“ OUR POLITICS: 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE 
 
 The H ouse of Convocation 
 
 OF 
 
 TRINITY COLLEGE, 
 
 IN CHRIST CHURCH, HARTFORD, CONN., JULY io, 1872, 
 
 STEWART L. WOODFORD, LL.D., 
 
 of Brooklyn, N, Y. 
 
 i 
 
 HARTFORD : 
 
 PRINTED FOR THE HOUSE OF CONVOCATION, 
 
 1872. 
 
M. H. MALLORY A CO., 
 PRINTERS AND ELECTROTYPKRS, 
 HARTFORD CONIft 
 
'0 , t/3 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 Mr. Dean and Gentlemen 
 
 of the House of Convocation : 
 
 Being of your number by the favor of adoption, 
 and not by the right of graduation, I would heartily 
 thank yourselves and your college for the degree, 
 which, by your kindness, has made me your fellow- 
 member. 
 
 Although no local attachments of student days 
 bind my heart to Trinity, still I well recall how, when 
 a boy, and resident in an adjacent town of this county, 
 I used to come into Hartford on market days, and 
 with what awe I passed the college grounds, and peer- 
 ing through the hedge into the campus , looked at 
 the old buildings and great trees, and fancied that 
 the gay-hearted students were the happiest, and the 
 gowned professors the wisest, among living men. 
 
 To another seat your college will soon remove. 
 May the love of her sons be heartily with her in the 
 new home ; may her usefulness be even more en- 
 larged, and. her honors be still more abundant. 
 
 It has become quite the fashion among educated 
 men, and even more among successful business men, 
 to take little personal interest in public affairs. Very 
 
4 
 
 many of our college graduates, and of our leading 
 traders, merchants, manufacturers, and bankers, affect 
 a sort of Dundrearyish indifference to our politics. 
 When one of their number gives any personal, prac- 
 tical heed to the duties of our citizenship, they may 
 not always openly condemn his waste of time or sneer 
 at his enthusiasm, but they take little pains to conceal 
 their surprise at his want of taste, or, still worse, want 
 of wit in giving to the State an hour that might have 
 been given more pleasantly to society, or more pro- 
 fitably to trade. In manydnstances, this indifference 
 must be affected rather than hearty and thorough ; 
 because the careful student of the past cannot be 
 'entirely careless of the present, and the intelligent 
 financier must at least estimate the political forces 
 within which his private enterprises are being urged. 
 
 This fashion of indifference, whether sincere or 
 affected, has some natural causes, and has, within a 
 few years, been artificially forced into hot-house 
 growth. The excitements of a great popular struggle 
 over the question of African slavery quickened every 
 interest and affected every person in our land during 
 the few years preceding 1861. Almost every one was 
 forced into decision, expression, and action upon that 
 question in some of the many forms in which it ap- 
 peared in the social and political life of the nation. 
 Between 1848 and 1861, nearly every intelligent man 
 and woman became in some degree a partisan upon 
 that question, and in some measure shared in the 
 intense interest which its discussion compelled. Then 
 followed the war, with its volcanic outbursts of enthu- 
 siasm, its patience of long-suffering, its heroism of 
 high-hearted achievement, and its sublimity of sacrifice. 
 
5 
 
 Between 1861 and 1865, nearly every one was, in 
 some shape, a participant in that struggle, on the one 
 side or the other, either as actor, sympathizer, or suf- 
 ferer. Then followed the natural discussion over the 
 settlement of the terms of peace. This discussion 
 would, under any circumstances, have been interesting 
 to all — vital to many. It would not of necessity have 
 been so absorbing and wide-spread, but for the action 
 of the then President in regard to reconstruction. 
 Without any criticism of that action, and referring to 
 it simply as matter of history, this much may be sug- 
 gested : It was certainly unexpected. It quickened 
 new hopes among those who had been unfortunate in 
 the field, and compelled those who had been successful 
 in arms to complete by the ballot that which had been 
 won by the sword. Hence the period of reconstruc- 
 tion was also one of great general discussion and 
 excitement. 
 
 Thus, for nearly twenty years, our politics, in one 
 form or another, appealed to the interest, quickened 
 the conscience, and occupied the best thought of al- 
 most our entire people. First, there was the long, 
 exhaustive, able, and bitter argument over principles 
 and ideas, which went to the very root of all govern- 
 ment, human and Divine. Then, when other courts 
 had failed, came the appeal to that last high court, 
 from which, among men, there can be no further ap- 
 peal — the tribunal of war. Then followed the settle- 
 ment, when that which the sword upon many fields 
 had written into the history of the nation, was placed, 
 with careful words and after full debate, into the 
 formal compact of our Federal Union. 
 
