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MaaMMtMMMiMMa 
 
 WASHINGTON 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 BEFORE THE 
 
 UNION LEAGUE CLUB 
 
 OF CHICAGO 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE F. HOAR, 
 
 FEBRUARY 23, 1903. 
 
 PRESS OF GIBSON BROS. 
 
 13th and Penka. Avb. 
 1903. 
 
WASHINGTON 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 BEFORE THE 
 
 UNION LEAGUE CLUB 
 
 OF CHICAGO 
 
 ^BY 
 
 GEORGE F. HOAR, 
 
 FEBRUARY 23, 1903. 
 
 '^asliiugtan, g. ®. 
 
 PRESS OF GIBSON BROS., 
 
 13th and Penna. Avk. 
 
 1903. 
 

 
 t Ap'07 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 There is no man living anywhere, with whatever lionors his 
 life may have been crowned, to whom it would not be an 
 added honor to be in\dted to address this brilliant company 
 in this famous cit\' on this liistoric anniversary. 
 
 Chicago is conspicuous among the great cities of the world 
 for many things. In two things she stands unrivalled. 
 
 Great as she is to-day, wonderful as has been her past, 
 yet she is, bej^ond all other communities, the city of the 
 future. She may well look forward with an assured and 
 sober confidence to the time when the scepter, which passed 
 away from Rome, shall pass away from London also, and 
 shall be •within her grasp. 
 
 Chicago is foremost among American cities, foremost, so far 
 as I know, among the cities of the world, in the great \drtue 
 of pubhc spirit. If we can judge by the report of her, the 
 citizen of Chicago seems to feel, to a degree not found else- 
 where, that her honor is his honor, that her prosperity is 
 his prosperity, and that all he is and has is at her service. 
 It is of this temper that ci\dc greatness is born. 
 
 Yet to a people having the right that 3^ou have to be 
 proud of their present, and looking forward as you do with 
 a confident courage and hope to a great hereafter, there is a 
 peculiar and special danger. That is the danger of Pro- 
 ^dncialism, the danger of that spirit which is impatient of 
 the authoi'ity of the past, and of the contemporary opinion 
 of mankind. Self-satisfaction, disregard of tradition and 
 precedent and authority, pride in being a law to themselves, 
 these are the besetting sins of successful and self-made 
 
men who have achie^'ed fortune and greatness rapidly. 
 They are hkely to be the besetting sins also of cities and of 
 States and Nations that have achieved greatness and suc- 
 cess, as you have, \nth a wonderful rapidit3^ 
 
 There is no Pro\'incialism like the Provincialism which 
 confines a man to his own time. There is no intel- 
 lectual dullness like the intellectual dullness which comes 
 from the contentment of an absolute self-satisfaction. 
 There is no man and no communit}^ so certain of failure as 
 the man or the community to which the past can speak no 
 lesson. But, on the other hand, re^'erence for the past, a 
 mind open to the lessons taught by other countries and other 
 places, which are in some sort to all of us as a posterity, 
 make even an Insular and Pro^'incial nature Continental 
 and Imperial. 
 
 So, gentlemen, it is a sign of profoundest wisdom, it is an 
 admirable augury of happiest omen to Chicago, that this 
 influential Societj' selects the birthda}^ of George Washington 
 for special commemoration, and means to keep his linea- 
 ments and character before her people, especially before her 
 youth. 
 
 It is well that such a conmiunitv still makes the birth- 
 day of Washington its great anniversary. Washington, 
 too, did his work well in his own time. He was not without 
 proper respect for ancestr}-, and proper care for posterity. 
 But he did not dwell too much on either. He was thinking 
 always of the duty which was present and at hand. As 
 Emerson said of him: "He was up to the top of his boots in 
 his own meadow." 
 
 I have sometimes thought that we might improve some- 
 what our method of celebrating the jjirthdays of our heroes 
 and statesmen. Instead of inviting some living orator, 
 let us, as near as may be, invite the man himself to the cele- 
 bration. If the people are considering some question in- 
 
volving the public welfare, or the fate of the republic, or 
 Avhat, if not the same thing, are higher and dearer yet, the 
 honor and the conscience of the Republic, let some faithful 
 searcher gather everything the man we would honor has 
 left us on that subject in the way of example or of precept. 
 If the question be whether we shall enter upon a career of 
 foreign dominion, let us celebrate Washington's birthday 
 by recalling what he said on that subject. If the 
 question be what constitutes lawful reason for war; or 
 what is the duty of good citizensliip when the country is 
 in a war in which it is wrong; or what are the rights which 
 belong everywhere to that being which we call a people; or 
 what is the line of distinction between power and right, 
 when a strong nation has to deal with a weak one ; or whether 
 it be lawful for one people to subdue another to its will; 
 what consent of the governed, if any, be necessary to the 
 exercise of just powers of government; whether there can 
 be taxation rightfully without representation; whether men 
 may be lawfully held in a State as subjects and not citizens — 
 would it not be well, on Abraham Lincoln's birthday, to 
 gather ever}i:hing he said on those subjects, and what he 
 did when charged with public responsibilities? Would it 
 not be well on Webster's birthday, to call him up to bear his 
 testimony as in visible presence; or, on Jefferson's birth- 
 day, to hear what he had to say about it; or, on Sumner's 
 birthday, to listen again to the counsel of that dauntless 
 and righteous spirit? In that way the silent lips of the 
 might}^ dead will seem ever speaking their high commands 
 to their countrymen. In that way every generation will 
 still live, and Washington and Webster and Lincoln may 
 still always be present on the spots with which they were 
 familiar in life, still sitting, still deliberating, still debating. 
 But I will not run that risk to-day. Washington's own 
 words, far better than my own, would be undoubtedly his 
 
most fitting memorial. But I might be thought to convey 
 by indirection a condemnation of some thing or somebody 
 which might be thought out of place in a celebration from 
 which current politics are supposed to be banished. 
 
 There is one unerring test of true greatness, whether in 
 literature, or in science, or thought, or action, or character. 
 That is. that it seems to be cotemporaneous with all the 
 generations. The Hebrew Scriptures, the essays of Bacon, 
 the plays of Shakespeare, Homer, and Virgil, and Dante, the 
 character and glory of Alfred and Lincoln and Frajiklin, 
 Plato, and Socrates, and Cicero, and the Declaration of 
 Independence, speak to us to-day freshly, and without 
 loss of effect by reason of remoteness of time. They would 
 have made a like impression in the time of the Hebrew or 
 the Greek, or the Roman Commonwealth. They will speak 
 with like effect hereafter in all coming time to any gen- 
 eration that hath ears to hear. 
 
 That is conspicuously true of Washington. If you were 
 to read of him in Plutarch there would be no sense that he 
 was out of place. He would still be the most perfect of 
 Plutarch's men. If you were to read of him on the page 
 that tells the story of Alfred or the Bruce, or St. Louis 
 of France, or the greatest and best of the men of the Hebrew 
 Commonwealth, there AA'Ould be no feeling that he did not 
 belong to his age, but only that there was a better and 
 purer and greater Alfred or Bruce or St. Louis or Hebrew 
 Monarch. So I believe there never will be a period in all 
 coming time when a character like that of Washington will 
 excite a sense of incongruity, or of antiquity, but only the 
 natural feeling that a character of supreme excellence has 
 been bestowed by God upon man. 
 
