Yale University Library 39002002897412 YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY A FRONTIER TOWN AND OTHER ESSAYS A FRONTIER TOWN OTHER ESSAYS BY HENRY CABOT LODGE NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1906 Copyright, 1906 By Charles Scribnek's Sons Published September, 1906 THE UNIVEESITY PBESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. TO A. C. M. L. WITH THE LOVE AND GRATITUDE OF A LIFETIME A Frontier Town 1 Good Citizenship 31 The Senate of the United States 56 History 86 Samuel Adams 128 Theodore Roosevelt 162 Senator Hoar 169 American History 210 Certain Principles of Town Government .... 225 Franklin 249 The United States at Algeciras 265 A FRONTIER TOWN1 " Seventeen hundred and fifty-five, Georgius Secundus was then alive, — Snuffy old drone from the German hive. That was the year when Lisbon town Saw the earth open and gulp her down, And Braddock's army was done so brown, Left without a scalp to its crown. It was on the terrible earth-quake day That the Deacon finished his one-hoss shay." It was a busy time just then, at the very middle of the eighteenth century. And two years before this annus mirdbilis described by Dr. Holmes, two years before the Deacon finished his masterpiece, or Lisbon was ruined, or a British army was destroyed by French and Indians because it would not heed the advice of George Washington, — in 1753, on the eve of a war which was to convulse Europe, decide the fate of India, and give North America finally to English-speaking people, certain loyal subjects of George II. on this spot established a new town-gov ernment. The homes and the people had been here from a much earlier time ; but in 1753 the moment had come when the village of the Green Eiver felt that it should be independent. The consent of Deer- 1 An address delivered at Greenfield, Massachusetts, June 9, 1903, on the 150th Anniversary of the Incorporation of the Town. 2 A FRONTIER TOWN field, the original settlement, had been obtained, the State had assented, and thereupon Greenfield be came a town and entered on her separate life. It was neither an unusual nor an extraordinary occur rence — this birth of a new town achieved in the orderly, quiet way characteristic of New England. Among the great events then crowding and crushing together to settle the destiny of nations and make up the world's history, it passed quite unnoticed except by those engaged in the undertaking. Yet we meet here to-day to celebrate the foundation of that town ; and it is just and right to do so, for it was a deed wholly worthy of commemoration. I do not mean by this the mere act of organizing a town government, for that was simple enough. That which is and ought to be memorable to us is that men and women at this place had so far con quered the wilderness that they were able to form a town, and that ever since they have been able to carry on their town government in peace, order, prosperity, and honor. It is neither the place nor the time that we would celebrate, but the men and their work, of which the place and time are but the symbol and expression. cos ouSek ovre irvpyos ovre vavs, eprjfios avSpcou f.in £vvoikovvtcov ecrco." " Neither citadel nor ship is of any worth without the men dwelling in them." A FRONTIER TOWN 3 What we commemorate are these men and their deeds; and their founding a town was a good piece of honest work which represented much. It has abundant meaning if rightly understood, and we may well pause to consider it. The work was begun by breaking into the wilderness and in solitude and hardship subduing the untouched earth to the uses of man. It was continued for half a century under the stress of savage and desolating war. Then it was crowned with success and permanency. It is not for me to trace in detail that story of adventure and persistent toil, of courage and of hope. That has been done already, and will be done again still more amply by those who live here and who have given to the annals of this region the study they deserve. Tempting as all this is, it lies beyond the narrow scope of an address. All I can hope for is to bring before you quite imperfectly, rather disconnectedly, I fear, two or three facts which have risen up to me charged with a somewhat deep sig nificance as I have reflected upon the history of this Connecticut Valley and of this town of Greenfield. It is not the hundred and fifty years which has struck me as at all important. Periods of time are all comparative. A century and a half con stitutes a ripe age in America. It is infancy in England and in western Europe. But the oldest town of England is modern compared to Rome; 4 A FRONTIER TOWN Rome is of yesterday when put by the side of Egypt, and the Roman law which runs far beyond our Christian era is a new invention when placed be side the six-thousand-year-old code of the Elamite King, Humarabbi. On the other hand, time can not be computed for us by the calendar alone. The Aruwhimi dwarfs of the African forests were noted by Herodotus, and then again by Stanley after a little interval of some three thousand years. If it had been three hundred or thirty thousand it would have been just as important, for nothing had hap pened. As they were when Herodotus mentioned them so they still were when Stanley stumbled upon them in the tropical forest. " Better fifty years of Europe Than a cycle of Cathay." It is the rate at which men live which must be counted, as well as the calendar, when we reckon time. The years of the French Revolution covered a wider space in life and experience and meaning than the entire century which preceded them. The American people lived more and lived longer be tween 1861 and 1865 than in all the years which had passed since Yorktown. So our century and a half of town existence looks very short when we put it side by side with the long procession of the recorded years fading away into a remote distance A FRONTIER TOWN 5 in the valleys of the Tiber and the Nile. Yet for all that, it is not brief. Properly regarded it is a very long time, for it is with nations even as with men: " One crowded hour of glorious life Is worth an age without a name." The last one hundred and fifty years have wit nessed political and economic changes more rapid and more profound than a thousand previous cen turies could show. The same period has seen a revolution in the affairs of the world and in the relations of men, due to the annihilation of time and the reduction of space by electricity and steam, which separates us further in certain essential ways of life from the men who fought at Waterloo than they were separated from those who died at Ther mopylae ; and in all the history of this wonderful time there is no chapter more impressive than that which we ourselves have written. Let us look at it once more as it comes out here in the history of this town. Where we stand to-day was once a frontier, not a mere boundary line be tween one State or one country and another, but a true frontier, the far-flung line of advance against the savage and the wilderness. I have often thought that a book which told the story of the American frontier would be of intense interest. As one looks at it in what seems to me to be the true fashion, 6 A FRONTIER TOWN one comes to personify it, to feel as if it were a sentient being, struggling forward through darkness and light, through peace and war, planting itself in a new spot, clinging there desperately until its hold is firm and then plunging forward again into the dim unknown to live over the old conflict. Frontiers such as ours have been do not go slowly forward, building one house next another in the manner of a growing city. The Puritan Englishmen of Massa chusetts Bay had scarcely fastened their grip upon the rugged shore where they had landed when Pyncheon pushed out from the coast and estab lished his outpost on the Connecticut. From Spring field the little settlements spread slowly up and down the river and thus the new frontier was formed. The older plantations along the coast were then no longer outposts, and the space between them and the western line lay ready to be filled in. Gradually the border villages planted themselves and crept north ward up the river, subduing the wilderness and reaping the harvest of the rich valley. They were just begin ning here when the red man came to the aid of the yielding forest and the savage war known by the name of Philip broke upon them and went raging and burning hither and thither along the river thrusting itself down between the towns to the east ward, and into the very heart of the coast settle ments. Many were the fights close by here, most A FRONTIER TOWN 7 conspicuous the bloody defeat at the Brook, and the shining victory at the Falls, which still bear the victor's name. For weary months and years the war blazed red and wild, then it began to flicker, flaring up only to sink down again into smouldering embers, until it finally died away, leaving ashes and desolation as its monuments. Again the pioneers worked their way up the river, again the houses rose and the meadows smiled and the forest was cleared. This time the settlers took a firmer grip. Grants of land were made here, mills built, and Deerfield, of which this town was then a part, sent her representative to Boston to sustain the cause of William against James. But William of Orange had more serious enemies than his poor, confused father-in-law. Louis XIV. made war upon him, and again the storm of savage inva sion broke on the New England frontier, guided now by the intelligence of France. Much fighting and burning ensued, but the settlers either held on or if driven off came back after the Peace of Ryswick in 1697. Then a brief lull, then a disputed Spanish throne : once more France and England fought, and again the French and Indians poured down upon the valleys and hillsides of New England. Here, just here, the worst blow fell. Deerfield was al most swept from the map already so deeply scarred. It was such a long war too. It went on for some 8 A FRONTIER TOWN ten years after the sack of Deerfield. Men's hearts began to fail. They were ready, almost, to think that this was an accursed spot, dogged by misfortune and haunted by slaughter and pillage. But the stout hearts did not fail entirely. The men finally made their way back again after all. They held on to this beautiful valley, and over the ruined homesteads they finally planted themselves more conclusively than ever. War was not over, by any means. There was peace in Europe, but the Jesuit missionaries had not made peace ; and Father Rasle's War, as it was called, led to sharp and bloody fighting in New England, chiefly to the eastward, yet with enough of ambush and murder and sudden death in these valleys to make the people realize the hard tenure by which they held their lands. When the war of the Aus trian succession came, Deerfield was still on the edge, but the fighting frontier had moved forward and the little hill-towns, each with its fort, formed a line of outworks. Before the " old French war," as we have been wont to call it, broke out ten years later, Greenfield had been born, and the line of frontier swung to the north and ceased to be a frontier when Canada passed into English hands. Now, too, it moved on westward until it joined that other ad vance guard of settlements which had crept up the Hudson and then turned to the west along the Mohawk. The frontier days of the Connecticut val- A FRONTIER TOWN 9 ley were over and it had taken half a century to do the work. Children had been born and had grown to be elderly men and women who had known nothing but more or less constant war. They had passed their lives in fighting to hold their own here among these peaceful hills, facing the wilderness, listening nightly for the war-whoop and watching daily for signs of a lurking foe. What a fine story it is ! — and have we not the right to be proud of the men who made it possible ? But the unresting frontier sprang forward, much lengthened now and running north and south along the Alleghanies when the Revolution began. Then George Rogers Clarke carried the country's bound ary to the Mississippi, and after peace came the frontier moved slowly and painfully after it across the " Dark and Bloody Ground," along the Great Lakes at the north and the Gulf at the south. Then there was a pause while all that vast region was taken into possession, and then the frontier leaped onwards again in the southwest and pushed the boundary before it far down to the Rio Grande. Another pause while the settlements slowly shot out beyond the Mississippi, and then came the war with Mexico, the Pacific coast was ours, and a. second frontier began to move eastward toward that which had been travelling westward for more than two hundred years. In our time we have seen them 10 A FRONTIER TOWN meet. It was only a few years ago, and the meet ing was hardly noticed. Men scarcely realized that there had ceased to be a frontier in the United States, that there was no longer a line where the hardy pioneers stood face to face with an untamed wilderness, ever pressing forward against it. Indian wars had ended, the red man was finally submerged by the all-embracing tide of the white civilization. Those wars had lasted for more than two hundred and fifty years ; they sank into final peace and silence, and the hurrying American world did not stop to note it. But history will note it well and ponder upon it, for it marked the ending of a long struggle and the beginning of a new epoch. The American frontier had ceased to be, the conquest of the con tinent was complete, the work which the men of Greenfield and Deerfield had carried on for fifty hard fighting years was finished at last far out upon the western plains. If you would know what that fact meant ask yourself how it is that Amer ican enterprise in the last six years, leaping over our own borders, has forced its way into every market of the globe, and why the flag floats now from Porto Rico to Manila. This making and moving of a frontier has been a mighty work, and that part of it which was done here during fifty years of conflict, remote, unheard- of in the great world of the eighteenth century, A FRONTIER TOWN 11 seems to me both fine and heroic. There was no dazzling glory to be won, no vast wealth to be suddenly gained from mines or wrested from the hands of feeble natives. The only tangible reward was at the utmost a modest farm. But there was a grim determination not to yield, a quite set tled intention to conquer fate, visible still to us among those men, silent for the most part, but well worth serious contemplation in these days when success is chiefly reckoned in money value. Consider, too, how this work of these old pioneers, wrought out here in this distant corner as it then was of the British Empire, formed, as all labor worth the doing must form, part of the work of the race and of the world. See how it touched and responded to the events of the world as the pulse beats with the heart; and how these men, consciously or unconsciously, it matters not, lived the life of their time, which, to all men who are real, must be the supreme test. Just before Parsons built his mill here, England was deciding whether James Stuart or William of Orange should rule over her, — whether she would continue free or sink back to an autocratic monarchy; and Deerfield, not knowing how the issue might turn, sent her man across the forests to Boston, and cast in her lot with the Dutch Prince. Louis XIV and William of Orange grappled on the plains of Flanders and 12 A FRONTIER TOWN at once the war-whoop of the savage and the crack of the English musket broke the stillness of these valleys. Such free, representative government as then existed rested solely in the keeping of the English-speaking people. France represented des potism, and the power of France was its bulwark. The struggle broke out again under Anne, nomi nally over the Spanish succession, really to deter mine whether France shonld dominate Europe and America. For this cause of English freedom Marl borough won Blenheim, Deerfield went up in flames, and Massachusetts farmers fell dead by their plows or hunted their French and Indian foes through the forests of New England. The struggle between France and England did not end, however, with the Peace of Utrecht. France was checked and beaten but not crushed, and the century was little more than forty years old when the long-standing conflict was renewed. Again the frontiersmen fought, and this time New England took Louisburg, the one serious triumph of an ill-conducted war. And during all this time, in peace and war alike, the people of New York and New England, slowly pushing forward, slowly gathering strength, were determining who should be the masters of America. The final decision could not be long post poned, and it came to the last arbitrament in 1756. It was a great war, that " war of seven years," as A FRONTIER TOWN 13 it was called. It settled many questions of mighty import: that Frederick the Great of Prussia should not be crushed, but should rise in victory over Bour bon and Hapsburg and Romanoff; that India should become a possession of Great Britain and India's millions her subjects, — as well as sundry other mat ters of less meaning to us to-day. But it also deter mined finally that North America should belong to the English-speaking people and not to France, something more momentous to the world's future, politically and economically, than any other event of that time. Pitt said that he " conquered America on the plains of Germany." It is true enough that the death struggle then in progress between the Eng lish and North German people, on the one side, and the Bourbon and Hapsburg monarchies on the other, had to be sustained in every quarter of the globe. But the effort to gain sole dominion in North Amer ica for the English-speaking people would have been utterly vain if it had not been for the labors of that same people in America itself. The English colonies in America, founded and built up slowly and painfully by men whose existence England at times almost forgot, were the efficient cause of the over throw of France in the New World. " The Lilies withered where the Lion trod ; " but the Lion would never have reached the Lilies if his path had not been cleared for him by the 14 A FRONTIER TOWN stubborn fighters of the American colonies, cling ing grimly to the soil they had won and ever pushing forward the restless frontier, behind which towns gathered to mark the progress of the march. So the half-century of conflict ended. Another George was on the throne, the northern danger had passed away, and men began to consider their rela tions with the mother country. We know well what followed. Ignorance and arrogance in London bred resistance in America, until at last revolution was afoot, and the American people determined to make a new nation in the new world. The movement now was toward independence and democratic govern ment. In the latter direction all the western world was soon to take part, but the first step was ours. As in the earlier days when the question was whether English freedom should prevail over Bourbon monar chies, so now Greenfield lived the life of the time. She sent her men to Boston to join Washington's army. She responded vigorously to the call that came later over the mountains to go forth and help to compass the destruction of Burgoyne. And from the days of revolution onwards, so it has always been. You have always lived the life of your time. You have stood the supreme test. You helped to make the State. You sustained the Constitution upon which the nation was founded. From these valleys in gen eration after generation men and women have gone A FRONTIER TOWN 15 forth to carry forward the frontier and> subdue the continent, even as your ancestors did over two hun dred years ago. When the hour of stress and peril came you have not failed. When the life of the na tion was at stake your sons went forth and fought for four years to save the Union. In the war of five years ago soldiers from this town were at the front in Cuba, and the last sacrifice of young life was offered up at El Caney for flag and country. You have a right to be proud of your record, for you have done your share to the full, and no one can do more. You have never sunk back in ignoble ease and held aloof from your fellows. In the advance columns of the nation you have always marched. The stern cry of " Forward ! " has never fallen here upon deaf ears or been disobeyed by faint hearts. Yet there are some persons, native, alas ! and to the manner born, who can see nothing of interest, nothing picturesque, nothing romantic in this history of the United States, one little fragment of which I have tried faintly to outline. Such beings, steadily declining in numbers in these later years, always remind me of the tendrils which a vine sometimes thrusts through the crevices of a house wall into some cellar or unused chamber. They grow there in the twilight very fast, quite perfect, too, in form, for they are in shelter there where the winds do not beat upon them nor the sun scorch nor insects gnaw them. 16 A FRONTIER TOWN But they are pale things, white of leaf and shoot, when they should be dark and green. And then winter comes and the vine sleeps, and when it awakes in the spring tbe hard brown trunk and branches, which have been twisted and whipped in the storms and faced cold and heat and sunshine and cloud, fill with sap and burgeon with leaves and rich young life ; but the tendrils which have crept into the shel tered dimness of the cellar are withered and dead and bloom no more. So the pallid souls who can see nothing, read no meaning in all this history of the United States, have dwelt so long in the twilight of the past, in the shel ter of foreign lands far from the rude, vigorous, ex uberant life of this new world of ours, that they have grown feeble of sight and extinct of feeling. They must have ruins and castles and walled towns and all the heaped-up riches of the centuries about them be fore they can believe that there is any history worth the telling. He would indeed be dull of soul who could walk unmoved in spirit among the tombs of Westminster, or gaze indifferently upon the cathedral of Amiens, or look out unstirred over the Roman Forum, or behold from the Sicilian shore, without a quickening of the pulse, the crags which Polyphemus hurled after Ulysses. Man's work on earth is of pro- foundest interest to man, and where his monuments are gathered thickest, memories cluster most, and we A FRONTIER TOWN 17 seem nearest to those who have gone before. But those who think that this is all mistake the vesture for reality. They are still believers in the doctrine of clothes explained once by Thomas Carlyle in a manner which it would profit them to read. Like Lear they would do well to tear off " these lendings," come to the naked facts, and find the soul which inhabits them. There is something older than walled towns and castles and ruins, and that is the history of the race who built them. It is well to give the plays of Shakespeare all the splendors of mounting and cos tume and scenery which the resources of the modern theatre can bestow, but these things are not Shake speare. The immortal poetry, the greatest genius among men were all there on the bare platform of the " Globe " playhouse when a sign alone told the audience what the scene of action was. The background is important, very pleasurable too, but the drama of humanity is what gives it value, and the scenery is secondary to the actors and the play. The trappings and the clothes of history count for much, no doubt, in Europe or Asia or Egypt, — chiefly for what they tell us of those who made them ; but man himself and of our own race is and has been here, too, for some three hundred years, just as in those older lands. Come out of the twilight, then, into the noonday and look at 18 A FRONTIER TOWN him and his deeds. Here we have seen in our his tory men engaged in that which was the very first battle of humanity against the primeval forces of nature, before there was any history except what can be read in a few chipped flints. Here in this America of ours in the last three centuries we have had waged the bitter struggle of the race against the earth gods and the demons of air and forest, but it has been carried on by civilized men, not skin-clad savages, upon a scale never known before, and which, upon our little globe now all mapped and navigated, will never be seen again. Our three centuries have watched the living tide roll on, pushing the savage who had wasted his inheritance before it, and sweep ing off to one side or the other rival races which strove with it for mastery. Here has been effected the con quest of a continent, its submission to the uses of man ; and there is no greater achievement possible than this with all its manifold meanings. Here the years have seen a new nation founded, built up and then welded together in the greatest war of the last century, at a vast sacrifice dictated only by faith in country, and by the grand refusal to dissolve into jarring atoms. To me there is here an epic of human life and a drama of human action larger in its proportions than almost any which have gone before. To those who can discern only crude civilization, unkempt, un finished cities, little towns on the border, unbeautiful A FRONTIER TOWN 19 in hasty and perishable houses, rawness and roughness, and a lack of the refinements of more ancient seats of the race, I say, you are still under the dominion of the religion of clothes. You hear only the noise of the streets, and you are deaf to the mighty harmonies which sound across the ages. There is a majestic sweep to the events which have befallen in this Western Hemisphere since the found ing of Jamestown and Plymouth which it is hard to rival in any movement of mankind. And it is all compact of those personal incidents which stir the heart and touch the imagination more than the march of the race, because we are each one of us nearer to the man than to the multitude. These are the events which in the mass make up human history, and wherever human history has been made we find them, whether on the windy plains of Troy or in an American forest. No need to go beyond this valley to show my meaning. The little group in Queen Anne's War holding the Stebbins house in smoke and flame against overwhelming odds ; the women and children in Mr. Williams's home, mur dered, shrieking in the darkness, — are as tragic in their way as Ugolino in the Tower of Famine, but they have had no Dante to tell their tale. The farmer slain at his plow, the stealthy scouting through the dusky woods, the captives dragged over ice and snow to Canada, are as full of deep 20 A FRONTIER TOWN human interest as the English adventurer or the Italian Condottiere or the German Lanzknecht, who sold their swords to the highest bidder in Italy four hundred years ago. They deserve interest far more too, and were doing work in world conquest which counted in the final reckoning, and was not merely a noisy brawl, dying into eternal silence when the tavern closed. Travel two thousand miles from here to the far Southwest, and look at the last fight of David Crockett. Is there anything finer in the history of brave men than that death grip at the Alamo ? The great scout wore a buckskin shirt, it was all less than seventy years ago ; but strip the clothes, and man for man how does he differ from Leonidas? Remember too, as has been said, that Thermopylae had her messengers of death, and the Alamo had none. The spot where human valor has reached to the highest point attainable is as sacred in Texas as in Greece. It is full and brimming over, that history of ours, with the labors and toils, the crimes and the passions, the sorrows and victories of human beings like ourselves, — with comedy and tragedy, with pathos and humor and poetry. All that is needed is the seeing eye instead of a vision grown dim in a region of half-lights. Byron looked at it and the drama of the frontier, and the men it bred rose clear before him. In noble verse he has embodied that march of the A FRONTIER TOWN 21 race agamst untamed Nature in the figure of Daniel Boone fighting the savages, fighting the forest, hunting the wild animals in their lair until the reserves of the army had crossed the Alleghanies and come up to his support. And then the old man feels choked and smothered by the civilization and the settlements for which he has cleared the way and fought the battles, and he passes on, a grim, grey figure, crosses the great river, and goes again into the wilderness where he can be alone under the sky and watch the stars and hear the wind upon the heath untroubled by the sound of human voices. It is a far cry from the English peer to the Amer ican carpenter, but both could see the realities below the surface, and Whitman, poet and prophet, felt in his soul the poetry of the great democracy. He saw it in the crowds of New York, in the common affairs of life, in the great movement over the continent, in the pioneers who led the advance ; and in strange forms he gave it to the world, first, to wonder at, and then dimly to understand. Emerson, a greater man than either of these, read in his fashion the meaning of this great new world, and gave it forth in a message which dwells forever in the hearts of all who have paused to listen to his teachings. Haw thorne and Holmes, Whittier and Lowell and Long fellow, each in his degree, heard the voices of the land 22 A FRONTIER TOWN and of its people, and touched his highest notes when inspired by them. They are all there, the epic and the drama and the lyric. They are all there in the great movement, with its wide sweep passing on relentless like the forces of nature. You will find every one of them, if you come nearer, in the small community, in the family, in the individual man, instinct with all the passions, all the aspirations, all the fears of the human heart, new with the freshness of eternal youth, and ancient as the first coming of man upon earth. And if the scenery and the trappings, the clothes, the titles, and the contrasts of condition are lacking, there is this compensation, that this story is all alive. It leads us to the very portals of the present, and the imagina tion looking thence can dispense with an outworn past when it is able to range over the future which belongs in ever increasing measure to the new world. To this hour, then, we have come. We have trav elled far in thought, and we have been gazing back ward over the road by which we have passed. Let us turn our eyes for a moment upon the present which is our own, which lies all about us, and peer thence into the future which stretches before us lim itless and unknown. We have toiled hard in our three hundred years. What have the generations accomplished ? Very great results, no one can doubt. By such work as has been done here in this valley A FRONTIER TOWN 23 we have made a great nation, no greater now extant as it seems to me, and yet we are only beginning to run our course. We are still young and unbreathed, with mighty strength and muscles trained and un exhausted. We have amassed riches beyond the dreams of avarice, and our resources are neither wasted nor decayed. We have shared in the revo lution of steam and electricity, and harnessed them to our purposes as no other people have done. We have also in these and other ways quickened life and living to an enormous degree. Our vast industrial and economic machinery is pushing forward with an accelerating speed, at a rate which should inspire us with caution as it already inspires other nations with alarm. All the instrumentalities of learning, of art, of pleasure are growing with an unexampled rapidity. We have contributed to literature, we have done great work in science, we have excelled in invention, we have bettered vastly the condition of life to all men. There is to-day no more impressive fact in this world of ours than the United States. A great country, a great people ; courage, energy, ability, force, all abundant, inexhaustible ; power, riches, success ; glory to spare both in war and peace ; patriotism at home ; respect abroad. Such is the present. Such are the results of the century and a half we commemorate here to-day. But this is not all. We should be undeserving of our past, reckless of our future, if we did not fully 24 A FRONTIER TOWN realize that we are human, that we have our perils and our trials, and that success can be kept only as it has been earned by courage, wisdom, and a truth ful mind, which looks facts in the face and scorns all shams and delusions. We have met and solved great problems. We have other problems ever rising with the recurrent years, which, like those that have gone before, will not settle themselves, but must in their turn be met and brought to a solution. Our prob lems are our own. They grow out of the conditions of the time, as those of our fathers did in the earlier days. From without there is nothing we need fear. " Come the three corners of the world in arms and we shall shock them." Nor does cause for serious anxiety arise from the ordinary questions of domestic management. Tariffs and currencies, the develop ment of the country, the opening of waterways, the organization of defence and of administration can all be dealt with successfully. The government of our great cities, the problem of the negro, the question of regulating and assimilating our enormous immigra tion are in the highest degree grave issues of great pith and moment which have a large bearing upon our future weal or woe. But I think they can all be met, that they all will be met with patient effort and with a due measure of success. None of them touches the foundations of society or the sources of national life, unless they should be neglected or mishandled to A FRONTIER TOWN 25 a degree inconceivable with a people so intelligent and so energetic as our own. But there are certain other questions looming up, the outgrowth of conditions common to the whole world of western civilization, and arising from the vast ex pansion and phenomenal acceleration of the industrial and economic forces of the age. They touch us par ticularly, because we are expanding and quickening our economic movement more largely and more rap idly than any other people. We have, in other words, a higher energy of organization and production than any other nation. For this reason we are driving less highly organized and less energetic peoples to the wall. Whether the opposition thus aroused can be stilled, or whether it will become desperate and manifest itself in a political or military manner, no one can say. It behooves us, however, to watch care fully, and be always on our guard both in our conduct and in our readiness. Yet there are still other condi tions which modern forces produce even graver than this. The dangers