 Such long excitement naturally caused weariness. 
 
6 
 
 Men turned from politics and arms, asking for rest 
 and peace. 
 
 During this long struggle very many bad and 
 designing men had, by shrewd appeals to the prevail- 
 ing sentiment of their localities and by various adroit 
 methods, so possessed themselves of the mechanism of 
 their respective political parties, as in many instances 
 to wield large local influence and exercise large local 
 control. That corruption, which seems as incident to 
 all national life as disease is to all individual life, had 
 fastened itself upon both the great political parties. 
 This tendency to evil, by the way, is in no measure 
 confined to politics. There are defaulters in banks 
 and trust-companies as well as in the public treasury. 
 Lies are told over the counter and in the drawing- 
 room as frequently as at the caucus and in the con- 
 vention. Human nature, when opportunity is afforded, 
 has an old-fashioned way of showing its bad side as 
 well as its best. There were probably canker-spots 
 on the apples in Eden. There was surely a fib on the 
 sweet lips of Eve, and cowardly tale-bearing in the 
 manly heart of Adam. Even where John loved so 
 devotedly, and Peter spake so resolutely, there was Ju- 
 das with his hungry bag and his ready kiss. But the 
 existence of evil is neither justification nor excuse for 
 evil doing. Corruption is in our politics, and the slime 
 of the serpent is in the primary caucus and in legisla- 
 tive halls. This corruption has disheartened a few 
 good citizens. It has disgusted more aesthetic and 
 refined ones. It has been availed of as an excuse by 
 very many more busy or careless men for their taking 
 little personal interest in public affairs, and affecting 
 indifference to our politics. 
 
7 
 
 There is still another cause which to-day largely 
 produces and stimulates this indifference. 
 
 The pecuniary rewards of public life are very 
 meagre. If you except the chief customs-officers at 
 some five or six of our principal ports of entry, and a 
 few local officials in our largest cities, there are none 
 of our higher place-holders who are paid salaries in 
 any degree approaching what the ability required for 
 a just discharge of such duties can readily earn in 
 private life. Take, for example, the judges through- 
 out the country, excepting in New York, and possibly 
 in one or two other States. Almost every lawyer fit 
 to be a judge can earn so much more money in the 
 ordinary practice of his profession than either Nation 
 or State will pay for his services on the bench, that it 
 is difficult to get a first-class lawyer to be a judge. 
 Indeed, you cannot, unless you find one so well off that 
 he can afford to give up private business, or so fired 
 with the noble ambition of his profession that he is 
 willing to forego wealth for the great honor of the 
 ermine. There is not a successful business man in 
 Hartford to-day who, in a pecuniary point of view, can 
 afford to take any public office and faithfully give to it 
 the time necessary for a conscientious discharge of its 
 duties. Our office-holders must therefore come, as a 
 rule, from one or other of three classes of our citizens : 
 either from such of the wealthy as, having decided 
 taste for public affairs or recognizing the duty of the 
 citizen to serve the State when the State needs his 
 service, can afford to give their time and service ; or 
 from among those of moderate means, who have such 
 natural fitness and inclination for official place and 
 public duty that they are willing to forego oppor- 
 
8 
 
 tunities of private gain and the accumulation of wealth, 
 in order to gratify their ambition and fulfil their inner 
 sense of personal responsibility to the State ; or else 
 — and here lies the greatest danger — our office-holders 
 will be men who, having the ambition to rule among 
 their fellows, and being burdened by no scruples, will 
 take public place, and either use its opportunities 
 for the • advancement of purely private and selfish 
 schemes, or else boldly steal what they may desire. 
 But the fact remains that here, where there are no 
 hereditary riches, no entailed estates, no reasonable 
 certainty that the grandson will possess what the 
 grandfather earns, all the avenues of material success 
 lead away from public station. 
 