 It is the great good fortune of the people of America, 
 especially of the youth of America, that we have for our 
 National hero a character whom they can take as a model 
 
of behavior in every condition, every transaction, every 
 occupation in life. I cannot think of any question of 
 morahty, of courtesy, or noble and elevated behavior, of 
 expediency in the conduct of doubtful and difficult affairs, 
 which a young man or an old man could not safely answer 
 by asking himself and telling himself what George Wash- 
 ington would have done in a like case. I do not know of 
 any other nation on earth that possesses or has possessed 
 such a model. 
 
 I need not dwell upon the vast advantage of such an ex- 
 ample over a mere lifeless code of general rules for the con- 
 duct of life. Indeed it is not necessary to remind you here 
 and in this presence that the Author of our religion has 
 directed that mankind be taught Christian principles and 
 Christian character by a great Exemplar. The power of 
 the great religious orders in the great churches, a power 
 which is among the wonders of history, is due largely to the 
 example of the saints who founded them, or for whom they 
 are named. 
 
 Now in claiming for George Washington that he was an 
 example of all excellence which the American youth may 
 with safety take as his model of character and conduct for 
 every condition and every transaction in life, do not let 
 me be suspected of falling into our National habit of ex- 
 aggeration. I wish to cite a few tributes from, if not hos- 
 tile, at least impartial sources of the highest authority. 
 
 There is no time to-day to cite much of the overwhelming 
 and concurrent testimony of great Englishmen, statesmen, 
 and writers of history, and of great authorities on the Con- 
 tinent, to the primacy of George Washington among man- 
 kind. The only name likely to be thought of anywhere 
 for parallel or comparison is that in whose glory we also 
 have an inherited title to share — that of Alfred. 
 
 We need have no misgivings about Washington. By 
 
8 
 
 this time, more than a century from his death, his Ufe at 
 home and in pubhc is well known. The case is all in. 
 
 "Whatever record leap to light, he never shall be shamed." 
 
 The youth of America need not depend on American 
 authority for an estimate of this supreme and faultless 
 character. The great historians of other countries are 
 not behind ours in their tributes to his greatness. Earl 
 Russell said of him: 
 
 "Without the genius of Julius Csesar or Napoleon Bona- 
 parte, he has a far purer fame, as his ambition was of a 
 higher and holier nature. In modern history no man had 
 done such great things without the soil of selfishness or the 
 stain of a groveling ambition. Csesar, Cromwell, Napo- 
 leon, attained a higher elevation, but the love of dominion 
 was the spur that drove them on. John Hampden, Wil- 
 liam Russell, Algernon Sydney, may have had motives 
 as pure, and an ambition as unstained; but they fell. To 
 George Washington nearly alone in modern times has it 
 been given to accomplish a wonderful revolution, and yet 
 to remain to all future times the theme of a people's grati- 
 tude, and an example of virtuous and beneficent power." 
 
 Lord Erskine, the greatest of English advocates, in- 
 scribed one of his works to Washington, declaring, "You 
 are the only being for whom I have an awful reverence." 
 Charles James Fox said of him in the House of Commons, 
 "The illustrious man before whom all borrowed great- 
 ness sinks into insignificance." Lord Brougham, at the 
 close of his public life, repeated the estimate he had given 
 near the beginning of it: "Until time shall be no more, 
 will a test of the progress which our race has made in wis- 
 dom and virtue be derived from the veneration paid to the 
 immortal name of Washington." And again, at another 
 time. Lord Brougham says, " Washington was the greatest 
 man of ovu* own or any age." 
 
9 
 
 At another time Fox says of him : " A character of vir- 
 tues so happily tempered by one another, and so wholly un- 
 alloyed with any vices as that of Washington is hardly to 
 be found on the pages of history." 
 
 Mr. Green, the author of the history of the English 
 people, says of him: 
 
 "No nobler figure ever stood in the forefront of a nation's 
 life. Washington was grave and courteous in address; 
 his manners were simple and unpretending; his silence and 
 the serene calmness of his temper spoke of a perfect self- 
 mastery. But there was little in his outer bearing to reveal 
 the grandeur of soul which lifts his figure with all the simple 
 majesty of an ancient statue out of the smaller passions and 
 meaner impulses of the world around him. It was only 
 as the weary fight went on that the colonists discovered, 
 however slowly and imperfectly, the greatness of their 
 leader, his clear judgment, his heroic endurance, his silence 
 under difficulties, his calmness in the hour of danger or 
 defeat, the patience with which he waited, the quickness 
 and hardness with which he struck, the lofty and serene 
 sense of duty that never swerved from its task through 
 resentment or jealousy, that never through war or peace 
 felt the touch of a meaner ambition, that knew no aim save 
 that of guarding the freedom of his fellow countrymen, and 
 no personal longing save that of returning to his own fire- 
 side when their freedom was secured. It was almost un- 
 consciously that men learned to cling to Washington with 
 a trust and faith such as few other men have won, and to 
 regard him with a reverence which still hushes us in pres- 
 ence of his memory." 
 
 No other man uttered the best thought of Scotland as 
 it was uttered by Robert Burns. When somebody in his 
 presence proposed the health of Pitt, I think then Prime 
 Minister, Burns said, ''I give the health of a better man, 
 George Washington." This was not very long after Burns 
 
/ 
 
 10 
 
 had given, during the American War, the toast, " May our 
 success in the present war be equal to the justice of our 
 cause." 
 
 Count Herzburg, for thirty years Frederick the Great's 
 famous minister of foreign affairs said, that Washington 
 surpassed men in his great virtues and quahties, even the 
 most celebrated of antiquity. 
 
 Lord Bjnron's tribute is well known: 
 
 Where may the wearied eye repose 
 
 When gazing on the great, 
 Where neither guilty glory glows 
 
 Nor despicable state? 
 Yes, One, the first , the last, the best, 
 The Cincinnatus of the West 
 
 Whom Envy dared not hate, 
 Bequeathed the name of Washington, 
 To make men blush there was but one. 
 
 "No one who has not been in England can have a just 
 idea of the admiration expressed among all parties for 
 General Washington. It is a common observation that 
 he is not only the most illustrious, but the most meri- 
 torious character that has yet appeared." 
 Rufus King to General Hamilton, 1797. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone said that Washington was the purest 
 figure in history. He declares: 
 
 "If, among all the pedestals supplied by history for 
 public characters of extraordinar}^ nobility and purity, 
 I saw one higher than all the rest, and if I were required, 
 at a moment's notice, to name the fittest occupant for it, 
 I think my choice, at an}- time during the last fort}-- 
 five years, would have lighted, and it would now light, 
 upon W^ashington. " 
 i_ Talleyrand said of him: 
 
 His fame is bej-ond com})arison with that of others." 
 
11 
 
 Even China has placed in his monvinient a stone which 
 declares: ''Can any man of ancient or modern times fail 
 to pronounce Washington peerless?" 
 