threaten from sources widely dif ferent, even absolutely opposed, and yet reacting upon each other. The new conditions, while they have raised greatly the well-being of the community and of the average man, have also caused an accumulation of fortunes and a concentration of capital the like of which has never been seen before. Here lies one peril, — that of irresponsible wealth. Wealth which 26 A FRONTIER TOWN recognizes its duties and obligations is, in its wise and generous uses, a source of great good to the com munity. But wealth which, if inactive, neglects the duty it owes to the community, is deaf to the cry of suffering, seeks not to remedy ignorance, and turns its back upon charity, or which, if actively employed, aims to disregard the law, to prevent its enforcement, or by purchase to control legislation, is irresponsible and therefore dangerous to itself and to others. Such unscrupulous wealth breeds dishonesty, and when dis honesty prevails the fabric is rotten and the end is not far off. The American people as a whole have been and are an honest people and haters of sham and fraud. Their future depends on their remaining so. The tyranny of mere money, moreover, in society, in politics, in business, or in any of the manifold forms of human activity, is the coarsest and most vulgar tyranny, as worship of mere money is the most de graded worship that mankind has ever known. Over against this money danger lies the peril of the demagogue, of the men who would seek to create classes and then set one class against another, the deadliest enemies to our liberty and our democracy that the wit of man could imagine. Under the guise of helping to better the common lot, they preach a gospel of envy and hatred. They ask men to embark on changes which may possibly relieve them from the pain of seeing any one more fortunate and successful than A FRONTIER TOWN 27 themselves, but which will not improve, and will probably lower and injure their own condition. They proclaim panaceas, social and political, which are as old as man's oldest attempts at government, and which have an ancient record of dismal failure. They ask us to come to a beautiful country of hills and woods and meadows, rich and fertile, with river and brook sparkling in the sunlight. They point to the prom ised land lying far away and dimly discerned upon the horizon. If you follow them the vision fades. It was but a mirage, and you find yourself indeed upon a level plain, but the plain is a desert, arid and deso late, where hope and ambition lie dead, and the bones of those who have gone before bleach upon the sands. I am no pessimist. I am an optimist, and I have a boundless faith in my country and her people. But he would be a poor sailor who did not watch for the reef on one side and the shoal upon the other, because his ship was leaping forward with every sail straining before the favoring breeze. So it is our duty that we all, each in his due proportion, seek to carry this great nation forward upon the voyage of life. We have weathered many storms and we fear them not. But let us not forget that however conditions change, the great underlying qualities which make and save men and nations do not alter. I look back upon the event which we commem orate to-day. In the great book of the world's his- 28 A FRONTIER TOWN tory it is but a line. Yet I find there the principles which alone I believe will enable us to strive and conquer as in the olden times. First, I see a great solidarity of interest. Those men were foes to an archy, most hateful of all things in human history. They fought shoulder to shoulder, united in purpose and determined that where they dwelt order should reign, and not chaos. They met here one hundred and fifty years ago and did three very memorable things. They organized a town; they established a church ; they opened a school. The simple, every day, instinctive acts of an American community, you say. Yes, truly, but it is because these have been, hitherto the simple every-day acts of the American people that America is what she is to-day. These men of Greenfield a century and a half ago recognized three great facts : religion, education, ordered gov ernment. They recognized that they stood here upon the "bank and shoal of time" for one brief moment between two eternities. They declared in their simple fashion that the man or nation who did not recognize that there was something spir itual in them higher than all earthly and mate rial things, would surely pass down into ruin and darkness ; and that here pretences were worse than nothing, and could never serve. They recognized ignorance as an enemy, and using to the utmost such modest means as they had, they proposed that A FRONTIER TOWN 29 so far as in them lay it should not be endured amono- them. Lastly they recognized the vital need of order and government, and they set up the town-meeting the purest democracy this modern world has seen or can yet see in actual operation among men. In that town government they embodied, as the great central principle, the largest individual liberty com patible with the rights of all. They built their town on the doctrine that all men must work and bear each one his share of the common burden, that the fullest scope must then be given to each man, and that each man thus endowed with opportunity must make his own fight and win his own way, and that no one else could or ought to do it for him. It was the stern doctrine of a strong race, but on that doc trine the United States have risen to be what they are to-day. The rights and the good order of the community are in the charge of the government, and the government must guard and protect them. But beyond that each man's fortune rests in his own hands, and he must make it good. It will be a sorry day for this republic when the vital prin ciple of the town-meeting, which has been thus far the vital principle of the American people, is dis regarded or set aside. As we look back into the past it is well to bear these lessons in mind, for otherwise we are false to its teachings. In the problems and difficulties which 30 A FRONTIER TOWN gather around us, in the future which stretches be fore us — a great and splendid future as I believe — we cannot go far wrong if we cling to the faith of the men who founded this town a century and a half ago. They built it on religion, on free gov ernment, and on the largest liberty possible to the in dividual man. They sought no ready-made schemes to solve in a moment all difficulties and cure all evils. Slowly and painfully they had fastened themselves and their homes in this valley, and they knew that only slowly, by much hard work and never by idle ness and short cuts, could they make the condition of the community and of all its members steadily and permanently better. They sought always to level up, never to level down. They looked facts in the face, and did the duty nearest to their hands with all their strength. They were diligent in business and pros pered as they deserved. But they did not forget that intelligence and character were of more value than wealth in the long process of the years. They felt, dimly perhaps, but none the less earnestly, that what they were, not what they had, would count most when the final reckoning came. On the foundations they laid, the great structure of the United States has been reared. In the splendor of accomplishment let us not forget the beliefs and the principles of those who placed the corner stone. GOOD CITIZENSHIP1 When invited to write on the subject of good citi zenship, I felt a little as I think Cowper felt when Lady Austin asked him to write her a poem, and gave him "The Sofa" for a theme, — somewhat at a loss as to what I should say, although for widely different reasons. The poet solved his difficulty by announc ing in his first line, " I sing the sofa," and then going on with hundreds of verses in which he sang of many things, but not of the sofa. Cowper's subject was in the highest degree concrete, and there was nothing to be said about it, so that his solution of his problem was fairly obvious. Good citizenship, on the contrary, is an abstract subject, upon which very much has been said and written, which opens out indefinitely, and about which it is no easy matter to say anything practical and at the same time to shun glittering generalities and the repetition of commonplaces as to political duties which are, as a rule, more hon ored in the breach than in the observance. It is also a topic on which it is painfully easy to be come didactic, — something to be sedulously avoided, 1 I am indebted to the kindness of the publishers of " Success " for permission to reprint here this article on " Good Citizenship." 32 GOOD CITIZENSHIP because the definition of a didactic poem, as one so called because it is not a poem and teaches nothing, has a wide application to similar efforts in prose. There is, however, consolation for such perils and anxieties in the thought that, in our country, good citizenship is a matter of such vast import that it is hardly possible to say too much about it, or to repeat too often the maxims and principles upon which it rests and which all Americans ought ever to keep in mind. Assuming at the outset that in the United States all men, young and old, who think at all, realize the importance of good citizenship, the first step toward its attainment or its diffusion is to define it accurately ; and then, knowing what it is, we shall be able intelli gently to consider the best methods of creating it and spreading it abroad. In this case the point of discus sion and determination lies in the first word of the title. There is no difficulty in the second. The acci dent of birth or the certificate of a court will make a man a citizen of the republic, entitled to take part in the government and to have the protection of that government, wherever he may be. The qualifying adjective applied to citizenship is the important thing here; for, while the mere word "citizen" settles at once a man's legal status both under domestic and international law, and implies certain rights on his part, and certain responsibilities on the part of his GOOD CITIZENSHIP 33 government toward him, we must go much further if we would define his duties to the State upon the performance of which depends his right to be called either good or worthy. Merely to live without actu ally breaking the laws does not constitute good citi zenship, except in the narrow sense of contrast to those who openly or covertly violate the laws which they have helped to make. The word " good," as applied to citizenship, means something more positive and affirmative than mere passive obedience to statutes, if it has any meaning at all. The good citizen, if he would deserve the title, must be one who performs his duties to the State, and who in due proportion serves his country. It is when we undertake to define those duties and determine what the due proportion of ser vice is that we approach the serious difficulty of the subject ; and yet the duties and the service to the country must be defined, for in them lies all good citizenship, and failure to render them carries a man beyond the pale. A man may not be a bad citizen, — he may pay his taxes and commit no statutory offences ; but, if he gives no service to his country, nor any help to the community in which he lives, he cannot properly be called a good citizen. Assuming, then, that good citizenship necessarily implies service of some sort to the State, the coun try, or the public, it must be understood, of course, 34 GOOD CITIZENSHIP that such service may vary widely in amount or in degree. The man and woman who have a family of children, educate them, bring them up honorably and well, teaching them to love their country, are good citizens, and deserve well of the republic. The man who, in order to care for his family and give his chil dren a fair start in life, labors honestly and diligently at his trade, profession, or business, and who casts his vote conscientiously at all elections, adds to the strength as well as to the material prosperity of the country, and thus fulfils some of the primary and most important duties of good citizenship. Indeed, it may be said, in passing, that he who labors in any way, who has any intellectual interest, who employs his leisure for any public end, — even the man who works purely for selfish objects, — has one valuable element of good citizenship to his credit in the mere fact of his industry ; for there is nobody so detrimental in a country like ours as the mere idler, the mere seeker for self-amusement, who passes his time in constant uncertainty as to how he shall get rid of the next day or the next hour of that brief life which, how ever short in some cases, is, from every point of view, too long for him. Rearing a family, casting a vote, leading a decent life, and working honestly for a livelihood are, how ever, primary and simple qualities in meritorious citi zenship. They are the foundation stones, no doubt, GOOD CITIZENSHIP 35 but good citizenship, in its true sense, rises much higher, and demands much more than these. Here, again, it becomes necessary to define one's meaning and get rid of generalities. All men who do good work have ideals at which they aim, dreams of what they hope to accomplish, and all, especially those who succeed most fully, fall far short of their ideals ; for self-satisfaction usually halts the advance and puts an end to achievement. But to come short of one's ideal is not defeat. " Not failure, but low aim, is crime." The ideal cannot be set too high, and then any pro gress toward it is a victory, and the life-work is not barren of results. This is as true of citizenship as of any other great field of human effort. The ideal cannot be too lofty, provided it is compassed by com mon sense and sound reason and does not topple over into eccentricity. But in order to possess an ideal which must be at once sane and lofty, it is essential to have a standard, and that standard must be clear and sharply defined, not misty or confused. For example, if we wish to teach our children that loy alty to the nation and to the union of States is a funda mental quality of any American citizenship worthy to be called good, we must not as a people set up a monu ment to a man, no matter how eminent, who won all his fame in an unsuccessful effort to wreck liberty and destroy the nation. Such matters emphasize the necessity of having 36 GOOD CITIZENSHIP our standards of citizenship true and correct as well as high. Fortunately, we have not far to seek for examples which are both. We have only to look to Washington and Lincoln to find the highest type of citizenship. The greatness of these two men, and the vast work they accomplished, it may be urged, render them too exceptional to serve as practical models. I do not think, myself, as I have already said, that it is possible to set one's ideal and one's standard too high, and if every American, in his own sphere, no matter how humble or obscure, will set himself to imitate, so far as in him lies, the character of Washington or Lin coln, the world will be made infinitely better thereby. But if the two great chiefs seem too remote for the daily life of most of us, other men less highly placed, but equally noble in their conception of duty, can readily be found for our imitation ; especially at that period of supreme trial of citizenship when the life of the country was staked on the event of war. From that time of storm and stress, I will take such a one as the best text I know on the subject. Charles Russell Lowell was one of the most brilliant of the younger volunteer officers in the Civil War. He had been graduated at the head of his class at Harvard University, and had shown intellectual power both in college and afterwards, in a remarkable degree. He went into the war at its beginning, and rose stead ily and rapidly until he became colonel of his regiment, GOOD CITIZENSHIP 37 and was then put in command of a brigade in Sheri dan's army. In this position, he took part in the battle of Cedar Creek. His brigade bore the brunt of the attack during the morning hours, when the Union army was driven back. In a charge at one o'clock, he was wounded in one lung by a spent ball. At three o'clock, Sheridan, who had come up and re formed his lines, ordered a general advance. Lowell mounted his horse despite his wound, and charged at the head of his brigade. A ball through the neck struck him from the saddle. He fell into the arms of his aids, and was carried to a farmhouse, where he died the next morning. On October 19, 1864, while Lowell was riding to his death in battle, Lincoln was signing his commission as a brigadier-general. He it was, in his uncle's poem, — Who, deadly hurt, agen Flashed on afore the charge's thunder Tippin' with fire the bolt of men Thet rived the Rebel line asunder. Sheridan said of him : " I do not think there was a quality I could have added to Lowell. He was the perfection of a man and soldier." So he stands out for us in the glory of youth, for he was not thirty years old when he was killed, a splendid figure in the full tide of success as a soldier, giving all to his coun try, even to the last great gift of his life. Such a man's conception of citizenship, of which he was him- 38 GOOD CITIZENSHIP self so fine an illustration, is worth consideration, and we are very fortunate in possessing it. About a month before his death, on September 10, 1864, he wrote as follows to a friend, also an officer in the army, who was at home, wounded : " I hope that you have outgrown all foolish ambitions, and are now content to become a ' useful citizen.' Don't grow rich ; if you once begin, you will find it much more difficult to be a useful citizen. Don't seek office, but don't ' disremember ' that a useful citizen always holds his time, his trouble, his money, and his life, ready at the hint of his country. A useful citizen is a mighty unpretending hero ; but we are not going to have any country very long unless such heroism is developed. There ! what a stale sermon I 'm preaching ! But, being a soldier, it does seem to me that I should like nothing else so well as being a useful citizen, — well, trying to be one, I mean. I shall stay in the service, of course, till the war is over, or till I 'm dis abled; but then I look forward to a pleasanter career. I believe I have lost all my ambition. I don't think I would turn my hand to be a distinguished chemist or a famous mathematician. All I now care for is to be a useful citizen with money enough to buy bread and firewood, and to teach my children to ride on horseback and look strangers in the face, especially southern strangers." There was a man who had achieved high distinc tion as a soldier, to whom still higher distinction seemed sure, and yet out of the fiery ordeal of war, where he had done and borne so much, he brings, as his ambition and his lesson, only the desire to be a GOOD CITIZENSHIP 39 "useful citizen," to be of broad, unselfish service to his country and mankind. Good citizenship demands, therefore, something active: in order to be attained, the man must be useful to his country and to his fellow-men, and on this usefulness all else depends. Fortunately, it is possible to be useful in many ways. " Hold your life, your time, your money," said Lowell, " always ready at the hint of your country." To him it was given to make the last great sacrifice. In time of war, the usefulness of man is plain ; he has but the simple duty of offering his services to his country in the field. But the service of war, if more glorious, more dangerous, and larger in peril and sacrifice than any other, is also the most obvious. When the coun try is involved in war, the first duty of a citizen is clear, — he must fight for the flag; or if, because of age or physical infirmity, he is unable to fight, he must support those who do, and sustain, in all ways possible, the nation's cause. Good citizenship implies constant readiness to obey our country's call. Less dangerous, less glorious, rarely demanding the last sacrifice, the time of peace is no less in sistent than the exceptional time of war in its de mands for good citizenship. How shall a man, in time of peace, fulfil Lowell's requirement of being a useful citizen? He may do it in many ways, 40 GOOD CITIZENSHIP for usefulness as a citizen is not confined, by any means, to public office, although it must, in some form or other, promote the general as dis tinguished from the individual good. A man may be a good citizen in the ordinary sense by fulfill ing the fundamental conditions of honest labor, car ing for his family, observing law, and expressing his opinion upon governmental measures at the time of election. But this does not make him a good citizen in the larger sense of usefulness. To be a useful citizen, he must do something for the public service which is over and above his work for himself or his family. It may be performed — this public service — through the medium of the man's profession or occupation, or wholly apart and aside from it. This does not mean that the mere production of a great work of art or literature which may be a joy and benefaction to humanity neces sarily involves the idea of public service in the sense in which we are considering it here. It may or it may not do so. Turner's art is a great posses sion for the world to have, but his bequest to the National Gallery was a public service. Regnault's portrait of Prim was a noble picture, but the artist's death as a soldier in defence of Paris was the high est public service. The literature of the English language would be much poorer if Edgar Allan Poe had not lived, — his verse, his prose, his art GOOD CITIZENSHIP 41 could ill be spared when the accounts of the nine teenth century are made up, — yet it would be im possible to say that Poe was a useful citizen, highly as we may rate and ought to rate his strange genius. On the other hand, Walt Whitman, who consecrated so much of his work as a poet to his country, was eminently a useful citizen of high patriotism, for he labored in the hospitals and among the soldiers to help his country and his fellow-men without any thought of self or self-interest, or even of his art. So Ralph Waldo Emerson was a great and useful citizen, as well as a great writer and poet, giving freely of his time and thought and fame to moulding opinion and to the service of his coun try. The same may be said of Holmes and of Long fellow, of Whittier and of Lowell, of Bancroft and of Motley. In any event, their work would have taken high place in the literature of the United States and of the English-speaking people ; in any event it would have brought pleasure to mankind, and, in Dr. John son's phrase, would have helped us to enjoy life or taught us to endure it. But over and above their work they were useful citizens in a high degree. Their art was ever at the service of their country, of a great cause, and of their fellow-men. They helped to direct and create public opinion, and in the hour of stress they sustained the national cause with all the great strength which their fame and talents gave 42 GOOD CITIZENSHIP them. With Winthrop, their watchword was : " Our country, — whether bounded by the St. John's or the Sabine, or however otherwise bounded or described, and be the measurement more or less, — still our country." The poet and the artist, the scholar and the man of letters are, perhaps, as remote in their lives and pursuits from the generally recognized paths of public service as any men in a community, yet these few examples show not only what they have done, but also what they can do, and how they have met the responsibilities which their high intellectual gifts and large influence imposed upon them. There are also professions which involve in their pursuit pub lic service of a very noble kind. Clergymen and physicians give freely to the public, to their country, and to the community in which they live, their time, their money, their skill, their influence, and their sympathy. It is all done for others without hope or thought of self-interest or reward. It is all done so naturally, so much in the usual course of their activities, that the world scarcely notes, and certainly does not stop to realize, that the great surgeon exercising his skill, which will com mand any sum from the rich, without money and without price, for the benefit of the poor in the hospitals, or the clergyman laboring among the miseries of the city slums, is doing public service GOOD CITIZENSHIP 43 of the highest kind, and is pre-eminently the use ful citizen who goes beyond the limits of personal or family interest to work for the general good, — to promote the public welfare in every possible way. The man of business who devotes his surplus wealth to the promotion of education or of art, or to the alleviation of suffering, is doing public service. So, too, among business men and lawyers and journalists, among the men engaged in the most energetic and active pursuits, we find those who are always ready to serve on committees to raise money for charitable or public purposes, to advance important measures of legislation, and to reform the evils which are especially rife in great municipalities. To do this they give their money, as well as their time and strength, which are of more value than money, to objects wholly out side the labors by which they support themselves or their families, or gratify their own tastes or am bitions. In this fashion they meet the test of what constitutes usefulness in a citizen by rendering to the country, to the public, and to tlieir fellow-citi zens, service which has no personal reward in it, but which advances the good of others and contributes to the welfare of the community. Thus in divers ways, only indicated here, are men of all conditions and occupations able to render ser- 44 GOOD CITIZENSHIP vice and benefit their fellow-citizens. But all these ways so far suggested are, however beneficial, indirect as compared with those usually associated in every one's mind with the idea of public service. When we use the word "citizen," or "citizenship," the first thought is of the man in relation to the state, as the very word itself implies. It is in that connection that we first think of service when we speak of a public- spirited or useful citizen. There are many other pub lic services, as has been said, just as valuable, just as desirable, very often more immediately beneficial to humanity than those rendered directly to the State or to public affairs, but there is no other which is quite so imperative, quite so near, quite so obvious in the way of duty as the performance of the func tions belonging to each man as a member of the State. In our country this is more acutely the case than anywhere else, for this is a democracy, and the government depends upon the action of the people themselves. We have the government, municipal, state, or national, which we make ourselves. If it is good it is because we make it so. If it is bad we may think it is not what we want, and that we are not responsible for it, but it is none the less just what it is simply because we will not take the trouble necessary to improve it. There is no greater fallacy than the comfortable statement so frequently heard, that we owe misgovemment, when it occurs any- GOOD CITIZENSHIP 45 where, to the politicians. If the politicians are bad, and yet have power, it is because we give it to them. They are not a force of nature with which there is no contending ; they are of our own creation, and, if we disapprove of them and yet leave them in power, it is because we do not care to take the trouble, some times the excessive trouble, needful to be rid of them. People in this country, as in other countries, and as in all periods of history, have, as a rule, the govern ment they deserve. The politicians, so commonly denounced as a class, sometimes justly and sometimes unjustly, have only the advantage of taking more pains than others to get what they want, and to hold power in public affairs. To this the reply is always made that the average man engaged in business, or in a profession, has not the time to give to politics which the professional politician devotes to it. That excuse begs the question. If the average man, active, and constantly occupied in his own affairs, cannot find time to choose the men he desires to represent him and perform his public business for him, then either democracy is a failure, or else he can find time if he chooses ; and, if he does not choose, he has no right to complain. But democracy is not a failure. After all allowances and deductions are made, it is the best form of government in the world to-day, and better than any of its predecessors. The fault is not in the system, even if there are in it, as in all other 46 GOOD CITIZENSHIP things human, shortcomings and failures, but in those who operate the system ; and, in a democracy, those who in the last analysis operate the system are. all the people. It must always be remembered, also, that in representative government all the people, and not some of the people, are to be represented. In a country so vast in area and so large in population as the United States, constituencies are very diverse in their qualities and there are many elements. Some constituencies are truly represented by men very alien to the standards and aspirations of other constituen cies. All, however, are entitled to representation, and the aggregate representation stands for the whole people. If the representation in the aggregate is sound, and honestly representative, then the theory of democracy is carried out, and the quality of the rep resentation depends on the people represented. There are two things, then, to be determined by the people themselves, — the general policy of the government, and the persons who are to carry that policy into effect and to perform the work of admin istration. To attain the first object, those who are pledged to one policy or another must be elected, and the persons thus united in support of certain general principles of policy or government constitute a polit ical party. The second object, the choice of suitable persons as representatives of a given political party, must be reached by all the people who support that GOOD CITIZENSHIP 47 party taking part in the selection. In the first case, the general policy is settled by the election of a party to power; in the second, the individual representa tive is picked out by his fellow-members of the same party. This, in broad terms, describes the field for the exertions of the citizen in the domain of politics, and the methods by which he can make his exertions most effective. I am aware that in this description I have assumed the existence of political parties as not only necessary, but also desirable. This is not the place to enter into a history or discussion of the party system. Suffice it to say here that all experi ence shows that representative government has been a full success only among the English-speaking people of the world, with whom the system of a party of government and a party of opposition has always prevailed. In other countries the failures or serious shortcomings of representative government are at tributed by good judges and observers, both native and foreign, largely to the absence of the party sys tem as practised by us. The alternative of two par ties, one carrying on the government and the other in opposition ready to take its place, is the system of groups or factions and consequent coalitions among two or more of the groups in order to obtain a par liamentary maj ority . Government by group-coalitions has proved to be irresponsible, unstable, capricious, 48 GOOD CITIZENSHIP and short-lived. Under the system of two parties, continuity, experience, and, best of all, responsibility, without which all else is worthless, have been ob tained. That there are evils in the party system carried to the extreme of blind or unscrupulous par tisanship, no one denies. But this is a comparative world, and the party system is shown, by the experi ence of two hundred years, to be the best yet devised for the management and movement of a represen tative government. Nothing, in fact, can be more shallow, or show a more profound ignorance of his tory, than the proposition, so often reiterated as if it were a truism, that a political party is something wholly evil, and that to call any one a party man is sufficient to condemn him. Every great measure, every great war, every great reform, which together have made the history of England since the days of William of Orange, and of the United States since the adoption of the Constitution, has been carried on and carried through by an organized political party. Until some better way is discovered and proved to be better, the English-speaking people will continue to use the party system with which, on the whole, they have done so well so far, and the citizen aiming at usefulness must therefore accept the party system as one of the conditions under which he is to act. The most effective way in wliich to act is through the medium of a party, and as a member of one of GOOD CITIZENSHIP 49 the two great parties, because in this way a man can make his influence felt not only in the final choice between parties, but in the selection of candidates and in the determination of party policies as well. This does not mean that a man can be effective only by allying himself with a party, but that he can in that way be most effective both in action and in in fluence. Many there must be unattached to either of the parties, whose mental condition is such that they can neither submit to discipline, nor yield nor compro mise their own views in order to promote the general principles in which they believe, all which conditions or sacrifices are necessary in order to maintain party organization. These are the voters who shift their votes if not their allegiance ; and, if it were not for them, one party, as politics are usually hereditary, would remain almost continually in power, and the results would be extremely unfortunate. It is the necessity of appealing to these voters which exercises a restraining effect upon the great party organiza tions. But these men who vote as they please at the minute, and yet usually describe themselves by a party name, and as a rule act with one party or the other, must be carefully distinguished from the professional independent, whose independence consists in nothing but bitterly opposing and seeking to de feat one party at all times. This independent is the worst of partisans, for he is guided solely by hatred 4 50 GOOD CITIZENSHIP of a party or of individuals, and never supports any thing because be believes in it, but merely as an instrument of destruction or revenge. Equally in effective, even if less malevolent, is the perpetual fault-finder, whether in conversation or in the news