attend to its construction, its 
 transportation, its manufactures, its commerce, 
 and business of every kind. 
 
 It was found then that our higher education 
 must be adapted to this startling and violent 
 change in our national life, and that if our Col- 
 leges and Universities would hold their own, they 
 must greatly increase their numbers, change their 
 methods, and assume new and closer relations 
 with the people whom they still aspired to instruct 
 and lead. 
 
 In the first place their numbers were multiplied. 
 204 
 
EDUCATION IN AMERICA 
 
 At the beginning of the century there were only 
 twenty-six Colleges and Universities in the whole 
 territory of the United States, and many of these 
 were in an infant and undeveloped state. They 
 are now numbered literally by hundreds, bringing 
 the higher education home to the people every- 
 where, many of them richly endowed, most of 
 them furnishing to the youth of the surrounding 
 community an adequate and varied training, 
 adapted to qualify them for business and for any 
 public or private duty to which they may be called, 
 although it may be far below the standard 
 now set by Harvard or Columbia, Yale or Prince- 
 ton. 
 
 These new Colleges were not all on the same 
 model, but afforded a wide choice of courses of 
 study, to suit the varied necessities of a greatly 
 diversified community. 
 
 With the exception of a few of the older States 
 which were already well provided with them by 
 private means, each State in the Union has, by 
 the use of public funds and lands, created a State 
 University ; — and it has been the laudable ambi- 
 tion of several of our multi-millionaires to create 
 Universities by the generous application of por- 
 tions of their vast fortunes. It has been interest- 
 ing to see how by this means powerful and most 
 useful institutions of learning could be created all 
 at once as it were. I mean of course in a very 
 few years. Of these, the University of Chicago, 
 founded in 1892, endowed chiefly by the generosity 
 of one man, now numbering over 3,000 students, 
 
 205 
 
EDUCATION IN AMERICA 
 
 and with an equipment approximating to that of 
 its oldest sisters, is the leading example and com- 
 pares favorably with the best. 
 
 The origin and foundation of the Stanford Uni- 
 versity, which owes its entire endowment to the 
 lavish generosity of Mr. and Mrs. Stanford, is 
 full of pathetic interest. Travelling in Europe 
 they had the unspeakable misfortune to lose their 
 only child, a youth of great promise, Leland Stan- 
 ford, junior. Returning to America they consid- 
 ered how they might best perpetuate his beloved 
 memory, and conceived the noble idea of creating 
 a great University that should bear his name to 
 a distant posterity. They were not much versed 
 in University traditions, and had no special knowl- 
 edge as to how to create an institution of learning. 
 But they cherished and fostered the happy idea 
 that had come to them. They consulted the best 
 experts that could be found ; — ^ they visited Har- 
 vard and Yale and studied their history and meth- 
 ods, estimated the cost and value of their entire 
 plants, and concluded that by an original invest- 
 ment of five million dollars, and a further five 
 millions for equipment and maintenance, they 
 might bring into existence a school of learning 
 that should rank with the best, and be worthy of 
 their highly honorable purpose. 
 
 They put their noble design into immediate 
 execution, and on a splendid estate in one of the 
 most beautiful regions of California, erected 
 buildings that would be quite worthy of Oxford 
 or of Cambridge, and in a very few years the 
 
 206 
 
EDUCATION IN AMERICA 
 
 Stanford University took its place among the 
 valuable seats of learning in the United States, 
 richly endowed and equipped, commanding the 
 services of distinguished professors and instruc- 
 tors, and thronged with many hundreds of stu- 
 dents. Not only has it received the liberal 
 amounts originally designed, but Mrs. Stanford 
 surviving her husband has actually devoted to it 
 the whole of their vast fortune, and thus they have 
 indeed created a University which will be, a lasting 
 monument not to their lost son only, but to their 
 own unstinted benevolence. 
 
 The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore is 
 another magnificent instance of private endow- 
 ment, and is unique in its character among Amer- 
 ican Universities. It is mainly a post-graduate 
 institution and embraces schools of Medicine, 
 Science, and Physics, and is a nursery of 
 original research, publishing from time to time 
 the results of researches of professors and stu- 
 dents. It has well fulfilled the hopes expressed 
 for it by Mr. Huxley in his splendid address at 
 its opening in 1876. 
 
 By far the most signal advance in University 
 Extension yet made in America is the latest in 
 date — the creation of the Carnegie Institute of 
 Research at Washington — with an endowment 
 of ten million dollars, to be devoted absolutely to 
 original research. Whoever believes that there 
 is no more truth to be found, no new law of nature 
 to be discovered, may as well join the ranks of 
 those deluded ones who believe the end of the 
 
 207 
 
EDUCATION IN AMERICA 
 
 world is at hand. So long as ideas rule tke world, 
 this Institute will occupy a foremost place among 
 institutions of learning, and bring lasting fame to 
 its generous founder. 
 
 I ought not to pass from this part of my sub- 
 ject without a reference to the source from which 
 some of our oldest and most prominent Universi- 
 ties, like Harvard and Yale and Columbia and 
 Princeton, derive the means of their maintenance 
 and development, to enable them to meet their 
 ever-increasing needs, and the enlarged demands 
 of the present day. They receive no aid from the 
 public funds; they have been built up and sus- 
 tained by private contributions; and their in- 
 creased means of usefulness are chiefly due to 
 the loyalty and gratitude and generous enthusi- 
 asm of their own graduates and their friends — 
 which are found to be an unfailing support. It 
 has come to be a common saying that no rich grad- 
 uate can live or die without giving something to 
 his University. 
 
 It goes without saying also that technical, pro- 
 fessional, and trade schools of great importance 
 and value, and in considerable numbers hold a 
 high place among our modern educational estab- 
 lishments. 
 
 The Massachusetts Institute of Technology 
 stands at the head of the whole system of tech- 
 nical education in the United States. It is pri- 
 marily a school of industrial science. At the same 
 time it finds room for the humaner studies. Mr. 
 Mark, whose essay on ** Education and Industry 
 
 208 
 
EDUCATION IN AMERICA 
 
 in the United States " has been published by the 
 Board of Education, says of it : — 
 
 '* Over and above the engineering courses of 
 various kinds, there are courses in architecture, 
 chemistry, biology, physics, geology, and there 
 is a general course for those students who wish 
 to secure an education based upon scientific study 
 and experiment, but including a larger amount of 
 philosophical study in history, economics, lan- 
 guage, and literature, than would be consistent 
 with the technical requirements of other courses." 
 
 Lord Bacon says that every man owes a debt 
 to his profession, and many of these technical, 
 commercial and professional schools in America 
 owe their high character, their great success and 
 their munificent endowment to the loyalty and 
 zeal of men who, without such advantages, by 
 sheer force of brains and character, have suc- 
 ceeded in their various callings. Every man is 
 naturally proud of the profession, business or art, 
 in which he has himself succeeded, and it is to the 
 eternal honor of many of our captains of industry 
 that they manifest their gratitude by thus smooth- 
 ing the footsteps to success of those who would 
 follow where they have led. 
 
 The Drexel Institute in Philadelphia, the Pratt 
 Institute in Brooklyn, the Armour Institute in 
 Chicago, are conspicuous examples of the gen- 
 erous sympathy of successful men — with the 
 struggles and necessities of those who come after 
 them. 
 
 The founders, Mr. Drexel, Mr. Pratt, and Mr. 
 209 
 
EDUCATION IN AMERICA 
 
 Armour were very active and prominent men of 
 business. Magnificent success had crowned their 
 own efforts, and each of them determined to leave 
 a memorial that should bear his own name, and 
 spread through a wide circle the benefits of his 
 great fortune. Nothing is more natural than that 
 the founders of such institutions should desire to 
 attach their own names to them, and so enjoy a 
 certain earthly immortality — a privilege that 
 cannot fairly be denied to them. They cherished 
 ideals and aspirations far nobler than the mate- 
 rial success which had come to them. One couplet 
 of the Psalm of Life had for them a practical 
 meaning. 
 
 Lives of great men all remind us, 
 We may make our lives sublime, 
 
 And departing leave hehind us 
 Footprints on the Sands of Time. 
 
 There are no more enduring memorials than 
 these '' footprints on the sands of time." It was 
 a '' footprint on the sand " that, by the aid of 
 the magic touch of De Foe's genius, has immor- 
 talized the name of a naked savage on a desert 
 island ; and geologists tell us that the surface of 
 the earth is marked with '' footprints on the 
 sand " that have lasted for countless ages, and 
 are to-day as distinct and clear as when they were 
 first implanted. What better footprints, what no- 
 bler memorial can any man leave behind him than 
 to g:ive his name to one of these new creations, 
 which shall carry the light of knowledge to the 
 youth of distant generations ? 
 
 210 
 
EDUCATION IN AMERICA 
 
 You will perfectly well understand that our 
 older Universities began as single Colleges, de- 
 voted to a strictly academic course, but as time 
 went on there grew up about them and under 
 their government, professional schools, each with 
 its own separate and special faculty, of which the 
 President of the University was the head. Taking 
 Harvard only as an example, it has its Schools 
 of Divinity, Medicine and Law, each distinct from 
 and independent of the old academic department, 
 Harvard College proper. For admission to each 
 of them something equivalent to a degree of Bach- 
 elor of Arts already obtained is in general re- 
 quired. So widespread is the repute of these 
 schools that students resort to them from all parts 
 of the country, bearing the Diplomas of the 
 most approved Colleges — and we now hear 
 that certain eminent English Jurists are 
 advising their sons to go over to the Harvard 
 Law School, as the best foundation for legal 
 studies. 
 
 Harvard also maintains, under the supervision 
 of its Faculty of Arts and Sciences, a Scientific 
 School crowded with students upon whom after 
 a full course of study it confers the degree of 
 Bachelor of Science. It also maintains, under the 
 same supervision, a Graduate School, which is 
 yearly growing in strength and importance, and 
 is already one of the most interesting departments 
 of the University. It provides advanced courses 
 of study for the Graduates of Harvard and other 
 approved colleges, and enables them to qualify 
 
 211 
 
EDUCATION IN AMERICA 
 
 for the higher degrees in Arts, Science and Phil- 
 osophy. 
 
 Thus have we endeavored to accomplish the 
 first and not the least important part of our Uni- 
 versity Extension, by increasing the number of 
 our schools of learning, and enlarging and vary- 
 ing the branches of knowledge and instruction to 
 which they are generally or specially devoted. 
 
 No adequate idea can be formed of the impor- 
 tance and utility of this enlarged system of Uni- 
 versities, Colleges, and Professional and Tech- 
 nical Schools, without a knowledge of the broad 
 and firm foundation on which they rest — the 
 common schools of the United States, which from 
 the beginning have been the peculiar care of the 
 people. It is not too much to say in this regard 
 that Education has been the chief industry of the 
 nation. The Constitution of the State of New 
 York declares that the Legislature must provide 
 for the maintenance and support of a system of 
 free Common Schools, wherein all the children 
 of the State may be educated. And this is but a 
 single application of the general policy, that each 
 State owes to all of its children of both sexes, 
 an education at the public expense, up to the point 
 at which they may be able to sustain themselves 
 in the struggle of life. Without this it was deemed 
 that our Institutions, resting as they do upon uni- 
 versal suffrage, could not be safe or enduring. 
 According as the condition in life of its parents 
 permits, every child may, without expense to them, 
 pass through the successive grades of primary, 
 
 212 
 
EDUCATION IN AMERICA 
 
 grammar, and high schools, and be prepared not 
 merely for its narrow vocation in life, but also for 
 the discharge of that public duty which the pos- 
 session of the suffrage involves. 
 
 Of course only a small proportion of the chil- 
 dren of the State can avail themselves of the full 
 benefit of secondary education provided, and a 
 much smaller percentage can advance to a Univer- 
 sity training, but in the aggregate education is so 
 generally diffused among the people, that the 
 average laborer, mechanic, farmer or clerk, 
 knows much more than enough to qualify him for 
 his narrow and peculiar occupation, and can un- 
 derstand, and act, with some intelligence upon the 
 public questions on which he is called upon to 
 vote. Upon this broad and deep foundation our 
 Universities rest, out of it they have grown, and 
 with it they form one entire and co-ordinated 
 system, upon which a Government depending 
 wholly upon the sum of public opinion of all its 
 citizens may safely abide. 
 
 It is difficult to present the simplest statement 
 of the magnitude of our common school system, 
 without seeming to be guilty of gross exaggera- 
 tion. According to the latest available statistics, 
 the whole number of pupils enrolled exceeds 
 16,000,000, of whom fifteen and a half millions are 
 in the primary and grammar schools, and 600,000 
 in the high schools and academies. It was to 
 these common schools that the nation looked, 
 when the Universities failed, for the supply of 
 that brain power, energy and enterprise, which 
 
 213 
 
EDUCATION IN AMERICA 
 
 the making of the nation demanded. From this 
 great mass the accidents of birth, fortune and 
 circumstance select the few, about 120,000 in all, 
 who can avail themselves of the College and Uni- 
 versity training. But the combined intellectual 
 force of the country is in the Common Schools, 
 and out of it by a process of natural selection 
 have been eliminated the effective genius, talent, 
 and faculty which the exigencies of the age re- 
 quired for the expansion of modern life. To these 
 in chief measure we owe the engineers, the in- 
 ventors, the mechanicians, the practical scientists, 
 who have directed our material development. 
 