 I will add one other tribute of exquisite beauty, from an 
 American source. It is from the most fastidious of critics, 
 Fisher Ames: 
 
 "Consider for a moment, what a reputation it was; 
 
 such as no man ever before possessed by so clear a title, 
 
 and in so high a degree. His fame seemed in its purity 
 
 to exceed even its brightness. Office took honor from his 
 
 acceptance, but conferred none. Ambition stood awed 
 
 and darkened by his shadow. For where, through the 
 
 wide earth, was the man so vain as to dispute precedence 
 
 With him; or what were the honors that could make the 
 
 possessor Washington's superior? Refined and complex 
 
 :is the ideas of virtue are, even the gross could discern in 
 
 lis life the infinite superiority of her rewards. Mankind 
 
 Derceived some change in their ideas of greatness; the 
 
 splendor of power, and even of the name of conqueror, 
 
 liiad grown dim in their eyes. They did not know that 
 
 m'^ashington could augment his fame; but they knew and 
 
 Ifelt that the world's wealth, and its empire, too, would 
 
 be a bribe far beneath his acceptance." 
 
 Works of Fisher Ames, Vol. 2, p. 78. 
 
 Probably no American public man of Washington's 
 time — certainly none who deserved the name of states- 
 man — differed so entirely in character, mental traits, and 
 political opinion from Washington as Thomas Jefferson. 
 Jefferson left the Cabinet of his great chief of his own ac- 
 cord to become the leader of the party opposed to his 
 policies — a party which took possession of the government 
 four years after Washington's retirement and a little more 
 than one year after Washington's death. But Jefferson, 
 late in his own life, when it was suggested to him that the 
 
12 
 
 fame of Washington might lessen with the lapse of years, 
 looked up to the sky and answered: "Washington's fame 
 will go on increasing until the brightest constellation in 
 yonder heavens is called by his name." 
 
 So we have the right to say of him as the old Monk 
 said of King Arthur: 
 
 "The Old World knows not his peer, nor mil the future 
 show us his. equal ; he alone towers over other kings, better 
 than the past ones, and greater than those that are to be." 
 
 If you wish to make a study of this great man you will 
 do well not to confine yourselves to any one biography. 
 When you have read carefully the best lives of Washington 
 you will have become familiar not only with the greatest 
 human character in history, but with a historic epoch of 
 large and enduring influence upon the destinies of mankind. 
 Several historians of great distinction and of great ^^ariet}^ 
 of intellectual quality, but all of the first rank, have made the 
 life of Washington their theme. You will do well to study 
 them all, perhaps to study them all at the same time. 
 When you deal with a great event, political or military, it 
 may be well to have the narrative of it as told by each of 
 these authors in the mind at the same time. 
 
 The first of these in the order of time, as in intellectual 
 rank, is the life of Washington by John Marshall, the great 
 Chief Justice of the United States. Marshall was a grave 
 and serious-minded man, indifferent to the graces of style, 
 or to the art by which an author entertains his readers 
 and relieves the tediousness of a narrative without depart- 
 ing from sobriety and propriety. His account of Washing- 
 ton's early life and the military transactions of the Revolu- 
 tionary war are lacking in spirit and picturesqueness, 
 although absolutely trustworthy, as the character of the 
 narrator would make us sure. Marshall's account of the 
 political history of the country from the close of the Revolu- 
 tion to Washington's death in 1799, is that of a very great 
 
13 
 
 statesman and Constitutional lawyer who himself had a 
 large share in the transactions of which he has to tell. No 
 other man who ever lived was so capal:)le of understanding 
 the great principles settled in that day, on which the en- 
 during foundations of the Republic are builded. He en- 
 joyed Washington's fullest confidence. He belonged to 
 Washington's own State. He was a leader in the legisla- 
 ture of Virginia, where the struggles were almost as impor- 
 tant as those in either House of Congress. He was one of 
 the leaders in the Virginia Convention that adopted the 
 Constitution, a convention on whose decision the fate of 
 the Constitution largely depended. Washington offered 
 him a seat in his Cabinet, which he declined. He offered 
 him the place of Envoy to France, which he declined. He 
 was afterward a member of Congress, Secretary of State 
 and, as you know. Chief Justice of the United States for 
 thirty-four years. It is hardly too much to say that but for 
 his great judgments the Constitution of the United States 
 could not successfully have worked in practice as a mecha- 
 nism of government. But as is commonly the case with 
 biographies written so near the lifetime of the subject, the 
 author had not access to a great deal of the material which 
 afterward came to hght, necessary for a perfect execution 
 of his task. 
 
 Jared Sparks, the editor of Washington's writings in 
 twelve volumes, and also the author of a life, is perhaps 
 unequaled among our historic investigators in the unerring 
 accuracy of historic judgment. He lacks grace of style, 
 enthusiasm, spirit and imagination. But he was the most 
 conscientious and industrious of investigators. He had 
 access not only to AVashington's own papers but to the 
 family papers of a great many of his contemporaries. He 
 rummaged the National archives and those of most if 
 not all of the old thirteen States, and he knew well what 
 was important and what was unimportant. He sticks to 
 
14 
 
 his fact like a mathematician. What he says is true is 
 true, and you need not trouble yourself to inquire further. 
 
 Washington Irving .brought to his task industry, in- 
 tegrity, the charm of that matchless style which makes 
 him still accounted, so far as that is concerned, the fore- 
 most of American prose writers, or in that respect at least 
 to share that lofty place with Hawthorne alone. Mr. 
 Irving liked to delight and entertain as well as to instruct 
 his readers. In his pages Washington steps down from 
 his pedestal, and while there is nothing found which tar- 
 nishes that pure fame, the hero leaves the rank of demigods 
 and mingles with mortal men. 
 
 Edward Everett also has written a brief life, prepared 
 originally for the Encyclopedia Britannica, and expanded 
 into a small volume. You can read it in two or three 
 hours. It will repay perusal as a good summing up of 
 the great career of the Father of his Country, although 
 there is nothing in it to enhance the fame either of the 
 subject or the author. It is a pity that Lord Macaulay, 
 on whose recommendation Mr. Everett was asked to 
 write that Memoir, could not have undertaken it himself. 
 But if I cannot speak with enthusiasm of Mr. Everett's 
 life of Washington, I can hardly find language to express 
 myself, in commending to you, and to the youth of the 
 present generation, Mr. Everett's masterly oration upon 
 the same theme. It is, so far as I know, and, so far as I 
 can judge, foremost among the masterpieces of eulogistic 
 oratory in any tongue or in any generation. It was un- 
 dertaken by Mr. Everett for the purpose of purchasing 
 and preserving Mt. Vernon. It was delivered and repeated 
 in the chief cities and large towns of the country and, 
 with the proceeds of a few other lectures and essays by Mr. 
 Everett on kindred subjects, yielded about ninety thou- 
 sand dollars of the fund of one hundred thousand required 
 to redeem Mt. Vernon. Mr. Everett sketches the Intel- 
 