papers. He calls himself a critic, blandly unaware that unrelieved invective is no more criticism than unrelieved laudation, and that true criticism, whether of a book, a work of art, a public measure, or a pubhc man, seeks to point out merits as well as defects, in order to balance one against the other, and thus assist in the proper conduct of life. The real and honest critic and the genuine independent in politics are most valuable, for they are engaged in the advance ment of principles in which they believe, and will aid those and work with those who are laboring toward the same ends. But the professional independent, whose sole purpose is to defeat some one party, or certain specified persons whom he hates, no matter what that party or those persons may be doing, the critic who only finds fault, the professional philan thropist or reformer who uses his philanthropy or reform solely to vilify his country or his government, and to bring shame or sorrow to some of his fellow- citizens, so that his personal malice may be gratified, — these men advance nothing, for their attitude is pure negation, and they generally do great harm to any cause which they espouse. They are not useful GOOD CITIZENSHIP 51 citizens ; but, as a rule, to the extent of their power, which luckily is not great, they are positively injurious. The serious difficulty, however, is not with those who give a false direction to their political activities, but with the political indifference which most good citizens exhibit, except on rare occasions when some great question is at issue which stirs the entire com munity to its depths. Yet it is in the ordinary every day affairs of politics that the attention of good citizens is most necessary. It is then that those who constitute the undesirable and objectionable elements get control, for they are always on the watch, and to defeat them it is essential that those who desire good and honest government should be on the watch, too. The idea that they cannot spare the time without detriment to their own affairs is a mistake. The time actually consumed in going to a caucus or a conven tion is not a serious loss. What is most needed is to follow the course of public affairs closely, to under stand what is being done, and what the various can didates represent ; and then, when the time for the vote in the caucus or at the polls arrives, a citizen interested only in good government, or in the promo tion of a given policy, knows what he wants and can act intelligently. His weakness arises, almost inva riably, from the fact that he does not rouse himself until the last minute, that he does not know just 52 GOOD CITIZENSHIP what he wants, or with whom to act, and that, there fore, he is taken by surprise and beaten by those who know exactly what they want and precisely what they mean to do. Here, then, is where the useful citizen is most needed in politics, and his first duty is to understand his subject, which a little thought and observation day by day will enable him to do. Let him inform himself, and keep always informed as to men and measures, and he will find that he has ample time to give when the moment of action arrives. No man can hope to be a useful citizen in the broad est sense, in the United States, unless he takes a continuous and intelligent interest in politics, and a full share not only in the elections, but also in the primary operations which determine the choice of candidates. For this every one has time enough, and, if he says that he has not, it is because he is indifferent when he ought to be intensely and con stantly interested. If he follows public affairs from day to day, and, thus informed, acts with his friends and those who think as he does at the caucus and the polls, he will make his influence fully felt and will meet completely the test of good citizenship. It is not essential to take office. For not doing so, the excuse of lack of time and the demands of more immediate private interest may be valid. But it would be well if every man could have, for a short period, at least, some experience in the actual work GOOD CITIZENSHIP 53 of government in his city, State, or nation, even if he has no intention of following a political career. Such an experience does more to broaden a man's knowledge of the difficulties of public administra tion than anything else. It helps him to under stand how he can practically attain that which he thinks is best for the State, and, most important of all, it enables him to act with other men, and to judge justly those who are doing the work of public life. Public men, it is true, seek the offices they hold in order to gratify their ambition, or be cause they feel that they can do good work in the world in that way. But it is too often overlooked that the great majority of those who hold public office are governed by a desire to do what is best for the country or the State, as they under stand it. Ambition may be the motive which takes most men into public life, but the work which is done by these men after they attain their ambition is, as a rule, disinterested and public- spirited. I have lately seen the proposition ad vanced that, in the last forty years, American public men, with scarcely an exception, have said nothing important because they were so ignorant of their sub ject, and have done nothing of moment because the country was really governed by professors, men of business, scientists, presidents of learned societies, and especially by gentlemen who feel that they ought 54 GOOD CITIZENSHIP to be in high office, but have never been able to get any sufficient number of their fellow-citizens to agree with them in that feeling. With the exception of the last, all these different classes in the community exercise a strong influence on public opinion, the course of public affairs, and public policy. Yet it is none the less true that the absolute conduct of government is in the hands of those who hold high representative or administrative office. The personal qualities and individual abilities of public men, have a profound effect upon the meas ures and policies which make the history and de termine the fate of the nation. Often they originate the measures or the policies, and they always modify and formulate them. Therefore it is essential that every man who desires to be a useful citizen, should not only take part in moulding public sentiment, in selecting candidates, and in winning elections for the party or the cause in which he believes, but he should also be familiar with the characters, abilities, and records of the men who must be the instruments by which the policies are to be carried out and the government administered. There are many ways, therefore, in which men may benefit and aid their fellow-men, and serve the State in which they live, but it is open to all men alike to help to govern the country and direct its course along the passing years. In the performance of this duty in the ways I have GOOD CITIZENSHIP 55 tried to indicate, any man can attain to good cit izenship of the highest usefulness. It is not too much to say that our success as a nation depends upon the useful citizens who act intelligently and effectively in politics. THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES1 In discussions concerning the political development of the United States it is almost always asserted that the growth and extension of the power of the Senate has been one of the most marked and significant feat ures of our history. It is also one of the common places of a certain kind of criticism to declare with much gloomy foreboding, at some period in each suc ceeding administration, that the Senate has usurped and is constantly usurping power, with great conse quent peril to our political health and to the balance of the government. That the power of the Senate is very great, and that it has developed to its present proportions since the organization of the government is unquestionably true. But it is equally true that there has been no usurpation by the Senate of power not rightfully belonging to it, and no one, I venture to think, would make this charge or criticism who had studied the origin of the Senate or considered carefully the powers conferred upon it by the Constitution. To understand the Senate as it is to-day, therefore, and to comprehend its meaning and functions in our 1 I am permitted to reprint in this volume this essay upon " The Senate " through the kindness of Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons. THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES 57 body politic, it is absolutely necessary to appreciate fully, and to know well just how and why the Senate was created, and with what powers its creators en dowed it. By this comparative method, and in this way alone, can we learn what the Senate is now, after more than a century of existence. The framers of the Constitution of the United States had no serious difficulty in agreeing that there should be two houses in the legislative body of the new government. Even if they all had not been wedded to the double-chamber system by tra dition, experience, and their own clear, good sense, there was no such success apparent in Franklin's single-chamber experiment in Pennsylvania, then drawing to an unlamented end, or in that of Georgia, or in the Congress of the Confederation, as to convert them to this new doctrine, or even to make its nominal supporters very solicitous for its extension. Such opposition as there was to two chambers came solely from the fact that the single chamber was thought to involve the vital question of the equality of the States, as against the national prin ciple which was sure to prevail, wholly or in part, with two chambers. There was no real support for a single chamber purely on its merits, and, as has been said, there was no serious difficulty in agreeing upon two houses. With that point passed, however, trouble began, and so serious was it that, as every one 58 THE SENATE OF THE LNITED STATES knows, the convention came near dissolution, and the whole Constitution was almost wrecked upon the question as to the basis of representation in the new Congress. The situation was saved by the adop tion of the principle laid down by Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth, that the only road to suc cess lay through grafting the new government upon the State governments ; and following out this prin ciple the House was made to represent population, and the Senate the separate States. This was the great compromise of the Constitution, the " Con necticut Compromise," as it is usually called, but it really was the solution of the most crucial prob lem presented to the framers of the Constitution. Without it there probably would have been no Constitution, and if one had been made with the representation of both Houses based on population, at the first attempt of the large States to control the government, the Union would, at the very out set, have gone to pieces. The Senate, therefore, was regarded as the key-stone of the new scheme, and the framers showed their belief in its overwhelming im portance by providing that the basis of representation in the Senate should not be altered except by the con sent of every State, while every other clause of the Constitution could be amended by a two-thirds vote of Congress followed by a ratification by three-fourths of the States. THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES 59 The reason for fixing the basis of representation for the Senate so firmly in the Constitution that so far as possible it should be beyond change is obvious, although often overlooked. The Convention which framed the Constitution voted by States, as did the Continental Congress and the Congress of the Confed eration. All sovereign powers of every kind, there fore, were in possession of the States as such, and consequently every power which was given in the new Constitution to the people of the Union at large was given by the States ; every power which was reserved was reserved to the States ; and all powers conferred upon the Senate were intended to guard and preserve the influence and authority of the States in the new government. Hence, in the formation of the Senate the States were retaining for themselves all the powers which they believed needful for their safety, and, as everything was theirs to give or to withhold, they were naturally liberal in their endow ment of the body which was to continue to represent them under a system where they necessarily parted with so much. It was for these reasons that the convention con ferred upon the Senate both executive and judicial, as well as legislative powers. The executive was to be elected by the people at large, and the executive power, therefore, passed away from the States, but the States took pains to limit this great gift by con- 60 THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES ferring upon the Senate the power to reject all nom inations to office made by the President, and by granting to the Senate an equal and co-ordinate part in making all treaties with foreign nations. These sovereign powers of appointing executive officers and of treating with foreign nations were, at the time of the Philadelphia Convention, vested wholly in the States, and when the States parted with them to an Executive elected by the people at large, they reserved to themselves an equal share and an absolute veto in the performance of both these great and vital func tions of government. In their legislative capacity the Senate was given all the powers conferred upon the House, or, in other words, the States retained for their branch of the national legislature all the powers allotted to the branch elected on the basis of population, with a single exception. That exception was the reservation to the House of the sole right to originate all meas ures to raise revenue, — a power of the most funda mental kind, — but as the convention took pains to provide that the Senate should have an unlimited right to amend such bills the reservation in favor of the House is so curtailed that their only real privi lege is the monopoly of merely initiating revenue bills, which does not seriously affect the legislative equality of the two Houses even on this point. The Senate, also, was made the high court to try all im- THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES 61 peachments of officers of the United States, and this great function has been performed by the Senators in the cases of certain judges, and in 1867 in the trial of Andrew Johnson, President of the United States. The upper House of Congress was the natural and obvious body to act as a court in impeachment cases, but the fact is of interest here because it shows that the Senate was given judicial as well as executive and legislative power, and was made in this way to share in the duties of both the co-ordinate branches of the government, this participation being emphasized by the fact that when the Senate sits as a court for the trial of the President the Chief Justice of the United States presides over its deliberations. The States in convention, having thus created an upper House to represent them and continue their authority in the general government, and having endowed their creation with an unprecedented com bination of legislative and executive powers, then further provided that the Senators should be elected for a term of six years, and that only one-third of the Senate should be changed every two years at the biennial national elections. These are very familiar facts, and it is obvious enough that the long term gives greater stability and a larger freedom of action to the body which enjoys it than would be possible with a short term. But only a somewhat careful consideration will disclose the ingenuity with which 62 THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES the Convention, representing as it did the separate States, sought to enhance the authority of the Senate by these apparently formal arrangements for terms and times of election. The term of six years is three times as long as that of members of the House, and half as long again as that of the President. There are always, therefore, two-thirds of the Senators whose terms extend either two or four years beyond the life of the existing House. When a President comes into office, he meets a Senate two-thirds of whose membership have terms coequal with or two years longer than his own period of service, and in the middle of his term he has a Senate two-thirds of whose members have terms of service either two or four years longer than his own. Stated in this way it becomes at once apparent that the Convention sought by the six-year term not merely to add to the stabil ity and dignity of the Senate, but to make it, so far as possible, independent at all times, through the su perior length of terms possessed by a majority of the Senators, as against the House on the one side and the President on the other, who were chosen alike by all the people of the Union on the basis of population. This painstaking arrangement as to the length of the term is supplemented and made most effective by the provision that only one-third of the Senate should be elected every two years. Joined with the six-year term, as has just been shown, the division of the THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES 63 Senate into three classes, elected respectively at in tervals of two years, gives it always a majority of longer life than the President or the House, but it also gives the Senate a quality of permanency not possessed by the lower branch, or even by the execu tive power. A House passes out of existence on March 4 in alternate years, and then ensues a period when there is no House, and can be none, until the members-elect are brought together by the summons of the President, or by the operation of law, to meet in Washington and organize one. The Senate, on the other hand, is always organized, always in exist ence. It was organized in April, 1789, and has re mained so ever since, for there never has been a moment since that time when there were not two- thirds of the Senators in office, able to meet at any instant and transact business without further formal ity than calling the roll in order to show the presence of a quorum, or, under certain contingencies, choosing a president pro tempore. In this connection it is not without interest to con trast the minute care of the Constitution-makers in regard to the perpetual existence of the Senate with the dangerous oversight of which they were guilty in making similar provision for the Executive. A Vice- President was created to take the place of the Presi dent in case of the latter's death, resignation, or disability, and in the event of the death or disability 64 THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES of both the President and Vice-President, Congress was empowered to settle the succession by law. But in the case, by no means an impossible one, of the death or disability of the President-elect, or of both the President and Vice-President elect, after the ad journment of the electoral colleges and before March 4, no provision whatever was made for the succes sion, or for the continuance of the Executive subse quent to March 4. This was the way the matter was left by the framers in the original Constitution. In the Twelfth Amendment, adopted in 1804, which regulated the manner of choosing a President by the House in the case of a failure to elect by the people, it is said that if the House does not elect before March 4 the Vice-President " shall act as President, as in the case of the death or other con stitutional disability of the President." Thus this amendment, by implication, provides for the possi bility of the death of the President elect, but the case of the death of both the President and Vice- President elect remains as the Constitution itself originally left it, wholly uncovered. Should this contingency just mentioned ever occur, as it well might, some way out of the grave situation thus created would no doubt be found, but it would have to be extra-constitutional and through an assumption of power by Congress. In the essential duty of main taining the existence of the government without lapse THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES 65 or break this is a serious, if not perilous, omission. There is no such oversight, no such instance of neg lect to be found in the constitutional arrangements guaranteeing the perpetuity and unchanging charac ter of the Senate. Having now shown the origin of the Senate, the manner in which it was formed, the great powers conferred upon it, and the care taken for its contin ued and unbroken existence, the next step, in order to understand the Senate as it is to-day, is to learn the conception entertained in regard to it by the men contemporary with the adoption of the Constitution who first organized the upper chamber of the new Congress and set it in motion. Early in the first session the Senate adopted the following set of brief and simple rules : 1st. The President having taken the Chair and a quorum being present the Journal of the preceding day shall be read, to the end that any mistake may be corrected that shall have been made in the entries. IlD. No member shall speak to another, or otherwise interrupt the business of the Senate, or read any printed paper while the Journals or public papers are reading, or when any member is speaking in any debate. 5 66 THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES HID. Every member when he speaks shall address the Chair standing in his place, and when he has finished shall sit down. IVth No member shall speak more than twice in any one de bate on the same day, without leave of the Senate. Vth. When two members rise at the same time, the President shall name the person to speak ; but in all cases the mem ber first rising shall speak first. VIth. No motion shall be debated until the same shall be seconded. VIIth. When a motion shall be made and seconded, it shall be reduced to writing, if desired by the President, or any member, delivered in at the table, and read by the Presi dent before the same shall be debated. VIUth. While a question is before the Senate, no motion shall be received unless for an amendment, for the previous ques tion, or for postponing the main question, or to commit it, or to adjourn. IXth. The previous question being moved and seconded, the question from the Chair shall be — " Shall the main ques tion be now put?" — And if the nays prevail, the main question shall not then be put. THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES 67 Xth. If a question in debate contain several points, any mem ber may have the same divided. XIth. When the yeas and nays shall be called for by one-fifth of the members present, each member called upon shall, unless for special reason he be excused by the Senate, declare openly and without debate his assent or dissent to the question. In taking the yeas and nays, and upon the call of the House, the names of the members shall be taken alphabetically. XHth. One day's notice at least shall be given of an intended motion for leave to bring in a bill. XIHth. Every bill shall receive three readings previous to its being passed : and the President shall give notice at each, whether it be the first, second, or third ; which readings shall be on three different days, unless the Senate unani mously direct otherwise. XIVth. No bill shall be committed or amended until it shall have been twice read, after which it may be referred to a Committee. XVth. All Committees shall be appointed by ballot and a plu rality of votes shall make a choice. 68 THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES XVIth. When a member shall be called to order, he shall sit down until the President shall have determined whether he is in order or not ; and every question of order shall be de cided by the President without debate : but if there be a doubt in his mind he may call for the sense of the Senate. XVIlTH. If a member be called to order for words spoken, the ex ceptionable words shall be immediately taken down in writing, that the President may be better enabled to judge of the matter. XVIIIth. When a blank is be filled, and different sums shall be proposed, the question shall be taken on the highest sum first. XIXth. No member shall absent himself from the service of the Senate without leave of the Senate first obtained.1 For a legislative body charged with executive func tions these rules seem rudimentary to the last degree. But it must be remembered that the first Senate which assembled in the Federal Hall of New York in April, 1789, consisted of only twenty- two members, as North Carolina did not accede to the Constitution until November of the same year, while Rhode Island held off until June, 1790. These twenty-two gentle- 1 From the " Journal of the First Session of the Senate of the United States of America, March 4th, 1789. New York, 1789." Paces 14-15, THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES 69 men, therefore, sat together in one not very large room, and talked matters over with an informality and a familiarity which have never entirely departed from the Senate debates, and which still reign in ex ecutive sessions. All their sessions at the outset were entirely private, there was no record of the debates, and the deliberations in legislative session were not opened to the public until 1793, on the occasion of the contest over the right of Albert Gallatin to a seat. This small body of men sitting in this way in private, with comparatively little to do, and with no record of the proceedings but the journal, did not require any thing very elaborate in the way of rules. Business was largely transacted by general assent, and with much regard for the convenience of each Senator, — habits which have survived unchanged to the present time, and which, although often jeered at by persons outside the Senate, are of much value and comfort to those within. There is, however, one rule in this primitive code which seems almost needless for so small a body and which is at direct variance with what is to-day one of the most cherished traditions and most characteristic features of the Senate. This rule is numbered nine, and provides for the previous question to close debate in the simplest and most drastic manner. The previous question in the first Senate was a privileged motion, as appears by rule eight. It could be moved and seconded at any time, 70 THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES passed by a majority vote, and if agreed to it cut off all debate then and there. When the rules were re vised, in 1806, this provision for closing debate was dropped, and unlimited debate has been the un changing rule of the Senate ever since. In fact, the rules of 1806, despite numerous revisions, which made no very vital changes, and a few amendments have remained substantially the rules of the Senate down to the present time. Under these century-old rules, for which there is often a fine disregard in prac tice, the Senate still transacts its business largely by unanimous consent and with a consideration for the wishes and convenience of each Senator very agree able to them, although not a little laughed at by an irreverent public. These rules, which have endured so long, are an excellent illustration of the conserva tism of the Senate and of the unbroken continuity of its existence as an organized body since the foundation of the government. They also show how closely the Senate has adhered to the conception of its duties and functions entertained by the framers of the Constitu tion and the organizers of the government. Beyond this the Senate rules do not require any detailed examination. There is, indeed, only one which first appears in the revision of 1806 which needs to be mentioned on account of the light which it throws on the relation of the Senate to the purely executive branch of the government, and it is only by THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES 71 a just comprehension of the relations of the Senate to the President and to the House that a proper under standing of what the Senate has come to be and what part it plays hi our political system can be obtained. The first code of rules, adopted in 1789, makes, as will have been seen, no provision for the President's meeting with the Senate in executive session. That he should do so was taken as a matter of course, and was in conformity with the ideas of the framers of the instrument. In accordance with this view Wash ington, in August, 1789, met with the Senate twice to formulate the provisions of a treaty to be made with the Choctaw Indians. The scheme did not work well. The President did not enjoy sitting by and hearing the terms of his treaty discussed, and Senators were embarrassed by being compelled to de bate and vote upon the President's proposals in his presence. The plan of personal meeting with the Senate was, therefore, given up by Washington, and has never been resumed. But the right of the Presi dent to come to the Senate for personal consultation, and the original constitutional theory in this respect, have never been abandoned, as will appear if we examine the later rules. In the revision of the rules adopted March 26, 1806, rule thirty-four provides, under the head of nominations, that : 72 THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES " When the President of the United States shall meet the Senate in the Senate Chamber the President of the Senate shall have a chair on the floor, be considered as the head of the Senate, and his chair shall be assigned to the President of the United States." Rule thirty-five provides that : " All questions shall be put by the President of the Senate either in the presence or absence of thc President of the United States." In the revision of 1820 the provision of rule thirty- five of 1806 was dropped, but that of rule thirty-four was retained and continued as a rule of the Senate until 1877, when the following rule (sixty-five), differing only in phraseology, was substituted for it : " When the President of the United States shall meet the Senate in the Senate Chamber for the consideration of executive business, he shall have a seat on the right of the chair." This is the rule at the present time, and although it is never put into practical operation, it has impor tance not merely as embodying an unbroken tradition, but as a formal recognition of certain constitutional principles of very great moment. By this rule are recognized the right of the President to consult per sonally with the Senate, the position of the Senators as the President's only constitutional advisers, and the equality of the Senate in the conduct of all executive business in which, under the Constitu- THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES 73 tion, they are entitled to share. The right of the President personally to consult the Senate as a body involves also the correlative right of the Senate, in the language of the Constitution, to advise the Presi dent. To the Senate alone is given this right to ad vise the Executive. The members of the Cabinet are often loosely spoken of as the constitutional ad visers of the President. They are, as a matter of fact, nothing of the sort. They are not created by the Constitution, but by the laws which the Constitution authorizes Congress to pass in order to carry out its provisions. The Constitution con templates the establishment of executive depart ments, and says that the President may require the opinion in writing of the heads of such depart ments, but these departments can exist only by the pleasure of Congress, and the President is not bound to consult their chiefs. A story is told of Lincoln's submitting a proposition which he fav ored to his Cabinet. All were against it. "Seven nays ; one yea," said the President ; " the ayes have it, and it is so ordered." Whether apocryphal or not the anecdote illustrates the distinction between the constitutional Senate and the statutory Cabinet. An adverse majority in the Senate cannot be over come in that way, for the Constitution gives the Senate power, while the law alone creates the Cab inet, whose members represent in the last analysis 74 THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES simply the policy and will of the Executive. The equality of the Senate in executive business — the last point recognized by the rule — is shown by the care taken from the beginning to make it per fectly clear that the President is neither to preside over nor to share in the discussions of the Senate, but is to deal with them as an organized body, under the guidance of their own presiding officer. Such being the theory of the Constitution, never abandoned since the beginning, the manner in which it has been worked out in practice shows at once the position of the Senate to-day. Since August, 1789, the President has never consulted or sat with the Senate in person to consider executive business, either in relation to nominations or to treaties. But while the inconvenience of personal consultation was thus early made apparent, it became at once equally obvious that to hold no consultation with a body of constitutional advisers about nominations and treaties upon which they had the power to put an absolute veto, would be at once dangerous and absurd. In 1789 Washington sent in the nomination of Benjamin Fishburn for the place of Naval Officer at the port of Savannah. He was rejected by the Senate. Fishburn had been an old soldier, and was well known to Washington, who was very much annoyed by his rejection. When he sent in THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES 75 another name for the same place he transmitted a message to the Senate in which he said : " Whatever may have been the reasons which induced your dissent, I am persuaded that they were such as you deemed sufficient. Permit me to submit to your consid eration, whether, on occasions where the propriety of nomi nations appears questionable to you, it would not be expedient to communicate that circumstance to me, and thereby avail yourselves of the information which led me to make them, and which I would with pleasure lay be fore you. Probably my reasons for nominating Mr. Fish burn may tend to show that such a mode of proceeding, in such cases, might be useful. I will therefore detail them." He then went on to give an account of Colonel Fishburn and the reasons which had led to his nom ination. The motives which influenced the Senate in the rejection of Fishburn do not appear, but the passage which has been quoted from Washington's special message demonstrates not only his belief in the need of consultation with the Senate about nominations, but the absolute necessity for it in order to prevent constant friction between the Senate and the Executive. This case undoubtedly led, there