 A young man may go into trade, and if he be 
 frugal and energetic, he shall be reasonably sure of an 
 ultimate competence. He may remain on the pater- 
 nal farm, and if he be industrious, discreet, and frugal, 
 old age will find him with fruitful fields, well-filled 
 barns, well-educated children, and with money in bank, 
 and mortgages on the farms of his less provident 
 neighbors. He may start as brakeman on the rail- 
 way, and faithfulness and brain shall place him in the 
 directors’ board-room. He may start at the loom or 
 the shoemaker’s bench, and if he thinks as he toils, 
 and saves as he earns, he shall at last control factories, 
 and help many in their work of life. But if, conscious 
 of his power to guide the thoughts of men and shape 
 their actions on great public questions, conscious of 
 his power so to rule among his fellows as to truly 
 serve them and the State, he shall in early life accept 
 public station, and give constant and sincere heed and 
 labor to public affairs, he may indeed grow to large 
 
9 
 
 honor among his people, and leave a name as one who 
 deserved well of the state ; but his life will be one of 
 care and frugality, and his age will be shadowed with 
 poverty. Each year this disparity between the re- 
 wards of public life and of private endeavor becomes 
 more and more marked. The present scale of official 
 pay was, for the most part, determined before the 
 inflations in values of the past twelve years had so 
 greatly increased the cost of living. The wages of 
 public official service have not been largely raised nor 
 the hours of such, service shortened. They will not 
 be to any great degree. It is not clear that it would 
 be well if they should be. 
 
 Besides, the tenure of all civil office of the clerical 
 kind, is such as to offer no inducement to faithful, con- 
 scientious, and capable clerks, either to seek or accept 
 such service. A man is put in, not primarily because 
 he is fit, but because he can politically serve his party 
 or has been or may be useful to sonje candidate for a 
 higher place. He is turned out, not because he is 
 clerically unfit, but either because his party is out of 
 power or because his especial faction within his party 
 is for the time in the minority. The whole theory is, 
 and must be, wrong. That its practical employment 
 has not given us worse officials is rare tribute to the 
 versatile ability of our people and to the average dis- 
 cretion of the appointing power. Still, the fact re- 
 mains that poor men, whQ would be strictly honest, 
 can seldom afford, without direct injustice to their 
 wives, their children, .and even to themselves, to 
 accept public office in our country. This deters 
 some from an active participation in our politics. It 
 
 is, with short-sightedness, suggested by very many as 
 
 ❖ 
 
o 
 
 their excuse for not expressing and exerting a per- 
 sonal interest and influence in public matters. 
 
 Such are the more marked causes for this present 
 fashion of indifference as to politics among our better- 
 educated and more successful citizens. 
 
 This indifference certainly exists. The reaction 
 after the intense excitement of the past twenty years, 
 the corruption which undeniably soils and stains our 
 political organizations to a very great and alarming 
 extent, and the greater comparative rewards of all 
 business pursuits and activities furnish natural expla- 
 nations for this indifference, or rather furnish fair- 
 sounding excuses to indifferent citizens for their neg- 
 lect of personal duty. 
 
 In so far as the present apathy springs from wea- 
 riness after exhaustive excitements, it is natural and 
 logical. It will naturally and logically cure itself. It 
 need give no thoughtful citizen long or deep concern. 
 
 In so far as it springs from the condition of the 
 public service and the corruptions in our politics, in so 
 far as either the methods or the morals of our politics 
 furnish either the cause or the pretext for the neglect 
 of political duty, either by any single citizen or any 
 great class of citizens, the present condition of affairs 
 deserves study and requires action. 
 
 Good men, conscientious men, very intelligent 
 men, meet you every day, and say : “ I take no interest 
 in politics. They are so corrupt that I cannot partici- 
 pate in them without loss of my self-respect.” That 
 is, a good man deliberately says : “ Because corruption 
 exists in politics, I will have nothing to do with poli- 
 tics.” Test such excuse by its application to any 
 other sphere of effort. 
 
Small-pox exists in a crowded tenement locality. 
 The doctor is asked to enter the place of disease, 
 fight its contagion, prevent its spread. Suppose he 
 should deliberately say: “ Because contagion exists in 
 small-pox, I will have nothing to do with small-pox.” 
 Society would vote him unfit for his calling. His fel- 
 lows would christen him a coward. 
 
 Sin exists in the world. The clergyman is be- 
 sought to work among sinners, to win them from 
 wrong, to inspire them to the right. Suppose he 
 should deliberately say : “ Because corruption and sin 
 exist in my parish and pollute my parishioners, I will 
 have nothing to do with their moral and religious con- 
 dition.” 
 
 The shocking absurdity of such answer and action 
 is self-evident. Yet precisely such is the logic of 
 your good man who takes no interest in politics and 
 never participates in political action. 
 