 In the same way those who have read that 
 fascinating book. Smiles 's " Lives of British 
 Engineers " must have been struck with the fact 
 that men who did so much for the making of Eng- 
 land, for the most part enjoyed but little of the 
 advantages of the higher education, but sprang 
 from the people, and seemed by the mere force 
 of natural faculty, to educate themselves for their 
 great and responsible work. But, school or no 
 school, college or no college, Genius will work its 
 way to the front. 
 
 A single word more about our common schools, 
 to me always a fascinating subject. Of the teach- 
 ers whose numbers amount to about half a million, 
 it is safe to say that much more than two-thirds 
 are women — who here find a field of usefulness 
 and honor, which lies at the foundation of our 
 national prosperity and distinction. By general 
 consent, the conscience, the sympathy and the 
 
 214 
 
EDUCATION IN AMEEICA 
 
 superior patience of women are deemed to qual- 
 ify them in the highest degree for the wise and 
 tactful instruction of the youth of both sexes. 
 At any rate* with us their general employment as 
 teachers has proved a complete success. 
 
 I freely acknowledge my great obligations to 
 the accomplished and faithful women who taught 
 in the common schools of Massachusetts which it 
 was my good fortune to attend. But since that 
 remote day the scientific training of women in 
 the fine art of teaching has advanced in a sort of 
 arithmetical progression in normal schools, in 
 colleges for women which fairly rival in dignity 
 and equipment the best colleges for men, and in 
 such institutions as the Normal College for 
 Women in the City of New York. So that 
 to-day great numbers of women, thoroughly qual- 
 ified for the service of the State in the common 
 schools and even in higher education, are to be 
 found in all parts of the Union, and they exercise 
 a wide-spread and powerful influence in elevating, 
 refining and humanizing the youth of the Nation. 
 
 But however much we may multiply the number 
 of our seats of learning, we cannot adapt them 
 to the demands and exigencies of modern life, 
 without a wide and radical departure from the 
 ancient curriculum, which aimed only at qualify- 
 ing youth to prepare for certain limited profes- 
 sions, or to take part in the administration of 
 public affairs. Whatever special calling a man is 
 to follow after leaving the University, he ought 
 to start with a generous and liberal education 
 
 215 
 
EDUCATION IN AMERICA 
 
 such as every gentleman should have. But if we 
 want our Universities to fill the full measure of 
 their usefulness in the grand action of the world 
 of to-day, and to be responsible for the leaders 
 in such great occupations as those of the Engi- 
 neer, the Architect, the Manufacturer, the Mer- 
 chant, the Banker, the Railroad President, the 
 Journalist, the man of Science, and those who 
 apply science to the useful arts on the grand scale 
 upon which those callings are now pursued, can- 
 not some system be evolved on a broader scale 
 than that which prevailed in all the Universities 
 before this tremendous expansion of modern life 
 began? Can we not attain the desired object of 
 a liberal education upon which we insist for them 
 all, without binding them all down to that system 
 of training which once sufficed for candidates for 
 the older professions, for public service and for 
 the cultivated life of the leisure class? Cannot 
 a scheme be devised which will enable every man 
 who enters the University, to get the most out 
 of himself, to begin to prepare for the life occu- 
 pation for which he is best fitted, and to serve the 
 community by the best exercise of the faculties 
 with which he is by nature endowed? 
 
 These questions have been answered in the 
 United States by the adoption of the second form 
 of University Extension to which I have referred, 
 the broadening and expansion of the courses of 
 instruction, and by the introduction of the open 
 door for the human mind into the University 
 curriculum. "What is known as the elective sys- 
 
 216 
 
EDUCATION IN AMERICA 
 
 tern, which was practically unknown fifty years 
 ago, has now, against great opposition, and in 
 the face of inveterate prejudice, been steadily 
 gaining ground, and promises to prevail in our 
 principal seats of learning. President Eliot, who 
 is well entitled to be called the author of this 
 system in the United States, explains it thus: — 
 
 '* The state of society at large under freedom 
 is perfectly illustrated by the condition of things 
 in a University, where the choice of studies is 
 free and every student is protected and encour- 
 aged in developing to the utmost his own gifts 
 and powers. In Harvard University for example, 
 thousands of students enjoy an almost complete 
 liberty in the selection of their studies, each man 
 being encouraged to select those subjects in which 
 he most easily excels and consequently finds most 
 enjoyment and most profit." 
 
 It is not, however, to be supposed that because 
 this wide liberty of choice is allowed to the indi- 
 vidual student a less amount of work is required 
 of him; on the contrary, a full and equivalent 
 measure of study is prescribed and exacted as 
 under the old system, and the same degree is 
 given for both. 
 
 I would not undertake to judge how far such 
 a system could be adopted with wisdom or suc- 
 cess, under the totally different social conditions 
 which prevail here, but a glance at the programme 
 of this Eleventh Summer Meeting prepared by 
 the Delegacy for the extension of teaching would 
 seem to show that it has already made consider- 
 
 217 
 
EDUCATION IN AMERICA 
 
 able progress, and I believe that at Oxford there 
 is practical freedom of choice for each student, 
 without regard, of course, to degrees or honors. 
 
 You must not suspect for one moment that 
 Harvard, or any of the other American Univer- 
 sities which have adopted the elective system, are 
 being converted into Technical Schools or Com- 
 mercial Colleges. Far distant be the day when 
 the first step in that direction shall be taken. On 
 the contrary, they adhere rigidly in their academ- 
 ical course, to the orthodox theory, that special 
 study for professional or business life should be 
 postponed, till a broad and general education has 
 developed the faculties and character, and that 
 only upon such a foundation can education in 
 specialties safely rest. But many men have many 
 gifts and different faculties. They are not all run 
 in one mould, or all capable of making the most 
 of themselves by studying the same things. The 
 old classical course is still always open to all who 
 desire to follow it, and is maintained in a high 
 degree of excellence. No preferential tariff is 
 imposed on the humaner courses, an equal amount 
 of duty and performance is exacted from the 
 others ; — and the modern languages, natural his- 
 tory, science and the many other studies that have 
 been added to the curriculum, are accepted only 
 as equivalents and substitutes for the more an- 
 cient requirements. 
 
 You are too familiar with the other forms of 
 University Extension in which the United States 
 have faithfully followed the lead of Oxford 
 
 218 
 
EDUCATION IN AMERICA 
 
 and Cambridge, to require me to enlarge upon 
 them. 
 
 Chautauqua, with its 10,000 students; — the 
 fourth quarter or the summer term at the Uni- 
 versity of Chicago, where academic work goes 
 right on throughout the year (48 weeks), like any 
 other business, drawing students and professors 
 from nearly all the other American Universities ; 
 the Harvard and Columbia Summer Schools, each 
 gathering hundreds of students from all parts of 
 the United States and from foreign lands; the 
 splendid and effective work done by the Exten- 
 sion Society of Philadelphia ; — are but examples 
 and illustrations of what is going on for the pro- 
 motion of higher education in many parts of the 
 country. 
 
 Among them all the Chautauqua summer as- 
 semblage has done more than any other to stimu- 
 late and satisfy the desire for knowledge, and an 
 earnest purpose to acquire something like a Uni- 
 versity education, among those to whom fortune 
 denied a regular college training. You should 
 read Mr. Herbert B. Adams's account, of which 
 I can only give you an abstract. It is really a 
 University itself in session for the summer 
 months, with schools of English language and 
 literature, of modern languages, of classical lan«- 
 guages, of mathematics and science, of pedagogy, 
 of religious teaching, of music and the fine arts, 
 of expression, of physical education, of domestic 
 science, and of practical arts, instructed by 
 learned professors, and by volunteers from the 
 
 219 
 
EDUCATION IN AMERICA 
 
 educated men and women of the land, and at- 
 tended by thousands from every State and from 
 foreign parts. It is really the pioneer of summer 
 schools, having held its regular sessions for 
 nearly thirty years, and has constantly increased 
 in the extent and power of its influence. It lays 
 out courses of home study and reading for four 
 years. " Work begun under competent direction 
 at Chautauqua, may be continued, at home, by 
 correspondence with the head of the ' school ' 
 throughout the year." In very rare cases, after 
 very searching tests and examinations, such work 
 may be rewarded by the degree of Bachelor of 
 Arts or Bachelor of Science, which the Regents 
 of the University, the highest educational author- 
 ity of the State of New York, are empowered to 
 confer. The number of local reading circles in 
 all parts of the country, inspired and guided 
 from Chautauqua in the last twenty years, has 
 been about 10,000, and its total enrolment of 
 readers in that time has been about a quarter of 
 a million. This is really bringing higher educa- 
 tion home to the people in earnest. Chautauqua 
 stands for hard study and high thinking, and its 
 votaries are almost entirely the people of plain 
 living. It is hard to measure its influence and 
 power for good. President Roosevelt, who has 
 long been known as a historical lecturer and 
 writer, visited the assemblage in 1899, when he 
 was Governor of New York. Welcomed by 10,000 
 people in the great amphitheatre, he said that he 
 came to preach the gospel of intelligent work, that 
 
 220 
 
EDUCATION IN AMERICA 
 
 this Chautauqua did not come by chance, that it 
 was the result of years of hard work, and that 
 now there is no institution more fraught with 
 good to the nation than this. 
 
 The Regents of the University of the State of 
 New York have had great success in promoting 
 Extension Lectures in connection with the State 
 Library at Albany, with the combined aid of 
 travelling libraries, travelling pictures, extension 
 lectures, and State examiners, all working har- 
 moniously and efficiently together under one cen- 
 tral guidance at Albany. The Library is the great 
 foundation of extension work in New York. To 
 bring books to the people, to teach them what 
 books to read and how to read them, and to bring 
 the best books within their reach in connection 
 with the living voice of the lecturer, is the cardinal 
 object and means of stimulating the love of study, 
 and the thirst for knowledge. 
 
 In some of the States, notably in Massachusetts, 
 travelling libraries are hardly needed, and but 
 few Carnegie Libraries are to be found. In that 
 State, which consists of 350 townships, all but 
 five had, at last accounts, established each for 
 itself a free public library open to the use of all 
 citizens, and maintained at the public expense; 
 but even in such States, what to read and how 
 to read it are still very serious questions, upon 
 which great light ought to be shed by the Summer 
 Lectures. 
 
 Emerson, whose name has been on all tongues 
 lately in connection with the centennial of his 
 
 221 
 
EDUCATION IN AMERICA 
 
 birth, and who was one of the greatest readers of 
 his time, and got more out of his reading than 
 almost any other man, laid down some cardinal 
 rules for his own selection of books. 
 
 ** Be sure," he says, '' to read no mean books. 
 Shun the spawn of the press on the gossip of the 
 hour. Do not read what you shall learn without 
 asking, in the street and the train. The scholar 
 knows that the famed books contain first and last 
 the best thoughts and facts. In the best circles 
 is the best information." 
 
 '' The three practical rules," he says, '' which 
 I have to offer are : 1. Never read any book which 
 is not a year old; 2. Never read any but famed 
 books; 3. Never read any but what you like." 
 Thus out, of the tens of thousands of books that 
 issue from the press every year, he would let the 
 world first winnow for him the chaff from the 
 wheat, and from the hundreds of good books that 
 were so eliminated he would have each student 
 select for himself what his own necessities and 
 his own taste required. At all events, one of the 
 greatest services which your lecturers can render, 
 is to guide you in the choice of the books in your 
 selected course. 
 
 But enough of our American methods. By sub- 
 stantially the same means the two countries are 
 pursuing the same end of popularizing the higher 
 education — of bringing it home to the people — 
 and securing its benefits not only to fhose whom 
 fortune or circumstance enables to spend four 
 years at the University — but to that vastly 
 
 222 
 
EDUCATION IN AMERICA 
 
 greater number, whose thirst for knowledge and 
 desire to make their working lives more useful 
 and more happy, lead them to seek and avail 
 themselves of the great privileges which the vari- 
 ous methods of University Extension supply. To 
 continue in after life the delights and profit of 
 those studies, which the great majority of Uni- 
 versity men leave behind them when they take 
 their degrees — to extend them in generous meas- 
 ure to the less fortunate, who have had to enter 
 upon the struggle of life without them — and to 
 apply the systematic methods of College training 
 to many general and popular subjects, for which 
 no place is found in the established curriculum, 
 are the three great objects which these and other 
 summer courses of lectures and reading have 
 successfully attained. 
 