fore, to the practice which has been continued to the present time of the President consulting with Sen ators in regard to appointments. As the Senate, af ter it has confirmed a nomination, becomes equally responsible with the President for the appointment, 76 THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES it is obvious that the right of consultation under the Constitution, which has already been defined, must be exercised in some way. Thus it came about that informal consultations with individual Senators took the place of the cumbrous and in convenient method of consulting the Senate as a body, and in this way the intent of the Constitu tion has been carried out. Nothing, therefore, is more inept than to criticise a President because he consults the Senators from a State in regard to an appointment in or from that State. The Senators are his constitutional advisers. In some way he must consult them, and it is impossible that any President should be able to know enough about the men in forty-five States to enable him to appoint intelligently unless he could avail him self of the knowledge of those who represent the several States. The consultation of Senators by the President, therefore, in regard to appointments, is nothing more than carrying out the intent of the Constitution in the manner which practice has shown to be the only convenient one. The influence of the Senate in making appointments is not in creased thereby, except so far as the multiplication of officers has made it more necessary for the Pres ident to receive local information and depend for it upon the Senators more than was essential in the early days. All that has been done constitu- THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES 77 tionally is to substitute an informal consultation with individual Senators for the consultation of the Senate as a body, which has been always recog nized as a constitutional right in the simple rule already quoted. The question of appointments to office was closely allied to that of removals, and while the right of the Senate to confirm or reject all nominations was plain and undoubted, the question of the right of the Presi dent to remove gave rise from the beginning to a great deal of discussion. There was a" protracted debate upon this point in regard to the act estab lishing the Treasury Department, passed in 1789, the question being whether the President had the right to remove absolutely under the Constitution, either with or without any reference to it in the law, or whether the Congress could confer upon the President or withhold from him the right to remove from an office which Congress had estab lished. The act of 1789 finally provided, in sec tion 7, "that whenever the Secretary should be removed from office by the President of the Uni ted States or in any other case of vacancy," etc. This recognized the right of the President to re move, but the fact of the recognition in the law conveyed the implication that it was not a purely constitutional right of the Executive for which no legislation was necessary. The question remained 78 THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES an open one and was discussed at intervals for some years, the Senate on more than one occasion, especially under Andrew Jackson, making efforts to establish some control over removals from office. Finally, in the bitter controversy with Andrew Johnson, the well known Tenure of Office Act was passed. It was so obviously objectionable that Gen eral Grant sent in a message to his first Congress urging its repeal, but the Senate, fresh from the struggle with Johnson, refused to do more than modify it. During Mr. Cleveland's first term the Senate, led by Senator Edmunds, of Vermont, had a controversy with the President as to its right to require him to give reasons for his removals, and thereby some of the nominations were hung up for a good many months. The sympathy of the country was with the President, and the con test seemed to be doing a great deal of harm. In the session of 1886-87, Senator Hoar introduced a bill, which became law on March 3, 1887, by which the Tenure of Office Act was repealed. This ended the controversy, and it may now be taken as settled that the absolute right of the President to remove, under the Constitution, is recognized, and that the right of the Senate to ask for the reasons for removals, which they clearly had under the Tenure of Office Act, has also been abandoned. That the present position is sound constitutionally THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES 79 is, I think, clear, but the course of events shows that in this important direction the Senate has given up a power which at one time it asserted not only in debate but by a law. In regard to the other branch of the Senate's executive functions, the treaty-making power, the course of development has been much the same, — consultation of individual Senators, either directly by the President or through the Secretary of State by means of communication with the Committee on Foreign Relations, having been substituted for the old plan of counselling beforehand with the Senate as a body. The treaty-making power of the Senate is a large subject, which I have already discussed at length in an article which appeared in a previous volume,1 but the results of more than a century of development in this direction may be briefly summed up. The Senate has the right, under the language of the Constitution, to advise beforehand that the ne gotiation be entered into, or the reverse. This right has been exercised on two or three occasions, but very rarely, and has usually been allowed to fall into abey ance, although circumstances may make its use neces sary and desirable at any time.2 The Presidents have 1 " A Fighting Frigate and other Essays and Addresses " — Charles Scribner's Sons, 1902. 2 In the last session of Congress (1905-1906) the " Niagara Bill " con tains a section by which Congress requests the President to enter upon negotiations with Great Britain for the preservation of Niagara Falls. 80 THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES from time to time consulted the Senate prior to nego tiation, and this right, although not often exercised, has been made use of at intervals down to the present day. The right of the Senate to amend has been always freely used at all periods of our history, and, of course, will continue to be exercised, because it is the only method by which the Senate can take part in the negotiations, as the Constitution intended it to do. This summary of the history of the treaty-making power as exercised by the Senate shows that the Sen ate has not only not sought to extend its power over treaties unduly, or in doubtful directions, but that it has wisely allowed certain undoubted privileges to fall into abeyance and has contented itself with dis cussion and amendment when a treaty came before it, and with the informal consultations which it has been the practice of most Presidents to hold with members of the Senate in regard to our foreign relations. This covers the relations of the Senate with the Executive in regard to its executive functions of confirming nominations and of ratifying treaties. It only remains now to consider the relations of the Senate with the House, and there is only one point in the Constitution where the powers of either House are restrained. That is the clause which gives to the House of Representatives the sole right to orig inate bills to raise revenue. In all other respects the Senate and the House are upon an absolute legislative THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES 81 equality. This right of the House thus given in the Constitution has, of course, never been questioned, nor has the right of the Senate to make unlimited amend ments to bills to raise revenue ever been successfully contested, but the practice has grown up of allowing the House to originate not only bills to raise revenue, but also the great appropriation bills which provide for the expenditure of the public money. The Senate has an undoubted right to originate any appropriation bill, large or small, and it frequently passes bills carrying an appropriation for some single and specific object, such as the construction of a light-house or of a public building, but at the same time the Senate has, without serious resistance, conceded to the House the sole right to originate the great appropriation bills, although its own right to originate such measures is the same as that of the lower branch. That this is a wise practice, I think few persons will doubt, but it certainly does not show on the part of the Senate a desire to usurp authority. Thus it appears that both in relation to the Exec utive and the House of Representatives the Senate has not sought to extend its constitutional powers, but has, on the contrary, refrained from the exer cise of some undoubted rights and has allowed others to rest in abeyance. Yet there can be no doubt that it is equally true that the power of the Senate has grown enormously in the one hundred years and more of our history. The influence of 82 THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES the Senate in legislation and in all departments of government is much greater than at the beginning, and far exceeds that of the House ; but this is not due to any usurpations on the part of the Senate, as has been shown by the preceding review of the history of its constitutional functions. The increase in the im portance, weight, and power of the Senate is due pri marily to its inherent strength, and this strength rests upon the manner in which it was endowed by the framers of the Constitution. With equal authority in legislation, with executive functions which involve all appointments to office and all our foreign relations, it was inevitable that as the country and the govern ment grew the power of the Senate should increase more largely than that of any other branch of the government, for the simple reason that its original opportunity for growth was greater. This increase of power in the Senate has undoubtedly been stimulated by the fact that the rigid rules necessary in the more numerous branch of Congress has prevented the House from doing many important things which the Sen ate, with its easy methods of conducting business, could readily take up. Many matters from which the House excluded itself by its own rules were in this way thrown into the possession of the Senate, which is a sure method of enhancing legislative power. In the same way, although the support of the entire Con gress is necessary to a successful administration, no THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES 83 President can get on without the Senate, even if he has the House with him, because it is always within the power of the Senate, if it is so disposed, to hamper the Executive without going into open opposition, both in administration, through the offices, and in foreign relations, through its treaty-making power. Very naturally, therefore, Presidents are always anxious to be on the best terms with the Senators, who are their constitutional advisers, and for this reason as Executive power has expanded with the growth of the the nation and the extension of the government, the power of the Senate has gone hand in hand with it. The Senate is to-day the most powerful single chamber in any legislative body in the world, but this power, which is shown daily by the wide at tention to all that is said and done in the Senate of the United States, is not the product of selfish and cunning usurpations on the part of an ambi tious body. It is due to the origmal constitution of the Senate, to the fact that the Senate repre sents States, to the powers conferred upon it at the outset by the makers of the Constitution, to its permanency of organization, and to the combi nation of legislative, executive, and judicial func tions, which set it apart from all other legislative bodies. Without the assent of the Senate no bill can become law, no office can be filled, no treaty ratified. The most important bills are largely the 84 THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES work of the Senate, owing not only to its large powers, but to its liberty of debate and amendment possible in a body of the size of the Senate, and very difficult in a body as large as the House. In the Sen ate, to take very recent instances, the bill for the Isth mian canal was finally made and the Railroad Rate bill vitally changed and improved after a very able and elaborate discussion extending over many weeks. In the Senate the long debate upon the Philippine government bill disposed of the question so entirely that it was not heard of in the ensuing campaign. The House, in 1894, initiated, made, and passed the Wilson tariff bill. But the Senate re-made the bill and it was the Senate bill which without the altera tion of a single line became law against the bitter opposition of both the House and the Executive. Contests over nominations are rare and rejections of Executive nominations still rarer because Presidents, following the theory of the Constitution, almost always consult Senators about them beforehand. But the power of the Senate to take part through amend ment in making treaties is freely and largely ex ercised. The amendments of the Senate to the first Hay-Pauncefote treaty relating to the Isth mian canal were rejected by England, but the second Hay-Pauncefote treaty embodied everything sought by the Senate in its amendments to the first, and was therefore ratified by an overwhelm- THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES 85 ing majority. Without the assent of the Senate Congress cannot declare war and the President cannot make peace. The United States went into the Spanish war upon the Senate resolutions, and the fate of the treaty of peace negotiated by the President depended upon the ratification of the Sen ate. The Senate is the tribunal before which every officer of the United States impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors must come for trial. Administrations come and go, Houses assemble and disperse, Senators change, but the Senate is always there in the Capitol, and always organized, with an existence unbroken since 1789. As the government of three millions of people gathered upon the Atlantic seaboard has expanded into the government of eighty millions, masters of a continent and stretching forth to distant islands, the power of that branch of the government which was most highly endowed by the makers of the Constitution has grown proportionately. How vast the national growth has been, the world knows, and the growth of the United States Senate in power, authority, and influence has gone with it step by step and hand in hand. All this influence and authority in the Senate are due to the powers con ferred upon it by its creators, by that remarkable body of men who, in the summer of 1787, framed at Philadelphia the Constitution of the United States. HISTORY1 It has been wisely and wittily said that " one fact is gossip and two related facts are history," an aph orism very characteristic of the scientific age in which it was uttered. But the saying, with all its truth, like many other brilliant generalizations, may easily be pressed too far, and contains an implication which is anything but sound. It may be quite true that collections of unrelated facts, whether trivial or im portant, or of facts presented without any philosophi cal sense or any " look before or after," merit their definition as " gossip " ; yet we should do very wrong to underestimate this same " gossip," upon which, in common parlance, the name history is so often be stowed. History of the " gossip " variety is, to begin with, the foundation of all other history, upon which it will be necessary to say something more later. "Gossip," moreover, whether light or serious, is in its best forms, especially in the guise of memoirs, biographies, and personal anecdotes, extremely enter- 1 This essay was written as an introduction to the series entitled " The History of the Nations " published by John D. Morris & Co. , of Philadel phia, to whose kindness I am indebted for permission to reprint it here. Copyright 1904, Henry Cabot Lodge. Copyright 1905, John D. Morris & Co. HISTORY 87 taining. While it is read, perhaps, only for the sake of reading, it helps us to enjoy life and may also teach us to endure it. It has, too, a real value in an instructive way, although how great that value shall be depends upon him who receives the information rather than upon the writer thereof. Even if one gathers from " gossip " nothmg but an unphilosophi- cal, unscientific knowledge of people and events, much is gained ; for the man who knows something of the history of the race and of those who have played a part in the past not only has widened his own interest in the world about him, but, other things being equal, is a proportionately more agreeable companion to those whom he encounters in the journey of life. Dr. Johnson on more than one occasion defended desultory reading, to which he himself was very prone, and a wiser man than he laid it down as a maxim many years before that " reading maketh a full man." Therefore, let us not give way too much to the nineteenth-century contention about scientific history, with its array of causes and deductions, theories and results, or to that other dogma of the same period, much in favor with writers who lack the historic imagination, that "picturesque" history is a poor and trivial thing, and that, above all, history must be " judicial " — a bit of cant quite as objec tionable as that concerning the " dignity of history " which imposed upon our ancestors and which we have 88 HISTORY laughed out of court. There was a good deal of sound truth in Byron's remark about Mitford: " Having named his sins, it is but fair to state his virtues — learning, research, wrath, and partiality. I call the latter virtues in a writer because they make him write in earnest." The history, indeed, to be defined as "gossip," or which remains or becomes " gossip " in the mind of him who reads, has also its very real merits of entertainment and of instruction as well as of imparting a knowledge which, however desultory and disconnected, is a good thing for him who has it and makes the possessor thereof more de sirable to his fellows. The " Memoirs of St. Simon " may be in themselves the merest gossip that was ever set down, as they are certainly the most copious ; but he who has looked upon these vivid pictures of a vanished society, whether he is imaginative enough to see shining upon them the red light of after years or not, has enlarged his own mind, widened his own interests, quickened his own intelligence, and made himself more attractive to others by following across these many pages the pageant of the great Louis and his court. We may, indeed, go much further, if we would do full justice to "gossip," by remembering what has already been suggested, that the worth of any record of the past, no matter how trivial or fond, depends not merely upon the mind of the writer, but upon HISTORY 89 that of the reader as well. According to the canons of those modern extremists who would make history as destitute of literary quality as a museum of com parative anatomy, Herodotus and Suetonius, Joinville and Froissart, Pepys and Walpole ancl Franklin would be rejected with contempt as historians and set down as mere retailers of idle "gossip" or, at best, rather untrustworthy " original sources." It may be readily admitted that not one of them ever attempted to trace properly the sequence of cause and effect or to draw a truly scientific deduction. They were all probably quite innocent of any knowledge of their duties in that respect ; yet not only the world but history in the truest sense would be much poorer and certainly much duller without them. The infinite charm which they all possess — from the ancient Greek, wandering about his little world, tablets in hand and ears open to the tales of the temple, the court, or the market place, down to the American boy seeking employment as a printer in London, where he was one day to determine the fate of empires — attracts and will always attract every one who cares for literature and to whom humanity and humor and the life of a dead past appeal. To those who look with considerate eyes into these old writers of tales, these purvey ors of " gossip," these simple chroniclers and de lightfully egotistic diarists, there rise up pictures of times long past, of social conditions and modes of 90 HISTORY thought long dead, as well as revelations of human character and motives, rich in suggestions of historic cause and effect and more fertile in explanation of the fate and meaning of man upon earth than acres of catalogued facts scientifically classified, or reams of calendared state papers arranged with antiquarian skill. The catalogues and calendars are work of solid value, yet they have no importance until the seeing eye of the real historian has torn out the heart of their mystery. The gossip of the Greek and the Roman, of the medieval chroniclers and the eighteenth- century diarists, have delighted and instructed thou sands who never write and to whom the solemn words " scientific history '' have no meaning. At the same time, to those who would seek the deeper mean ings and link together cause and effect, they offer far more than barren collections of indiscriminate facts, no matter how well or how scientifically ar ranged. Herodotus may be loose and inaccurate, and Suetonius may be malignant and filled with error, but what light shines from the one upon the ancient civilizations of Asia Minor and Egypt, and how could we ever realize the dark shadows which overhung the glories of the Caesars without the grim pictures of the other ? We should fare ill in any attempt to under stand from mouldering parchments alone the wonder ful century which gave to France her royal saint and the art which produced the Sainte-Chapelle if we could HISTORY 91 not read the simple words of Joinville. The English and French wars live for us in the rambling pages of Froissart ; Pepys, besides laying bare a human soul, tells more of what the Restoration really was than all the professed historians then or since ; in Walpole, greatest of English letter-writers, we know the Eng land of the second and third Georges ; and in Franklin we can discover the secret of the loss of the American colonies. In all alike we get the atmosphere of the times, we learn to know man as he then was in those various countries and widely separated periods. Such knowledge can be obtained only from men who had literary power, observation, and imagination. With out such knowledge " scientific history " cannot make a beginning even, cannot advance a step. With it the seeker for cause and effect can find as long a chain as he may wish to forge and as many deductions as he may desire to draw. The " gossip " which is also literature is the best foundation for history, and that which is not literature is, after all, merely a collection of the unclassified facts so dear to the scientific histo rian, who thinks they can be made alive by arrange ment alone. Let us not, then, be too quick to throw aside "gossip" without discrimination, for when it has a high literary quality it will outlive scientific history in the hearts of men, and will, in the long run, teach them more about themselves and about their race than the wisest collector and classifier of 92 HISTORY facts who ever lived, because men will read the " gossip" and fall asleep over the reasoned catalogue. So much, then, for the unscientific, unphilosophical, disconnected, desultory history, whether great litera ture or not, which we are quite ready to call "gossip," and to speak of patronizingly as an inferior thing, but which most of us in our heart of hearts really like better than any other. Let us leave it with all good wishes for the pleasure it has given us and the pro found instruction it has offered to those who seek in struction diligently, and come to the superior function of history, the true history which, relying solely upon itself and not upon the reader, aspires not only to instruct and inform, but to explain man to himself. Of its importance there can be no doubt ; still less of its seriousness. History in this aspect may easily fail to be amusing ; if it is not literature also, it will prob ably fail to be anything else, but properly written it cannot be otherwise than profoundly important and in teresting. Here in this History of the Nations, and in countless other volumes, lie the garnered facts, ever being increased and ever shifting in their propor tionate importance and in their relation to each other. What is the purpose of history in dealing with these facts, if in itself it is to be of any real value in the largest sense? There have been many answers to this question, many essays, most of them, it must be confessed, rather dreary, replying at length as to the HISTORY 93 functions and uses of history. Setting aside as alien to what we are now considering all that vast and valuable mass which may be classified as " gossip," and which is at the lowest estimate certainly raw material, the object of history or of the study of his tory may be briefly stated. There is, to begin with, the old, classical, and conventional phrase that history is philosophy teaching by example, which means little or nothing. Napoleon said that "history was the fable agreed upon," the quick utterance of a great genius who had never gone beyond the "gossip." Disraeli, readiest and most epigrammatic, perhaps, of the more modern public men — certainly the most un-English — saw use in history only as an explana tion of the past, an excellent definition, but so limi ted as to make history of but little worth if it cannot pass these bounds. Emerson, in his vaguely beautiful essay, defines history as the record of man, tells us that we are history, and that history is ourselves ; in more prosaic words, that history is the explanation of the present. Add this definition to that of Disraeli and we have advanced a goodly distance, but history must be yet more and must go further still if it is to fulfil its whole function. In a very recent essay Mr. George Trevelyan has described the function of history in a manner as fine as his conception of the work of the historian is noble and true. The three functions of history he defines 94 HISTORY as teaching the lessons of political wisdom, spreading the knowledge of past ideas and of great men, and, most important of all, " causing us in moments of diviner solitude to feel the poetry of time." The first two functions are of great worth, and it was never more necessary to preach their virtue and ne cessity than now, but they are the more immediate achievements of history, inseparable from it when rightly written, and do not reach that larger and more ultimate purpose which I am seeking to find and express here. It is in the third aspect that Mr. Trevelyan touches history in its highest range, when he says that it ought to make us feel the poetry of time and the passing of the race through many epochs along the highway of eternity. " Each changing place with that which goes before, In sequent toil all forward do contend." Such is the poetry of time, and there lies hid the secret of man and his relation to the universe. To be more explicit, history must, it is true, explain the past as Disraeli wished, and the present, as Emer son desired. But that is not enough. Perhaps it is impossible that it should do more ; but history, if it is carried to the full height of our conception, ought also to enable us to see into the future, to calculate in some degree the movement of the race as we now cal culate the orbit of the stars, and read in the past, HISTORY 95 whether dim or luminous, a connected story and a pervading law. In other words, history in the ulti mate analysis ought to give us a theory of the uni verse as well as of human life and action. Has this been done ? Have these masses of facts, gathered of late with such ant-like diligence, yet been brought into such connection? Have they been so ordered and mastered as to tell a coherent story and thus ex- ' plain to us the course of human life and conduct ? If they have not, then history has thus far failed of its final purpose in whole or in part. In the nineteenth century just closed we have gone clearly beyond the simple-minded writers of annals and chronicles. We have learned, indeed, to regard annals and chronicles, as well as biographies and sta tistics and every phase and form of human activity, as primarily so much raw material, so many observa tions to be sifted and compared and grouped until they afford a theory or explanation of some sort for the man or the incident or the events to which they relate. But have we by this method as yet deduced a result which really explains at once the past and the present, which makes us not only feel the poetry of time, but which also throws a bright light along the pathway of the future ? Have we attained in any degree to a working hypothesis which shall make clear to us the development and fate of man upon earth ? Unless we can answer these questions quite 96 HISTORY clearly in the affirmative then history has not yet ful filled her whole mission, and still sits by the roadside like the Sphinx waiting for the traveller who can guess her riddle. It is a riddle worth guessing. None more so. The genius who will draw out from the welter of recorded time a theory which will explain to man both himself and his relation to the universe need fear comparison with no other who has ever lived, for he must not only make the great discovery, but he must clothe it in words which will live as liter ature and touch it with an imagination which will reach the heart of humanity and endure like the poetry of those who sang for the people when the world was young. Let us see, however, what has been accomplished ; let us at least try to measure " the petty done, the undone vast." We have brought together immense masses of facts, in some cases far too many — so much so that their very density has caused men not infrequently to lose their way among details, and, having deprived them of the sense of proportion, has led them to mistake the particular for the general. We are, indeed, more likely now to suffer from having too many facts than too few. By no possibility can we have, in anything which relates to human affairs, all the facts. Even some of the most tangible and external escape us; and of the tangle of passions, emotions, and desires which so largely determine the HISTORY 97 course of human events we can know but little, and must always be content with large inferences and with a psychology of the masses, because that of in dividuals, except in a few isolated instances, is lost to us forever. Unable, therefore, to know all the facts, we must proceed by selection and by generalizations based on those dominating types which have been chosen through the instinct and the imagination, the very qualities which no amount of mere training will give. The besetting danger of the time lies in the tendency to reverence mere heaps of facts and to treat one fact, because it is such, as equal in value to every other — a doctrine much beloved by those who would separate history from literature and make it nothing more than a series of measurements or a classified catalogue. Facts in themselves have no value except as the material from which the men of high and co ordinating intelligence can, by selecting and rejecting, bring forth a theory, a philosophy, or a story which the world will be able to read and understand because it is helped to do so by all the charm and all the light which literary art and historic imagination can give. A " scientific history," crammed with facts, well ar ranged, but unreadable, and at the same time devoid of art and selection, is, perhaps, as sad a monument of misspent labor as human vanity can show. None the less, after all deductions, the accumulation of facts, if properly used and then supplemented by 98 HISTORY all the resources of literary art, is absolutely essential to the highest history, for laws governing human de velopment rest, like those of science, in large degree on the number of recorded observations, and find in that way control and correction. This is especially true in the case of archaeology, which is daily adding so enormously to our knowledge of early civilizations in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Asia Minor, as well as in the Greek islands and peninsula, and which thus enables us to make those comparisons, stretching over long periods of time, upon which any stable theory of the movement of civilized mankind must ulti mately rest. To this must also be added the scientific investigation into the condition of prehistoric man and of those primitive tribes and races who are our prehistoric contemporaries, from which alone it is pos sible to draw the widest deductions as to the primary development of what we call civilized man. To put this first proposition in a few words, we have in the last one hundred years gathered, and in a large measure ar ranged intelligently, the necessary material to which we are still adding, and which is an essential preliminary to writing history in the highest sense of the word. We have also passed definitely and finally out of the stage where history was considered too solemn and too dignified to have any of the attractions of what is frankly "gossip," and yet remained nothing. but a stringing together of facts, as if they were HISTORY 99 single beads, each separated from the others by a dividing and impassable knot. The habit is now ingrained in all writers of history, even if they are merely dealing with an episode or preparing a mono graph, to lead up from cause to effect, to point out the sources of an event, the culmination of the vari ous compelling forces and the ultimate results, or else to arrange the narrative in such wise that the reader must perforce draw his own deductions, and thus learn the lesson which the author desires to impart. This method of dealing with history varies, of course, most widely in the extent of its application. It may be applied to a single incident or to the occurrences of a few years ; or, on the other hand, it may stretch over the centuries, seeking in past generations the distant conditions from which sprang finally some great event ; or, again, it may strive to connect with the phenomena of our modern times remote causes which are dimly discerned in the dawn of civilization, and in this way establish a law which shall govern the entire movement of humanity. It is this search for cause and effect which has been the distinguishing feature of historical work in the nineteenth century. No doubt the practice has ex isted, sporadically at least, since history began to be written ; but in the last century it became the domi nant note, the ruling characteristic to which all writ ers aspired, although naturally with varying degrees 100 HISTORY of success. That which we seek here is to estimate approximately to what point the increased knowledge, the multiplied observations, and the system of tracing out cause and effect have brought us on the road to fulfilling the highest function of history. We can see very readily that in the explanation of the past and the present much has been achieved. For example, the causes which led to the revolt of the American colonies against England, or to the French Revolu tion, have been studied not only in the immediately preceding years, but have been patiently tracked through the centuries, and sought not merely in po litical and economic conditions, but in the qualities, habits, and characteristics of the people, and in the attributes and ethnic peculiarities of the stocks from which these historic races were formed. The time when it was possible to treat great and violent changes of this kind as isolated events, growing suddenly out of surrounding conditions, has passed away never to return. Having thus reached the point where it is not only possible but habitual to explain philosophically and on logical principles a past event, it is but a short step to find in past events, properly arranged and treated, the explanation of the present in any given country, or in any group of countries similar, if not identical, in race and in the character of their civili zation. It is also true that modern history, advanc- HISTORY 101 ing from the explanation of a given event, or of an important era, by tracing its causes through a long succession of years, has gone on to the work of fol lowing out through the entire historic period tenden cies of thought or art, of literature or morals, as well as the religious, economic, and political movements of mankind. The results of these investigations have been more illuminating, probably, than anything else which has been accomplished. From these researches, which have embraced anthropology, philology, psy chology, literature, and archaeology, as well as history proper, a brilliant hght has been cast upon much that before seemed shrouded in hopeless darkness, and a multitude of problems which puzzled the will and baffled the imagination have been made plain. From this source has come the theory of myths and folk lore ; the development of the identity of certain fun damental religious beliefs in all the many families of mankind ; the reduction to a very small number of the absolutely different races of men; a knowledge of the often unexplained migrations of vast bodies of people, of the economic conditions, the trade, the com merce, the industries, and the discoveries of minerals, which have played such a large and so often a con trolling part in human affairs, and of the military and political attributes and tendencies which have so largely, in appearance at least, determined the fate of states and empires. 