lectual and physical character of Washington, from his 
 splendid youth, a model of manly strength and beauty, 
 perfect in the qualities and accomplishments of the gentle- 
 man and the soldier, but wise and thoughtful beyond his 
 years, inspiring at the outset of his career that love and 
 confidence which are usually earned only by a long life of 
 service, through all the acts of that mighty drama of which 
 he was the foremost character, the observed of all eyes, 
 the beloved of all true American hearts, shaping and wielding 
 the destinies of his country in her great birthtime, down 
 to his death at Mount ^^ernon, in his own home, the wife of 
 his youth by his side, amid the benedictions and the 
 sorrow of his countrymen. The story is depicted by the 
 marvelous genius of the great artist on a canvas that shall 
 endure as long as the fame of Washington himself. I 
 should like to repeat to you some of the great passages from 
 that great oration, especially the contrast between Mt. Ver- 
 non, the simple dwelling place of America's illustrious hero 
 and Father, the home of George Washington and Martha, 
 his beloved, loving and faithful wife, and the splendor of 
 Blenheim House, the monumental pile where the gratitude of 
 England poured itself out in unrestrained lavishness upon 
 her great warrior and victor; and the beautiful close where 
 the orator conceives the fame of Washington passing from 
 the narrow strip of territory fringing the Atlantic shore, 
 which was all his country occupied when he died, from the 
 southern plains to the western lakes, beyond the Ohio, be- 
 yond the Mississippi, along with the stupendous trail of im- 
 migration from east to west, which, bursting into States as it 
 moved westward, was then already threading the western 
 prairies, swarming through the portals of the Rocky 
 Mountains and winding down their slopes to the Pacific, 
 and then in the prophetic imagination of the orator, trav- 
 eling with the Silver Queen of heaven through sixty de- 
 grees of longitude, and not parting company with her till 
 
16 
 
 she walks in her brightness through the golden gate of 
 California, and passes serenely on to hold midnight court 
 with her Australian stars. 
 
 Mr. Everett adds that there and only there, in barbarous 
 archipelagoes, as yet untrodden by civilized man, the 
 name of Washington is unknown, and there, too, when 
 they swarm with enlightened millions, new honors shall 
 be paid with oiu-s to his memory. 
 
 But the rich silver tones of the trumpet voice of the 
 unequaled orator, speaking as Pericles might be conceived 
 to have spoken to an Athenian audience in the great day 
 of Grecian eloquence, still linger in my memory and forbid 
 the sacrilegious attempt. 
 
 But, after all, among the elaborate biographies of 
 Washington the best portraiture of him in literature is 
 the life of him by my colleague, Henry Cabot Lodge. It 
 may be trusted thoroughly as to its facts and its judg- 
 mtens. A flood of light has been poured in upon the sub- 
 ject by the material which has been uncovered since the 
 time of Marshall and Sparks and Irving. The memoir is 
 full enough to tell the story of the great and important 
 transactions of Washington's life, and still compact 
 enough to retain its hold on the interest and attention of 
 the reader from the beginning to the end. Mr. Lodge has 
 a statesman's capacity to deal with and to judge of the con- 
 cerns of State, the enthusiasm of an orator, the literary 
 skill of a trained and practiced writer, and the industry 
 of a thorough historic investigator. If you have time but 
 for one of these biographies, I commend to you that of 
 Mr. Lodge as, on the whole, the best, although he has to 
 contend with such great competitors as Marshall and 
 Sparks and Irving. 
 
 You should also make yourselves familiar, not only for a 
 description of Washington, but as a masterpiece of splendid 
 oratory, with the almost forgotten oration of Fisher Ames, 
 
17 
 
 delivered before the Massachusetts Legislature just after 
 Washington's death. It is a tribute of exquisite beauty, 
 from an American source. Mr. Ames was the most fastid- 
 ious of judges and of critics. But he knew Washington, 
 in whose first administration he was, although a young 
 man and in feeble health, a great Federalist leader. His 
 speech on Jay's Treaty ranks with that of John Marshall 
 on the case of Jonathan Robbins, and Webster's reply to 
 Hayne, as one of the three greatest speeches ever delivered 
 in either House of the American Congress. It is said that 
 that speech and the speech of Chief Justice Marshall, which 
 I just mentioned, are the only speeches ever made in the 
 American Congress that converted a hostile majority on a 
 great political question on which the House was divided 
 by party lines. Mr, Ames's thought is profound and 
 wise as that of Burke, his style full of life and spirit, im- 
 pressive and sententious like that of the Proverbs of Solo- 
 mon. Image crowds upon image in the inexhaustible 
 fertility of his mind, keeping the mind of the hearer and 
 the reader constantly stimulated with expectation and 
 curiosity, and creating constant surprise and delight. 
 
 I think I ought also to commend to your attention two 
 very remarkable addresses by the late Robert C. Winthrop. 
 He delivered the oration at the laying of the corner-stone of 
 the Washington Monument, July 4, 1848, and again an 
 oration in commemoration of its completion February 
 22, 1885, thirty-seven years thereafter. It is a curious 
 coincidence that he associated his name forever with the 
 beginning and the finishing of that monument, as Mr. 
 Webster is associated by two wonderful orations with the 
 foundation and the completion of the monument at Bunker 
 Hill. Mr. Winthrop's addresses are in all respects worthy 
 of comparison with those of Webster. These four orations 
 will stand together at the very head of that department of 
 oratorv. 
 
18 
 
 When you have read these hves and read also Washing- 
 ton's own great addresses — his farewell to the Governors 
 of the States when he laid down his commission in 1783 ; 
 his Farewell Address when he laid down the Presidency in 
 1797 — you will have seen Washington as he was. You 
 will see him as if you had gazed upon a photograph of his 
 very soul. You will know by heart the greatest man in 
 all history ; one of the very few and the greatest of the very 
 few great men who have lived wholly for their country and 
 not at all for themselves, and who, as a great orator says, 
 appear in human annals ' ' like five or six lighthouses on as 
 many thousand miles of coast." 
 
 It was said by Richard Steele of a beautiful and accom- 
 plished Englishwoman, Lady Elizabeth Hastings, that to 
 love her was a liberal education. If you have studied and 
 taken into your hearts and souls the character of Washing- 
 ton as depicted by these great authorities, you have a 
 liberal education in the essentials of American citizenship. 
 You have laid the foundation in character for anything that 
 can be demanded of you by your country in war or in peace, 
 for soldier, statesman, citizen. 
 
 Now in commending to you the sources by which you 
 can possess yourself of a just conception of the great char- 
 acter of the Father of our Country from an original investi- 
 gation, I have left little space to say anything about him 
 from myself. But surely it is better so. What can I say 
 which is worth saying upon such a theme? Washington 
 died one hundred and four years ago next December, 
 From that day to this his life and his praise have been the 
 theme of oratory and poetry the country through, on 
 every recurring anniversary of his birthday which, like 
 the birthday of the country itself, is one of our two great 
 national holidays. 
 
 The designer of the noble shaft which towers above the 
 city which bears his name has with rare felicity designed 
 
19 
 
 that emblem of the simple and majestic character of Wash- 
 ington. There is no ornament or sculpture or delicate carv- 
 ing to attract or fascinate the eye. Simplicity, grandeur, 
 just proportion, strength, endurance are its characteristics, 
 as they were his characteristics. It must ever take a high 
 rank among great and majestic pul^lic works. In a clear 
 morning, when the sky is full of light or some delicate 
 cloud moves over its summit, far above the streets and 
 towers and spires of the city, its shining point suggests the 
 lines of the Englishman, Doctor Aiken, written while Wash- 
 ington was yet living : 
 
 Point of that p>'ramid, whose soHd base 
 Rests firmly founded in a Nation's trust, 
 Which, while the gorgeous palace sinks in dust, 
 Shall stand sublime, and fill its ample space. 
 