 To come for these high purposes to Oxford — 
 this most ancient seat of education known to the 
 English race — about whose venerable Halls and 
 Libraries, quadrangles and walks, cluster all the 
 history, traditions and memories of many cen- 
 turies of learning and study, whose very air is 
 redolent of knowledge and wisdom, seems to me 
 to be the highest reward and privilege of the 
 earnest seeker after truth. 
 
 One supreme advantage you enjoy, which will 
 make the month you spend here more rich and 
 profitable than a whole year to the ordinary 
 University student. He who comes here because 
 he is sent, because it is the fashion to come, be- 
 cause his parents know not what else to do with 
 
 223 
 
EDUCATION IN AMERICA 
 
 him in the four years which separate youth and 
 manhood, often carries away, I fear, very little to 
 show for his time. But you who are in dead ear- 
 nest, who come because you cannot stay away, and 
 with the firm resolve to make the most of the 
 opportunity, will go home bearing your sheaves 
 with you, and fruits of study which will enrich 
 and gladden all your days. 
 
 Upon one thing I must especially congratulate 
 you — the presence of women on an absolutely 
 equal footing in attendance upon all the courses 
 that are offered here. Here in conservative Ox- 
 ford, and in the Summer School of Harvard which 
 on other occasions equally ignores the idea of 
 co-education, these men and women, earnest and 
 ardent seekers after truth, sit on the same 
 benches, hear the same lectures, pursue the same 
 studies, and live the same lives, while this ideal 
 month lasts. The young daughter of Somerville 
 or Grirton, of Eadcliffe or Barnard, who is in 
 search of more light and the higher life, finds here 
 her full and equal opportunity. 
 
 And this brings me to the last point I wish to 
 make, that these Summer Meetings are not only 
 an opening of the doors of the University to those 
 who have been shut out — not merely an exchange 
 of learning between different Universities and 
 Colleges and Schools, but they constitute a real 
 international exchange of knowledge and oppor- 
 tunity. I see in this audience visitors from all 
 the Continental nations, all bound on the same 
 glorious errand, and what I rejoice in still more, 
 
 224 
 
EDUCATION IN AMERICA 
 
 men and women from my own country, who having 
 acquired what our own Universities had to give, 
 have crossed the seas for the sole purpose of 
 spending a month in this congenial company, in 
 these sympathetic and inspiring surroundings, in 
 this Oxford, the historic and perpetual home of 
 the scholar. 
 
 It is such intercourse as this — the exchange of 
 ideas, of sentiments, of hopes and aspirations, 
 that will be of priceless benefit to both countries. 
 Cecil Rhodes, that great Englishman, — ' ' great 
 empire builder," as the Times calls him — great 
 citizen of the "World as I prefer to call him, for 
 so his will attests him, — with the most compre- 
 hensive and exalted view of the unity of the race 
 to which he belonged, — has provided that hence- 
 forth forever, there shall at all times be at Oxford 
 100 American youth selected from all the States, 
 here to receive and enjoy, and to carry home, the 
 best fruits of her nurture and instruction, which 
 this ancient nursery of scholars and wise men has 
 to bestow. We shall try to give you our very 
 best — picked men on whom no opportunity will 
 be wasted — men who will be ambitious to win 
 your highest honors and rewards — and I am 
 sure they will carry home with them what is of 
 more value than all that, a better knowledge of 
 our own country and of yours — a better under- 
 standing of the relations which should exist be- 
 tween them, a more generous sympathy of race 
 with all who speak the English tongue. 
 
 And now will not some rich American — there 
 225 
 
EDUCATION IN AMERICA 
 
 are plenty of tliem who could do it without feel- 
 ing it — I could name scores of them — will not 
 some broad-minded and patriotic American re- 
 spond to Mr. Rhodes 's challenge, and in his life- 
 time — now — straightway — make a similar and 
 equal provision for one hundred young Britons — 
 English, Scotch and Irish — to be maintained at 
 all times at such Universities in the United States 
 as they may select — the best men you can give 
 us — who would study England from the Amer- 
 ican point of view, while they are studying Amer- 
 ica from the English point of view — and learn 
 that the two peoples, in spite of their different 
 methods and usages are very much alike, and in 
 pursuit of the same ends and objects. 
 
 I know both peoples pretty well now, but I do 
 not know which Country, or which set of young 
 men, would be the greater gainer by the exchange, 
 I am sure that it would put an end for ever to 
 that provincial spirit which still lingers on both 
 sides, and especially among the young men of 
 both sides, and would establish an endless chain 
 of intercourse and sympathy, which it would be 
 to the perpetual interest of both countries to 
 preserve. 
 
 What I mean by the provincial spirit which still 
 exists among the young men of both countries, is 
 that national prejudice born of intense love of 
 country, which refuses to see or believe that any- 
 thing can be done quite as well abroad as it is at 
 home, and which looks with condescension and 
 patronage upon the best efforts and achievements 
 
 226 
 
EDUCATION IN AMERICA 
 
 of other nations. This prejudice, though trace- 
 able to a very noble motive, does certainly stand 
 in the way of the highest national development, 
 and I know of no cure for it so effectual as would 
 be the constant interchange of students in large 
 numbers, between the great Universities of the 
 two nations. And if the movement lately inaugu- 
 rated, for a more intimate relation and inter- 
 change of ideas and students between the Univer- 
 sities of English-speaking countries is to proceed 
 in earnest, the Universities of the United States 
 must not be left out. 
 
 In a matter so vital and far-reaching as Edu- 
 cation, on which the supreme interests of both 
 nations so absolutely depend, England and the 
 United States cannot stand apart. They must 
 each study the methods, motives, and results of 
 the systems pursued by the other, and in a spirit 
 of generous rivalry strive each to promote the 
 moral, intellectual and spiritual welfare of its 
 own people — being sure that in so doing they 
 will best advance the cause of civilization, and 
 co-operate for the general welfare of mankind. 
 I know of no more notable compliment ever paid 
 by one to the other, than when your Board of 
 Education published last year, for the informa- 
 tion of the British public, in its Special Reports 
 on Educational subjects, those two great volumes 
 upon Education in the United States — so ex- 
 pressive of the sympathy and interest of this 
 kindred people in all our experiments, mistakes 
 and successes — and you may be sure that all the 
 
 227 
 
EDUCATION IN AMERICA 
 
 friends of Education in America, including every 
 intelligent and public spirited citizen, are watch- 
 ing with equal sympathy and attention the great 
 work which is being done here in the same direc- 
 tion. 
 
 If the moral courage and intellectual achieve- 
 ments of the English race the world over are to 
 keep in advance, or even to keep pace with its 
 material and industrial progress, it can only be 
 done by maintaining at its highest level the stand- 
 ard of Education on both sides of the water, and 
 especially by extending the higher education as 
 broadly as possible among the men and women of 
 both countries. And so I say let us stand to- 
 gether, and learn from each other and help each 
 other all that we can. 
 
 As Mr. Lowell well said: " The measure of a 
 nation's true success is the amount it has contrib- 
 uted to the thought, the moral energy, the intel- 
 lectual happiness, the spiritual hope and consola- 
 tion of mankind.'* 
 
 The more strenuously we contend for that suc- 
 cess, the stronger and warmer will be our friend- 
 ship, our sympathy, and our mutual confidence 
 and respect. 
 
 228 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 Address be/ore the Edinburgh Sir Walter Scott Club, 
 November 11, 1S99. 
 
 IVTE. PEESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN : — I 
 J-'J- thank you most warmly for this cordial 
 greeting, but I take all the credit of it for my 
 country and not for myself. Truly your country 
 and mine are connected by bonds of sympathy 
 which were never stronger and closer than at this 
 very hour. When Dandie Dinmont had listened 
 to the reading of Mrs. Margaret Bertram's will, 
 he threw himself back and gave utterance to that 
 great saying: '' Blood is thicker than water." 
 Little did he dream that he was giving to two 
 great nations a watchword for the exchange of 
 love and greetings eighty years afterwards. 
 
 I can assure you that Lord Salisbury, in his 
 generous and cordial words last night at the Lord 
 Mayor's banquet, will meet with a quick and 
 hearty response on the other side of the Atlantic. 
 Our great poet has said that '' peace hath her vic- 
 tories not less renowned than war," and this iron- 
 clad friendship that now prevails between these 
 two kindred nations is her last and greatest vic- 
 tory. It means peace not merely between your 
 country and mine, but among all the great nations 
 of the earth, and it tends, by advancing civiliza- 
 
 231 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 tion, to promote the prosperity and welfare not of 
 the Anglo-Saxon race alone, but of the whole 
 human race. 
 
 Now, it must be said that Americans and Scotch- 
 men in particular have a great deal in common. 
 Even in those lighter personal characteristics 
 which sometimes amuse our common critics, they 
 are very much alike. Our national habit, for I 
 confess it is a fixed habit, of making ourselves at 
 home wherever we go, must have been inherited 
 from some remote Scottish progenitor, for I as- 
 sure you that your people come over and settle 
 down upon us and make the very fat of our land 
 their own. They celebrate the birthday of your 
 patron saint in America with far more gusto than 
 you have ever done at home. No doubt about that. 
 And on the thirtieth of November, they convert 
 our great land, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, 
 into another land of cakes. 
 
 I have known more than one of these invaders 
 who, landing on our shores in youth with nothing 
 but sound minds and brave hearts in stalwart 
 bodies, have returned in mature age to become 
 the owners of lordly castles and broad domains 
 of which princes and dukes might well be proud. 
 
 There is another habit of ours which I do not 
 admit, but which malicious critics ascribe to us, — 
 of being very eager in the pursuit of the almighty 
 dollar. Well, I have been studying the Scottish 
 character somewhat since my arrival, and I am 
 bold enough to ask the question whether that is 
 not, after all, a feeble and respectful imitation of 
 
 232 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 your keen and constant pursuit of the five times 
 more almighty pound. 
 
 Although those are circumstances in which we 
 are alike, there is one ruling trait more striking 
 than either of these, and that is that innate mod- 
 esty — that overwhelming modesty and distrust 
 of ourselves, which is truly the common character- 
 istic of both i^eoples, and which always puts us in 
 a pious frame of mind and leads us to unite in 
 uttering that well worn prayer : ' ' Lord, help us, 
 to have a good conceit of ourselves. ' ' 
 
 But, seriously, in those essential and vital 
 qualities that go to make up the national char- 
 acter, we are also alike ; and we may boast and be 
 proud of our mutual resemblance. I mean in that 
 inborn love of independence; that claim for the 
 individual to all the liberty and all the scope which 
 is consistent with the general welfare ; in the pure 
 spirit of the highest and noblest democracy at 
 home in these islands as well as in the United 
 States, and in that spirit by which we measure 
 men more by their worth than by their birth. 
 
 ** The rank is but the guinea's stamp, 
 The man 's the gowd for a ' that. ' ' 
 
 And then we agree also in that love of national 
 liberty; of freedom bred in the bones of every 
 nation that has struggled for and achieved it. 
 They all, you all, we all, worship the champions 
 that have helped us win it even for centuries after 
 they are turned to dust, and if liberty ever should 
 
 233 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 be in danger on either continent, we should invoke 
 their venerated names and spirits. 
 
 ** Oh, once again to freedom's cause return 
 The patriot Tell, the Bruce of Bannockburn. 
 O'er the broad ocean let the summons run 
 And wake to life the sword of "Washington." 
 
 We acknowledge with gratitude the service 
 which Scotchmen have rendered to us in every 
 period of our national history. They helped us 
 found more than one of our infant colonies ; they 
 helped us to win our independence; and in your 
 ancient cemetery, the monument erected to our 
 great patriot, Lincoln, (the first erected to him on 
 this side of the water) recalls the valor of Scot- 
 tish soldiers who helped us to maintain our politi- 
 cal independence ; to strike the shackles from the 
 limbs of four millions of slaves, and to prove, in 
 the words of our martyr President, that ' ' govern- 
 ment of the people, by the people and for the 
 people shall not perish from the earth." 
 
 I have been told to-night to propose the theme 
 of literature, but that entire sentiment at this 
 place and in this presence centres upon the name 
 and personality of one man. All the other fixed 
 stars in the spacious firmament of Scottish litera- 
 ture must pale a little to-night before the light of 
 this central luminary. 
 
 To an American visiting, for the first time, 
 Scotland and your romantic, your picturesque, 
 your beautiful city of Edinburgh, everything 
 
 234 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 around Mm speaks of Scott. Go where you will, 
 turn in wliichever direction,- his name seems to 
 sanctify and hallow everything. I have read in 
 your last annual report, and to my intense amaze- 
 ment, that it requires the efforts of the Society to 
 induce the schoolboys of Edinburgh to read Wal- 
 ter Scott's works. I can hardly believe it. No, I 
 will not believe it. Why, in America he finds hun- 
 dreds of thousands of readers every year. The 
 press teems with new editions, and every educated 
 man is supposed to be, and is really, familiar with 
 his leading poems and romances. When we come 
 here we do not come as strangers. He has made 
 us feel at home, more at home in Edinburgh than 
 in any other city of Europe. There is not any 
 other city, not even Rome itself, that has become 
 so familiar to Americans who have never seen it, 
 than this beautiful city of yours, and all thanks 
 to the marvellous descriptions of this your be- 
 loved poet and novelist. 
 