102 HISTORY Yet the final question is still unanswered. The world still awaits a theory, or an explanation, of the movement of mankind as a whole which shall make clear the entire past, show whence we have come, why we have marched in the manner recorded along the highways of time, whither we are going, and in what direction we must go, by a proof as resistless as the fall of the apple to the ground, which, as we as sert, conclusively demonstrates what we call the law of gravitation. To reach this ultimate goal we must have a theory of the universe, and the necessity of such a theory has been perceived more or less dimly, or more or less clearly, by all serious historians from the time when history first began to be written with any other purpose than that of making a brief abstract and chronicle of the time. The theory of the universe and of life upon which historians proceeded either deliberately or unconsciously down to the latter half of the eighteenth century was, broadly speaking, the theological theory. The doctrines, the dogmas, and the formulas of theologians and priests furnished the underlying theory upon which historians worked out their results, and this was as true of the East as of the West, of Asia as of Europe, of the writers of an tiquity as of the schoolmen of the Middle Ages. In the last analysis history fell back upon theology, and accepted its formulas and its philosophy as giving HISTORY 103 the final answer whenever the historian sought to set forth an explanation of man's existence upon earth, or to show the connection and relation of events in the life of humanity. In the eighteenth century the spirit of scepticism and inquiry rose up and took possession of the thought of Western civilization. In dealing with history its resources were meagre, its material was limited, and its methods crude. Voltaire, who rep resented that sceptical spirit in its most powerful and concentrated form, and who exercised a wide and profound influence to a degree which it is now difficult even to imagine, was simply destructive. He struck at the theological conceptions aud explana tions of past events with penetrating force, and with weapons of the keenest edge, but the simplicity of his attack is only equalled by his ignorance of the real meaning of the traditions and habits of thought at which he aimed his blows. None the less the work of the eighteenth century was effective so far as it went. It tore the theological theories of the universe to tatters, and scattered the fragments to the four winds of heaven. It was unable to replace that which it destroyed, but it cleared the groimd, and to this inheritance the next century succeeded. The old theories were discredited. The way was open to construct a new one. The nineteenth century was pre-eminently scien- 104 HISTORY tific. Science during that period was the ruling force in the domain of thought, and its discoveries and ad vances are the monuments of its marvellous success. But its influence has spread far beyond its own prov ince. In every direction the methods of science have been adopted, and its standards set up as the best methods and the loftiest standards for all forms of thought and inquiry. History, therefore, during the last hundred years has sought to make itself and to call itself scientific as the highest quality at which it could aim ; and the devotion to facts, the search for truth at all costs, the rigid deductions, coldly regard less of sentiment or prejudice, have all been attributes borrowed from science, and of immense value to his torical results. The study of history pursued in this way, and carried into adjoining fields of research like anthropology, archaeology, and philology, has brought about a complete readjustment of many of our ideas ' as to the development of man and his relations to the universe. Indeed, it is scarcely realized how pene trating the influence of history governed by scientific methods has been, and what a revolution it has wrought, for the most part quite insensibly, in all our conceptions as to the existence, meaning, and fate of the human race. That this has been accomplished at a loss, and a serious loss, to history as literature can hardly be denied. Modern history of the purely scientific and HISTORY 105 judicial variety has thus far been unable fully to sus tain the literary glories of the past. Thucydides and Tacitus and Gibbon were by no means wanting in a theory of the universe, or of the life of man. They were masters of their subjects and of their material, and they were also most distinctly philosophers, rea- soners, and thinkers, although not given over to mod ern scientific methods ; yet they still stand alone and unrivalled in literature, and would wonder greatly to be informed that we cannot have serious history or a philosophy of life until we cease to be picturesque. They would marvel even more to be told that it is the fashion to hold that we must be "judicial" to the point of never taking sides, and usually of sus taining a paradox ; that if we would really be histo rians we must assume that the accepted opinion is wrong because it is accepted, and must close our eyes firmly to the splendid pageant of the years which have gone if we would win the praise of the antiqua rian, the specialist, or the learned society. We owe much to the adoption of scientific methods in history ; but if we give way to the intolerable dogma that his tory, in order to be really scientific, must divest itself of all connection with literature, it would be better never to have attempted those methods, and to have blundered along in the old way. When Mr. Bury, the Regius Professor of History at Cambridge, an nounces that " history is not a branch of literature," 106 HISTORY he advances a proposition which, if adopted, would kill history, and which could by no possibility give us science in its place. Imagination is no doubt one important quality among others in the really great men of science, but it is absolutely essential to the great historian, for without imagination no history worthy of the name can be written. Very valuable results can be achieved without it in the physical sciences, because their phenomena are devoid of the spiritual and emotional elements ; but the history of man is in large measure governed, or modified, by passion, sentiment, and emotion, and cannot be gauged, or understood, without the sympathy and the perception which only imagination and the dra matic instinct can give. Moreover, history is utterly vain unless men can learn something from it ; they cannot learn unless they read, and they will neither read nor understand unless the theory or the doctrine drawn forth from the winnowed facts is presented to them with all the grace and force which style can give, and with all the resources of a beautiful literary art. The worst enemies of scientific methods are those who would, in the name of science, reduce history to a sifted dust-heap, and who decry the art of literature because they cannot master it, although without it history has never yet been written, and never will be able to speak to men, or to give them the explanation of their existence, HISTORY 107 if that great secret is ever discovered in all its completeness. But the literary side of historical development, without which it cannot continue, is not, after all, what concerns us here further than to point out its absolute necessity, if we would effect anything of lasting worth. It is to the achievements of modern scientific history, not yet ruined by its unreasoning devotees, that we must look for the dial hand of progress ; and however dryly the fashion of the mo ment or personal incapacity may have compelled his torians to state the conclusions thus reached, here are to be found the latest steps which have been taken toward the goal of that history which shall give us, if such a thing is possible, the full explanation which we seek. It is along the lines followed by modern history that we must proceed in our quest, but thus far these lines have been separate. One subject or one tendency has in turn and each by itself been traced out from the beginning, and the theory or law which has governed in each case has frequently been evolved and stated with the utmost care and acute ness. But the lines have not yet converged, the theories have not yet been grouped, the various laws still await the genius who shall cast them into a code. The stupendous difficulties of the task must not be underestimated. Perhaps it is beyond the power of man to develop and state a great law of life, a com- 108 HISTORY prehensive theory of the universe, when he must per force rest it not merely upon a vast mass of recorded observations and classified facts, but must throughout allow for that which no other scientific man need consider — the unending perturbations caused by human passion, human emotion, and unreasoning animal instincts. One thing alone is certain : no single theory dealing with one set of facts and one set of passions and tendencies can ever explain every thing. The forces which have started the great migrations, the religious passions, the political apti tudes, can each explain much ; the economic move ment can probably explain more than any single clew, and yet no one of them alone is sufficient to make clear all that has happened and weave the many threads into a final answer to the riddle of the Sphinx, who waits and watches by the roadside as the procession of mankind marches by in endless files. Yet is there here no reason for discouragement. Every failure of a proper attempt to reach that final and complete solution of the great enigma which his tory alone can give, if it is ever to be given at all, has advanced us in knowledge. It is much better to look at what has been accomplished than to sigh over the undone, fold our hands in despair and content our selves by saying, like the scientific professor of his tory, that all we can do is to heap up more facts for distant generations to use. The answer may not yet HISTORY 109 have been found ; but the light is growing brighter, and the prospect of attaining to a complete reply, if no nearer, seems at least clearer than ever before. Even to realize where we fall short is, if not very hopeful, very instructive, and opens the only possible path to future success. The theological theory, then, which was so long dominant has been swept away, and history has fallen under the control of scientific processes. It has not only assimilated the methods of science, but it has striven to deduce from its own phenomena the doc trines which science in the latter half of the nine teenth century adopted and promulgated. It has, in short, substituted for the theological theory that of science. So far as it has had any definite purpose it has aimed to show, like the science of the last fifty years, that the true explanation of man's existence and movements is mechanical; that at bottom we must fall back on the " fortuitous concourse of atoms," and that a continuous evolution is the sole guide in the maze of human affairs, as it has been partially shown to be in the animal world. And now, even while history is advancing on these lines, science is pausing in doubt, the mechanical theory seems to be breaking down, the "fortuitous course of atoms" is being abandoned, the limitations of evolution are be coming constantly clearer, the younger biologists no longer trust implicitly the dogmas of the later years, 110 HISTORY and Lord Kelvin announces that the last word of the latest science indicates a reversion to the doctrine of a governing law. Is history to go on in the old ways, which but yesterday were new, or is it to pause, as science has paused, and turn again, not to the old theological theory, but to one which involves a general and permanent law of the universe and of life? What has history herself to say, speaking from her own experience and enlightened by her own efforts ? What have the profound research and the acute de ductions of these later years to produce by way of solving the problem of what her future course shall be ? Has history been able to show a process of evo lution so continuous as at once to demonstrate that men from the beginning, despite many aberrations, have moved along one line, compelled thereto by en vironment and by their physical and mental structure, thus proving that humanity has been governed by mechanical processes as completely as science very recently held all physical developments to be, whether in the heavens above or in the earth beneath ? Or, on the other hand, has history, like science, apparently failed to maintain the mechanical theory and found the " fortuitous concourse of atoms " insufficient to support the facts which she herself has brought to light ? Has the Darwinian doctrine of evolution as applied to the events of history disclosed there also HISTORY HI limitations which make it appear incomplete and at best tentative? Looking broadly at the situation as it is to-day, the story of man upon earth seems to fall into two divi sions, the prehistoric and the historic periods, the former reaching back through unnumbered years possibly to the tertiary rock, if we may believe the traces found in Australia, the latter so brief in com parison as to seem but as yesterday or as a watch in the night. The earliest knowledge, however, which can in any proper sense be called historical, or which in other words rests upon records of any sort, is im parted to us by the remains of the civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and western Asia. These civi lizations, as revealed to us by the latest archaeological discoveries, appear to have been substantially at the point where we ourselves were a century ago, and if not complete were certainly in a stage of high devel opment. How and by what processes that position was reached, we do not and probably can never know. A long road certainly had been travelled before it was attained. The starting-point is dim. The earliest human skulls which have been found do not differ more widely in size and shape from the skulls of men to-day than the skulls of several actually existent races vary from each other. They leave unbridged and substantially undiminished the gulf which yawns between the skulls of races now existent and the most 112 HISTORY highly developed ape. Man, therefore, as we know him, is not fundamentally different physically from the earliest progenitor who can be distinctly recog nized as a man, a human being in our sense of the word. But the gap between the earliest man known to us, between the man of the drift or the shell heap, for instance, and the neolithic man, is immense, although it is trifling compared to the chasm which separates the man of flints from the man who lived under the earliest Egyptian dynasties, who reared the first buildings by the Nile or who constructed the first palaces of Babylonia, drained the streets and houses of her cities and codified her laws. We find man at the outset with nothing apparently except the discovery of fire, although we must infer a period when even the use of fire was unknown ; and then we find him with weapons of stone, at first rudely and then ingeniously worked ; with pottery and with in dications of some use of metals in the form of pins or copper models of stone implements for war or the chase. Then we plunge into darkness again, and when we emerge we behold a man possessed of language and written characters, who has organized society and government and enacted laws ; who has invented the wheel for locomotion, and mastered the applica tion of animal or muscular power ; who has devel oped a splendid architecture and a noble art; who understands engineering, carries on an extensive com- HISTORY 113 merce, marshals armies and conducts wars with ordered legions. The distance from the man who applied and controlled fire, the greatest single dis covery ever made, and from the later man who was able to chip stone, fabricate weapons, and make pottery, to the man who could do all which is re vealed at the dawn of history, staggers imagination when we strive to guess at what had happened and been accomplished in the interval. We seem to pass at a single bound from the dimly conceived being who, stark naked or dressed perhaps in skins, was savage to a degree beyond our power of description, and who waged an unequal war with monstrous ani mals, to men who are so like us in comparison with what had gone before, that it seems as if the solemn Egyptian kings and the makers of the winged bulls were our own kin and lived but yesterday instead of dwelling on the misty verge of recorded time. In that long interval which elapsed between the earliest trace of man onward and upward from the discovery of fire to the time of these ancient civilizations, what happened ? By what steps had man, or rather certain tribes and races of men, climbed to such a height ? We do not know, probably we never shall know more than reasonable conjecture can tell ; yet the inference seems irresistible, inevitable we may almost say, that during that period of darkness there was a steady process of evolution advancing slowly but surely by 114 HISTORY the discovery and development of forces which radi cally changed the environment and all the conditions surrounding the race to a position where man was master of essentially all that he possessed a hundred years ago. These ancient civilizations and their suc cessors ripen as we approach the Christian era. Their art was refined, their language was perfected, their literature attained to imperishable beauty ; they widened their geography and increased the sum of knowledge, but there was no radical change of envi ronment, there were no new forces to compel such a change. In the earliest civilizations really known to us we find that men had arms and arts, architec ture and letters, organized government and systems of laws ; commerce, war, armies, means of transporta tion by land and water. All these things they per fected down to the fall of the Roman empire; but they added no new force like fire or the wheel, like linguistic symbols or organized society, such as they had brought slowly forth in the prehistoric days. When the empire of Rome went to pieces Western Europe sank into a period of anarchy, in which all the arts, whether ornamental or economic, and all forms of organization retrograded, and the period known as the Dark Ages set in. The traditions of science and learning, of literature and art, were kept alive only by Byzantium in the East, where they were destined to disappear under the onset of HISTORY 115 the Ottoman Turks, and by the Moors in Spain. Slowly and painfully new systems, new states, and a new social order were evolved from the welter of destruction which followed the downfall of Rome ; and out of these new movements came at last the Renaissance, the revival of learning, the junction of the present with the classical past, and thence modern civilization. But through all these chances and changes, alike through the rise and fall of Egypt and Chaldea, of Assyria and Persia, through the su premacy of Greece and the final dominion of Rome, as well as through the Middle Ages and the growth of our modern civilization, there was no fundamental change in the conditions and achievements such as we find indicated at the close of the prehistoric period. No new forces had come into play to alter the devel opment of man. States and empires had waxed and waned; there had been great migrations of peoples, great shiftings of the centres of military, political, and economic power. We can trace these move ments, we know their causes, we understand the influence of mineral wealth and of trade routes, but the foundations are undisturbed. In the eigh teenth century, as in the time of the earliest Egyptian dynasty, men still depend on themselves and on ani mals as the source of power ; they have the wheel for transportation, the written word for communication ; they reap and sow and build and have literature and 116 HISTORY the fine arts. The bounds of knowledge have widened, broadening far in the days of Greece and Rome, and then contracting after the fall of the empire only to widen again after the fourteenth century and then stretch farther and farther out with each succeeding year. Still there is no vital change. The art of war is revolutionized by the introduction of gunpowder, the acquisition and preservation of knowledge are made easy by the invention of printing; but these two things apart, the man of the eighteenth century does not differ essentially from the Egyptian or the Babylonian, from the Greek or the Roman, in the con ditions of life or in his relations to the earth and his fellow-men. He still travels with the horse on land and with the wind or the oar at sea. His journeys are still along paths and trails and roads or by canals, rivers, and ocean. He knows the earth and its extent more completely than the Roman, but it is probable that roads and methods of communication were better under Rome, so far as they extended at all, than they were a hundred years ago. One civilization has suc ceeded another, new states have risen, old ones flour ished and decayed ; the economic equilibrium has shifted and trade routes have altered, carrying pros perity to one kingdom and ruin to another; the fine arts have taken on new forms and develop ments among different peoples, have touched the heights, blazed with splendor, and gone out only HISTORY 117 to shine again in some new home. But still there has been no fundamental change. No empire, no state, no civilization seems to have passed beyond a certain point which others had already achieved. The scene shifts, the accessories change, but the drama is the same. If there had been a steady and scientific evolution in the prehistoric period, after the close of that period the evolution of the most highly developed portions of mankind seems to have ceased. The movements are all sporadic, and never get beyond the point which the most ancient civilization, when it emerges from the dark ness to greet our eyes, had in all essential things al ready at hand. There is no indication that man has improved physically since the day when history began. That he has advanced in his moral attributes and con ceptions under the influence of religion we can hardly refuse to believe, if we would, and the facts by any test furnish sufficient proof that man's attitude to his fellows is better and more sympathetic even if we have improved in no other way. On the other hand, al though we know more, there can be no doubt that man is no stronger as an intellectual being than he was when Plato taught and Sophocles composed his tragedies, when Phidias carved and Zeuxis painted and Pericles fought and governed. In the fine arts, indeed, it is difficult to see that, except in rare in stances, man has ever attained a higher standard 118 HISTORY in sculpture or architecture, of which alone we are able to judge with certainty, than he reached in the earliest civilizations. It must always be carefully borne in mind that there is a broad distinction between the elaboration or perfection of an existing art or a discovered force and the successive introduction of new forces which lead on to a different structure of society and to con ditions wholly different from what has gone before. The latter is a true scientific evolution, no matter how infinitesimal the advance or how slow the movement which destroys the unfit and causes the survival of those fittest to survive. The mere elaboration or perfection of existent arts and forces, although they may exhibit in a distinctly limited way the operations of the laws of evolution, do not, in the broad scientific sense, constitute a race evolution which can supply us with an explanation of the development of the race as a whole, or with a theory of the universe or of life. The discovery of the means by which fire could be applied and controlled whenever it occurred, changed all the conditions surrounding the race of men. It was a true evolutionary step in the development of the race, and the Promethean myth shows how the tremendous impression of its effects survived through ages the length of which we cannot calculate. The same may be said of the application of animal power, of the invention of written symbols, of the organiza- HISTORY 119 tion of society, of the art of building. But the elab oration and perfection of architecture, the refinement of written characters into a literature, the increase of size in boats or vessels when propulsion by wind or muscle had once been discovered are not an evolu tionary progress of the race in any true sense, nor do they furnish a general law to explain the entire mystery of humanity. The men who first discovered the process of making bricks, and then the further possibility of so putting stones or bricks together as to make a permanent structure to shelter their gods, their dead or their living, took a long step on the path of evolution. But this step once taken, the men who built the temples of Egypt or of Nippur or the Lion Gate of Mycenae, the Parthenon of Athens, the Colosseum of Rome, or the Gothic cathedrals of France, were expressing the same in vention in different forms, but they were not carry ing forward at all the evolution of the race. These forms of surpassing strength, grandeur, and beauty were evolved, no doubt, from the principles of the rude beginnings which constituted the scientifically evolutionary step ; but it was the original discovery which was evolutionary and not the refinement and elaboration which followed and which failed to change the fundamental conditions of the race. It is very essential to keep clearly in mind the distinction be tween the evolution of the race, as a whole, through 120 HISTORY a vital change in environment and conditions necessi tating a corresponding adaptation and alteration in the life of man and in the organization of society, and on the other hand the evolution of a given art or society, or of an economic structure or po litical state. From the discovery of the means by which a fire could be kindled and controlled to the lamps of the Roman or the Greek is a long process of evolution in the use of fire, but does not touch the general evolution of the race. The original discovery changed vitally the conditions which surrounded man and forced him into a new environment to which he was obliged slowly to adapt himself, but the improve ments and extensions of the use of fire had in them selves no such effect. The process by which men advanced from picture writing to the plays of Eurip ides and Aristophanes is of great importance in the evolution of language, but it was the invention of a symbol for human speech which altered the environ ment of man and not the improvements and develop ments of such symbols. The secret we would wring from the past is not the law governing the evolution of any particular state or people, of any especial art or form of social organization, but what the forces are which in their union have changed the environment of humanity and which will give us a law that explains the entire movement of the race, solves the mystery of existence and defines with a single answer man's HISTORY 121 relation to the universe. We can readily understand the difference between the essentially evolutionary step and that which is only an elaboration of a discovery already made, if we can imagine the world divested of all that has come into it through the agency of steam and electricity and then contrast it with that which existed under the ancient civilizations. The men who separated the American colonies from Eng land and carried through the revolution in France, events which together changed the entire political system of America and western Europe, possessed gunpowder and printing, but beyond these two things they did not differ essentially in their environment from the men of the ancient civilizations. Like the Egyptian, the Assyrian, the Greek, and the Roman, they still depended upon the muscles of men and ani mals or on the wind, the rivers, or the tides for power. They propelled their boats by sails or oars, they trav elled on horseback ; and in war and peace their trans port rested on wheels, which they caused to revolve by the force of draft animals or of men. After de veloping new forms of architecture they had reverted to the ancient models, and it may be safely said that they never surpassed the work of the builders of the Parthenon or of the tombs and temples of Egypt. Modern engineering has yet to show whether it can rival the Pyramids, or outdo the engineers whose lofty bridge over the Gard still stands with 122 HISTORY its tiers of arches, after nineteen hundred years, absolutely plumb, and along which "Men might march on nor be pressed Twelve abreast." How much of our pavement will remain after two thousand years? There are miles of Roman pave ment still to be found scattered over Europe from Italy to Scotland. How much better is our system of water supply than that which the great aqueducts striding across the plains brought to Rome and to her provincial towns ? Have we improved mate rially upon the Cloaca Maxima or the almost perfect arched drain in the deepest excavation of Nippur? Have we carried architecture or painting or sculpture further than it was carried in Egypt or in Greece? We may go over the whole field and the results will be everywhere the same, and all alike will point to the same conclusion : that from the earliest civ ilizations historically known to us down to the close of the eighteenth century there had been no change in environment and conditions sufficient to warrant the assertion of a continuous evolution, such as we must have if we are to find in it a general law and complete explanation. The stream of civilization rises and falls, plunges out of sight in one place and reappears in another, but it never cuts new channels or reaches a higher plane or flows with a HISTORY 123 broader current than it apparently possessed at the dawn of recorded history. Evolution of the race in the sense in which it is used here, must go stead ily forward without a break, compelled thereto by successive radical changes in race environment. No matter how minute or how slow the advance, it cannot stand still ; and variety alone or mere shift ing of place is not advance, although it may be movement. Thus it seems, speaking broadly, that during the historic period and down to the closing years of the eighteenth century, there has been no true race evolution in the proper sense of the word or in the manner in which we may reasonably infer it to have existed and proceeded down to the time of historical records. It would seem, if this be true, that there are marked limitations upon the doctrine of evolution in history, or at least, long pauses in its movement as there are in science, and the dif ficulty is one which history itself must meet. But there is a still further difficulty if we consider the period just preceding the present day, for there we find strong evidence of a resumption of the real evolutionary movement of the race, if we may assume that such a movement went on in prehistoric times ; and history is in this way confronted with the de mand that it should enunciate some law which shall cover not only the periods of evolution, but also the space filled with intense activity in which no evo- 124 HISTORY lution took place. This demand becomes apparent if we examine closely the very latest period in the life of humanity, the one through which we have been and are at this moment passing. To make clear what this latest period means it is necessary briefly to summarize and restate the proposition which has just been laid down. We find man at the opening of the nineteenth century with a vastly extended knowledge, with greatly advanced methods of killing other animals, including himself, and