 Think how poor were Washington's resources! During 
 a large part of the time when he was besieging the British 
 army in Boston, he had scarceh^ powder enough to fire 
 a salute. His few cannon had been dragged by oxen 
 across New England from Ticonderoga. He had no money 
 to pay his soldiers ; no drill-officers to teach his raw recruits 
 military discipline; no military text-books for his engi- 
 neers. His life was almost a solitude amid the jealousies 
 and strifes which existed in that day, in quite as large 
 degree as now, among his generals and officers, and (what 
 has happil)^ passed by now), among the troops of the dif- 
 ferent colonies. The inexhaustible pecuniary resources 
 of England promised an inexhaustible supply of troops, 
 native or mercenary. His great antagonists had the sup- 
 port of a powerful navy. I would not undervalue the 
 navy of the revolution, whose great service to the cause 
 of independence has been so much overlooked. Indeed, 
 it is doubtful whether without it the war for liberty could 
 have been brought to a successful close. But its chief 
 service was in destroying English commerce and not as an 
 
20 
 
 aid to our military operations. So in the time of framing 
 the Constitution and in administering the government for 
 the first eight years, Washington had nowhere to look 
 either for example or for instruction. All the paths he 
 trod had to be broken out by himself and his great com- 
 panions and associates. We who find our path broken, 
 macadamized, leveled, blazed by the sure and safe precedents 
 of one hundred and twenty-five years can hardly under- 
 stand the difficulties which beset Washington. And }'et, 
 in his whole life, from the time when, but a youth of 
 twenty-four, he gave his wise but vain counsel to General 
 Braddock, and brought home all the laurels of that most 
 disastrous expedition, to the time when, full of years and 
 honors, he left to his countrymen his Farewell Address — 
 that almost inspired political Bible, the adherence to \ 
 which ever has brought and ever will bring to us safety, \ 
 prosperity, and glory, the departure from which is the j 
 path to danger, ruin and shame — he never made a m\^y 
 take and never gave unwise counsel to his countrymen. 
 
 There are some characters, unhappil}^ few, of whom we 
 never think as struggling with or conquering temptation. 
 Sin did not beset them. I suppose this was never yet 
 literally and perfectly true of any man or woman. Yet it 
 was as nearly true of George Washington as of any man 
 or woman. Integrity, unselfish and unambitious service, 
 industry that sought no repose while it remained to be 
 done, unhesitating self-sacrifice, purity not only unsullied 
 but untempted, were all his. The temptation to evil never 
 seems to have beset that lofty nature, nor besieged that 
 impregnable fortress. The Devil is an ass. But he never 
 was such an ass as to waste his time tempting George 
 Washington. 
 
 Washington's style, in general, is somewhat artificial, 
 with a little tendency on ordinarj' occasions to the some- 
 what inflated, latinized diction of which Doctor Johnson 
 
21 
 
 had set the fashion in his time. But he rises often, when 
 he forgets the language and is intent on the thought, into 
 a noble and vigorous speech. Some of the best examples 
 of good English are to be foimd in the untutored speech 
 and writing of boys. AVashington compiled Or copied or 
 composed, in early youth, a series of rules of behavior in 
 company and conversation which ends with a maxim cer- 
 tainly not to be improved upon either in style or sub- 
 stance: "Labor to keep alive in your breast that little 
 spark of celestial fire — conscience." 
 
 Mr. Winthrop, with that curiosa felicitas both of thought 
 and phrase, for which he is unsurpassed among the orators 
 of the generation which has just left the stage, said in his 
 last great public address, speaking to the youth of the 
 country: "Keep ever in your mind and before your mind's 
 eye the loftiest standard of character. Strive to approxi- 
 mate that lofty standard, and measure your integrity and 
 your patriotism by your nearness to it or your departure 
 from it. The prime meridian of universal longitude on 
 sea or land may be at Greenwich or at Paris or where you 
 will. The prime meridian of pure, disinterested, patri- 
 otic, exalted human character, will be marked forever by 
 yonder Washington obelisk." 
 
 Washington's virtues were the corner-stone virtues. 
 They were the virtues which lie at the foundation of all 
 civil society as well as of noble individual character It is 
 not these which commonly excite the imagination or strike 
 the fancy. It is not these which delight audiences in the 
 portrayal. Poets celebrate the beauty of the morning, 
 the Assyrian sunrise and the Paphian sunset, the fragrance 
 of the rose, the verdure of the grass, the softness of the 
 gale. They do not write odes to gravitation or to mathe- 
 matics, or to order, or to the great laws which preserve 
 health. So we do not find that veracity, judgment, pru- 
 dence, disinterestedness, justice, sobriety, stir the blood 
 
22 
 
 and quicken the pulse when we talk of them. But they are 
 the virtues to which human life owes its safety and human 
 society its civilization. 
 
 I would say it in all reverence (surely we have a right 
 to say it), if it be true that God has made man in his own 
 image, and if it be true that divinity has come to the earth 
 to be an example to humanity, then it is not impious for 
 us to claim that humanity has sometimes attained some- 
 thing of the divine image in which it was created, and has 
 been able to copy the divine Example to imitate which it 
 is invited. The virtues of Washington are the virtues which 
 we ascribe in our humble, imperfect and faraway concep- 
 tion to divinity. 
 
 Think of his absolute veracity! He conducted with 
 his own hand a vast correspondence, enough to tax to its 
 uttermost the strength of mind and brain and body of an 
 athlete even if he had had to bear no other burden of 
 public care. His published correspondence fills many large 
 volumes, and there is a great deal, I suppose, still unpub- 
 lished. But there is not a trace of duplicity, of conceal- 
 ment, of saying one thing to one man and another to 
 another, of assurances of respect or goodwill that do not 
 come from the heart, such as, I am sorry to say, disfigure 
 the correspondence of some of his famous and honored 
 cotemporaries. The little fable invented by Weems, his 
 enthusiastic biographer, has become the standing jest of 
 many a generation of irreverent boys. But nobody ever 
 doubted or ever will doubt that George Washington could 
 not tell a lie, could not act a lie, could not think a lie; that 
 a lie could not live in his presence, or that all falsehood 
 and dissimulation would slink abashed and confounded 
 from the gaze of those pure eyes and from that perfect 
 witness. 
 
 "I do not remember," said Washington in 1786, "that 
 in the course of my life I ever forfeited my word, or broke 
 a promise made to any one." 
 
23 
 
 " 1 never say anything of a man that I have the smallest 
 scruple of saying to him." 
 
 This virtue of absolute veracity deserves to rank highest 
 among those which our humanity can attain. Men of all 
 civilized nations pay an unconscious tribute to it when 
 they resent the imputation of falsehood as even a greater 
 affront than the charge of cowardice. Indeed falsehood is 
 the very essence of cowardice. The man who lies, lies, 
 usually, because he is afraid to tell the truth, because he does 
 not dare to stand by his action or his thought. The great 
 nations of history, the great characters of history, are those 
 who are most famed for the supreme virtue of truth. The 
 only heroes of the nation from whom we derive our own 
 lineage, who deserve to be named in the same day with 
 Washington are the Englishman King Alfred, and the 
 Irishman, the Duke of Wellington. King Alfred was 
 called "the truth teller." Wellington was called the 
 truth lover. 
 