 So, when we come here, we come, as it were, as 
 pilgrims to visit shrines that he has made familiar 
 in story; to the haunts and homes of his heroes 
 and heroines; to Arthur's Seat and Holyrood; 
 to his Own professional and personal places; to 
 Abbotsf ord, the sad memorial of his tragic strug- 
 gle, and Dryburgh Abbey, where his sacred dust 
 reposes, while his spirit still walks abroad among 
 all English speaking peoples, to fill them with love 
 of Scotland, its history, its scenery and its people. 
 
 Carlyle has said, after nobly describing Scott 
 as the pride of all Scotsmen, giving him credit for 
 
 235 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 an open soul — a wide, far reaching soul — that 
 carried him out in absolute sympathy with all 
 human things and peojDle ; after giving him credit 
 for that wonderful and innate love of the beauty 
 of nature and the power of describing it, and his 
 infinite sympathy with man as well as with 
 nature, he has, in one of his most acrid utterances, 
 said that if literature has no other task than 
 pleasantly to amuse indolent, lacguid men, why 
 here in Scott was the perfection of literature. 
 Well, now, for one, I must confess that every now 
 and then, I am one of those indolent, languid men, 
 and as I look along these tables, if I rightly study 
 your characters and moods, I suspect that this is 
 a great group of those indolent, languid men, who 
 believe that it is not the only task, but that it is 
 one of the most valuable tasks of literature to 
 amuse and to entertain mankind. 
 
 I have often thought that I would rather have 
 been the author of one such book as Waverley, or 
 Kenilworth, or Henry Esmond, or Romola, than 
 to achieve any other kind of personal, profes- 
 sional or public fame. The good that these books 
 do us, the rest they give us, the enjoyment they 
 yield us ardong the hundreds of millions who read 
 the language in which they are written, is abso- 
 lutely infinite, and the fame that the author of 
 such a book wins rivals, if it does not outshine, all 
 other kinds of fame. 
 
 Look at it now ! Waverley was written in 1814, 
 a memorable event in the history of British litera- 
 ture; the battle of Waterloo was fought in the 
 
 236 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 next year, one of the great critical battles of all 
 human history. Eighty-j&ve years have gone by 
 since then, and which name is now dearer to man- 
 kind? Which one now enjoys the wider and the 
 better fame, Wellington or Walter Scott? I shall 
 not answer that question, I leave every man to 
 answer it for himself. 
 
 So much has been said about Walter Scott to- 
 night that I will not tell you all I wish to say 
 about him. I would like to recaJJ just four points 
 of his character, which are the dearest to me in it 
 all — his humanity, his cleanliness, his heroic in- 
 dustry and his patriotism. 
 
 His humanity! He was the most humane of 
 men, with the sunniest of souls in the soundest of 
 bodies, and with a cheerful and happy tempera- 
 ment which is always worth millions to its pos- 
 sessor. What would not Carlyle have given for 
 a share of it? He loved God and he loved man, 
 and what more can you say? His heart went out 
 to all his fellow men and theirs in turn came back 
 to him. Everybody loved him. Even the dumb 
 animals fawned at his feet, and it was this in- 
 tense, everloving and glowing humanity that was 
 in his heart that made him as he was in his 
 day and generation, the most popular man in all 
 the world. 
 
 Well, this humanity was godliness, and it is the 
 old proverb that '^ cleanliness is next to godli- 
 ness." Now, to have written so much, to have 
 found so many millions of readers, to have found 
 his way in every family, in every land that reads 
 
 237 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 at all, and yet not one word in the whole, not one 
 word that he, dying, would wish to erase, not one 
 false suggestion, not one double meaning, not a 
 single thought or suggestion that could bring a 
 blush to the cheek of the most innocent and deli- 
 cate reader. This ought not to be high praise, but 
 it is high praise when you recall some modern 
 novels, not French only, but some English, which 
 have brought fame and profit to their authors, 
 which find their way into every family upon the 
 plea that everybody reads them, catering to the 
 morbid passion for mental and nervous stimulus, 
 and which present to the minds of our young 
 people scenes and incidents which men and women 
 of the world cannot read without a shudder. 
 
 I am happy to believe that there is a reaction 
 from the modern poison; that there is a return 
 to a better state of feeling. Lead the minds of our 
 young people back to the more wholesome diet, 
 such as Scott and Thackeray and Dickens and 
 George Eliot provide, and I recognize, in the 
 work of this Society, a step in that direction. It 
 is not in vain that you have taken up such a work 
 as that. Literature ought not to contain such 
 poison as I have referred to, and, thanks to such 
 men as Scott, Thackeray and Dickens, and such 
 women as George Eliot, there is ample reading 
 without any resort to that. 
 
 And then his heroic industry. Shall I say one 
 word about that 1 Scotchmen and Americans have 
 been brought up for so many generations upon the 
 gospel of hard work that mere industry is not 
 
 238 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 such a venerable virtue, but in him it indicated 
 that high reserve, that indomitable purpose, which 
 has hardly been manifested in such force by any 
 other man in all my reading. When adversity 
 overwhelmed him, when great schemes that he had 
 built up with so much ambition came toppling 
 about his head, he never wavered. He lost not 
 one jot of heart or life. He held his head erect 
 and worked on, until his tireless pen dropped 
 from his dying hand. Every hour was full of life 
 and aspiration to the end, and he personified in his 
 own action, in his own fashion, his own favorite 
 maxim : 
 
 " One crowded hour of glorious life 
 Is worth an age without a name." 
 
 And then his patriotism, noblest and proudest 
 of his gifts. He loved his country with an in- 
 tensity exceeding that of woman. He never tired 
 of describing the glorious virtues of Scottish 
 heroes, the beauties of Scottish landscape, and all 
 that went to make the land of his birth heroic and 
 beautiful. And so he drew the eyes and hearts 
 of all men hither to admire and to love. His 
 biographer says that upon the publication of the 
 Lady of the Lake, swarms of English tourists 
 came flocking over the borders the next summer, 
 to visit the places which his magic pen had de- 
 scribed. 
 
 But that was not all. This patriotic fervor, this 
 irresistible charm which mark all his writings, 
 
 239 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 goes a great deal deeper and further than that. 
 It inspires the hearts of his young countrymen 
 to imitate the heroic deeds of their ancestors 
 whom he so fondly loved to describe. Wherever 
 the Scottish soldier goes, wherever you find him 
 in the hour of trial, in the trenches, in the hos- 
 pital, or in the camp, you find in many a knap- 
 sack stray copies of Marmion, Rob Roy, or other 
 of his charming works, for the solace and enter- 
 tainment and inspiration of the soldier who has 
 gone forth to battle. If you hear, as you will 
 hear, of young soldiers of Scotland doing great 
 deeds and dying heroes' deaths, I am sure you 
 will give some of the credit to this great wizard 
 of the North, who has inspired them with his own 
 patriotic fervor. 
 
 Scott stands midway between Burns and Car- 
 lyle in your literature. How fortunate the coun- 
 try, the little country, that has produced, in a 
 single century, three such wonders as these. 
 Where will you find the like ? Search through his- 
 tory, ancient and modern — where will you find 
 three such wonderful boasts of literature as 
 Burns, Scott and Carlyle 1 The emerald, the ruby 
 and the diamond, the three great jewels in Scot- 
 land's crown. And in their name I give you the 
 toast of Literature, and I am proud and happy to 
 couple with it the name of one who has done, I 
 think, as much as any other living man to keep the 
 well of English pure and undefiled. I give you the 
 toast of Literature and Mr. Andrew Lang. 
 
 240 
 
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 Address at the Centenary of the British and Foreign Bible Society, 
 London, May, 1904. 
 
 MY Lord Northampton, Ladies and Gentle- 
 men : — I consider it a very great honor to 
 be privileged to appear before this great audience 
 assembled from all the Christian nations to-night, 
 to represent first, my country, and secondly, the 
 American Bible Society, as one of its delegates. 
 
 I shall take as my text for the brief discourse 
 that I am privileged to address to you, a direct 
 message which I have received by cable from the 
 President of the United States. 
 
 The President, no matter what heavy responsi- 
 bility, no matter what serious labors may rest 
 upon him, is always ready with a good work 
 and a helping hand for every great and worthy 
 cause. The President cables: '' Convey to the 
 British and Foreign Bible Society my hearty con- 
 gratulations on their Centenary and my earnest 
 wish for the continued success of their good work. 
 Theodore Roosevelt." 
 
 My Lord Northampton, for the American Bible 
 Society and in its name, I have the honor, in 
 common with my fellow-delegate, the Eeverend 
 Dr. Ingersoll, to submit this address to the Presi- 
 dent, Vice-Presidents and officers of your Society : 
 
 243 
 
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 '' Gentlemen and Brethren, we, the President, 
 Vice-Presidents, Officers and Managers of the 
 American Bible Society, in accepting the honor of 
 an invitation to the celebration of the One Hun- 
 dredth Anniversary of your Society, and in join- 
 ing the great number of those who congratulate 
 you on the honorable and auspicious accomplish- 
 ment of your first centenary, do hereby pay our 
 hearty tribute of gratitude, admiration and rever- 
 ence to our elder sister. 
 
 '^ The organizers of our Society acknowledge, 
 with deep gratitude, the generous gift of money 
 and of sympathy with which the British and For- 
 eign Bible Society brightened our first years. In 
 all our career, we have been stimulated by your 
 faithful example. 
 
 ' ' In recognition of the wonderful achievements 
 made possible by your steady fortitude and noble 
 devotion in all lands, it has pleased us to designate 
 as our official representatives to your celebration 
 the Reverend Edward Payson Ingersoll, D. D., 
 Corresponding Secretary, and the Honorable 
 Joseph H. Choate, the Ambassador at the Court 
 of St. James to bear personal testimony at your 
 Centenary of our fraternal regard and steadfast 
 confidence. We who send these greetings and 
 salutations, recognizing your high aims and noble 
 endeavors in every domain of your activity, com- 
 mend you to Him whose we are and whom we 
 serve, praying that He may continue to be your 
 light and guide until the Word shall be fulfilled. 
 ' They shall teach no more every man his neigh- 
 
 244 
 
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 bor and every man liis brother, saying ^' Know 
 the Lord," for they shall know Me from the least 
 of them and unto the greatest of them.' 
 
 *' Adopted by the Board of Managers of the 
 American Bible Society February 4, 1904. 
 
 " Daniel Coit Gilman, President. 
 
 ^' William Ingkaham Haven^ Secretary." 
 
 And now let me say that the President, in his 
 hearty message of good cheer, and the American 
 Bible Society in their more formal address, have 
 but spoken the sentiments of the entire people 
 of the United States, who have justified from the 
 beginning the cordial and hearty support which 
 you have given to the American Bible Society for 
 the last eighty-six years. 
 
 I was going to say that the American Bible 
 Society is your own offspring, but, inasmuch as 
 you yourselves were only twelve years old when 
 it came into being, I must regard you as our elder 
 sister, and our elder sister it was who showed us 
 the way, who encouraged us in our small begin- 
 ning, who sent us a grant of five hundred pounds 
 from her treasury to start with, which was a tre- 
 mendous help in those days, and who has ever 
 since been leading the way which we have been 
 glad to follow. 
 
 Let me say one word more about the American 
 Bible Society. Like yourselves, it has had its 
 struggles and its triumphs. Like yourselves, it 
 has an immense work on hand. T;ike j^ourselves, 
 it finds the demand far greater than the supply 
 
 245 
 
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 that it is able to furnish. It is no small under- 
 taking to keep eighty millions of people supplied 
 with a Bible in every house, and that has been 
 their ambition. And then they have to meet about 
 eight hundred thousand immigrants from foreign 
 lands every year as they land in New York and 
 other parts of the country, and I am sorry to say 
 that they are not always provided with Bibles, and 
 the Society has to take care of them. But with all 
 that, I think its records will show, as in the past, 
 that now and in the future, it can be relied on to 
 do almost as much for foreign lands as it does 
 for its own people at home. 
 