with highly improved machinery for transmitting and dif fusing his knowledge through the medium of printed speech. Otherwise he does not differ in any radical manner from his predecessor on the upper Nile, in the temples of Nippur, the streets of Bactra, or within the walls of Tiryns or Mycenae. To men in this condition came suddenly two new forces, in the prac tical application of steam as power, and of electricity, first as a means of transmitting thought and knowl edge, and then as a form of power also. These new forces have changed the face of the world and radi cally altered human conditions, creating a wholly new environment, by the quickening of transporta tion and communication, and by bringing the whole earth so easily within the grasp of the dominant races that it is nearly all reduced to possession in name and will soon be so in reality. There is no need to point out or dwell upon the marvels HISTORY 125 which have thus been wrought out, or the social and political revolutions which have been effected. Gunpowder and printing worked social and politi cal revolutions in their time also. The important point for us now is that under the mastery of these new forces, which have produced a new en vironment, another period of regular and scientific evolution has apparently set in ; and the new move ment, which is chiefly economic and social, has gone on not only with regularity, but with an accelerated momentum which is little short of appalling. Here, under these new forces, we are not carrying the well-understood civilization of the past five thousand or six thousand years once more to a pitch of splen dor, but we are producing a civilization and a social system wholly different from what has gone before. To speak more exactly, we are pushing forward the civilization we have inherited from the count less centuries beyond all the former limits and on to heights or depths never before touched. The phenomena of this resultant of the new forces are largely economic on the surface, but they are at bottom not only economic, but social. We are creat ures of habit, and we still express the new forces in terms of the only power the race knew for many thousands of years ; but what we have actually done is to change the world from the horse to the engine, from the man to the machine. We are rapidly in- 126 HISTORY creasing this force, estimated in horse power, until it has already gone well-nigh beyond imagination. And still we are increasing it, still concentrating the whole movement of the world and the daily life of humanity on the production of machine power, heedless alike of the velocity at which we are trav elling, or of the fact that a single break at any point might mean ruin and desolation such as the world has never known. Armed with this power we are tearmg out the resources of the earth with entire disregard of the future, and heaping up wealth in a profusion and in masses such as the world never be fore imagined even in its dreams. But the one fact more important than any other is that a process of steady evolution, owing to a change in the conditions surrounding humanity, seems to be again in progress. Can history ex plain this present time in which, borne on by new and untried forces, we are passing beyond any civilization hitherto known, or predict the future which this present portends ? Can history, with the assistance of archaeology, anthropology, geol ogy and the rest, do this, and by researches in the prehistoric times, when there must have been evolution, owing to radical discoveries and changes, and by the local and limited evolution in specific cases in modern times, tell us the manner in which this new evolutionary power is going to work ? Are HISTORY 127 we to infer that, because the movement of our own time appears to rest upon the conservation, con centration, and control of energy, and upon the development of natural forces to that end, there fore the movement of prehistoric times must have had the same evolutionary process at work, and that here we are to find at last the clew to the development of the race ? Can history bring all the periods within the operation of one har monious law and the scope of a single explana tion ? The purely mechanical theory of the universe seems to have broken down under science. It has also failed apparently to explain finally and com pletely the history of man. Must history, like science, return upon her steps and seek for some new governing law which shall succeed where dogma was defeated, and where evolution fell short of the final goal? A new period, bringing with it forces and conditions hitherto unknown, confronts modern his tory. Unless she can solve the problem it presents, unless she can bring forth a theory of the universe and of life which shall take up the past and from it read the riddle of the present and draw aside the veil of the future, then history in its highest sense has failed. To the men of the twentieth century comes the opportunity to make the effort which shall convert failure to success, if success be possible. SAMUEL ADAMS1 The British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America were very remote from the great centres of civilization and but little known in the eighteenth century. Frenchmen and Englishmen fought grimly in the American forests, and the war offices of their respective countries knew of it, and fitted out expedi tions and sent assistance to their fellow-countrymen in the distant West. When treaties were made, diplomatists wrangled over mountains and marked lines upon alleged maps of regions they had never seen. In time of peace sundry official persons were conscious that reports of provincial governors or other crown officers were gathering dust on the shelves of the colonial office or of the Board of Trade, and a group of merchants in London were well and profit ably aware that there was a sturdy and increasing people beyond the Atlantic who bought their goods. But this was all. It is safe to say that there is hardly a corner of the world to-day so little known 1 Through the kindness of the W. A. Wilde Co. of Boston, I am' permitted to reprint here this essay upon Samuel Adams which origi nally appeared in " The Stepping Stones of American History " published by them. SAMUEL ADAMS 129 to the civilized world as the great American colonies of England were to Englishmen in the days of the First and Second Georges, and the American people were even less known than their country. Out of that vigorous population, prosperous, intelligent, full of life and energy, only two names at that period reached the ears of England and of Europe with any sense of reality or any actual meaning. Wherever the doctrines of Calvin were cherished, the name of Jonathan Edwards was revered. Wherever the spirit of invention or of scientific research was stirring, — and it was a very vivid spirit just then, already open ing the way for the great century which lay beyond, — the name of Franklin was known and admired as that of one of the memorable men of the time. Those who dealt with public affairs knew also that this pioneer in meteorology, this discoverer in the untrodden field of electricity, this ingenious inventor of practical things, was also a man of the world, an economist, a diplomatist, and a master of knowledge in regard to America and her colonies, whom English statesmen consulted with confidence and were glad to number among their friends. But there the list of known Americans stopped, and all beyond was darkness. As the century grew to its last quarter, however, certain American colonies and towns began to emerge from the haze which covered the distant continent, 130 SAMUEL ADAMS and to assume large and quite definite outlines as they acquired a somewhat painful familiarity in the minds of men. It now appeared that this distant and forgotten people were very real, after all. It became dimly visible that they were not all Indians or negroes or half-breeds or the descendants of con victs and redemptioners, but for the most part, well educated, hard-headed men, extremely well versed in English history, of sound English, Scotch-Irish, and Huguenot stocks, acute lawyers and politicians, with very fixed ideas as to their own natural and constitu tional rights. The first province to come out clearly before the vision of England and of western Europe was the old Puritan colony of Massachusetts, and the first town to impress itself upon their minds was Boston, which seemed to lead and guide the province. Whatever questions the generous emulation of later days may have raised as to the respective share of the original States in the Revolution, there was no con temporary doubt as to which colony began and pushed steadily forward the revolutionary moment. The statesmen and writers, the army of pamphleteers, the editors of newspapers, and the historians of England and France, all alike proclaimed Massachusetts as the head and front of the offending, and Boston as the head and front of Massachusetts. " This province began it, — I might say this town," wrote General Gage, in bitterness of soul ; and when George Rogers SAMUEL ADAMS 131 Clarke was conquering the West for the United States he found the British calling upon the French and the Indians to come out and " fight Boston." So long does an old tradition live that to this day the Indians in the northwest of the continent still describe the people of the United States as " Boston men," and the Canadians as " King George men." Thus the popular imagination, ever seeking for the simple and concrete, depicted the two antagonists in the great conflict then breaking upon the world as the town of Boston and King George of England. So it came about that the events which for a few years made the little provincial capital the best known town in his Majesty's wide dominions added two names to the meagre list of Americans whose fame had crossed the Atlantic and whose deeds had given them meaning and reality. Many men took their lives in their hands when they signed the Declaration of Independence, but Samuel Adams and John Han cock could not by any act or by any signature have made their own condition worse. They had been proscribed for years ; they had been excepted by name from Gage's amnesty ; and one of the objects of the somewhat famous march to Concord had been to seize their persons. For their special behoof a statute of Henry VIII had been drawn from its tomb ; on their necks had rested the gleam of the axe, and across their pathway had fallen the shadow 132 SAMUEL ADAMS of the gallows. Whatever else others might say, they at least could not complain that they were ignored or neglected by England and her rulers. John Hancock found himself in this distinguished position, which had led him to the presidency of the Congress and to the first signature on the Declaration of Independence, because it had suited his companion in proscription to make him his associate, and to use him for certain important purposes. But Samuel Adams was proscribed and famous solely by his own acts and deeds. No one but himself had raised him to eminence. English ministers had sought for evi dence to warrant his arrest for treason, they had tried to cajole him, they had laid wealth and pensions and places at his feet, they had failed to buy or intim idate, and finally they had proscribed him. They had named him " the arch rebel," " the chief incen diary," " the instar omnium," and they were troubled by no doubts when they did so. Men constantly err in their friends, but with the curious animal instinct which they have brought with them across uncounted centuries they are, as a rule, fairly correct in recog nizing their most dangerous enemies. England re garded Samuel Adams as the beginner, leader, and organizer of the revolutionary movement which cul minated in war and independence, and the Americans of that day agreed with her. It is a high position to assign to any man, for the American Revolution, SAMUEL ADAMS 133 momentous at the time, grows ever more mo mentous and more worthy of serious thought as the United States, which came from it, waxes more powerful, and, standing in the forefront of nations, looms larger and larger upon the vision of mankind. Yet Samuel Adams really made for himself and actually filled the place which his own contempo raries and the voice of history, authorities quite prone to differ, alike give him. His career is curiously simple, for his whole life was one of public service. Pleasure, professional success, money, business, private tastes, society, all these and many other things which usually shoot their parti-colored threads across the web of even those lives most singly devoted to state craft or war, to art or letters or science, find no place and shine out nowhere in the career of Samuel Adams. He came from the Braintree stock, founded at the beginning of the Puritan emigration by the sturdy farmer Henry Adams, who had two grand sons, Joseph and John. Joseph stayed by the ances tral farm in Braintree, and became the grandfather of John Adams the first President, and the ancestor of his line of distinguished descendants. John, the brother of Joseph, left Braintree, took to the sea, settled in Boston, became the father of Samuel Adams the elder, who in due time married and had in his turn a son, Samuel Adams the younger, the 134 SAMUEL ADAMS second cousin of John, " the man of the Revolution," as Jefferson called him. We may well pause here for a moment to consider Samuel Adams the elder, because he was a man of dis tinction, and his success and his misfortunes, as well as his mind and character, had much influence upon his famous son. He had inherited a considerable property and increased it. He had a goodly house and garden, for the fashion of the day required a gar den as an appendage of houses of the better sort. He was a leader in church and town affairs, went to the " Great and General Court " and became a leader there, heading the opposition to the royal governor. He was a politician and a manager in the more pop ular sense, organizing the men of the shipyards into what was known as the " Caulkers' Club," which is believed to have given a word to the language as well as a system to politics. He had also unluckily a speculative turn. As years passed he was less suc cessful in business, became involved in the "Land Bank," a scheme for increasing the currency, utterly unsound in principle, and going to wreck accordingly ; so that when he came to die he transmitted a sadly impaired property to his children. Thus we can understand the atmosphere in which the younger Samuel grew up. The strong impres sions of boyhood, youth, and early manhood were of public service, active political organization, extending SAMUEL ADAMS 135 to the most popular forms, and of steady and ingenious opposition to the successive governors, who repre sented the royal authority. Add to this that he saw his father's property shattered by the Land Bank, and instead of blaming the inherent unsoundness of the scheme, his hostility, as is often the case, turned against the government, and with personal bitterness against Thomas Hutchinson, the chief opponent of the Bank, who afterwards rescued the province from the miseries of a depreciated and irredeemable paper currency. That all these impressions drawn from his father's actions and career should have sunk deep into his mind was quite natural, and they were enhanced by the fact that that father was a " wise and good man," a victim of unmerited reverses, and to his son all that was most kind and affectionate. Born in 1722, a child in a happy united household, Samuel Adams's father gave him every opportunity and advantage which the town and province afforded, or which gen erosity could suggest. He went to the best public school. Thence he was sent to Harvard College and received a sound classical training, and there at Cam bridge, in 1743, whither he had returned to take his master's degree, he delivered a thesis before the as sembled dignitaries of the province, entitled " Whether it be lawful to resist the Supreme Magistrate, if the Commonwealth cannot otherwise be preserved." It 136 SAMUEL ADAMS would be hard to find another case in which a college boy took as his theme a subject which was to be the text of his life-work, for the defence of his affirma tive answer made that day at Cambridge as an academic exercise was to be carried on unrelentingly and without break until the resistance he advocated culminated at Philadelphia in the Declaration of Independence. Thus equipped in education and opinion he went forth in the world. His father placed him in the counting-house of Thomas Cushing and then gave him a thousand pounds to start in business for himself. He had every advantage. He belonged to the aris tocracy of his little town, he still had wealth in prospect, he had a father distinguished in public life and respected by all, and a fair business opportunity was laid open before him. Unluckily he cared for none of these things. Half of the thousand pounds was lent to a friend and never came back. The other half he lost himself. Then he went into the opera tion of a brewery with his father. This ran on until his father's death in 1748. Then the brewery faded and failed, and Samuel Adams found himself with the paternal house and garden on Purchase street, a wife and family, no money, and no business. So he re mained through life, entirely poor, absolutely regard less of money as well as indifferent to it, and living always straitly, but decently, honorably, and free from SAMUEL ADAMS 137 debt, on the petty stipend of his public employments. But although he had lost the worldly things for which he did not care, he had what he valued most, — his freedom, the untrammelled way to gratify the ruling passion of his nature open before him, and a steady growth of the power which he coveted. For in those years of financial decline he became gradually known as a strong and able writer upon public questions. Men began to turn to him for advice, and he began to shape opinions. He took one office after another in the town, the scale gradually increasing. He found himself at the head of followers ever growing in num ber, and slowly but surely the mastery of the formi dable instrument of the Boston town-meeting came into his hands. So passed away sixteen toilsome, hard working years, and then he stepped forth into the light as a leader, never afterwards to lose his place. His father died, as has been said, in 1748. In the succeeding years, while Samuel Adams was struggling with poverty, and with the evil legacy of Land Bank claims, and slowly winning his place in the politics and business of the town, great world events had been following each other in rapid succession. War had come, convulsing Europe and America. Fred erick of Prussia had fought and beaten off banded Europe, and Pitt had raised England to the zenith of glory, one victory chasing close after another. In all this glory and in many of these victories, the Ameri- 138 SAMUEL ADAMS can colonies had largely shared, and none had given more in men and money than Massachusetts. The colonists were filled with pride in the empire and with admiration for the " great commoner." In 1759 Quebec fell, and close behind this crowning victory, which gave North America to the English-speaking people, came the first ministerial attempt, born of ignorance and restlessness, to put colonial affairs in order. England thought it wise to undertake to en force the Navigation Acts in despite of which Amer ican merchants had been wont to sail ships and carry on a lucrative and illegal trade. Writs were given out authorizing the customs officers to search houses for smuggled goods ; and James Otis thundered against these writs of assistance, on the theme that an Englishman's house is his castle, in a speech which still echoes in history, and with which John Adams declared that the child Independence was born. It was a great speech. It was the first cry of warning to England, where it fell on deaf ears. It was the first note of resistance, but there was nothing of independence in it, and no one was farther from that conception than James Otis. That far- reaching thought was to come from a stronger and more determined man than the brilliant orator, from one who was even then fast working himself out from obscurity in the politics of Boston, although he had no gift of eloquence to aid him. SAMUEL ADAMS 139 Meantime events moved. George III came to the throne. Peace was to be made. Pitt fell from power, all largeness of view went with him, and George Grenville, worthy, well-informed busybody, decided that it would be a good thing to raise a revenue from America. So the Stamp Act was passed, and the American colonies burst into a flame of bitter opposition. A Congress was called, and mischief was afoot. The moment also had come at last for Samuel Adams; and in 1764 he drafted certain instructions, very famous in their day, from the town of Boston to her representa tives in" the Legislature, setting forth the necessity and duty of resistance to taxation, and also con taining what was far more fatal to England, — an appeal for a union of all the colonies in what was necessarily a common cause. It is well to note this appeal for union, because it appears in this, the first of Samuel Adams's great state papers, and is repeated unceasingly by him from that day forward. Its importance lies in the fact that the political union of the colonies meant and could mean nothing but a mortal blow to English author ity. Everything else was trivial compared to that purpose of union, and Adams clung to it with a grim tenacity which nothing could move. In the following year, 1765, he is reported to have ad mitted to his friends in private that he wished for 140 SAMUEL ADAMS independence. Whether that date is exact or not, it is clear that he aimed at such a consumma tion long before any one else dreamed of it, and three years later he openly declared it. To that end he labored, to that ultimate object all his argu ments tended. He stood alone in 1765. He still stood nearly alone ten years later, and was feared on account of what were thought to be his desperate opinions. But through all he never swerved, and he passed along his stormy course with the strength of the man who knows exactly what he wants and precisely how he means to get it. To follow here in anything except one line that remarkable career, every detail of which had a meaning and an influ ence upon the current of events, is impossible. All that can be done is to enumerate the most important incidents and point out the great landmarks of the march of resistance to England, which culminated at last in war and independence. In 1765 Samuel Adams was chosen to the Legis lature. There he remained until a Continental Con gress sprang into existence, and he became at once not only a leader, but the master spirit. He already led and controlled the town-meeting of Boston. Now he led all the towns of the province ; and when the Legislature slackened or seemed to lose heart, he used the Boston town-meeting to spur it on. He signalized his entry into the Legislature by SAMUEL ADAMS 141 carrying a series of resolutions which made much stir, and in which he set forth the principles of resistance to taxation without representation, and boldly questioned the power of Parliament. When the repeal of the Stamp Act had caused a fervent outburst of loyalty, it was Samuel Adams who kept the spirit of opposition alive by his incessant writing in the newspapers, pointing out that, though the ob noxious act had gone, the declaration of the right of Parliament to tax the colonies remained. He never lost heart or quieted down when public feel ing ebbed, and it is but fair to say that England always came to his aid. At this moment it was the act to tax red and white lead, glass, paper, painters' colors, and tea. Adams met this fresh attempt with his scheme of non-importation agreements, and in 1768 with a far more dangerous weapon, — a circu lar letter from the Massachusetts House to the other colonies, asking them to unite in resistance to this new taxation. Side by side with these large schemes, covering the policy of the continent, went on an unceasing controversy with the royal governors; first with Bernard, then with Hutchinson, — the former an irascible, rather dull Englishman, the latter a very able and keen New Englander, to whom opposition was sharpened by the life-long personal enmity of the man who had suffered by the downfall of the 142 SAMUEL ADAMS Land Bank. This contest with the governors was never allowed to flag. Everything they desired was withheld, every proposition they advanced was com bated. Letters emanating from Samuel Adams went out constantly to the colonial agents in London, and to public men in England, setting forth the case of the colonies, assailing the governors and demanding their recall. This contest maintained the popular interest and ministered to the popular excitement, and there was always something on hand to serve the purpose of the man who waged it. In 1766 it was the Billeting Act; in 1768 came the circular letter from the House to the other colo nies, and the governor, acting under instructions, demanded it should be rescinded, — which the House debated at length, and then would not comply. Next arrived the British regiments, and a fierce discussion opened in regard to their presence in the town. This controversy had a bloody ending. The people bitterly resented the presence of the soldiers, and the leaders, headed by Adams, stimulated the popular hostility. Affrays were frequent ; and at last, on the evening of March 5, 1770, the inevitable happened. Some men and boys baited the soldiers, and the soldiers fired on the crowd. The young moon shining clear that night looked down upon the light snow in King Street, stained red now with the first blood of the Revolution. The ominous cry of " Town-born, turn SAMUEL ADAMS 143 out ! " rang through the streets. The troops were brave and disciplined. They would have died hard, but numbers would have overwhelmed them. Hutch inson managed to restore quiet for the night. The next day there was a town-meeting, presently grown so large that it adjourned to the Old South Church. Guided by Samuel Adams, they demanded the with drawal of the troops from the town. Hutchinson refused ; he had no authority. Then he would send away one regiment, but not both. All this was voted unsatisfactory by the meeting, now swelled by the country people who were pouring into Boston and crowding the streets. So the day wore away, and darkness fell. For the last time the committee went to the Council Chamber, with the cry of the town- meeting — Adams's own watchword, "Both regiments or none ! " — sounding behind them. Then Adams, plain of dress, simple in manner, stern and decisive in words, spoke in the Council Chamber to the repre sentatives of royal authority. It was the most dra matic, the greatest moment, perhaps, of his life. He was only the man of the "town-meeting;" and facing him were the royal governor, the judges in their robes, the council, and the colonels in their scarlet uniforms. But he was able to unchain the demo cratic force destined soon to enter on a career which would shape the fate of two continents, and those whom he addressed dimly felt the presence of some- 144 SAMUEL ADAMS thing new and strange. They hesitated and resisted. First the council gave way, then the colonels, and at last Hutchinson. The regiments were withdrawn, and passed out of Boston with the name of " Sam Adams " attached to them. So the fire blazed up for a moment and then sank down ; and thereupon ensued one of those lulls, one of those moments of weariness and dejection which occur in all popular movements, and which Adams dreaded more than anything else. He met it in the newspapers with his articles. He fought it in the House with continued attacks on the removal of the Legislature to Cambridge. But the non importation agreements were slackening. Men were growing weary. The House began to yield, and Hutchinson was a clever manager. He let them go back to Boston, and then Adams, alive to the danger, opened his new plan. He turned to the town-meeting, and started the scheme of committees of correspondence in all the towns. The Tories laughed, and made light of it ; but the towns re sponded. Boston adopted Adams's declaration of rights, and the other towns answered to the call. The plan was a success after all, and a new and more dangerous weapon was now in the hands of the agi tator. Not the town of Boston alone, but henceforth all the towns of the province responded to his touch. Revolution was organized. Nothing remained but to SAMUEL ADAMS 145 extend it to the other provinces, and union, active and effective, was accomplished. Again, too, the ministry and the king came to his aid. All the obnoxious duties had been repealed ex cept that on tea, and the East India Company, whose tea was piling up in their warehouses, thanks to the non-importation agreement, were now relieved of the export duties, and thus urged to send tea to the colo nies. Meantime, the contest in the colony had been steadily advancing. The payment of the salaries by governor and judges had been decreed in England, and the House, under the lead of Adams, denounced it as a perilous assault upon the liberties of the peo ple, as, indeed, it was. Then Hutchinson, in a very able message, asserted the power of Parliament to legislate in all ways for the colonies; and all the Tories, and, in fact, not a few of the patriots, felt that the argument was unanswerable. But it was really just what Adams wanted. Above all things, Adams desired to discuss the power and authority of Par liament, and now the governor had given him the chance to do it in a manner to attract the utmost possible attention. The reply of the House, drafted by Adams and carefully considered by the members, proved to be abler, keener, and more conclusive than the learned and ingenious argument of the governor. In the debate thus opened the House scored, and public opinion was strongly turned against the crown. 10 146 SAMUEL ADAMS Adams's motto always was, throughout the struggle, " Put your enemy in the wrong " ; and in the case of such an enemy as he was contending with, this was not difficult. But it must have seemed to him, in 1773, as if his enemy was fairly delivered into his hands. Not only had Hutchinson given him oppor tunity to discuss the power of Parliament, but Vir ginia, in March, passed resolutions for Intercolonial Committees of Correspondence. Massachusetts had accepted the offer with enthusiasm, and Adams's plan for organization and union was effected. The most mortal blow to English rule had been struck, although few knew it at the moment ; and while America was thus engaged, England was passing the Tea Act. When the news reached America, Adams replied by starting the movement for a Congress of all the colonies. Events ever growing in importance were now treading close upon each other's heels. Presently came news that the tea ships had sailed ; then that they were in the harbor. Boston, acting ever through the town-meeting, under the lead of Adams, would not suffer the tea to be landed. Every expedient was tried to avoid anything like violence, and to get the tea sent back to England. But the consignees fal tered and resisted, and when they had been brought to terms, the officers of the customs and the governor opposed. So the days wore by until it was within a SAMUEL ADAMS 147 few hours of the time when, under the law, the fate ful cargoes had to be landed. The town-meeting was in session at the old South Church ; they were wait ing, as the short December day drew to a close, the result of a last attempt to obtain a permit from the governor to let the ships go to sea. At last the mes sage of final refusal came. It was another dramatic moment in the career of Samuel Adams. Again he was the central figure, and again he had everything arranged, and knew exactly what he meant to do. The refusal of the governor was reported, and Adams arose and cried out, " This meeting can do nothing more to save the country." As he uttered the words the Indian war-whoop was heard outside. There was a rush to the wharves, and in a few hours the harbor was black with tea. It was at last evident to all men that Massachusetts, and that America, would not pay taxes which they had not a part in imposing. England responded quickly to the defiance con veyed by the destruction of the tea. A military governor in the person of Thomas Gage replaced Hutchinson, and brought more troops with him. The Port Bill closed Boston Harbor, reduced her people to idleness, thus making her a martyr and her cause the cause of all the colonies, a better bond of union than any Adams himself had devised. The Provincial charter was changed and the popular rights curtailed, — another link in the union chain. 