 Truth-teller was our England's Alfred named. 
 Truth-lover was our English Duke. 
 
 He had a weighing and balancing mind. His intellect 
 was like a pair of accurately adjusted scales. He did not 
 often, especially in civil affairs, originate the policies upon 
 which he acted. But he listened carefully and patiently 
 to every counsel from which he could get instruction, and 
 then brought it in the end to the sure test of his own un- 
 erring judgment. He weighed the advice of his great 
 counsellors, the claims of contending parties, and of Jeffer- 
 son and Hamilton and Adams and Pickering, in a balance as 
 infallible as the golden scales which the Eternal hung forth 
 in Heaven. 
 
 a "Betwixt Astrea and the Scorpion sign" 
 
 in which, according to Milton, the arch-rebel read and 
 knew his fate. 
 
24 
 
 There are young men before me who I am sure aspiie to 
 take hereafter an honorable part in the service of the 
 country. You have not received the priceless advantage 
 and blessing of American citizenship as beggars or mendi- 
 cants who receive a benefit which they never return. 
 What your country has given you }ou mean to return 
 again to her. You mean, in the simple language of the 
 oath taken by the humblest official, "to defend her against 
 all enemies, foreign or domestic. " The foreign enemy is not 
 likely to put your manhood to any severe proof, or it will 
 be a proof of your physical courage alone. The enemy 
 that will demand your moral courage for the encounter is 
 the domestic enemy. He will appear under many names, 
 in various guise. But the unerring test by which ycu 
 will detect him will be by comparing his principles, pur- 
 poses and character with those of George Washington. 
 If any man tell you that the counsels of George Washing- 
 ton have grown musty and rusty; that they are not 
 for large nations, but only for little ones; that, as a great 
 newspaper said the other day, a man who is now in the 
 company of George Washington is in bad company, be- 
 cause his policies and counsels are bad for the America 
 of the present day — mark and distrust that man as the 
 domestic enemy of your country. He may be sincere; he 
 may be misguided; he may be carried away by a spasm of 
 popular excitement; he may be obeying the behest of 
 party. But, none the less, indeed all the more for that, 
 is he the dangerous enemy of the peace and prosperity 
 of the United States. 
 
 Mr. Everett's great oration, of which I spoke just now, 
 was delivered in the few years preceding 1860, when the 
 angry threatenings of civil war and disunion w^ere heard 
 all round our national horizon. Mr. Everett called upon 
 his countrymen, as it seemed for a time, in vain, to forget, 
 to turn a deaf ear to these unpatriotic counsels, , to this 
 
25 
 
 mad cry of treason and disunion, and return once more 
 to the patriotic counsel of Washington. It seemed, for a 
 time, as if the appeal were unheeded. Butt-he spasm of 
 popular madness and rage passed by, and Washington 
 resumed his place again as our supreme counsellor and 
 leader. He became once more the example and idol of 
 every American soldier and statesman, and the Farewell 
 Address became once again the political Bible of every 
 American. Doubt not that this shall happen again and 
 again. Other temptations will come to us, and party spirit, 
 like Satan sitting at the ear of Eve, will speak again its 
 baleful counsel in the ear of the people. Popular excite- 
 ment will be kindled by the lust of empire and passion 
 for conquest. The eyes of the people may be dazzled 
 for a time by a false and tinsel military glory. But while 
 the portrait of Washington hangs in every village; while 
 his statues adorn our chief cities; while his monument is 
 found in every State; while his life is on the shelf of every 
 home; while the detail of his great career is studied in 
 every university; while his image is in the heart of every 
 youth, the people will come back again to the wise, sober 
 and just counsel in following which lies the path to a 
 true glory and a true safety. The American people will 
 never long go astray so long as to every great question of 
 national policy or national duty they know what Wash- 
 ington would have said, and know what Washington did 
 say. 
 
 If any man would test, as with a touch-stone, any 
 party or political war-cry of to-day, let him think before 
 he grow too enthusiastic if he can imagine George Washing- 
 ton uttering it. If he can, he is safe enough to utter it 
 himself. If he cannot, he had better try to find another. 
 
 Who ever thinks of George Washington as stopping to 
 consider popularity or public sentiment or political or per- 
 sonal advantage to himself by pleasing the people when he 
 
26 
 
 had to determine a question of duty? He was as unmoved 
 by the breeze of popular opinion as the summit of the 
 mountain that bears his name. It is for that reason that 
 the reverence in which his countrymen hold him is as en- 
 during and as unshaken as the mountain summit. 
 
 I am no blind worshipper of the Past. I do not believe 
 that Renown and Grace are dead. I am no pessimist or 
 alarmist. I am certainly no misanthropist. While there 
 are many men who have served their country better in 
 their generation than I have in mine, I ^deld to no man in 
 love for the Repul)lic, or in pride in my country, and in my 
 countr}Tnen who are making to-day her honorable histor3^ 
 We may err in our day. Our fathers erred in theirs. Yet 
 our generation is l^etter than those who went before it. 
 The coming generations will be better than we are. The 
 Republic where every man has his share in the Govern- 
 ment is better than the Monarchy, or the Oligarchy, or 
 the Aristocracy. Our Republic is better than any other 
 Republic. To-day is better than yesterday, and to-morrow 
 will be better than to-day. But while each generation 
 has its own virtues, each generation has its own dangers, 
 and its own mistakes, and its own shortcomings. 
 
 The difference between the generations of any country 
 with a history is commonly not one of principle, but of 
 emphasis. The doctrine of 1776, when we won our inde- 
 pendence, planted our country on the eternal principles of 
 equality of individuals and of nations in political rights, 
 and declared that no man and no people had the right to 
 judge of the fitness of any other for self-goverimient. In 
 1787 the Constitution was builded on the doctrine that there 
 were domains within which the Government had no right to 
 enter, and that there were powers which the people would 
 not commit to any authority, State or National. The 
 doctrine of 1861 and the j^ears which followed, declared 
 the natural right of every man to his own freedom, what- 
 
27 
 
 ever might be his race or color; and the natural right of 
 every man to make his dwelling wherever on the face of 
 the earth he might think fit. These truths will, perhaps, 
 be accepted to-day as generally as ihej were accepted 
 then. But if accepted at all they are accepted by the 
 intellect only, and not by the heart. They are not much 
 talked about, except to ridicule them, to refine about 
 them, or to find some plausible reason why they should 
 not be applied. 
 
 The orator of to-day puts his emphasis on Glory, on 
 Empire, on Powder, on Wealth. We live under, and love, 
 and we still shed our heart's blood for the same flag 
 which floated over our fathers, and for which they were 
 ready to die. But it sometimes seems that the flag has a 
 different meaning, whether it float oA'er the Capitol or 
 the ship of war, or the regiment on the march, or the public 
 assembly. We no longer speak of it, except coldly and 
 formally, as the s\inbol of Liberty ; but only as the symbol 
 of power, or of a false, cheap, tinsel glory. 
 
 I think the popular reverence for Washington, and Lin- 
 coln, and for Sumner, and for Webster, is not abated. But 
 }'et few political speakers quote to-day the great sentences 
 which made them so famous, or the great principles to 
 which they devoted their lives. 
 