 Now this great harvest which this centenary 
 demonstrates, is only, after all, what has grown 
 up from the little seed which, nearly three hundred 
 years ago, your fathers and our fathers united 
 in planting in the distant wilderness. When the 
 Pilgrim Fathers embarked in the Mayflower in 
 1620, and when, eight years afterwards, the great 
 Puritan immigration from old England to New 
 England set in, they carried with them, our 
 fathers and the brothers of your fathers, carried 
 with them, as their best possession — in fact, the 
 only one which was to have a lasting value — 
 King James 's Bible, upon which their infant State 
 was built. It was their only book — their only 
 readable book. I have read catalogues of the 
 books which some who were best off among them 
 had, and the Bible was the only readable book, and 
 that was readable by every man, woman and child. 
 It was the ark of their covenant, and, really, they 
 
 246 
 
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 did find, within those sacred covers, their shelter 
 from the stormy blast and their eternal home. 
 Their faith was founded upon it, and having 
 no other book, you can realize how there they 
 stood to find, not their religion only, but their 
 literature, their biographies, their voyages and 
 travels, their poetry, such as no poets have ever 
 since produced, and that magnificent march of 
 history from the beginning, and they searched and 
 found in it the golden rules of life. 
 
 I do not know that I can more forcibly bring 
 before you how completely the Bible was their one 
 treasure, than by describing one of the few family 
 Bibles that have come down from those days to 
 ours — the only legacy that has reached the re- 
 mote posterity of the family to which it belonged. 
 It was read twice a day in every family by the 
 head of the household, with all the members 
 gathered about him, going in at Genesis and com- 
 ing out at Revelations, the whole journey being 
 accomplished twice every year between January 
 and December. Dog's-eared? — that is a mild 
 term to express its condition, for its leaves were 
 absolutely worn away by the pious thumbs that 
 had turned them. It was really the fact that New 
 England, in its first generation, was the most 
 biblical community on the face of the earth. Their 
 laws, their customs, their language, their habits, 
 were founded upon it, and in it they found their 
 sole guide of life. 
 
 Let me read a word from one of the greatest 
 of their descendants, Phillips Brooks, that most 
 
 247 
 
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 noble product of New England culture, himself 
 a true descendant of their blood. He said worth- 
 ily of them (I could not begin to find language 
 equal to his in point of expression) : *^ It never 
 frightened a Puritan when you bade him stand 
 still and listen to the voice of God. His closet and 
 his church were full of the reverberations of the 
 awful, gracious, beautiful voice for which he 
 listened. He made little, too little, of sacraments 
 and priests, because God was so intensely real to 
 him. What should he do with lenses who stood 
 thus full in the torrent of the sunshine? " 
 
 Our New England fathers, with the Bible as the 
 basis of their lives, realized that prayer of Eras- 
 mus, uttered one hundred years before they found 
 foothold upon Plymouth Rock, — a prayer which 
 it was often dangerous to breathe in those early 
 days: '' I wish the Gospels were translated into 
 the languages of all people, that they might be 
 read and known not only by the Scotch and the 
 Irish and the English, of course, but even by the 
 Turks and the Saracens. I wish that the husband- 
 man may sing parts of them at his plow ; that the 
 weaver may warble them at his shuttle ; that the 
 traveler may, with their narration, beguile the 
 weariness of the way." 
 
 Well, our Pilgrim Fathers were exactly the kind 
 of men that you might expect them to have been. 
 I wish you would just imagine, for one moment, 
 what our lives would be if, like them, the Bible 
 were our only book. No newspapers, no weeklies, 
 no magazines, no novels, no libraries, no school 
 
 248 
 
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 reading of any kind. I only hope that we, like 
 them, would find our refuge where they so safely 
 found theirs. 
 
 In the days of their greatest poverty and dis- 
 tress, they founded Harvard College, in order, as 
 they said, that the supply of learned and godly 
 ministers might never fail, and they gave it a 
 motto which holds to this day: '' To Christ and 
 the Church," and, what means the same thing, 
 '' Veritas " (truth), and then they founded the 
 great State of Massachusetts, which I shall not ask 
 you for one moment to hear about. I can only 
 say what Mr. Webster says of her : ' ' Massachu- 
 setts, she needs no eulogy. There she stands; 
 behold her and judge for yourselves." 
 
 If you ask me what more has come of it, what 
 other good things founded upon the Bible, besides 
 Plymouth Eock and Boston, I should say that a 
 very large share of the good which has been 
 wrought out in America from the beginning is 
 traceable to their pious efforts, that if the common 
 schools have found their way from the Atlantic 
 to the Pacific ; if slavery has been abolished ; if 
 the whole land has been changed from a wilder- 
 ness into a garden of plenty, from ocean to ocean ; 
 if education has been fostered according to Ihe 
 best light of each generation since then; if in- 
 dustry, frugality and sobriety are the watchwords 
 of the nation, as I believe them to be, I say it is 
 largely due to those first emigrants, who landing 
 with the EnsrlisH Bible in their hands and in their 
 hearts, and assisted by men like themselves here 
 
 249 
 
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 in London, established themselves on the shores 
 of America. 
 
 Without detracting at all from the great part 
 which has been contributed from other countries, 
 we say that that little leaven has leavened the 
 whole lump, and if you ask me what the signs of 
 the leavening of the lump are, I point again to the 
 work of the American Bible Society and its rela- 
 tion to that community. It is liberally supported 
 and encouraged by many ardent friends in every 
 state and in every territory of the Union. I point 
 to the fame and influence which it has acquired 
 throughout the land. I point to the millions of 
 dollars which it is gathering in for this pious 
 use, and to the scores of millions of Bibles which 
 it has distributed, on the principle always of the 
 whole Bible for the whole world, to all but the 
 poor at cost, to every one of the poor without 
 money and without price. 
 
 And now, before I sit down, I should like to 
 make a claim for my country which may be a little 
 surprising to this audience, and that is that one 
 of the first translations from the English text of 
 the whole Bible into a heathen language, was made 
 in the earliest days of Massachusetts with the 
 great aid that was sent over to us from London. 
 There came over to us in 1639 a poor clergyman 
 from Jesus College, Cambridge. There he had 
 been distinguished for his studies in theology and 
 for the study of languages, and when he came 
 to America he made himself Busy in connection 
 with that peaceful, harmless tribe of Indians who 
 
 250 
 
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 made their home in Massachusetts, and tried to 
 teach them the word of God. After he had 
 learned their language, and it took him about 
 twelve years to learn, he sent over a cry for help, 
 and he got a response. The same cry and the 
 same response has been going on to this day: 
 '' Can we to souls benighted the lamp of life 
 deny? " What was the response? Why, Parlia- 
 ment, consisting then only of the Commons, I am 
 sorry to say, organized a society entitled '* The 
 Corporation for the propagation of the gospel of 
 Jesus Christ in New England." And the pre- 
 amble of the act passed in connection with this 
 society is a very remarkable one and shows how 
 interesting was the relationship which our an- 
 cestors bore to the Indians to whom they held out 
 the hand of fellowship. Here it is : 
 
 *' Whereas, the Commons of England have re- 
 ceived certain intelligence by the testimonial of 
 divers faithful and godly ministers in New Eng- 
 land, that divers heathen natives of that country, 
 through the blessing of God, upon the pious char- 
 acter and pains of some godly English of this 
 nation, who preached the gospel to them in their 
 own Indian language, who not only of barbarous 
 have become civil, but many of them, forsaking 
 their accustomed charms and sorceries and other 
 Satanical delusions, do now call upon the name of 
 the Lord — with tears lamenting their misspent 
 lives, teaching their children what they are in- 
 structed in themselves, being careful to place their 
 said children in godly English families and to put 
 
 251 
 
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 them to English schools, betaking to themselves 
 but one wife and putting away the rest, and by 
 their constant prayer to Almighty Grod morning 
 and evening in their families, expressed to all 
 appearances with much devotion and zeal of 
 heart, Therefore," etc., etc. 
 
 Therefore the Commons established this cor- 
 poration to raise a fund in England for this pur- 
 pose, and by their apostle John Elliot, completed, 
 as early as 1663, or one hundred and forty years 
 before the foundation of the British and Foreign 
 Bible Society, a complete version of the Bible in 
 the Algonquin tongue. Probably there is not a 
 man now living who can read a word of it. Cer- 
 tainly there is not a vestige of the tribe for whom 
 it was written, but it is a grand monument for its 
 author, and it pointed the way for this Society 
 and for the American Bible Society. 
 
 I cannot take up any more of your time. I only 
 wish to ask. What is it that we are working for as 
 societies'? Each for its own interest primarily, 
 but, next to that, we have a greater and a further 
 mission, and that is to promote and advance the 
 cause of civilization, of order, of religion, of peace 
 and of duty. I believe that such occasions as this 
 go far in the accomplishment of that mission. 
 How far, then, is it possible to make these two 
 great nations policemen to keep the peace of the 
 world? Some rely upon armies and on navies, 
 upon armaments and gunpowder and lyddite and 
 dynamite as the best guarantees of the preserva- 
 tion of peace, but sometimes these things explode 
 
 252 
 
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 when least expected. Others rely upon the slow 
 and tortuous processes of diplomacy, but diplo- 
 macy sometimes fails, as we have had illustrations 
 lately. 
 
 I believe, and I think that the British and For- 
 eign Bible Society and the American Bible Society 
 unite in that belief, that the only sure guarantee 
 of peace is the moral influence of public opinion. 
 Let each nation and the people of each nation give 
 their governments to understand that they are for 
 peace and there will be no war. I believe that if 
 these two nations which you and I represent were 
 to set the example, the other Christian nations 
 would follow. Nothing could withstand such a 
 weight of public opinion based upon this book, 
 which speaks always to the world for peace and 
 good will, " Peace on earth, good will to men." 
 I believe in co-operation in good work, in every 
 good work possible, between the people of our two 
 countries. Why should we not co-operate in all 
 good work, we who have one God, one Bible, one 
 language and one destiny? 
 
 253 
 
ADDRESS AT DINNER GIVEN TO 
 
 MR. CHOATE BY THE BENCH 
 
 AND BAR OF ENGLAND 
 
 AT LINCOLN'S INN, APRIL 14th, 1905 
 
ADDRESS AT DINNER GIVEN 
 
 TO MR. CHOATE BY THE 
 
 BENCH AND BAR OF 
 
 ENGLAND 
 
 AT LINCOLN"S INN, APRIL 14th, 1905 
 
 MY Lord Chancellor, my Lords, and Gentle- 
 men, — I may say brothers all, for I accept 
 your presence here to-night as a signal proof that 
 neither time, nor distance, nor oceans, nor con- 
 tinents can weaken the ties of sympathy and fra- 
 ternity between the members of our noble pro- 
 fession wherever the English law has reached or 
 the English tongue is spoken. On this spot, con- 
 secrated for centuries — I was going to say for 
 unnumbered centuries — to the study and de- 
 velopment of the law, I feel that we are gathered 
 to-night for a veritable professional love-feast, if 
 I can judge from the kindly words of the Lord 
 Chancellor and the Attorney-General and from 
 your genial countenances. No profane presence 
 of laymen, no troublesome affairs of clients, 
 can disturb us here to-night. We are all lawyers, 
 except the Judges, and they, too, are lawyers who 
 have soared in ascension robes to a higher and 
 
 257 
 
BENCH AND BAR OF ENGLAND 
 
 nobler sphere. I thank you all from the bottom 
 of my heart. For an American lawyer who long 
 since withdrew from the arena to find himself the 
 guest of the united Bench and Bar of England, 
 supported by the presence of all that is illustri- 
 ous and famous among them, is a position which 
 only overcomes me with a sense of my own un- 
 worthiness of the compliment you have paid me. 
 I cannot but feel that in my person and over my 
 head you desire to pay an unexampled honor to 
 the great country that I represent, to its Bench 
 and Bar, that daily share your labors and keep 
 step with your progress, and to the great office 
 that I am about to lay down. 
 