148 SAMUEL ADAMS Gage also had orders to arrest Adams and Hancock, but even with his army about him he feared to do it ; for the menace of a new danger and a new force was in the air, and although the governor did not comprehend it he recoiled from it. Then Gage sum moned the Legislature to meet at Salem, and when they were assembled, Adams amused the governor and his friends in the House by talk of conciliation, while he quickly gathered an unyielding majority to effect the masterstroke. When the majority was en rolled, when all was ready, suddenly and surely Adams moved. The doors were locked, and even while the governor's messenger with the message of prorogation demanded admittance and beat upon the panels, the House chose delegates to the American Congress. Then the doors were broken open, and the last " Great and General Court " to be held under the crown was dissolved, and passed out into history. Its work was done. In September Samuel Adams and his cousin John met with the other delegates in Philadelphia. In the remarkable body of men who then gathered in Car penter's hall, none except Franklin was so well known, none excited so much interest, as Samuel Adams, and none also was so much feared or regarded with so much suspicion. His ability, patriotism and courage were recognized and admired, but he was thought to be a desperate man aiming at independence. His SAMUEL ADAMS 149 purpose certainly was independence, and a very clear, definite purpose it was, although he stood alone, and every one of his associates shrank from the very word. But he was anything but desperate. Never, indeed, did he appear greater and stronger than at this trying moment when all around him were sus picion and hostility. Those who reckoned on a violent incendiary did not understand that they were face to face with one of the most adroit managers of men known to history. Never so much as at this critical instant, with all his hopes trembling on the verge of fulfilment, were the tact, the self-control, the perfect calmness of the man so conspicuous. Great as a combatant, he was equally great as a conciliator. It was he, the rigid Puritan, the hater of bishops, who moved that a clergyman of the Church of England should be asked to offer prayer. The pre-eminent man in the revolutionary movement, he now sedu lously kept himself in the background. He served on such committees as he was appointed to diligently, as was his wont, and took his share in the great state papers which emanated from the Congress; but it was all done so unobtrusively that the most delicate sensibilities could not be ruffled nor the most wakeful suspicion aroused. No doubt in private conversation he gently impressed his views upon others. It is certain that his plans carried out by others at home brought pressure upon the Congress in the shape of 150 SAMUEL ADAMS " Suffolk resolves," county congresses, and then a Provincial Congress, all pointing out to the other colo nies the way to independent government. But in Philadelphia Samuel Adams sank into the back ground, leaving leadership to others and trusting to events and to outside influences which he himself, in part, at least, set in motion, to carry them along what seemed to him both the inevitable and the righteous path. From Philadelphia Adams returned to Massachu setts to join in the work of organizing the Provincial Congress, carrying on the work of the Committees of Correspondence, keeping the Boston town-meeting, which Gage had prohibited, alive by adjournments, so that a new one need never be called, and in all ways preparing for the war which he knew to be near. Events indeed moved now with great rapidity. Win ter wore away, and when the spring came, Gage determined at last to arrest the two men whom he had proscribed. Warned in ample time Hancock and Adams left Boston for Lexington, and thither Gage sent troops to seize them on the way to destroy the munitions of war at Concord. There in the fading darkness came Revere bearing news of the coming of the troops. Presently they saw the British infantry march up in ordered ranks ; they heard Pitcairn's order ; they heard the shots ring out ; and then they slipped away from the house and drove rapidly off to SAMUEL ADAMS 151 Woburn. As they passed along the quiet country road, the beautiful light of the April dawn flushing the skies above their heads, the Puritan reserve for one moment gave way to an overwhelming emotion, and Adams looking upward, like Cromwell at Dunbar, cried out, " What a glorious morning is this ! " And so they passed on together to Philadelphia, re ceived with acclaim along the road, for the news of Lexington and Concord had gone before them. The Revolution had begun, but there were still some months of conflict before the new Congress. There was also abundance of bitter opposition to Adams, but now events, as he had foreseen, were working irresistibly on his side. Paine's famous pamphlet " Common Sense " had wrought a great change in opinion and had crystallized the popular will. Con gress was compelled to authorize the States to set up governments of their own. They were obliged to adopt the army before Boston and put Washington at the head of it. Virginia was now working side by side with Massachusetts, and the two great colonies were drawing the others with them. John Hancock, the proscribed, was made president of the Congress. No longer was it necessary for Samuel Adams to hold his hand or keep in the background. Now, with all his power of will, he was able to drive forward to the goal at which his whole life had aimed.. In June, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, the close friend of 152 SAMUEL ADAMS Adams, introduced his famous resolution declaring for independence. There was a committee appointed, there was the pause and the deliberation for nearly a month so characteristic of the race, and then Jeffer son reported the Declaration, and it was adopted, signed, and given to the world. This was the great moment of Samuel Adams's life. For years he alone had foreseen this outcome and labored for it. For this he had faced proscrip tion, suspicion, and bitter hostility. To few men is it given to win so great a victory, to behold so com plete a triumph of all they hold most dear. When Samuel Adams set his name to the Declaration his great work on the stage of history was done. Not that his labors for his country and his beloved State ended then. On the contrary, for twenty-one years more he worked as hard, as unceasingly, as he had ever worked, and that meant all the time, and in a measure which few men had ever equalled. He remained in Congress nearly to the end of the war, stayed there long after it had declined in char acter and importance, and after the great men with whom he had begun had been almost wholly re placed by others sadly their inferiors in distinction and ability. He shirked no duty, he served on great committees, he labored in every way to sustain the war and the army. His zeal, intelligence, and energy slackened no jot in all those toilsome years SAMUEL ADAMS 153 or in the darkest hours. Never for a moment did his faith and courage fail. In the intervals at home he labored just as hard at the work in Massachu setts. He served as Secretary of State, the execu tive officer of the Executive Council, and guided the Provincial Congress, spurring the State on to give that full share of men and money to the common cause which stands as one of the glories of the old Commonwealth. He had a leading part in preparing the Articles of Confederation and in framing the con stitution of 1780 for Massachusetts, under which the State is still governed. When the state government was formed, he became a member of the state senate, then for a series of years its presiding officer, then lieutenant-governor, and finally, after the death of Hancock, he was for three years governor, the office with which beyond all others he would have pre ferred to crown his career. In .1797 he retired from public life, and six years later, just after he had passed his eighty-first birthday, he died honored and mourned by the people of Massachusetts whom he had loved so well and served so long. His career after 1776 was one filled with unremit ting labor crowned with high distinction, furnishing in itself a career sufficient to gratify an eager ambition. Yet is it nevertheless true that the work of Samuel Adams in the largest sense ended on the 4th of July, 1776. All that came after was secondary and slight 154 SAMUEL ADAMS compared to what had gone before. His work after 1776 might have been done by others. His work before 1776, whether any other man could have per formed it or not, was, as a matter of fact, performed by him alone, and it not only exhibited high qualities of mind and character, but it brought lasting results which entitle him to be reckoned among the greatest public men of whom the history of the United States makes record. Without exaggeration, it may be said also that what he accomplished and the abilities which he displayed give him a sure place among the most important men of his age, whether at home or abroad. The ten years, moreover, preceding 1776 showed nothing but success, won with an efficiency and freedom from error rarely to be met with. The twenty years after, on the other hand, made it appar ent that he was not fitted for the great work which the new conditions demanded, as he had been for the equally important but widely different work which alone had made the new conditions and the new problems possible. Samuel Adams was, as he was often called, the " man of the Revolution." His work in life was to organize revolution and separate the colonies from England. But although a great organizer, he was not a man of constructive power. Outside of Massa chusetts, where he understood the people, the com munity, and the modes of government, he could pull SAMUEL ADAMS 155 down, but he could not build up. Within the Com monwealth, he could play a leading part in making the constitution of 1780 one of the best written con stitutions ever framed, because that merely involved a transfer of the powers and methods of government exercised by crown and people under the provincial form to the people of the State. Outside Massachu setts, where the problem was to make a nation out of thirteen jarring States, Adams failed, for there he was on new ground, filled with unreasoning suspi cions of external authority which he had always re sisted, and unable to see that there was an absolute distinction between the rule of the English crown and that of a government formed by the people of the thirteen States themselves. At Philadelphia, his jealousy of a standing army led him to oppose half pay to officers on retirement. At Philadelphia he took a conspicuous share in framing the Articles of Confederation, and was unable to see not merely that they would not work, but that they were so funda mentally wrong in conception and principle that they were doomed to failure. He had no liking for the Constitution of 1787, and no sympathy with the movement which produced it. He was finally brought to its support by the pressure of his friends, and his support was most essential ; but he neither under stood it nor believed in it. He was by nature emi nently conservative in the great underlying principles 156 SAMUEL ADAMS of law and order. No one was more stern than he in measures to repress and punish the Shays Rebel lion, for, revolutionist as he was, he hated chaos and loved order of a pretty rigid kind. Yet he opposed Washington's administration in all its great policies and in a manner which demonstrated that he had utterly failed to comprehend that the national gov ernment was the only means by which the States and people of America had been rescued from a hopeless and widespread anarchy, of which the Shays Rebel lion, which he had helped to crush, was but a single manifestation. It is very seldom that we find in the same man the power to pull down combined with an equal ability to build up. The men who made the Consti tution, although all supporters of the Revolution, were not the men who planned the struggle and brought on the war. Washington is a rare example of a man, who, having led in the destruction of one political system, is then able to exhibit an even greater capacity in constructing a new one upon the ruins of the old. Yet even Washington had no important part in preparing revolution. When he entered upon his great task at Cambridge, that of Samuel Adams was finished. So it is that when we turn back from the period of construction to the period when revolution was engendered and made inevitable, we find that there is no one who ap- SAMUEL ADAMS 157 proaches Samuel Adams in effectiveness or capacity as a statesman and leader of men. He was a Puritan by descent and a Puritan him self. Robust and vigorous, physically and mentally, his gray eyes and strongly cut features look out at us from Copley's picture with a prevailing sense of force, which time cannot dim nor fading colors lessen. He was deeply religious, and the Puritan hatred of Roman papacy and British episcopacy burned hot within him. He had no care for material things. He lived in respectable poverty all his days, and desired nothing more. The best education possible to the time and place was given him, and made him a good classical scholar and an especial lover of Latin. Everything that bore upon politics or his tory, the philosophy or science of government, or the rights of men, he had read and pondered and knew with an exactness which made his learning as ready in use as it was thorough in possession. He was a man of pure life, beloved in his household, cheerful and agreeable in company, and with a power of at taching young men to him, which shows that his nature was neither austere nor ungenial. But his most remarkable quality was an utter absence of egotism, so complete, indeed, that it kept him long from his true place in history, and has made it most difficult to know him. In all his published writings he was absolutely objective and impersonal, and in 158 SAMUEL ADAMS his private letters he never talks of himself. Even when he is assailed by jealousies and attacked with injustice, he puts it all aside as indifferent and of no consequence. Not that he was a forgiving man ; he was disposed to be relentless, and Dr. Johnson would have found him a good hater, but his own personality never figured in his enmity. In most strong men, the personal equation is very large. It was so in the Adams family, and John Adams always looks at every event first as it touches himself, so that his writings, while they brim over with egotism, have also the intensely human note which ever appeals to human sympathies. Samuel Adams was a very strong man indeed, but this personal note is lacking, not only in his own writings, but in all that his con temporaries wrote about him. They describe and criticise and praise him, but they never tell us that he ever said anything about himself. He had in truth to the full the old Puritan temperament, which in the days of Charles made the casters-down of church and throne lose sight of everything but their religion, and in the days of George III made Samuel Adams forget everything, including himself, in his mission, as he conceived it, of separating America from England. With a patience which nothing could weary, he carried on his opposition to the royal governors. He got possession of Boston, he got possession of the SAMUEL ADAMS 159 province and the Legislature. He wove bonds of connection with the leading men in England and in all the colonies. He organized Boston, then the Leg islature, then all the towns, and then came the conti nent. He argued his case on every point, in state papers, in ^resolutions, in declarations, in countless articles in the newspapers, in innumerable letters to correspondents everywhere. No question was too large for his grasp, no detail too small to be over looked. Hutchinson noted that as the controversy progressed, Adams changed even his formal phrases, and every change pointed toward popular rights and independence. His whole life was given to the work, and his industry and capacity for labor seem almost superhuman. His light burning far into the night was a familiar sight in the little town, and people used to say when they saw it, " There is Sam Adams writing against the Tories." He was no ora tor, and his style in writing was plain and unorna- mented to the last degree, but he spoke with a force, clearness, and mastery, and wrote with a skill and strength, which carried conviction captive. Greatest he was, perhaps, as a manager of men where two or three were gathered together. He passed hours on the wharves, in the shipyards or the shops, and the shipwrights and sailors and mechanics of Boston followed him implicitly and moved at his word. Galloway, the Pennsylvania Tory, says that 160 SAMUEL ADAMS Adams controlled the mob in Philadelphia, although he had never seen Philadelphia until Congress met there in 1774. How he did it, no man knew then or knows now, but the mere charge is a tribute to his singular power over the mass of the people, for he was no demagogue, and never had any of the arts of one. He watched also for all the young men of promise, yoked them to his cause, and made them not only his followers, but his devoted friends, as they appeared in turn upon the stage of action. He it was who captured Hancock, the rich, vain, generous, difficult, not over-intelligent aristocrat, for the popular side. The Warrens, Church, Quincy, John Adams himself, were all brought forward by him. Yet for himself he always took a second place. He was never speaker, only clerk, of the House which he ruled. He was rarely first on the great committees, although in the hour of trial the post of danger and of leader ship was always his. So much power and so much self-effacement are seldom found together, but the combination displays that marvellous tact which was never at fault, and that ability to manage men which in politics and history is not easy to equal. Thus he gradually, step by step, led the resistance to England forward. No threats or perils could move that iron courage, no bribes of place or power or money could touch that stern integrity. It was a SAMUEL ADAMS 161 continual advance. Even in moments of fatierue, when the popular feeling was lulled, he was still pressing forward, still writing, still arguing, still moving the minds of men. In this way he gradually created a public opinion which became irresistible, and which astounded his opponents when the moment came to call it forth. No crisis ever found him sur prised. He was always prepared, and met every ordeal victoriously. He stands out in history not only as the organizer of revolution and the teacher who made revolution possible, but as the first man who understood and wielded the force of the people — the great demo cratic force which then entered upon its career and which was destined to change the entire political form of Western civilization. This was a very large part to play in the world's history, and it puts Samuel Adams among the few leaders of men who in the days of Louis XV and George III made possi ble the events of the nineteenth century and opened the way for the rise of the United States. 11 THEODORE ROOSEVELT.1 No human character can be justly depicted, with all its lights and shades duly touched and set forth, in a few pages or a dozen phrases. How much more impossible to make clear to others a human character which has been caught in the toils of great affairs, upon which responsibilities, growing ever more vast, have acted and reacted, and which has thus been modified, educated, and developed ! All this is pre eminently true of President Roosevelt. No man has lived the life of his time so amply as he ; no one lias known humanity in so many phases, no one has wider sympathies or so many interests. It would be worse than idle for any one, no matter how intimate his friendship, to fancy that he could depict a character so many-sided, so tried and tested in such multiform experiences within the brief space allowed me, and in 1 I am indebted to the kindness of the publishers of McClure'' s Mag azine for permission to include this article in this volume. I reprint it with a full realization of the utter impossibility of giving any proper description of President Roosevelt within such narrow limits. I venture to republish it because it was an attempt, at a critical moment, to give an impression of the real man, and only an impression, but at the same time one sufficient to counteract some of the misunderstandings which were rife during the Presidential election of 1904, when the article appeared. THFODOltE ROOSKVELT IG.'! the hurry and excitement inseparable from the closing days of a presidential election. But perhaps out of my personal knowledge I can give an impression ; and to that I can best attain by dispersing some of the myths and misconceptions engendered partly by accident and partly by malice, which, if not actually believed, have certainly con fused the minds of some very honest and very patriotic people, and have even troubled many men who thoroughly believe in the President and fully intend to vote for him. There are few things in this world so dangerous as catchwords. President Roosevelt once used the word "strenuous" as a title for some essays. The popular fancy pounced upon the word, the popular humorist caught it up, and to-day there is an idea widely diffused through the mass of the American people that Theodore Roosevelt leads an existence of feverish and almost diseased activity, which, if not expended on things physical, is projected upon public affairs. Mr. Roosevelt is certainly a man of great physical and mental energy. H he had not been he could not have performed the extraordinary amount of work which he has accomplished in the last twenty-five years; yet the very accomplishment of that work shows that his activity is neither feverish nor abnor mal nor diseased, but regulated and controlled ; for if it had not been regulated and controlled it would 164 THEODORE ROOSEVELT have effected nothing. His daily life does not differ in any respect from that of any other very busy man of great energy, who finds rest and relief not only in active out-of-door life, but in a wide and constant reading of books, — a habit, by the way, quite as char acteristic of the man as any other, but of which the newspaper critics and humorists tell us little. In the same way the President is described and widely accepted as hot-headed, rash, and impulsive, prone to sudden resolutions, and acting upon them without sufficient consideration. The origin of this misconception is as slender as that of the strenuous life. Theodore Roosevelt is a man of strong convic tions, who started as a boy with some high and fixed ideals of life and conduct, to which he has tenaciously clung. Like most young men similarly equipped, he was disposed at the outset to be very certain of his opinions and very vigorous in their expression. But unlike most other young men, he had the perilous opportunity, when barely out of college, to put his opinions into practice and to express them in perma nent form both in speech and writing, — a trial which youth usually escapes. The care of statement which comes with age and experience was sometimes lacking to the young writer and assemblyman; as it would be to any young man. But the written word and the accomplished deed remain; and hence the delusion has sprung up, and been carefully fostered for politi- THEODORE ROOSEVELT 165 cal purposes, that all the strong utterances of youth, to which they are entirely becoming, are those of the present moment, and mean rashness and indiscretion in the mature statesman, to whom these particular forms of utterance might not be at all fitting. There is no necessary connection between the two ; between the generous and often unmeasured expression of youth and the instructed mind of the man who has known men and cities and tasted the delight of battle. We judge the mature public man by what he is, not by what he may have said twenty-five years before, honest and brave as that early opinion and that boy ish speech surely were. Theodore Roosevelt apprehends very quickly. When he has thought a subject out thoroughly and knows what he means to do, he acts promptly. When, after full consideration, he has made up his mind as to what is right he is unbending; but no man has been in the White House for many years who is so ready to take advice, who has made up his mind more slowly, more deliberately, and after more consultation than Theodore Roosevelt. No President within my observation has ever consulted with the leaders of his party, not only in the House and Senate, but in the States and in the press, so fre quently and to such good purpose as Mr. Roosevelt, although, a favorite charge is that he is headstrong and wishes no advisers. 166 THEODORE ROOSEVELT Another misconception growing out of the same theory and much urged by his political opponents and by sundry neurotic newspapers, is that Mr. Roosevelt is extremely reckless, and would not hesitate for an instant to plunge the country into war.1 This absurdity grows, I am inclined to think, very largely out of the President's passion for athletics and for more or less dangerous sports, and because he went so readily and quickly himself as a soldier into the war with Spain. But this theory is of course a mere confusion of ideas. Because a man likes to take the risks of the hunting-field or of the pursuit of big game, or because he is eager to fight personally when his country goes to war, it may follow that he is a brave man with plenty of nerve ; but it does not follow that he is therefore a fool, who regards our foreign relations in the same light as he would dan gerous or exciting field-sports. The fact, indeed, is just the reverse. A man who has faced danger, either in hunting or in war, is the very last man to put other men's lives in peril without the sternest necessity, and is the first man to feel most keenly in this respect the heavy responsibility of a great office. In the space allotted to me I can only touch on 1 The peace between Russia and Japan and the attitude of the Pres ident in regard to the Morocco difficulty which have come to pass since his re-election in 1904, are interesting illustrations of the absurdity of the charge that he loved war for its own sake, and of the truth of what was written in this article in refutation of that charge. THEODORE ROOSEVELT 167 these two or three popular misconceptions which a personal friendship of many years' standing render more absurd to me than those which usually swarm about Presidents, and which, in this case, are being used for somewhat mean and low political objects. But in the many attacks made upon President Roose velt there is one thought which has come again and again into my mind, knowing him as I do. Every nation, or rather every historic race, has certain attri butes, in addition to the great and more obvious virtues, which it believes to be peculiarly its own, and in which it takes an especial pride. We of the United States like to think of the typical American as a brave and honest man, very human, and with no vain pretence to infallibility. We would have him simple in his home life, democratic in his ways, with the highest education which the world can give, kind to the weak, tender and loyal and true, never quarrelsome but never afraid to fight, with a strong, sane sense of humor, and with a strain of adventure in the blood, which we shall never cease to love until those ancestors of ours who conquered a continent have drifted a good deal farther into the past than is the case to-day. These are the qualities which all men admire and respect, and which thus combined we like to think peculiarly American. As I enumerate them I describe Theodore Roosevelt. The use to which he has put these qualities of heart and char- 168 THEODORE ROOSEVELT acter, as well as the fine abilities which are also his, is cut pretty deep into the history of our last twenty- five years, whether in the Commission of the Civil Service, in the Police Commission, in the Navy Department, in the Spanish War, at Albany, or in the White House. SENATOR HOAR1 Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, Senators, and Gentle men of the House of Representatives : I am here by your invitation, which is at once an honor and a command. I am to speak to you of a remarkable man and of a long and distinguished career of public service. I am to speak to you of a man who has taken his place in that noble company who have made Massachusetts what she has been in the past, what she is to-day, and to whom she owes her great part in history and her large influence in the Union of States. Here where Mr. Hoar rendered his first public service, here where he was five times commis sioned to represent the State in the great council of the nation, is the fittest place in which to honor his memory and make record of our grief for his death. I cannot hope to do full justice to such a theme, but the sincerity of my endeavor and the affection which inspires it give me confidence to proceed and assure me of your indulgence. 1 An address delivered on January 19, 1905, before the Legislature of the State of Massachusetts, in the Hall of the House of Represen tatives, in the State House at Boston. 170 SENATOR HOAR Men distinguished above their fellows, who have won a place in history, may be of interest and impor tance to posterity as individuals or as representatives of their time, or in both capacities. Hobbes and Des cartes, for instance, are chiefly if not wholly interesting for what they themselves were and for their contribu tions to human thought, which might conceivably have been made at any epoch. On the other hand, Pepys and St. Simon, substantially contemporary with the two philosophers, are primarily of interest and im portance as representative men, embodiments and exponents of the life and thought of their time. Benjamin Franklin, to take a later example, was not only deeply interesting as an individual, but he seemed to embody in himself the tendencies of thought and the entire meaning and attitude of the eighteenth century in its broadest significance. Mr. Hoar be longs to the class which is illustrated in such a high degree by Franklin, for he has won and will hold his place in history not only by what he was and what he did, but because he was a very representative man in a period fruitful in great events and conspicuous for the consolidation of the United States, — the great est single fact of the last century, measured by its political and economic effect upon the fortunes of mankind and upon the history of the world. To appreciate properly and understand intelligently any man who has made substantial achievement in art SENATOR HOAR 171 or letters, in philosophy or science, in war or politics, and who has also lived to the full tlie life of his time, we must turn first to those conditions over wliich he himself had no control. In his inheritances, in the time and place of birth, in the influences and the at mosphere of childhood and youth we can often find the key to the mystery which every human existence presents, and obtain a larger explanation of the mean ing of the character and career before us than the man's own life and deeds will by themselves disclose. This is especially true of Mr. Hoar, for his race and descent, as well as his time and place of birth, are full of significance if we would rightly under stand one who was at once a remarkable and a highly representative man. He came of a purely English stock. His family in England were people of consideration and substance, possessing both edu cation and established position before America was discovered. Belonging in the seventeenth century to that class of prosperous merchants and tradesmen, of country gentlemen and farmers which gave to Eng land Cromwell and Hampden, Eliot and Pym, they were Puritans in religion and in politics supporters of the Parliament and opponents of the King. Charles Hoar, sheriff of Gloucester and enrolled in the record of the city government as " Generosus," or "gentle man," died in 1638. Two years later his widow, Joanna Hoar, with five of her children, emigrated 172 SENATOR HOAR to New England. One of the sons, Leonard Hoar, chosen by his father to go to Oxford and become a minister, entered Harvard College, then just founded, and graduated there in 1650. He soon after returned to England, where he wras presented to a living under the Protectorate. He married Bridget, the daughter of John Lisle, commonly called Lord Lisle, one of the regicides assassinated later at Lausanne, where he had taken refuge, by royal emissaries after the King had come to his own again. John Lisle's wife, the Lady Alicia, died on the scaffold in 1685, the most famous and pathetic victim in the tragedy of Jeffreys' " Bloody Assize." Her son-in-law, Leonard Hoar, ejected from his living under the Act of Uniformity, studied medicine, and returning to New England ten years later became in 1672 president of Harvard College and died in 1675. Senator Hoar was descended from an elder brother of the president of Harvard, John Hoar, evidently a man of as strong character and marked abilities as the rest of his family. The old records contain more than one account of his clashings with the intolerant and vigorous theocracy which governed Massachusetts, and of the fines and imprisonments which he endured ; but he never seems either to have lost the respect of the community or to have checked his speech. We get a bright glimpse of him in 1690, when Sewall says, in his diary on November 8 of that year : SENATOR HOAR 173 " Jno. Hoar comes into the lobby, and sais he comes from the Lord, by the Lord, to speak for the Lord ; complains that sins as bad as Sodom's found here." In every generation following we find men of the same marked character who were graduates of Har vard, active citizens, successful in their callings, taking a full share of public duties and in the life of their times. Senator Hoar's great-grandfather, who had served in the old French war, and his grandfather were both in the fight at Concord Bridge. His father, Samuel Hoar, was one of the most distinguished law yers in Massachusetts. He served in both branches of the State legislature, and was a Member of Congress. Honored throughout the State, his most conspicuous action was his journey to Charleston to defend certam negro sailors ; and from that city, where his life was in danger, he was expelled because he desired to give his legal services to protect men of another and an enslaved race. On his mother's side Senator Hoar was a descend ant of the John Sherman who landed in Massachusetts in 1630 and became the progenitor of a family which has been extraordinarily prolific in men of high ability and distinction. In the century just closed this family gave to the country and to history one of our most bril liant soldiers, one of our most eminent statesmen and financiers, and through the female line the great law yer and orator, Mr. Evarts, and E. Rockwood Hoar, 174 SENATOR HOAR distinguished alike as judge, as Member of Congress, and as Attorney-General of the United States. In the eighteenth century we owe to the same blood and name one of the most conspicuous of the great men who made the Revolution and founded the United States, — Roger Sherman, signer of the Declaration of Independence, signer of the articles of Confederation, signer of the Constitution, first Senator from Connec ticut, and grandfather of Senator Hoar, as he was also of Mr. Evarts. I have touched upon this gene alogy more, perhaps, than is usual upon such occa sions, not only because it is remarkable, but because it seems to me full of light and meaning in connection with those who, in the years just past, had the right to claim it for their own. We see these people, when American history begins, identified with the cause of constitutional freedom and engaged in resistance to what they deemed tyranny in church and state. They became exiles for their faith, and the blood of the victims of Stuart revenge is sprinkled on their gar ments. They venture their lives again at the outbreak of our own Revolution. They take a continuous part in pubhc affairs. They feel it to be their business to help the desolate and oppressed, from John Hoar shel tering and succoring the Christian Indians, in the dark and bloody days of King Philip's war, to Samuel Hoar, going forth into the midst of a bitterly hostile com munity to defend the helpless negroes. The tradition senator hoar 175 of sound learning, the profound belief in the highest education, illustrated by Leonard Hoar in the seven teenth century, are never lost or weakened in the succeeding generations. Through all their history runs unchanged the deep sense of public responsibil ity, of patriotism, and of devotion to high ideals of