 AVhile, as I said, I have a profound respect for the opinion 
 of my countrymen, it is not for that opinion formed in ex- 
 citement or in haste or under pressure of political necessity. 
 It is for the opinion formed, as Washington formed his, 
 soberly, quietly, calmly, through sober, second thought. 
 
 There is scarcely a shabby or sorry story of any 
 country, certainly in the history of free nations, which is not 
 a story of a popular delusion in which for a time nearly the 
 whole community shared. The martyrdom of Socrates, 
 the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the persecution which 
 drove the Pilgrims to Leyden, the witchcraft delusion, the 
 
28 
 
 Compromise measures, the brief rise and spread of Know- 
 Nothingism, all represent completely the desire of the peo- 
 ple for the time being. 
 
 There have been many such delusions in the history of the 
 American people. But, so far, the American people have 
 outgrown them, have repented of them, and have atoned 
 for them. Indeed we can hardly lament that they have 
 happened, when we think that if they had not happened 
 the sublime repentance and atonement also would not 
 have happened. We may lament the long and gloomy and 
 terrible years of Slavery and of Rebellion ; and yet without 
 Slavery and Rebellion we should have never known the 
 heroism of the American people, or the quality of our 
 splendid youth of 1861. We cannot explain why it is that 
 an omnipotent and benignant Providence has suffered 
 evil to exist in the universe He has created. But at least 
 this is true. Without evil there could have been no virtue ; 
 without the possibility of sin, there could have been no 
 possibility of righteousness; without the Athenian mob, 
 there could have been no Socrates; without George III 
 and Lord Nortli, there could have been no Washington; 
 without Slavery and Rebellion, there could have been no 
 Lincoln. 
 
 Another lesson the Republic may learn from Wash- 
 ington is its sensitiveness to the individual touch. I do 
 not think that it would be true if I were to say that the 
 moral power of a single will and a single character is as 
 strong in a popular Government as in a Monarchy or a 
 Despotism. But I am sometimes tempted to say so when 
 I think of the many instances where the whole current of 
 our history has been turned by one man. 
 
 I should like, if I had time, to give a great many ex- 
 amples, easih" to be found, where the fate of a nation, and 
 many more where the fate of a generation has depended 
 upon the will and the purpose and the character of a sin- 
 
29 
 
 gle individual. Many of Washington's contemporaries 
 believed that but for the confidence felt in him the con- 
 flict with I^]ngland could not have been maintained. Mr. 
 JefTerson, I think it was, said later: "We can all hang to- 
 gether, so long as we have you to hang to." It does not 
 seem likely that the great political revolution which over- 
 threw the Federal party after its twelve years of power, 
 could have been accomplished but for the individual skill 
 of Jefferson. I suppose most lawyers agree that but for 
 the interpretation of the Constitution, supported by the 
 great Judge Marshall, and carried into effect by his au- 
 thority, the mechanism of our Constitution would have 
 failed. The spot where I am now speaking would, in 
 my opinion, as I think can be clearly established, have 
 been at this moment part of a great slave-holding Empire 
 but for the far-reaching sagacity and untiring energy of 
 Rufus Putnam, the founder and father of Ohio, who put 
 a new life into the dead Ordinance which consecrated this 
 region to religion, education, and Liberty, and himself led 
 the first colony down the Ohio to Marietta. There have 
 been in our own da}^ great measures pregnant with his- 
 tory, and with the fate of parties, won or lost by a single 
 vote. 
 
 Washington is by no means the only conspicuous ex- 
 ample in history, God be thanked, of a man whose public 
 conduct was determined absolutely by the sense of duty. 
 But he is the most conspicuous and lofty example. He is 
 the best example of absolute conscientiousness accom- 
 panied by unerring wisdom in a place of power, where his 
 action determined the fate of a nation, and was successful 
 in achieving the most fortunate results. 
 
 The fate of the nation depends in the last resort on in- 
 dividual character. Everything in human government, 
 like everything in individual conduct, depends, in the 
 end, upon the sense of duty. Whatever safeguards may 
 
• 30 
 
 be established, however comphcated or well adjusted the 
 mechanism, you come to a place somewhere where safety 
 depends upon somebody having the will to do right when 
 it is in his power and may be his interest to do wrong. 
 When the people were considering the adoption of the 
 Constitution of the United States, one of our wisest states- 
 men said that the real and only security for a Republic is 
 when the rulers have the same interest as the people. If 
 they have not, constitutional restraints will break down 
 somewhere, except for the sense of duty of the rulers. 
 
 All elections depend upon this principle. You may 
 multiply election officers and returning boards, you may 
 provide for an appeal to courts of first resort or last 
 resort. But in the end you must come somewhere to a 
 point where the sense of public duty is stronger than party 
 spirit, or your election is but a sort of fighting, or, if not 
 that, a sort of cheating. The same thing is true of the 
 individual voter, or of the legislator who is to elect the 
 Senator, or the governor who is to appoint the judge, or 
 the executive officer, or the judge who is to interpret the 
 Constitution or the statute and decide the cause, or the 
 juror who is to find the fact. On these men depend the 
 safety and the permanence of the Republic. On these 
 men depend life, liberty, and property. And yet each 
 of them has to make that choice. Each has to decide 
 whether he will be influenced by ambition or by party 
 spirit or the desire for popular favor or the fear of popular 
 disfavor or the love of money, on the one side, or by the 
 sense of duty on the other. 
 
 So, in the last resort, the destiny of the Republic, like 
 the destiny of the individual '(and, in the case of an in- 
 dividual, character and destiny are the same thing), de- 
 pends upon individual will. Will the individual will 
 choose what is right and not what is wrong? Now this 
 choice is largely affected by what we call strength of will ; 
 
31 
 
 by that habit of the soul which enables man to adhere'to 
 its deliberate purposes and principles, formed when reason 
 is unaffected by passion or by desire, against the pressure 
 and excitement of an immediate demand ; that (character 
 of will which, as Wordsworth says in his "Happy Warrior" — 
 
 ' ' in the heat of conflict keeps the law 
 In cahnness made, and sees what it foresaw." 
 
 The great single purpose of moral education, must be to 
 induce the will to adhere to its general, permanent and 
 deliberately conceived purpose, in spite of the motives 
 which appeal to it with special strength at the time of the 
 choice or action. In other words, to give a strength to 
 resolution which will overcome the strength of temptation. 
 
 Of course, the first and perhaps the greatest thing to be 
 accomplished is to get habit upon the side of virtue. 
 "Happy is the man whose habits are his friends." To 
 Washington no duty, however obscure, was unimportant, 
 and no deviation from duty, however trifling, was pos- 
 sible. 
 
 I said just now, quoting from a great orator, that a few 
 great men who have lived wholly for their country and 
 not at all for themselves, and who alone can be thought of 
 for comparison with Washington, appear in human annals 
 like five or six lighthouses on as many thousand miles of 
 coast. Even to complete that list men must go to Roman 
 or Grecian story, where you cannot verify the record. How 
 much of their glory Plutarch's characters owe to Plutarch, 
 no critic can tell you to-day. 
 
 All the great men of antiquity, who in the boldest imagi- 
 nation might be compared with Washington, failed in accom- 
 plishing their desire for their country. Epaminondas died 
 in battle. Socrates died by public sentence. Aristides 
 was ostracized and banished. Cato died a suicide and an 
 exile. The destruction of the Republic he served speedily 
 followed the death of each. 
 