 Let me say a single word about the altogether 
 too lavish compliments that the Lord Chancellor 
 has paid me in respect to my official career in 
 England. My task has not been the difficult work 
 of diplomacy to which he has referred. It has all, 
 from the day of my arrival here until now, been 
 made absolutely easy by the spirit with which I 
 have been received. The two representatives of 
 this great country with whom I have had to do 
 at the Foreign Office — Lord Salisbury and Lord 
 Lansdowne — have made my task perfectly easy, 
 not only because they have always practised the 
 modern diplomacy, meaning what they say and 
 saying what they mean, with never a card up any 
 sleeve on either side, but because in every single 
 incident they have met me more than half-way in 
 all that went towards conciliation, harmony, and 
 union between the two countries. It was also 
 
 258 
 
BENCH AND BAR OF ENGLAND 
 
 easy for us on both sides for other reasons — be- 
 cause the two great chiefs of State on either side, 
 the late illustrious Queen and the present oc- 
 cupant of the Throne, his not less illustrious Maj- 
 esty, upon the one side, and President McKinley 
 and President Roosevelt upon the other, have all 
 the while been determined that the two countries 
 should be friends; and, back of all that, a cir- 
 cumstance which gave great force to everything 
 that either has ever said, the rank and file, the 
 great mass of the people on either side, were de- 
 termined that nothing should happen to impair 
 the friendship of the two peoples. I cannot tell 
 you how much I thank you for your presence here 
 to-night. I am especially proud that the chair is 
 occupied by the Lord Chancellor, whose name in 
 both countries is a synonym for equity and jus- 
 tice. In spite of his thirty-five years at the Bar 
 and his eighteen years upon the "Woolsack, he is 
 the very incarnation of perennial youth. Time, 
 like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away, 
 but the Lord Chancellor seems to stem the tide of 
 time. Instead of retreating like the rest of us 
 before its advancing waves, he is actually working 
 his way up stream. He demonstrates what I have 
 been trying to prove for the last three years, that 
 the eighth decade of life is far the best, and I am 
 sure he will join with me in advising you all to 
 hurry up and get into it as soon as you can. He 
 gave me his personal friendship immediately 
 after my arrival here, which has all the time been 
 growing stronger and stronger ; and, while he has 
 
 259 
 
BENCH AND BAR OF ENGLAND 
 
 been drinking at some mysterious fountain that 
 always renewed his mind and his body, I can an- 
 swer for it that his heart has all the time been 
 growing younger and fresher and warmer. I 
 must also acknowledge with gratitude the pres- 
 ence of the Lord Chief Justice to-night. He, too, 
 has graced my life in England with his friendship. 
 His name is a household word in America. He is 
 held in the highest esteem and honor ; and I only 
 hope that he will yield to my repeated persuasions 
 to come over and give us a chance to show how 
 much we like him. 
 
 The occasion and the Lord Chancellor's and At- 
 torney-General's most kindly words, I am afraid, 
 will make me a little egotistical. I must disavow 
 what they ha37e so strongly pressed — my great 
 prominence in the profession. I only tried always 
 to keap my oath to do my duty by my client and 
 the Court; but I will confess that from the begin- 
 ning to the end of my forty-four years at the Bar 
 I loved the profession with all the ardor and inten- 
 sity that that jealous mistress the law could ever 
 exact, and was always trying to pay back the debt 
 which, as Lord Bacon says, we all owe to the pro- 
 fession that honors us. In my youngest days I 
 could not resist the attraction of those historic 
 and dramatic scenes and incidents in the lives of 
 the world's great advocates which everybody 
 knows. Who would not have given a year's ran- 
 som, a year of his life, to have heard Somers, in 
 the case of the seven Bishops, in a speech of only 
 five minutes, breaking the rod of the oppressor, 
 
 260 
 
BENCH AND BAR OF ENGLAND 
 
 winning the great cause, and at one bound taking 
 his place, the foremost place, among the orators 
 and jurists of England ; or Erskine, the greatest 
 advocate anywhere and of all time, when he dared 
 to brave even the mighty Mansfield's admonition 
 that Lord Sandwich was not before the Court? 
 * ' I know he is not before the Court, and for that 
 very reason I will bring him before the Court." 
 He entered the tribunal that morning an abso- 
 lutely briefless barrister, and went out of the 
 Court with thirty retainers in his pocket and fol- 
 lowed by a crowd of solicitors engaged in a race 
 of diligence to see who should reach his chambers 
 first. Who would not have given a year of his 
 life to have heard Webster pleading before the 
 Supreme Court of the United States for the little 
 college in the hills, where his intellectual life 
 began, and throwing successfully round it the 
 shield of that most beneficent of all constitutional 
 provisions, that no State shall pass any law im- 
 pairing the obligation of contracts'? 
 
 I started in life with a belief that our profession 
 in its highest walks afforded the most noble em- 
 ployment in which any man could engage, and I 
 am of the same opinion still. Until I became an 
 Ambassador and entered the terra incognita of 
 diplomacy I believed a man could be of greater 
 service to his country and his race in the foremost 
 ranks of the Bar than anywhere else ; and I think 
 so still. To be a priest, and possibly a high priest, 
 in the temple of justice, to serve at her altar and 
 aid in her administration, to maintain and defend 
 
 261 
 
BENCH AND BAE OF ENGLAND 
 
 those inalienable rights of life, liberty, and prop- 
 erty upon which the safety of society depends, to 
 succor the oppressed and to defend the innocent, 
 to maintain Constitutional rights against all viola- 
 tions, whether by the Executive, by the Legisla- 
 ture, by the resistless power of the Press, or, 
 worst of all, by the ruthless rapacity of an un- 
 bridled majority, to rescue the scapegoat and 
 restore him to his proper place in the world — all 
 this seemed to me to furnish a field worthy of any 
 man's ambition. 
 
 The relations between the Bench and the Bar 
 of England and those of the United States are far 
 more intimate and enduring than I think even you 
 can suppose. I wish you could enter any of our 
 Courts in America anywhere between Boston and 
 San Francisco. You would find yourself on famil- 
 iar ground and perfectly at home — the same law, 
 the same questions, the same mode of dealing with 
 them. You would find always and everywhere the 
 same loyalty on the part of the Bar to the Bench 
 and on the part of the Bench to the Bar. Some 
 things you would miss. You would miss, I think, 
 some of that dignity, some of that picturesque- 
 ness, at least, which prevails in your own tribu- 
 nals. Our barristers appear in plain clothes in 
 Court. The Judges — some of them — wear 
 gowns, but never a wig. I think it would be a 
 very rash man that would propose that bold ex- 
 periment to our democracy. If the Lord Chancel- 
 lor had wished that our primitive and unsophisti- 
 cated people should adopt that relic of antiquity 
 
 262 
 
BENCH AND BAR OF ENGLAND 
 
 and grandeur, lie should not have allowed his pre- 
 decessors in his great office to tell such fearful 
 stories about each other in respect to that article 
 of apparel. We have read the story of Lord 
 Campbell, as given in his diary annotated by his 
 daughter, as to what became of Lord Erskine's 
 full-bottomed wig when he ceased to be Lord 
 Chancellor — that it was purchased and exported 
 to the coast of Guinea in order that it might 
 make an African warrior more formidable to his 
 enemies on the field of battle. We have a great 
 prejudice against anything that savors of over- 
 awing the Court, overawing the jury ; and if any 
 such terrors are to be connected with that instru- 
 ment our pure democracy will never adopt it. 
 
 Now, gentlemen, these ancient Inns of Court, 
 and, above all, Westminster Hall, with its far 
 more ancient and historic associations, which have 
 been the nurseries and the home of the Common 
 Law for ages, are very near and dear to my coun- 
 trymen, and especially to my brethren of the Bar 
 in America. There is nothing dearer to them. 
 They flock to Westminster Hall immediately on 
 their arrival here; and they wish — I wish for 
 them — to acknowledge that infinite debt of grati- 
 tude that we owe, that the whole world owes, to 
 the Bench and Bar of England, who have been 
 working out with untiring patience through whole 
 centuries the principles of the common law which 
 underlie alike the liberties of England and of 
 America. It was the Bench and Bar of England 
 in the Inns of Court and in the Courts in West- 
 
 263 
 
BENCH AND BAR OF ENGLAND 
 
 minster Hall, and more lately in the Eoyal Courts 
 of Justice, that established those fundamental, 
 those absolute principles that lie at the foundation 
 of our common liberties. What are they? That 
 there is no such thing as absolute power, that 
 King, lords, and commons, President, congress, 
 and people, are alike subject to the law; that be- 
 fore its supreme majesty all men are equal ; that 
 no man can be punished or deprived of his dearest 
 or any of his rights except by the edict of the law 
 pronounced by independent tribunals, who are 
 themselves subject to the law; that every man's 
 house is his castle, and though the winds and the 
 storms may enter it, the King and the President 
 cannot ; in other words, and the sublime words of 
 the great Sidney, that ours, on both sides of the 
 water, is ' ' a government of laws and not of men. ' * 
 Indeed, we claim these venerable structures as in 
 large part our own. I believe that William Rufus 
 held his first Court in Westminster Hall at Whit- 
 suntide, 1099. Well, when John Winthrop, of 
 the Inner Temple, went over to America to found 
 the State of Massachusetts in 1629, those Courts, 
 that great Hall, these Inns of Court had been as 
 much ours as yours for hundreds of years; so 
 that you see we claim a very great interest, a 
 personal and immediate, and direct right in all 
 that has contributed to the growth and develop- 
 ment of the law in England. You had been in 
 these very Inns of Court, studying and teaching 
 the law, for at least a century before Columbus 
 made his great discovery, which opened the dawn 
 
 264 
 
BENCH AND BAR OF ENGLAND 
 
 of a new creation and put an end to the dark ages. 
 In Magna Charta and the Petition of Right our 
 colonies carried with them the germs of what has 
 grown to be American law and American liberty. 
 At the beginning there were no lawyers in Amer- 
 ica. They had an idea of a Utopia which could 
 be carried on successfully by the help of the 
 clergy, without them. But we have made great 
 progress since then, and our last census shows in 
 America more than 100,000 lawyers. I can give 
 the exact number — 104,700, of whom 1,010 are 
 women. Now, I am afraid the Lord Chancellor, 
 who is so conservative, would hesitate a little at 
 the admission to the Bar of 1,010 women; but I 
 assure him that if he will go over there and hold 
 a Court in which they may be heard, and if you, 
 gentlemen of the Bar, will go over there, and take 
 retainers with them or against them, you will be 
 so fascinated that you will embrace every oppor- 
 tunity afterwards of repeating the experiment. 
 
 Now, our Declaration of Independence, which 
 the Lord Chancellor seems to have a little doubt 
 about, our Constitution of the United States, 
 which he has no doubt about, are only the natural 
 sequence of Magna Charta and the Petition of 
 Right. Our Revolution only followed suit after 
 your Revolution of a hundred years before. "We 
 stood for the same principles, we fought the same 
 fight, we gained the same victory. Our Jefferson 
 and Franklin and their associates in declaring 
 independence, our Washington and Hamilton and 
 their associates in organizing the Government of 
 
 265 
 
BENCH AND BAR OF ENGLAND 
 
 the United States and setting its wheels in motion, 
 were only doing for ns what Somers and his great 
 associates had done for you in 1688. Now you 
 will not be surprised that in these fateful events, 
 which meant so much for the welfare of the 
 world, and in which the lawyers took a very great 
 part, these Inns of Court contributed their quota; 
 and that there were five of the signers of the 
 Declaration of Independence who had been bred 
 to the law in the Middle Temple, and three of the 
 framers and signers of the Constitution of the 
 United States who had been bred in the same Inn, 
 and one of them was afterwards nominated by 
 President Washington as Chief Justice of the 
 United States. So you may well imagine with 
 what delight I was informed a day or two ago that 
 I had been made a Bencher of the great American 
 Inn, the Middle Temple. I do not think any Amer- 
 ican lawyer has ever had such a success as that. 
 They may have won more cases, they may have 
 got more fees, but they never have been made 
 Benchers of any of the Inns of Court. In fact, 
 this incident, so touching to my heart, has almost 
 changed my mind. I have a great mind not to 
 go back to America, but to remain here and re- 
 sume the practice of the law where those five 
 signers of the Declaration and those three sign- 
 ers of the Constitution left off 125 years ago. 
 I should like to cross swords and join conclusions 
 with some of these distinguished Benchers of the 
 four Inns of Court who grace these tables to- 
 night. I do not know what my brethren of the 
 
 266 
 
BENCH AND BAR OF ENGLAND 
 
 Bar at home would say, but I think they would 
 say, ' ' If you have achieved such a success as that 
 make the most and the best of it at once." 
 
 Well, there is no difference between American 
 law and liberty and English law and liberty. I 
 should like to mention two responsibilities which 
 have been thrown upon the Bench and the Bar 
 in America in a greater degree than here. One 
 is that on the Bar the whole burden of legislation 
 from the beginning has been thrown. In a coun- 
 try like ours, where the executive and the legisla- 
 tive departments are kept asunder by impassable 
 constitutional barriers, it is justly considered, and 
 has always been considered, that, for making and 
 amending and expanding the law, the men best 
 qualified are those who are already skilled in the 
 law, and so from the beginning the majority of 
 lawyers in Congress and in each one of the Legis- 
 latures of our forty-five States has been uni- 
 formly maintained. 
 
 And then upon the Bench there has been thrown 
 another very great responsibility, growing out of 
 our peculiar form of government, exercised by all 
 the Judges and culminating in the unique power 
 of the Supreme Court, to which the Lord Chan- 
 cellor has referred, to set aside, to declare null 
 and void, any Act of any Legislature or of Con- 
 gress itself which comes in conflict with the pro- 
 visions of the Constitution. I believe it has been 
 exercised by that Court about twenty-four times 
 in the case of Acts of Congress, and something 
 like two hundred times in the case of State enact- 
 
 267 
 
BENCH AND BAR OF ENGLAND 
 
 ments, and it has been the balance wheel upon 
 which our complicated and dual system of gov- 
 ernment has turned. There we have over every 
 foot of the soil of our great territory and over 
 every living being within it two distinct and in- 
 dependent Governments, each supreme and abso- 
 lute in its own sphere and working in absolute 
 harmony because of this harmonizing function of 
 our great tribunal. 
 