 You are a citizen. You did not make yourself 
 one. You cannot help being one. You may neglect 
 the duties of citizenship. You cannot avoid its re- 
 sponsibilities. The state is as essential to human 
 existence and happiness as is the family. The state 
 exists. It must exist. It will be either better or 
 worse for your living in it. If you act wisely and well, 
 it is better. If you act foolishly or wrongly, it is 
 worse. If you pretend not to act at all, you, in fact, 
 act on the side of evil, and add either the vice of indo- 
 lence or the crime of selfishness to what is practically 
 evil action. You are ready to reap all the advantages 
 of citizenship. Can you honestly neglect its obliga- 
 tions ? Government or the state, whatever you call 
 it, is the necessary organization among men for their 
 
 library 
 
 university of ilunois 
 
mutual protection, for the general security, and by the 
 united power of all to prevent some men from injur- 
 ing others. The state made possible and safe the 
 home in which you were born. It provided the sys- 
 tem of general education under which you were nur- 
 tured. It protects you to-day in the enjoyment of 
 your personal rights. You cannot live for an hour 
 without touching the state somewhere, without being 
 personally helped or hindered by the state, as it is 
 wisely or ignorantly, justly or unjustly ruled. And so 
 you can hardly live for an hour without yourself influ- 
 encing, in greater or less degree, the state itself, with- 
 out helping or hindering it in its work of government. 
 Is it manly to use and enjoy the opportunities of the 
 state, and to do nothing in return for the real welfare 
 of the state ? Is it wise ? Since the state must exist — 
 since, if well ruled, you are benefited, and if badly 
 ruled, you must be ultimately injured, and since, under 
 our democratic system, if good men do not rule, bad 
 men inevitably must rule, I repeat, is it wise for you to 
 take no interest in politics ? 
 
 Your reason is, that politics are too corrupt for 
 you to touch them. Gentlemen, let me speak plainly: 
 the politics of the Republic are corrupt to-day mainly 
 because you, the educated and influential men of the 
 nation, are so indifferent to our politics. The edu- 
 cated brain and virtuous conscience of this people can 
 rule this land, if educated and good men will faithfully 
 attempt the task ; but if the men of the school and 
 the counting-room do not rule, the men of the gamb- 
 ling dens and the brothels will. 
 
 Tammany ruled New York, and Tweed ruled Tam- 
 many, simply and solely because good men, wise men, 
 
13 
 
 and business men left their political duties unper- 
 formed, and Mr. Tweed did for them what they were 
 too indifferent, too dainty, or too busy to do for them- 
 selves. And of another thing be sure : Mr. Tweed 
 or his natural successor in corruption will continue 
 to rule New York, unless the late repentance which 
 broke out into spasmodic action in New York City last 
 summer and autumn shall crystallize into continuous 
 and constant attention by good men to their daily 
 political duties. 
 
 Corrupt adventurers rule to-day in Louisiana, in 
 South Carolina, and most painfully in poor and robbed 
 Florida, simply and solely because the better men 
 among the old white residents of those States clung 
 so foolishly and blindly to the prejudices and traditions 
 of the old era of slavery that they would take no lot 
 nor part in the new order of things, and because the 
 better men among the new white residents of those 
 States were either so slighted socially by those among 
 whom they had come to dwell, or were so selfishly 
 engrossed in private enterprises of business, that they 
 would give no heed to public affairs. Of course, if 
 some intelligent men sat in the shadows of the even- 
 ing and pined for the bubbles which the sword had 
 pricked forever, and if others followed their Northern 
 habit of neglecting politics whenever a dollar was to 
 be made or a personal taste to be gratified, adven- 
 turers and schemers seized their opportunity, with 
 specious pleas cajoled the ignorant and unwary, and 
 placed themselves in power, where they could specu- 
 late at their own sweet will in state credit and railroad 
 bonds. 
 
 And of another thing be sure. Such men will con- 
 
H 
 
 tinue to rule in such states until good men, white and 
 black, Southern-born and Northern-born, shall heartily 
 resolve that the living state is better than dead slavery, 
 that men should work in the fields of to-day rather 
 than mope and dream among the wrecks of yesterday; 
 until good and intelligent men, of all races and all 
 political creeds, shall come to understand that school- 
 houses are better and more useful than burned negro- 
 huts, and until the young men of the South shall come 
 to know that they can do more for the South they love 
 so well by resolutely going to work, by clearing up 
 the debris of the past, and by helping to build up a 
 New South on the broad basis of general education, 
 general industry, and the manly recognition by all of 
 the rights of all, than they ever did by their bravest 
 battle and most devoted sacrifice. 
 