32 
 
 In later times Wellington was the instrument of saving 
 Europe from the ambition of Napoleon. He was a high 
 example of sincerity and strength and unselfishness in 
 peace. But he had at his command the resources of a 
 great Empire, and the indomitable English military spirit, 
 indomitable from the beginning of her history save by the 
 power which Washington organized and led. No man can 
 / doubt that with Wellington's resources Washington could 
 have accomplished Wellington's results. No one can say 
 that with Washington's irsources Wellington could have 
 accomplished the results of Washington. 
 
 But his achievement in war is the least of Washington's 
 title to glory. Through his influence a great Republic was 
 constructed and inaugurated on principles unknown until 
 his time to history. He laid the foundation of om' Empire 
 not on military strength, but on Liberty and Law. The 
 Constitution framed by the Convention over which he 
 presided, which would not have been adopted but for his 
 influence, and which he inaugurated, was a new and un- 
 tried experiment, without either example or model in 
 human history. Wellington, on the other hand, was a 
 defender of the existing order of things. Many an abuse 
 and injustice was prolonged through his influence. 
 
 No American, I think no lover of virtue anywhere, 
 would seek to diminish or to darken the glory of Alfred, 
 that "King to Justice dear" — 
 
 ' ' Mirror of Princes, indigent renown 
 Might search the "starry ether for a crown 
 Equal to his deserts." 
 
 The glory of Alfred is ours also. The laws he gave have 
 come down to us. We are of the blood and lineage of the 
 country where for more than a thousand years the descend- 
 ants of the great Saxon have occupied the throne. We have 
 certainly no desire to cultivate that temper which, when- 
 
33 
 
 ever goodness or greatness anywhere be mentioned, is eager 
 always to declare that something or somebody else is better. 
 But the witnesses whom we have cited, who declared Wash- 
 ington's primacy among mankind, are English witnesses 
 of the highest title to be believed. Not one of them has 
 given his judgment without considering the name of King 
 Alfred. 
 
 We may concede to King Alfred perhaps an integrity 
 and an unselfish tlevotion to his country unsurpassed even 
 by that of Washington himself. But it is to be remembered 
 that the difficult task of rallying the people of England 
 to the expulsion of a band of piratic invaders, was far less 
 than of sustaining a civilized warfare for eight years against 
 the fleets and armies and inexhaustible treasure of Great 
 Britain. When Alfred won his throne he gained a kingly 
 power. He had a kingly power at his command. He 
 had not, as Washington had, to reconcile hostile factions, 
 to bring into accord jealous and rival States, to inaugurate 
 a Government, the like of which was to that time un- 
 known to the experience of mankind. We can not only 
 believe, we can be sure that in Alfred's place Washington 
 would have ccomplished everything that Alfred did. No 
 man can be sure that in Washington's place Alfred would 
 have been able to accomplish what Washington did. 
 
 One figure remains, and one alone, who in the opinion of 
 mankind may share with Washington his lofty pinnacle. 
 His is an American name also ; a name among the priceless 
 treasures of the great State within whose borders we come 
 together. 
 
 Never were two men more unlike in every lineament 
 that made up their mental and physical portraiture than 
 George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. They seemed 
 to come to the same high place from opposite quarters and 
 by diverse paths. Washington, with his quiet and grave 
 manner, with his seriousness, his earnestness, with the 
 
34 
 
 stately beauty and dignity of his person and behavior, 
 has been claimed by Englishmen as an admirable example 
 of an Englishman. The awkward and ungainly Lincoln, 
 with his wit and his jesting and his homely proverbs, his 
 stories as pithy and to the point as the fables of ^sop, his 
 shrewd management of men, his tenderness, his knowledge 
 of human nature in every variety and condition, was, if 
 ever man was, a typical American. Washington was a 
 born Aristocrat, who had learned by the experience of life 
 the justice and the beauty of Democracy. Lincoln was 
 the child of the people, who had learned by the experience 
 of life the value of order and strong Government. 
 
 "His was no lonely mountain peak of mind 
 Thrusting to thin air o 'er our cloudy bars, 
 A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind ; 
 Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined, 
 Fruitful and friendly for all human kind. 
 Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars, 
 Nothing of Europe here, 
 Or, then, of Europe fronting morn ward still, 
 Ere any names of Serf and Peer 
 Could Nature 's equal scheme deface 
 And Thwart her genial will; 
 
 He knew to abide his time, 
 
 And can his fame abide 
 
 Still patient in his simple faith sublime,' 
 
 rill the wise years decide. ' ' 
 
 Washington had little poetry or imagination in him. 
 He accepted and lived by the simplest maxims of morals 
 and duty. He did not seem to care for the great things 
 in literature or poetry. You do not find him quoting 
 the noble sentences of the Declaration, although he did 
 so much to make it real. Lincoln was an idealist. He 
 was penetrated to the very depth of his soul with those 
 eternal idealities. They moved and stirred him like a 
 note of lofty music. But yet to his mind they were as 
 real and practical and undoubted as the multiplication 
 
35 
 
 table, or the Ten Coininandiuents. No Republic could live 
 long, o- deserve to live long, that was not founded on 
 them. He declared on that fateful journey to Washington, 
 on his way to be inaugurated, that he was willing to be 
 assassniated, if need be, for the doctrine that all govern- 
 ments derive their just powers from the consent of the 
 governed, and that no man, and no people, had the right 
 to judge of the fitness for self-government of any other. 
 And he was assassinated for it. 
 
 Each of these men embodied what was best in his 
 countrymen in his generation. Each was the first citizen 
 among a people who were like him. Each wrought in ac- 
 cord with his time. Washington more than any other 
 man was the creator of a nation, of which Lincoln, more 
 than any other man, was the Saviour. It will be for a 
 later generation, not for us who remember Lincoln, to 
 assign the precedence to either. Of one thing we may be 
 sure, knowing the modesty so characteristic of both, that 
 each, were he consulted, would yield the palm to the other. 
 
 Washington was a good neighbor and friend, hospitable 
 and charitable. He loved his Mother and his Wife, and 
 his kindred. He had companions and counsellors and 
 correspondents. And yet, and yet, in spite of it all, he 
 seems to me with his austere sense of duty and his free- 
 dom from all disturbing influences and attractions, to 
 have dwelt in a solitude — 
 
 "Like as a ship, that through the ocean wide, 
 By conduct of some star doth make her way." 
 
 But after all, Washington has but one lesson for us; 
 one lesson for the country; one lesson for each of his coun- 
 trymen. It is the old lesson, older than history, old as 
 Creation. That is that Justice, Veracity, Unselfishness, 
 Character, lie at the foundation of all National and all 
 Individual Greatness. Justice and Freedom are the Par- 
 
36 
 
 ents of Fate. To the larger and surer vision there is no 
 such thing as Fortune. Where these are we have no need 
 to concern ourselves with what the day may bring forth. 
 The product of the eternities will be secure. The cosmic 
 results will be the same, whatever the daily event may be. 
 It is to this that the story of George Washington is a per- 
 petual witness to his countrymen. It will be their fault 
 if they^do not make their country its perpetual witness 
 to mankind. 
 
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