 I said a little while ago that perhaps you ex- 
 celled us in your tribunals in dignity, in the con- 
 trol which the Court exercises, and ought to exer- 
 cise, over the Bar. It is all illustrated by a single 
 difference of phraseology. In America we say 
 that the counsel try the case and that the Judge 
 hears and decides; but, if I understand your 
 common parlance here, the Judge tries the case 
 and the counsel hear and obey. That is where 
 we have got a good deal to learn from you. It 
 is exactly as it should be. But do not believe for 
 a moment that there is any abdication on the part 
 of our tribunals, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, 
 of the functions and authority that belong to the 
 judicial office. If anybody should go over there 
 and try it on he would find that he was very much 
 mistaken indeed. There is an example set by that 
 august tribunal to which I have referred. No 
 Court could be looked up to with so much rever- 
 ence ; no Court, I think, receives the homage and 
 deference, not only of the community, but of the 
 Bar, in such a signal way as that; and the in- 
 fluence of its example is widely extended, and 
 
 268 
 
BENCH AND BAR OF ENGLAND 
 
 other tribunals follow as they may. Now, gentle- 
 men, I must not occupy any more of your time. 
 I cannot express the overflowing feelings that 
 are welling up from my heart at this moment 
 when I find myself thus honored by the most 
 illustrious men of the Bench and Bar in Eng- 
 land, and that such words of affection for me 
 should have been spoken on every side. I can 
 only thank you again and again. Let me tell you 
 of what one of my predecessors said — I think 
 many of you knew him — himself a very great 
 lawyer, Mr. Phelps. Before I left America to 
 come and take up my office here he called upon 
 me and he said, " Mr. Choate, the best nights that 
 you will have in England are those that you will 
 pass with the Bench and the Bar." '' The law- 
 yers," said he, " are the best company in Eng- 
 land, and I advise you to lose no opportunity of 
 cultivating their friendship. You certainly will 
 have your reward." My Lord Chancellor and 
 gentlemen, I have faithfully followed his advice 
 and I have my reward to-night. No one ever had 
 one more rich and generous. I shall carry the 
 memory of it with me as long as I live, and I think 
 I shall be attracted by the love of my professional 
 brethren to visit these shores as often as I can. 
 
 269 
 
FAREWELL 
 
\5 
 
 FAREWELL 
 
 Address at the Farewell Banquet given to Mr. Choate, hy the Lord 
 Mayor at the Mansion House May 5th, 1905. 
 
 MY Lord Mayor, Mr. Balfour, my Lords and 
 Gentlemen, — Certainly this is the crowning 
 hour of my life. At any rate, it is positively my 
 last farewell benefit upon the English stage. To 
 be received and feted by the Lord Mayor of Lon- 
 don, who holds the most unique and picturesque 
 office in the kingdom, who bears upon his breast 
 the badge which his predecessors in direct suc- 
 cession have worn for more than seven hundred 
 years, the Chief Magistrate of this wonderful 
 City, the centre of the world's commerce and the 
 seat of the British Empire; to have my health 
 proposed and my obituary pronounced by the 
 Prime Minister, who bears upon his ample shoul- 
 ders all of this great globe which the British 
 drum-beat encircles, supported as he is too by 
 such a number of possible Prime Ministers of the 
 future, all ready and willing in the fulness of 
 time, with consummate self-sacrifice, to relieve 
 him of this great portion of his duty ; to see pres- 
 ent also so many members of that august but 
 occult body, the Cabinet, who labor in secret, but 
 to-night for my sake have come out into the full 
 glare of the bright electric light; to be honored 
 
 273 
 
FAREWELL 
 
 by the presence of the Foreign Secretary with 
 whom I have had such delightful intercourse, 
 Lord Lansdowne, from whom no secrets are hid; 
 and then to find that so many of the famous men 
 of England of all professions, parties, and opin- 
 ions have come here to-night as my friends — I 
 could look almost every man in this company in 
 the face and claim him almost as an old friend — 
 I do not dare trust myself to speak at all about 
 it. I can only thank the Lord Mayor for his 
 magnificent hospitality, and you, all my fellow- 
 guests here, for your inspiring presence. I am 
 sure that you will indulge me, before I say the 
 fatal word " Farewell," in a few words in re- 
 sponse to what has been so eloquently said 
 to you by the Prime Minister. Altogether too 
 much credit has been attributed to me for the 
 happy, the delightful relations that now exist be- 
 tween our two countries. If I have contributed in 
 the least degree to maintain and preserve what 
 I found already existing, the last six years will 
 be the proudest of my life. 
 
 But, gentlemen, the real credit of this happy 
 state of things belongs not to me or to any Am- 
 bassador, but it belongs to the two men who are 
 responsible, and have now for some years been 
 responsible, for the conduct of our relations, no 
 longer foreign relations — I mean Lord Lans- 
 downe and Mr. Hay. The diplomatist who should 
 try to pick a quarrel with Lord Lansdowne would 
 be a curious crank indeed ; because he would have 
 to pick it all himself; Lord Lansdowne would be 
 
 274 
 
FAREWELL 
 
 no party to it. And, happily, so it is with Mr. 
 Hay. Never were two statesmen more happily 
 matched, for the noble game that is entrusted to 
 them. When the noble marquis escapes from the 
 ennui of Downing street and the tiresome visits 
 of Ambassadors, to his beloved retreat in the 
 extreme southwest of Ireland, he finds himself in 
 the next parish to the United States, with nothing 
 between us and him but fresh air and salt water. 
 And I think I have noticed that he catches and 
 reflects the breezy influences of that close neigh- 
 borhood. At any rate, I have always found that 
 my best time for dealing with him on American 
 questions was when he returned refreshed and 
 invigorated from that near approach to the West- 
 ern World. Always, the policy of the Foreign 
 Office, so far as I have observed it, has been one of 
 fairness, frankness, justice and simple truth, and 
 I hope that he has found our State Department 
 the same. 
 
 No single man can claim exclusive credit in this 
 happy result. You all know how constant, how 
 unceasing your gracious Sovereigns and our high- 
 minded Presidents have always been in the same 
 direction. I wish to say here to-night that I have 
 never been called into the presence of his Majesty 
 the King or of his illustrious mother that I did 
 not find them full of expressions of sympathy and 
 friendship for the country that I represent. I 
 well remember the last interview that it was my 
 honor to have with your late illustrious Queen. 
 It was immediately after a frightful conflagration 
 
 275 
 
FAREWELL 
 
 had occurred in America, where many lives were 
 lost. She knew all about it, she had studied all 
 its details, and was as full of sympathy and sor- 
 row as if the disaster had occurred in her own 
 dominions. And as for his Majesty, the King, 
 why, his instinct for peace is so unceasing, his 
 genius for conciliation so perfect, as he has been 
 showing to the world in this very last week, that 
 it will be impossible hereafter as long as he lives 
 for any of the other nations to quarrel with his 
 own people. 
 
 I have been asked a thousand times in the last 
 three months, ^' Why do you go? " *' Are you 
 not sorry to leave England? Are you really 
 glad to go home? " Well, in truth, my mind 
 and heart are torn asunder by conflicting emo- 
 tions. In the first place, on the one hand, I will 
 tell you a great secret. I am really suffering from 
 homesickness. Not that I love England less, but 
 that I love America more, and what Englishman 
 will quarrel with me for that? There is no place 
 like home, be it ever so homely, or, as the old 
 Welsh adage has it, '' east and west, hame is 
 best." My friends on this side of the water are 
 multiplying every day in numbers and increasing 
 in the ardor of their affections. I am sorry to 
 say that the great host of my friends on the other 
 side are as rapidly diminishing and dwindling 
 away. " Part of the host have crossed the flood, 
 and part are crossing now," and I have a great 
 yearning to be with the waning number. And 
 then, on the other hand, to make a clean breast of 
 
 276 
 
FAEEWELL 
 
 it in this family party, I am running a great risk, 
 if I stay here much longer, of contracting a much 
 more serious disease than homesickness — I mean 
 Anglomania, which many of my countrymen re- 
 gard as more dangerous and fatal than even 
 cerebro-spinal meningitis. To a young man it is 
 absolutely fatal, but to one who has well-nigh 
 exhausted his future, the consequences are not 
 quite so serious. It was wisely said by one of the 
 Presidents of the United States that he would 
 not trust a Minister or an Ambassador in Eng- 
 land more than four years, because those English 
 would be sure to spoil him, and you have done 
 your best to spoil me — not as the children of 
 Israel spoiled the Egyptians, by taking from them 
 all they could lay their hands upon, but by heap- 
 ing on my undeserving head all the honors and 
 compliments and benefits that you can lay your 
 hands upon. And so it is hard to say whether I 
 am more glad or more sorry, or on which side of 
 the water I shall leave or have the largest half 
 of my heart. Mr. Balfour has spoken of the ad- 
 vantages that I have had in studying the English 
 people, and he wondered what sort of impression 
 I should carry home. "Well, I shall carry, in the 
 first place, the most delightful personal memo- 
 ries — memories of exalting and enduring friend- 
 ships formed, of many happy homes visited, of 
 boundless hospitality enjoyed. 
 
 But I shall carry away something better than 
 that. I shall carry away the highest appreciation 
 of those great traits and qualities which make and 
 
 277 
 
FAEEWELL 
 
 mark your national life — the reign of law abso- 
 lutely sovereign and supreme in all parts of the 
 land ; individual liberty carried to its highest per- 
 fection, perfected by law and subject to it; that 
 splendid and burning patriotism which inspires 
 your young men when their country calls to risk 
 life and all they hold dear for her sake. I recall 
 that lofty stanza of Emerson applied to our young 
 men when they responded to a similar call : — 
 
 " So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 
 So near is God to man ; 
 When duty whispers low — ' Thou must ' 
 The youth replies, ' I can ! ' " 
 
 I shall carry with me the recollection of that splen- 
 did instinct for public life which animates and 
 pervades those classes here from whom public 
 duty is expected, and the absolute purity of your 
 public life which is the necessary result. There 
 are so many other things that I witnessed here. 
 I wish I could spend time in recalling more of 
 them. 
 
 One thing that has struck me from first to last 
 here in England is the loyal devotion of all the 
 people to the integrity of the Empire, conforming, 
 as it does, exactly to our fundamental idea of 
 American life that everything must be sacrificed, 
 everything else must be sacrificed, if necessary, 
 to maintain the sovereignty and integrity of the 
 Republic. I came here believing that you were a 
 cold and phlegmatic people, not capable of those 
 
 278 
 
FAEEWELL 
 
 mercurial outbursts of emotion which sometimes 
 carry away my own countrymen and those of 
 other nations. But I have lived here long enough 
 to change my mind and to know you better. I 
 have seen you, as Mr. Balfour has said, in all 
 the vicissitudes of peace and war, under the 
 strain of a tremendous anxiety and apprehensions 
 of disaster, and in all the exultation of victory. 
 I found that under your cool exterior, your serene 
 repose of manner, the hall-mark of the English 
 gentleman, which other nations may well envy, 
 you carry hearts as warm as ever inspired the 
 enthusiasm of any people. I was brought up to 
 believe that work, hard work, was the end and 
 aim of life — that that was what we were placed 
 here for. But on contemplating your best exam- 
 ples I have learnt that work is only a means to a 
 higher end, to a more rational life, to the develop- 
 ment of our best traits and powers for the benefit 
 of those around us, and for getting and giving as 
 much happiness as the lot of humanity admits. 
 
 Six years ago I came among you an absolute 
 stranger upon a mission wholly new to me, but 
 from the moment I landed I was no longer a 
 stranger. All doors were open to me, endless 
 hospitality was showered upon me, and I learnt 
 that I had really some useful work to do here. In 
 these days of cables and wireless communications, 
 when the Foreign Office of each nation is brought 
 into actual presence in the capital of every other, 
 an American Ambassador who confined himself to 
 official duties would have very little work to do. 
 
 279 
 
FAREWELL 
 
 I was instructed by President McKinley to en- 
 deavor to promote the welfare of both countries 
 by cultivating the most friendly relations between 
 them ; and in obedience to that instruction I have 
 gone to and fro among the English people, coming 
 in close contact with them, studying them at near 
 range for the purpose of discovering the distinc- 
 tions and differences, if any, that exist between 
 us. I have endeavored to make them better ac- 
 quainted with my own country, its history, its 
 institutions, its great names, for the purpose of 
 showing them that really the difference between 
 an Englishman and an American is only skin deep, 
 that under different historical forms we pursue 
 with equal success the same great objects of lib- 
 erty, of justice, of the public welfare, and that our 
 interests are so inextricably interwoven that we 
 would not, if we could, and could not if we would, 
 escape the necessity of an abiding and perpetual 
 friendship* I have no doubt now, and can have 
 no doubt, about the permanence of the peace which 
 now exists between us. War between these two 
 great nations would be an inexplicable impossi- 
 bility. We have got along without it for the last 
 ninety years; we shall get along perfectly well 
 without it for the next nine hundred years — ab- 
 solutely so. 
 