 Let me, then, frankly say to you, as educated men, 
 that I can see neither wisdom, logic, nor manliness in 
 the excuse which educated men so generally make for 
 their neglect of political duty and their indifference to 
 public affairs. 
 
 But there remains the excuse or pretext that public 
 service is so poorly compensated, or of so uncertain * 
 tenure, that capable men cannot afford to enter it. 
 
 Because a man votes, he need not therefore be a 
 candidate to be voted for. Because he takes part in 
 selecting a candidate, he need not therefore try to get 
 the nomination for himself. If you are not able to 
 hold any given office yourself, why, then be a man, do 
 not hanker after it, do not tempt yourself to theft or 
 dishonesty by trying to get it, but do your best to see 
 that some one is nominated for the position who is 
 honest, capable, and so circumstanced that he can 
 
i5 
 
 justly occupy the place. If one neglects such political 
 duty as he is able to perform because there lies 
 beyond it some other duty or opportunity which he 
 cannot properly perform, he is. simply shirking the 
 work at his hand without any just excuse. There is 
 nothing among men which for their real welfare is 
 needed to be done, but there is some person specially 
 fitted to do it. There is no public service which the 
 State actually requires, but there is some citizen pecu- 
 liarly qualified for its performance. He who seeks to 
 find the one so qualified instead of seeking the place 
 for himself, best performs his duty as citizen, and so 
 best serves the State. 
 
 Except in those rare crises in the life of the nation, 
 when the good of the whole justifies and requires any 
 and every possible sacrifice on the part of every citi- 
 zen, no man ought to neglect his business or injure his 
 family in order to serve the state. But the converse 
 of this is also true. No man ought to neglect the 
 state, or suffer it to receive hurt in order to gratify his 
 avarice in trade or his love of personal ease or social 
 life. “These things ought ye to have done, and not 
 to leave the other undone.” The busiest man, pro- 
 vided he regulates his devotion to business by intelli- 
 gent methods, can keep himself well-informed as to 
 the current politics of the day. It he apply the ordi- 
 nary tests of intelligence and morality, of wise and 
 just expediency, of right and wrong, to the various 
 questions of political duty and policy as they arise, he 
 will seldom find much difficulty in deciding what his 
 personal duty and consequent political action should 
 be. Having thus decided his duty, he should give his 
 conviction the indorsement of his example by doing 
 
6 
 
 what he justly may to express that conviction in intel- 
 ligent, direct, and manly political action. It is very 
 seldom that the citizen cannot attend the caucus or 
 primary meeting of. the party with whose general 
 views and course he sympathizes. If all voters would 
 recognize this duty, and only those should omit to per- 
 form it who were prevented by the immediate and 
 unavoidable pressure of some other and higher duty, 
 there would nearly always be present in the caucus or 
 primary meeting a sufficient number of good men to 
 either directly control its action by the voices and 
 votes of a majority, or indirectly, by the weight and 
 influence which virtue and intelligence always exert. 
 But it may be suggested that good men thus going 
 might be outvoted by the bad and the designing, or 
 that, in our great cities, fraud often substitutes a false 
 result for the actual wish of the voters. Go and do 
 your duty, and if you are cheated, do not in disgust 
 lay down unused the duties and privileges of your 
 citizenship, but stand up like men, perform your per- 
 sonal duty upon your own personal responsibility, and 
 bolt the corrupt dictation of bad men. 
 
 There is no sanctity about nominations simply 
 because they are regular. And there is neither oil of 
 anointing upon the brow of a regular candidate, nor 
 just claims of apostolic succession in any party con- 
 vention. When party is right, sustain party; not 
 because it is party, but because it is right. When it 
 is wrong, do your best to set it right; and if you fail 
 in that, then bolt your party and beat it. As spirit is 
 better than form, as the brain, the heart, the soul, and 
 not the body, are the man, so the ideas and purposes 
 of government for which a political party is organized 
 
i7 
 
 are, in its best sense, the party. So long as the organ- 
 ization sustains and gives practical, honest, and efficient 
 expression to those ideas, it has just and binding 
 claims upon such citizens as sincerely believe in such 
 ideas. But when it discards and rejects them, or when 
 it seeks to make them only a rallying cry for the 
 unwary, that its ambitious leaders may get victory for 
 merely selfish ends, when party has outlived purity, it 
 has outlived usefulness, and, being dead, ought to be 
 buried. 
 
 But to return to this pretext that the pecuniary 
 rewards of business and professional life are so much 
 greater than those of the public service as to justify 
 men in attending to the former to the exclusion of the 
 latter. It is certainly the duty of each able-bodied or 
 able-minded citizen to support his own family by his 
 own effort either of muscle or brains, and during his 
 health and strength to make suitable provision for his 
 and their maintenance when old age, sickness, or any 
 incapacity for labor may hinder his earning such sup- 
 port. This social duty to family and self may and 
 does justly excuse any man from any ambitious self- 
 seeking for official place. It even excuses any man, 
 except in rare crises of public danger, from accepting 
 an official trust when such trust is tendered by his fel- 
 lows, even without solicitation by himself, provided 
 that such acceptance interferes with another actual and 
 necessary duty to family and self. But when the pop- 
 ular judgment voluntarily selects a man from among 
 his fellows because the popular judgment intelligently 
 believes that he is the best qualified among them to 
 discharge any given public trust, then it is the duty of 
 such citizen to accept the trust if he possibly can. 
 
i8 
 
 Nothing can justly excuse his declination except the 
 presence of some other and higher duty. Utopian as 
 such an idea or theory of the public service may seem 
 to you, amid the strifes and ambitions of our practical 
 politics, it is not merely the theory of the ideal repub- 
 lic. It is the saving leaven of our actual state. It is 
 the constant presence in our public life of some men 
 thus guided and thus living, which largely helps to 
 sustain a lofty ideal of public virtue among parties 
 and politicians. Some such men honor our national 
 Congress to-day. Such an one was the great war- 
 Governor of Massachusetts, a man to whom public 
 office was a duty, reluctantly assumed, conscientiously 
 discharged, gladly surrendered. The turf is green 
 over the grave of John A. Andrew, but his life remains 
 as a singularly pure and beautiful example to our 
 educated men of one who recognized, respected, and 
 fulfilled the obligations of his citizenship. 
 
 To such performance of duty the state has just 
 and binding claim upon her citizens. Public place is 
 a trust to which an honest ambition may laudably 
 aspire, providing no mean methods form the ladder 
 on which ambition mounts, and no false morals sully 
 the pursuit or the use of office. But it is always and 
 everywhere a trust, to which the state has the right to 
 call any of her sons, whenever the common good to 
 be gained by his service shall outweigh the loss or 
 inconvenience which such service may cause to him- 
 self. In time of war, when the nation’s life was 
 assailed, men were needed. The state called for 
 volunteers. There were many so situated that they 
 were morally bound to go. Such as were so circum- 
 stanced and did not go were wanting either in con- 
 
19 
 
 science or in pluck. There were many others so situ- 
 ated that duty to wife and children, to parents or to 
 great trusts already undertaken, forbade their going. 
 The question of going or remaining was one of duty, 
 to be settled solely as one of duty ; not in the fevered 
 impulse of a young man’s enthusiasm, but soberly, 
 faithfully, manfully. But as the state had thus an 
 absolute claim to the life of her sons, a claim so high 
 that when men came not in sufficient numbers of their 
 own free will, a draft was ordered and the ranks were 
 filled, so the state has to-day, and always, like claim to 
 the service of her sons, to honest, faithful service ; 
 not the service of selfish ambition, but of pure and 
 earnest loyalty to our fatherland. 
 
 I shall not here and now discuss this matter of the 
 tenure of our civil service in its various clerical and 
 subordinate grades. The present evils and still 
 greater future dangers of the present system are evi- 
 dent to all thoughtful men. As both political parties 
 unite in a lip-condemnation, let us faintly hope that 
 whichever shall have the power will do something 
 practical to remedy the wrong. But one serious word 
 right here. Politicians, as a class, are men, not saints. • 
 If political work is to be mainly done by political 
 place-holders, then party leaders will naturally and 
 quite logically fill such places with men who can and 
 will do the required work. 
 
 The evil is to be corrected most largely and most 
 effectively by the old-fashioned but sure rule, that each 
 citizen shall, in his own place, perform his own duty to 
 the state. My faith in immediate results would be 
 greater if the classes whom you represent would more 
 heartily appreciate this truth. 
 