 The gravest questions have arisen during this 
 protracted period of peace, questions which other 
 nations might have made causes for war, and we 
 have settled them all without a single exception 
 by resort to the peaceful mode of arbitration, to 
 
 280 
 
FAEEWELL 
 
 the principle of which Senate and people are all 
 equally committed. You must not be troubled by 
 hearing of any domestic discussion as to how this 
 happy result of leaving every question that may 
 arise between us to final settlement by arbitration 
 can best be brought about. In the practical ap- 
 plication of the principle we have never yet failed 
 in the past, and we shall never fail in the future. 
 Of course, as you all know, there are questions 
 which are not capable of arbitration, but no such 
 questions are possible, as it seems to me, to arise 
 between your nation and ours. Our good under- 
 standing is now complete and perfect; our in- 
 terests are more interwoven than ever before; 
 our knowledge of each other is greater and closer 
 than ever before, and every year and every day 
 it is growing closer. It means very much that 
 our multitudinous visits to your shores have been 
 responded to in a single season by return visits 
 of such men as the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 the Bishops of Hereford and Ripon, Lord Dart- 
 mouth, Mr. Bryce and Mr. Morley; and, if I am 
 rightly informed — if I am not mistaken — in the 
 event of any change of Government the retiring 
 Ministers would follow their example, and they 
 would find in the capacious bosom of our broad 
 Republic the rest for which they were seeking 
 and the new life and inspiration which would 
 bring them home for the next rebound. And I 
 really believe that, if you follow the advice of 
 his Grace and these returned statesmen, a visit 
 to America might be made hereafter an absolute 
 
 281 
 
FAREWELL 
 
 qualification in the education of a British states- 
 man. 
 
 Our literature on both sides is filled and sat- 
 urated with our good understanding. The most 
 recent eminent historian of Great Britain ex- 
 hausts the power of eulogy in dwelling upon the 
 merits of those arch Republicans, Greorge Wash- 
 ington and Alexander Hamilton, and even of Ben- 
 jamin Franklin, who snatched the lightning from, 
 the clouds and the sceptre from tyrants. And it 
 has also been discovered what we always knew — 
 that my predecessor, Mr. Adams, who stood here 
 like a rock for the interests of his country in days 
 most perilous to our peace, has really proved to 
 be in the end the best friend of both countries, as 
 Mr. Herbert Paul, in his last volume, for which 
 I thank him, declares him to have been. He says 
 that at Geneva he saved the arbitration from col- 
 lapse and the two nations from falling apart, and 
 he boldly suggests that he is entitled to have a 
 monument at Westminster as well as at Washing- 
 ton. I thank him for that. Then, on the other 
 side you have heard a good deal, and I have heard 
 a good deal, of the rancor and bitterness that had 
 grown into the American school-books, especially 
 the school histories, bringing down to present 
 times the hard feelings of our former conflicts ; 
 but Mr. Goldwin Smith, whose name you will all 
 respect as an historian, in his very recent address 
 before the American Historical Association, de- 
 clared that, having heard a great deal about this 
 vice in the school histories in use in America, he 
 
 282 
 
FAEEWELL 
 
 made a collection of our school books of the pres- 
 ent day and examined them, and he expresses the 
 positive belief that there is very little in them 
 which could give offense to any reasonable Eng- 
 lishman. 
 
 Then you heard what my successor, Mr. White- 
 law Reid, who will soon be with you, said recently 
 in New York. Let me read it to you, for it is a 
 very good introduction of him to this audience. 
 He said that international good will '' after all 
 is no longer a subject of much concern. We do 
 not continue to worry over an object of national 
 or international desire when it has already been 
 attained. We are content to enjoy it." The good 
 will between your country and this already exists. 
 Never at any stage of our history has it been so 
 generally taken as a matter of course on both 
 sides of the Atlantic. And let me say here that 
 you will find my successor — you will recognize 
 him as a life-long advocate of friendly relations 
 between England and our own country. He will 
 come among you as an old friend. You have re- 
 ceived him before on several most distinguished 
 and brilliant missions. His experience and 
 diplomacy, his knowledge of affairs, his versatil- 
 ity are well known, and I am sure that you will 
 give him a good old-fashioned, hearty British 
 welcome. 
 
 Now, serene and secure as our peace is, I am 
 not so foolish as to indulge the hope that it will 
 never be disturbed. Untoward events will hap- 
 pen, unfortunate things will be said, something 
 
 283 
 
FAEEWELL 
 
 or other will happen that will for the moment 
 disturb the serenity of our peaceful relations. 
 And how are these threats of disaster to be 
 avoided ? Standing here by the side of your pred- 
 ecessor, eight years ago, Lord Salisbury said that 
 there was nothing in the traditions of Govern- 
 ment, nothing in the tendencies of official life, 
 which was any danger, if any existed, to good re- 
 lations. '* Take care," he said, ^' of the unofficial 
 people, and I will see that the official people never 
 make any war ; ' ' and he went on to speak of that 
 public opinion which dominated Governments 
 then and which has since grown to dominate them 
 still more. If any such unhappy occurrences do 
 arise, we are to be tided over them by public 
 opinion and by that great exponent of public 
 opinion and guide of the public conscience — a 
 high-minded and patriotic Press on both sides of 
 the Atlantic. If the Press does its best to mini- 
 mize such untoward events and to keep the people 
 cool till sober second thoughts come we shall 
 all be glad; but if they stir up the embers and 
 fan the flames and pile on the fuel, they may get 
 up a conflagration which will tax all the inter- 
 national powers of the fire brigade commanded by 
 Lord Lansdowne and Mr. Hay to extinguish. 
 
 And now why waste a night in words when I 
 only came here to say a single word? I bid you, 
 and through you the people of England, farewell 
 with infinite regret, carrying with me the most 
 precious memories and the best opinions and a 
 mind enlarged and improved by my six years 
 
 284 
 
FAREWELL 
 
 here, having learned to take a broader and a hap- 
 pier view of our relations and the possibilities of 
 our two peoples than I had before ; and I end as 
 I began, by thanking the Lord Mayor for his 
 boundless hospitality and for giving us this splen- 
 did occasion for the interchange of friendly senti- 
 ments between two great and friendly peoples. 
 
 285 
 
JOHN HARVARD 
 
JOHN HARVARD 
 
 Address at the unveiling of the Harvard Memorial Window presented 
 hy Mr, Choate to the Dean and Chapter of St. Saviour's Church 
 (Southwark Cathedral), May 23d, 1905. 
 
 "IMT Y Lord Bishop, I may be permitted to state in 
 •^^ a few words my object and purpose in pre- 
 senting the window to the Cathedral. I desired to 
 signalize my long residence in London by an ap- 
 propriate gift which should be in itself emblem- 
 'atical of the deepseated and abiding relations of 
 friendship which happily unite our two countries. 
 As a loyal son of Harvard, I thought that nothing 
 could be more fitting than a permanent memorial 
 here of the principal founder of Harvard Univer- 
 sity. John Harvard was born in this ancient 
 borough, close by the end of London Bridge, and 
 baptized in this venerable church in 1607, almost 
 three centuries ago. Educated at Emmanuel Col- 
 lege in Cambridge, where he spent eight years, 
 during at least four of which Milton was at 
 Christ's, he and Milton received substantially the 
 same nurture and discipline, and must often have 
 been thrown together. At any rate, he imbibed 
 something of the same spirit as Milton, for his 
 contemporaries speak of him as a scholar and 
 pious in his life. Seeking larger freedom of 
 thought than could be found in the London of that 
 
 289 
 
JOHN HARVARD 
 
 day, he made his way to Massachusetts, and there, 
 within two years of his arrival, he died, prema- 
 turely, as it then seemed, but in the fulness and 
 perfection of time, as is now manifest ; for, find- 
 ing the infant colony struggling without means to 
 establish a college in the wilderness, in the first 
 decade of its settlement, he bequeathed to its 
 foundation his library and half of his considerable 
 fortune, and, what was better still, his name, 
 which has now become so illustrious. The colonial 
 record is quaint and touching : — " After God had 
 carried us safe to New England and we had 
 builded our homes, provided necessaries for our 
 livelihood, reared convenient places for God's 
 worship, and settled the civic government, one of 
 the next things we longed for and looked after 
 was to advance learning and perpetuate it to pos- 
 terity, dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to 
 our churches when our present ministers shall lie 
 in the dust. And as we were thinking and consult- 
 ing how to effect this great work, it pleased God 
 to stir up the heart of one Mr. Harvard (a godly 
 gentleman and lover of learning then living among 
 us) to give the one-half of his estate (it being in 
 all about £1,700) towards the erecting of a college, 
 and all his library. After him another gave £300, 
 others after them cast in more, and the public 
 hand of the State added the rest. The college was 
 by public consent appointed to be at Cambridge, 
 a place very pleasant and accommodate, and is 
 called according to the name of its first founder, 
 Harvard College." It assumed in its arms, as 
 
 290 
 
JOHN HARVARD 
 
 you will see in the window, a double motto — Veri- 
 tas, truth, a word broad enough to embrace all 
 knowledge, human and divine; and, what meant 
 the same thing, Christo et Ecclesiae, to Christ and 
 his Church, that the supply of godly ministers 
 might never fail. 
 
 And now, after the lapse of three centuries, the 
 little college in the pathless wilderness has become 
 a great and splendid University, strong in pres- 
 tige and renown, rich in endowments, and richer 
 still in the pious loyalty of its sons, who supply 
 all its wants upon demand with liberal hand. It 
 is not unworthy to be compared with Oxford and 
 Cambridge, those ancient nurseries of learning 
 from which it drew its first life. And the name 
 of John Harvard shares the fame which mankind 
 accords to the founders of States. From the be- 
 ginning until now it has occupied the foremost 
 place in America as a radiating source of light 
 and reading. In all the great movements of prog- 
 ress by which the United States have advanced 
 from that little handful of storm-swept immi- 
 grants on the Atlantic coast to the Imperial Re- 
 public of to-day, Harvard University and its sons 
 have had their full share ; and without disparage- 
 ment to her younger sisters, who are many and 
 great, it may truly be said that, as she was first 
 in time, she has always been first in position and 
 influence; and especially in the matter of educa- 
 tion, which is and always has been the chief indus- 
 try of America, she has always led and still leads 
 the way. So considerable have been the contribu- 
 
 291 
 
JOHN HARVARD 
 
 tions of her sons to the public and social and 
 intellectual life of the nation that, if all other 
 books and papers were destroyed, its history- 
 could be fairly reproduced from the Harvard Uni- 
 versity Catalogue, and from what is known of the 
 lives of the alumni there registered. And if you 
 ask if she is still true to her ancient watchwords 
 Veritas and Christo et Ecclesiae, I can answer 
 that, in our own time, in a single quarter of a 
 century, she has sent forth Phillips Brooks to be 
 a pillar of Christ and the Church, and Theodore 
 Roosevelt to be a champion of the truth, and thou- 
 sands more who in humble spheres follow in their 
 footsteps and share their faith and their hope. 
 
 Thus the name of John Harvard, unknown and 
 of little account when he left England, has been 
 a benediction to the new world, and his timely and 
 generous act has borne fruit a millionfold. Com- 
 ing back to the very beginning of things, we are 
 here to-day to lay a wreath upon his shrine. I 
 hope that this memorial, which the Dean and 
 Chapter have kindly consented to accept from my 
 hands, will long remain for Americans to come 
 and see the very spot where one of their proudest 
 institutions had its origin, and to remind all Eng- 
 lishmen who visit it how inseparable we are in 
 history and destiny. I hope, also, that it may tend 
 to keep alive the kindred spirit between the Uni- 
 versities of the two countries; for Harvard is 
 just as surely the offspring of Cambridge and Ox- 
 ford, and the own daughter of Emmanuel, as old 
 England is the mother of New England. In the 
 
 292 
 
JOHN HARVARD 
 
 earlier period of the colony we had one hundred 
 teachers from Oxford and Cambridge, and of 
 these seventy were from Cambridge, and of these 
 again twenty were from Emmanuel. So long as 
 ideas rule the world let all the Universities of 
 both countries stand together for truth, and with 
 one voice let them say to the youth of both lands, 
 '* Take fast hold of instruction. Let her not go, 
 for she is thy life." I am under deep obligations 
 to the Dean and Chapter for consenting to receive 
 and cherish this gift, and to Mr. LaFarge, the 
 distinguished artist, for the noble manner in 
 which he has designed and executed it. 
 
 293 
 
k 
 
One copy del. to Cat. Div.