20 
 
 It is your duty, as citizens, to vote — to vote intelli- 
 gently, honestly. Because another is employed in the 
 post-office or revenue service, his duty is no higher 
 than yours. Remember, also, it is no less. You vote, 
 not because you are out of place, but because you are 
 
 * citizens. Honor is due to the man who, being in office 
 or out of office, still fulfils his obligations as citizen. 
 What will you justly say of the man who, being out of 
 office and never or but seldom performing his personal 
 duty as citizen, sneers at his fellow in office as one 
 wearing the collar of a place-holder, and thus practi- 
 cally denies to him the right to a voice and vote in our 
 public affairs? 
 
 Our office-holders are but a very small fraction of 
 our people, or even of any dominant party. When- 
 ever all the people shall faithfully attend to their polit- 
 ical duties, the office-holders will be practically power- 
 less. Their duty is to-day your duty. Their respon- 
 sibility is yours. That under so many sneers and 
 against such silent but very potent influence of fashion 
 and example, so many good men and true men accept 
 subordinate public place, and perform its functions so 
 
 # honestly and well, is large honor to them. It should 
 be large shame to such as never touch the burden of 
 public duty, even with their little fingers, yet bemoan 
 the influence of office-holders in our politics, and sneer 
 at the political effort of the official as the service of 
 one who wears a master’s collar, and humbly eats 
 another’s bread. 
 
 Mr. Dean and Gentlemen: To you as represen- 
 tatives of the educated classes of the Republic, I 
 come with earnest plea for the personal discharge by 
 each citizen of his personal political duties. The the- 
 
 
21 
 
 ory of our government seems to be the simplest, 
 purest, and best among all the political systems of all 
 the ages. But one thing is needed to keep our state 
 as beneficent in fact as it is beautiful in theory. That 
 one thing is the honest, intelligent effort of each indi- 
 vidual citizen ; each man by himself, and not any man 
 by another. Such is the injunction which the state 
 lays upon her children. Your performance is either 
 an example or a restraint to your fellow. You thus 
 encourage him when right. You thus correct him 
 when wrong. Your neglect unjustly imposes your 
 own burden upon him if he faithfully bears his own. 
 It exposes the state to his evil purpose if he acts 
 corruptly or ignorantly. 
 
 From sea to sea our nation has grown. She is 
 belted with railways ; she is rich in all material re- 
 sources ; she is ready and eager to crown herself with 
 all that is highest and best in culture and develop- 
 ment. Treason assailed her in vain. From sweetest 
 labors of peace she passed to sternest battle, and in 
 that trial neither muscle nor faith nor endurance failed. 
 With unwilling, but with skilful hand, she beat the 
 ploughshare into the sword, the pruning-hook into the 
 spear. When the strife was done, she built no gibbets ; 
 laid no blocks ; whetted no axes. She took from 
 the erring neither their flocks nor their fields. But 
 remembering that in all the land her sons were breth- 
 ren, she bade them dwell together in unity and peace. 
 Back into the ploughshare she beats the sword of her 
 triumph, back into the pruning-hook the spear of her 
 strength. With laurels of great victory upon her 
 brow, with the pages of her story open to the world, 
 she puts the wreath aside, closes the record of war, 
 
22 
 
 and turns again to the spindle and the loom. Forget- 
 ting the evil passions of war, she proffers forgiveness 
 to the mother-land that wronged her so sorely in the 
 tinffe of great agony, and asks that mother-land to 
 unite with her in seeking peaceful solution of quarrel 
 rather than bloody and cruel settlement by the sword. 
 Knowing alike her strength and her courage, she 
 is brave enough and self-reliant enough to dare to 
 seek her rights by peaceful means and before the tri- 
 bunal of the enlightened opinion of civilized nations. 
 Grander effort hath no people made — an effort worthy 
 of the Christian progress of this, the latest of the' 
 ages. 
 
 Such is the state, strong, brave, peaceful, into the 
 great privilege of whose sonship we are born. Her 
 future shall be the worthy crowning of her past, only 
 as you, her educated sons, shall, each in your place, 
 recognize and fulfil your personal duties as citizens. 
 There is no imperial Appian W&y by which the state 
 shall keep her onward path of honor and of blessing, 
 save that which her children build ; each building with 
 patient effort and pure purpose ; each doing such little 
 public service as he may ; faithfully, honestly, not for 
 self, but for the highest good of all. 
 
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