conduct. The stage upon which they played their several parts might be large or small, but the light which guided them was always the same. They were Puritans of the Puritans. As the centuries passed, the Puritan was modified in many ways, but the ele mental qualities of the powerful men who had crushed crown and mitre in a common ruin, altered the course of English history, and founded a new State in a new world, remained unchanged. So parented and so descended, Mr. Hoar inherited certain deep-rooted conceptions of duty, of character, and of the conduct of life, which were as much a part of his being as the color of his eyes or the shape of his hand. Where and when was he born to this noble heritage ? We must ask and answer this ques tion, for there is a world of suggestion in the place and time of a man's birth, when that man has come to have a meaning and an importance to his own generation as well as to those which succeed it in the slow procession of the years. Concord, proclaimed by Webster as one of the glories of Massachusetts which no untoward fate 176 SENATOR HOAR could wrest from her, was the place of his birth. About the quiet village were gathered all the austere traditions of the colonial time. It had witnessed the hardships of the early settlers; it had shared and shuddered in the horrors of Indian wars ; it had seen the slow and patient conquest of the wilderness. There within its boundaries had blazed high a great event, catching the eyes of a careless world which little dreamed how far the fire then lighted would spread. Along its main road, overarched by elms, the soldiers of England marched that pleasant April morning. There is the bridge where the farmers re turned the British fire and advanced. There is the tomb of the two British soldiers who fell in the skirmish, and whose grave marks the spot where the power of England on the North American conti nent first began to ebb. Truly there is no need of shafts of stone or statues of bronze, for the whole place is a monument to the deeds which there were done. The very atmosphere is redolent of great memories ; the gentle ripple of the placid river, the low voice of the wind among the trees, all murmur the story of patriotism and teach devotion to the nation, which, from "the bridge that arched the flood," set forth upon its onward march. And then, just as Mr. Hoar began to know his birthplace, the town entered upon a new phase, which was to give it a place in literature and in the develop- SENATOR HOAR 177 ment of modern thought as eminent as that which it had already gained in the history of the country. Emerson made Concord his home in 1835, Haw thorne came there to live seven years later, and Thoreau, a native of the town, was growing to man hood in those same years. To Mr. Hoar's inheri tance of public service, of devotion to duty, and of lofty ideals of conduct, to the family influences which surrounded him and which all pointed to work and achievement as the purpose and rewards of life, were added those of the place where he lived, the famous little town which drew from the past lessons of pride and love of country, and offered in the present ex amples of lives given to literature and philosophy, to the study of nature, and to the hopes and destiny of man here and hereafter. Thus highly gifted in his ancestry, in his family, and in his traditions, as well as in the place and the community in which he was to pass the formative years of boyhood and youth, Mr. Hoar was equally fortunate in the time of his birth, which often means so much in the making of a character and career. He was born on the 29th of August, 1826. Super ficially it was one of the most uninteresting periods in the history of Western civilization — dominated in Europe by small men, mean in its hopes, low in its ambitions. But beneath the surface vast forces were germinating and gathering, which in their develop- 12 178 SENATOR HOAR ment were to affect profoundly both Europe and America. The great movement which, beginning with the re volt of the American colonies, had wrought the French Revolution, convulsed Europe, and made Napoleon possible, had spent itself and sunk into ex haustion at Waterloo. The reaction reigned supreme. It was the age of the Metternichs and Castlereaghs, of the Eldons and Liverpools, of Spanish and Neapol itan Bourbons. With a stupidity equalled only by their confidence and insensibility, these men and others like them sought to establish again the old tyrannies, and believed that they could restore a dead system and revive a vanished society. They utterly failed to grasp the fact that where the red-hot plough shares of the French Revolution had passed the old crops could never flourish again. The White Terror swept over France, and a little later the Due De"cazes, the only man who understood the situation, was driven from power because he tried to establish the sane conditions upon which alone the Bourbon mon archy could hope to survive. The Holy Alliance was formed to uphold autocracy and crush out the aspi rations of any people who sought to obtain the sim plest rights and the most moderate freedom. To us, Webster's denunciation of the Holy Alliance sounds like an academic exercise, designed simply to display the orator's power, but to the men of that day it had SENATOR HOAR 179 a most real and immediate meaning. The quiet which Russia and Austria called peace reigned over much wider regions than Warsaw. England cringed and burned incense before the bewigged and padded effigy known as " George the Fourth." France did the bidding of the dullest and most unforgetting of the Bourbons. Any one who ventured to criticise any existing arrangement was held up to scorn and hatred as an enemy of society, driven into exile like Byron and Shelley, or cast into prison like Leigh Hunt. But the great forces which had caused both the American and French revolutions were not dead. They were only gathering strength for a renewed movement, and the first voices of authority which broke the deadly quiet came from England and the United States. When the Holy Alliance stretched out its hand to thrust back the Spanish colonies into bondage Canning declared that he would call in the " New World to redress the balance of the Old," and Monroe announced that in that New World there should be no further European colonization, and. no extension of the monarchical principle. Greece rose against the Turks, and lovers of liberty everywhere went to her aid ; for even the Holy Alliance did not dare to make the Sultan a partner in a combination which professed to be the defender of Christianity as well as of despotic government. When Mr. Hoar was born the Greek revolution 180 SENATOR HOAR was afoot, the first stirrings of the oppressed and divided nationalities had begun, the liberal move ment was again lifting its head and preparing to confront the intrenched, uncompromising forces of the reaction. When he was four years old Concord heard of the fighting in the Paris streets during the three days of July, and of the fall of the Bourbon monarchy. When he was six years old the passage of the Reform Bill brought to England a peaceful rev olution instead of one in arms, and crumbled into dust the system of Castlereagh and Liverpool and Wellington. The change and movement thus manifested were not confined to politics. As Mr. Hoar went back and forth to school in the Concord Academy the new forces were spreading into every field of thought and action. Revolt against conventions in art and literature and against existing arrangements of society was as ardent as that against political oppression, while creeds and dogmas were called in question as unsparingly as the right of the few to govern the many. In England one vested abuse after an other was swept away by the Reform Parliament. It was discovered that Shelley and Byron, the out laws of twenty years before, and Keats, the despised and rejected of critics, were among the greatest of England's poets. Dickens startled the world and won thousands of readers by bringing into his novels SENATOR HOAR 181 whole classes of human beings unknown to polite fic tion since the days of Fielding, and by plunging into the streets of London to find among the poor the downtrodden, and the criminal characters which he made immortal. Carlyle was crying out against venerated shams in his fierce satire on the Philos ophy of Clothes. Macaulay was vindicating the men of the great rebellion to a generation which had been brought up to believe that the Puritans were little better than cutthroats, and that Oliver Cromwell was a common military usurper. The English establishment was shaken by the Oxford movement, which carried Newman to Rome, drove others to the extreme of scepticism, and breathed life into the torpid church, sending its ministers out into the world of men as missionaries and so cial reformers. In France, after the days of July, the romantic movement took full possession of literature, and the Shakespeare whom Voltaire rejected became to the new school the head of the corner. The sacred Alexandrine of the days of Louis XIV gave way to varied measures which found their inspiration in the poets of the Renaissance. The plays of Hugo and Dumas drove the classical drama from the stage; the verse of De Musset, the marvellous novels of Balzac were making a new era in the literature of France. 182 SENATOR HOAR Italy, alive with conspiracies, was stirring from one end to the other with aspirations for national unity and with resistance to the tyranny of Nea politan Bourbons and Austrian Hapsburgs. Hun gary was moving restlessly; Poland was struggling vainly with her fetters. Plans, too, for social re generation were filling the minds of men. St. Simon's works had come into fashion. It was the age of Fourier and Proudhon, of Bentham and Comte. Such were the voices and such the influences which then came across the Atlantic, very powerful and very impressive to the young men of that day, especially to those who were beginning to reflect highly and seriously upon the meaning of life. And all about them in America the same portents were visible. Everything was questioned. Men dreamed dreams and saw visions. There is a broad, an impassable gulf between the deep and beautiful thought, the mysticism and the transcendentalism of Emerson, on the one hand, and the wild vagaries of Miller and of the Second Adventists, or the crude vulgarity of Joseph Smith, on the other; yet were they all mani festations of the religious cravings which had suc ceeded the frigid scepticism of the eighteenth century and the dull torpor of the period of reaction. So, too, Brook Farm and the Oneida Community were widely different attempts to put into practice some of the SENATOR HOAR 183 schemes of social regeneration then swarming in the imagination of men. Literature was uplifting itself to successes never yet reached in the New World. It was the period of Poe and Hawthorne, of Longfellow and Lowell, of Holmes and Whittier. Bancroft and Prescott were already at work ; Motley was beginning his career with romantic novels. And then behind all this new literature, all these social experiments, all these efforts to pierce the mystery of man's exist ence, was slowly rising the agitation against slavery, a dread reality destined to take possession of the country's history. These influences, these voices were everywhere when Mr. Hoar, a vigorous, clever, thoughtful boy of sixteen, left his school at Concord and entered Harvard College in 1842. Brook Farm had been started in the previous year ; the next was to witness Miller's millennium ; he was half way through college when Joseph Smith was killed at Nauvoo. In his third year the long battle which John Quincy Adams had waged for nearly a decade in behalf of the right of petition and against the slave power, and which had stirred to its depths the con science of New England, culminated in the old man's famous victory by the repeal of the " gag rule." As Mr. Hoar drew to manhood the air was full of revolt and questioning in thought, in literature, in religion, in society, and in politics. The dominant note was faith in humanity and in the perfectibility 184 SENATOR HOAR of man. Break up impeding, stifling customs, strike down vested abuses, set men free to think, to write, to work, to vote as they chose and all would be well. To Mr. Hoar, with his strong inheritances, with the powerful influences of his family and home, the spirit of the time came with an irresistible appeal. It was impossible to him to be deaf to its voice or to shut his ears to the poignant cry against oppression which sounded through the world of Europe and America with a fervor and pathos felt only in the great mo ments of human history. But he was the child of the Puritans. Their elemental qualities were in his blood, and the Puritans joined to the highest idealism the practical attributes which had made them in the days of their glory the greatest soldiers and statesmen in Europe. Macaulay, in a well-known passage, says of Cromwell's soldiers that — " They moved to victory with the precision of machines, while burning with the wildest fanaticism of Crusaders." Mr. Hoar, by nature, by inheritance, by every influence of time and place, an idealist, had also the strong good sense, the practical shrewdness, and the reverence for law and precedent which were likewise part of his birthright. He passed through college with distinction, went to his brother's office for a year, to the Harvard Law School, and thence, in 1849, to Worcester, where he cast in his fortune SENATOR HOAR 185 with the young and growing city which ever after was to be his home. But his personal fortunes did not absorb him. He looked out on the world about him with an eager gaze. As he said in his old age, " Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive." The profound conviction that every man had a public duty was strong within him. The spirit of the time was on him. He would fain do his share. When the liberal movement culminated in Europe in 1848 he was deeply stirred. When, a little later, Kossuth came to the United States the impression then made upon him by the cause and the elo quence of the great Hungarian sank into his heart and was never effaced. He, too, meant to do his part, however humble, in the work of his time. But he did not content himself with barren sympathy for the oppressed beyond the seas, nor did he give himself to any of the vague schemes then prevalent for the re generation of society. He turned to the question nearest at hand, to the work of redressing what he believed to be the wrong and the sin of his native land — human slavery. He did not join the aboli tionists, but set himself to fight slavery in the effect ive manner which finally brought its downfall — by organized political effort within the precincts of the Constitution and the laws. Mr. Hoar had been bred a Whig. His first vote 186 SENATOR HOAR in 1847 was for a Whig governor, and Daniel Webster was the close friend of his father and brother. He had been brought up' on Webster's reply to Hayne, and as a college student he had heard him deliver the second Bunker Hill oration. In that day the young Whigs of Massachusetts looked up to Webster with an adoring admiration. They — " followed him, honored him, Lived in his mild and magnificent eye, Learned his great language, caught his clear accents, Made him their pattern to live and to die." But the great command of conscience to Mr Hoar was to resist slavery, and the test of his faith was at hand. He was to break from the dominant party of the State. Webster was to become to him in very truth " The Lost Leader." He was to join with those who called the great Senator " Ichabod," and not until he himself was old was he to revert to his young admiration of that splendid intellect and that unrivalled eloquence. But when the ordeal came there was no shrinking. Charles Allen, of Wor cester, amid derisive shouts, announced at Phila delphia, after the nomination of General Taylor, that the Whig party was dissolved, and Mr. Hoar went with him. After the delegates had returned to Massachusetts Mr Hoar rendered his first political service by addressing and mailing a circular drawn by his elder brother, E. Rockwood Hoar, which invited SENATOR HOAR 187 the antislavery Whigs to meet at Worcester and take steps to oppose the election of either General Taylor or of General Cass, the Democratic candidate. The convention was held in Worcester on June 28, became the Free Soil party, and gave their support to Van Buren. The result of the movement nation ally was to defeat the Democrats in New York, as the Liberty party had turned the scales against Clay four years before. In Massachusetts the Worcester convention marked the appearance of a group of young men who were to form a new school of states men, and who were destined to control Massachusetts and to play a leading part in guiding the fortunes of the nation for forty years to come. The Federalists, who had formed and organized the Government of the United States, and who were essentially constructive statesmen of great power, had followed the men of the Revolution, and in turn had been succeeded by the Whigs. Under the lead of Webster and Choate, of Everett and Winthrop, and others hardly less distinguished, the Whigs con trolled Massachusetts for a generation. They never had seemed stronger, despite Webster's personal dis content, than on the eve of Taylor's election. But it was to be their last triumph. The men, mostly young, who gathered at Worcester were to displace them and themselves take and hold power for nearly forty years. There at Worcester, with Samuel Hoar, 188 SENATOR HOAR one of the pioneers of earlier days, presiding, were assembled the men of the future. Charles Sumner, Charles Francis Adams, Henry Wilson, E. R. Hoar, Charles Allen, and Richard H. Dana spoke to the convention, while Palfrey the historian, John A. Andrew, then a young, unknown lawyer, and Anson Burlingame, although not present, joined with and supported them. These were not only new men, but they represented a new political school. The Whigs, inheriting the Federalist doctrines of liberal construc tion, were essentially an economic party, devoted to the industrial and material development of the coun try. The men who supplanted them were primarily and above all human-rights statesmen, as befitted the time. To them the rights of humanity came first, and all economic questions second. With these men and with this school Mr. Hoar united himself heart and soul, swayed by the sternest and strong est convictions, for which no sacrifice was too great, no labors too hard. He was perhaps the youngest of the men destined to high distinction who met in Worcester in 1848 ; he was certainly the last great survivor of this remarkable group in the largest fields of national statesmanship. Thus, then, was the beginning made. The next step was an unexpected one. There was a Free-soil meeting in Worcester in 1850. Charles Allen, who was to speak, was late, and a cry went up from the SENATOR HOAR 189 impatient audience of " Hoar ! " " Hoar ! " Neither father nor brother was present, so Mr. Hoar took the platform, and speaking from the fulness of his heart and with the fervor of his cause, won a success which put him in demand for meetings throughout the county. The following year he was made chair man of the Free-Soil county committee, proved him self a most efficient organizer, and carried all but six of the fifty-two towns in the county. Then, greatly to his surprise, he was nominated for the legislature. He accepted, was elected, became the leader of the Free Soilers in the house, and distinguished himself there by his advocacy of the factory acts limiting the hours of labor, in which Massachusetts was the pio neer. He retired at the end of the year for which he had been chosen. In 1857 he was nominated, again unexpectedly, to the State senate, was elected, served one year with marked distinction, and then retired, as he had from the house. He had, indeed, no desire for office. On coming to Worcester he had been offered a partnership by Emory Washburn, soon after governor of the State, and later a professor in the Harvard Law School. This connection brought him at once into one of the largest practices in the county, and his partner's election to the governor ship, which soon followed, gave him entire responsi bility for the business of the firm. He was not only very busy, but he was devoted to his profession, for 190 SENATOR HOAR he possessed legal abilities of the highest order. Yet he was never too busy to give his services freely to the great cause of human rights, which he had so much at heart. He labored unceasingly in his resistance to slavery and in building up the Republi can party, which during that time was fast rising into power, both in State and nation. It is impossible to follow him through those event ful years when freedom and slavery clinched in a death struggle far out in Kansas, and the black clouds of Civil War were gathering darkly on the horizon. But there are two incidents of that period which illustrate Mr. Hoar's character so strongly that they can not be passed over. In 1854 the Know Nothing movement broke out with all the force of a tropical hurricane. To men painfully strug gling to bring a great cause to judgment against the resistance of the old and dominant parties it offered many temptations. The new party was overwhelm ing in its strength ; it evidently could not last indefi nitely ; it was sound on the slavery question, and it promised to act as a powerful solvent and dis integrate the old organizations which every Free Soiler rightly thought was vital to their own success. But Mr. Hoar, unmoved by the storm, believing in freedom of conscience as he believed in political free dom, set himself in stern opposition to a party which rested on the principle of discrimination and ostra- senator hoar 191 cism against all men of a certain race or of a given creed. No public clamor then or ever was able to sway him from those ideals of faith and conduct which were the guiding stars of his life. The other incident was widely different and even more characteristic. If there was one thing more hateful to Mr. Hoar than another in those days, it was the return of runaway slaves to the South by the authorities of Northern States. Massachusetts was the scene of some of the worst examples of this bad business, and the wrath of the people was deeply stirred. In 1854 a deputy marshal connected with the work of slave catching arrived in Worcester. His presence became known, and an angry mob, ut terly uncontrollable by the little police force of the town, gathered about the hotel. The man was in imminent danger and stricken with terror. No one loathed a slave catcher more than Mr. Hoar, but the idealist gave way to the lover of law and ordered lib erty. Mr. Hoar went out and addressed the crowd, then gave his arm to the terrified man, walked with him down the street, surrounded by a few friends, and in this way got him to the station and out of the town, bruised by blows but alive and in safety. So the years of that memorable time went by. Mr. Hoar worked diligentty in his profession, rising to the front rank of the bar and laboring in season and out of season in support of the Republican party 192 SENATOR HOAR and of the administration of Lincoln when the Civil War came. He had neither thought nor desire for public life or public office. He wished to succeed in his profession, to live quietly at home among his books, and he cherished the modest ambition of one day becoming a judge of the supreme court of the State. But it was ordered otherwise. In 1868 Mr. Hoar went to Europe, worn out by hard work at his profession. There were at the moment many candidates for the nomination for Congress in the Worcester district, and most of them were strong and able men. In this condition of affairs Mr. Hoar con sented to let some of his friends bring his name for ward, and then took his departure for Europe. Travel and rest brought back his health, so that he returned home eager for his profession, and regretting that he had allowed his name to be suggested as that of a candidate for any position, only to find himself nomi nated for Congress on the first ballot taken in the convention. Thus his life in Washington began, with no desire or expectation on his part of a service of more than one or two terms. At the end of his sec ond term he announced his intention of withdrawing, and was persuaded to reconsider it. The fourth time he was obliged again to withdraw a refusal to run, because it was a year of peril to the party. The next time the refusal was final, and his successor was nom inated and elected. SENATOR HOAR 193 His eight years in the House were crowded with work. He began with a very moderate estimate of his own capacities, but his power of eloquent speech and his knowledge and ability as a lawyer soon brought him forward. When Mr. S. S. Cox of New York sneered at him one day, in debate, say ing that "Massachusetts had not sent her Hector to the field," and Mr. Hoar rephed that there was no need to send Hector to meet Thersites, the House rec ognized a power of quick and sharp retort, of which it was well to beware. When Mr. Hoar entered the House Congress was engaged in completing the work which by the war and the emancipation of the slaves had marked the triumph of that mighty struggle for human freedom and National Union to which he had given his youth and early manhood. He was therefore absorbed in the questions raised by the reconstruction policy, which involved the future of the race he had hoped to free ; and he labored, especially in the interests of that race, for the establishment of national education, which, after years of effort constantly renewed, ultimately failed of accomplishment. But the Civil War, besides its great triumphs of a Union preserved and a race set free, had left also the inevitable legacy of such con vulsions, great social and pohtical demoralization in all parts of the country and in all phases of public and private life. Political patronage ran riot among the is 194 SENATOR HOAR offices and made Mr. Hoar one of the most ardent, as he was one of the earliest and most effective, of civil- service reformers. Unhappily, however, the poison of the time penetrated much higher in the body poli tic than the small routine offices so sorely misused under the "spoils system." It was an era when Cab inet officers and party leaders were touched and smirched, and when one Congressional investigation followed hard upon another. Mr. Hoar's keenness as a lawyer, his power as a cross-examiner, and his fearless and indignant honesty caused the House to turn to him for this work of punishment and purifi cation, which was as painful as it was necessary. He was a member of the committee to investigate the Freedmen's Bureau, and took part in the report which exonerated General Howard. He was one of the House managers in the Belknap trial and the leading member of the committee which investigated the Union Pacific Railroad and the scandals of the Cre'dit Mobilier. But his greatest and most distinguished service came to him just as his career in the House was drawing to a close. The demoralization of the war, the work ing out of reconstruction, the abnormal conditions which war and reconstruction together had produced, culminated in 1876 in a disputed Presidential election. Into the events of that agitated winter it is needless to enter. The situation was in the highest degree SENATOR HOAR 195 perilous, and every one recognized that a grave nisis bad arisen in tlie history of tlu; republic. Finally an electoral tribunal was established wliich settled the controversy and removed the danger. Upon that tri bunal Mi-. Hoar was placed by a Democratic Speaker as one of the representatives of the House, and this appointment alone was sufficient to fix his place as one of the political leaders of the country. With tbis great and responsible task accomplished, his career in the House drew to a close. Yet even while he was thus engaged a new and larger service came to him by bis election to the Senate. He was then, as when he entered the House, without desire for public office. He still longed to return to his library and his profes sion, and allow the pleasures and honors as well as the trials of public life to pass by. But again it was not to be. There was at that time a strong and deep- rooted opposition to the dominance of General Butler in the politics of Massachusetts, and this opposition, determined to have a Senator in full sympathy with them, took up Mr. Hoar as their candidate and, without effort or even desire on his part, elected him. So he passed from the House to the Senate. He entered the Senate a leader, and a leader he remained to the end, ever growing in strength and influence, ever filling a larger place, until he was recognized everywhere as one of the first of American statesmen, until his words were listened to by all his countrymen, 196 SENATOR HOAR until there gathered about him the warm light of history, and men saw when he rose in debate — " The past of the nation in battle there." Neither time nor the occasion permits me to trade in fitting detail that long and fine career in the Sen ate. Mr. Hoar was a great Senator. He brought to his service an intense patriotism, a trained intellect, wide learning, a profound knowledge of law and his tory, an unsullied character, and great abilities. All these gifts he expended without measure or stint in his country's service. His industry was extraordinary and unceasing. Whatever he spared in life, he never spared himself in the performance of his public duty. The laws settling the Presidential succession, provid ing for the count of the electoral vote, for the final repeal of the tenure-of-office act, for a uniform system of bankruptcy, are among the more conspicuous mon uments of his industry and energy and of his power as a constructive lawmaker and statesman. Nor did his activity cease with the work of the Senate. He took a large part in public discussion in every polit ical campaign and in the politics of his own State. He was a delegate to four national conventions, a leading figure in all, and in 1880 he presided at Chi cago, with extraordinary power, tact, and success, over the stormiest convention, with a single exception, known to our history. In the Senate he was a great debater, quick in SENATOR HOAR 197 retort, with all the resources of his mind always at his command. Although he had no marked gifts of presence, voice, or delivery, he was none the less a master of brilliant and powerful speech. His style was noble and dignified, with a touch of the stateli- ness of the eighteenth century, rich in imagery and allusion, full of the apt quotations which an unerring taste, an iron memory, and the widest reading com bined to furnish. When he was roused, when his imagination was fired, his feelings engaged, or his indignation awakened, he was capable of a passionate eloquence which touched every chord of emotion and left no one who listened to him unmoved. At these moments, whether he spoke on the floor of the Senate, in the presence of a great popular audience, or in the intimacy of private conversation, the words glowed, the sentences marshalled themselves in stately se quence, and the idealism which was the dominant note of his life was heard sounding clear and strong above and beyond all pleas of interest or expediency. Thus we come back to the hght which shone upon his early years and which never failed him to the last. Mr. Hoar was born in the period of revolt. He joined the human-rights statesmen of that remark able time. He shared in their labors ; he saw the once unpopular cause rise up victorious through the stress and storm of battle ; he beheld the visions of his youth change into realities, and his country 198 SENATOR HOAR emerge triumphant from the awful ordeal of civil war. He came into public life in season to join in completing the work of the men who had given them selves up to the destruction of slavery and the preser vation of the Union. But even then the mighty emotions of those terrible years were beginning to subside. The seas which had been running moun tain high were going down, the tempestuous winds before which the ship of state had driven for long years were dropping and bid fair to come out from another quarter. The country was passing into a new political period. Questions involving the rights of men and the wrongs of humanity gave place throughout the world of Western civilization to those of trade and commerce, of tariffs and currency and finance. The world returned to a period when the issues were economic, industrial, and commercial, and when the vast organizations of capital and labor opened up a new series of problems. In the United States, as the issues of the war faded into the distance and material prosperity was carried to heights undreamed of before, the nation turned inevitably from the completed conquest of its own continent to expansion beyond its borders, and to the assertion of a control and authority which were its due among the great powers of the earth. Many years before Mr. Hoar's death the change was complete, and he found himself a leader in the midst of a generation SENATOR HOAR 199 whose interests and whose conceptions differed widely from those to which his own life had been devoted. He took up the new questions with the same zeal and the same power which he had brought to the old. He made himself master of the tariff, aided thereto by his love of the great industrial community which he had seen grow up about him at Worcester, and whose success he attributed to the policy of protec tion. In the same way he studied, reflected upon, and discussed problems of banking and currency and the conflict of standards. But at bottom all these questions were alien to him. However thoroughly he mastered them, however wisely he dealt with them, they never touched his heart. His inheritance of sound sense, of practical intelligence, of reverence for precedent, rendered it easy for him to appreciate and understand the value and importance of matters involving industrial prosperity and the growth of trade ; but the underlying idealism made these ques tions at the same time seem wholly inferior to the nobler aspirations upon which his youth was nur tured. An idealist he was born, and so he lived and died. Neither scepticism nor experience could chill the hopes or dim the visions of his young manhood. He was imbued with the profound and beautiful faith in humanity characteristic of that earlier time. Tie lived to find himself in an atmosphere where this faith was invaded by doubt and questioning. 200 SENATOR HOAR How much that great movement, driven forward by faith in humanity and hope for its future, to which Mr. Hoar gave all that was best of his youth and manhood, accomplished, it is not easy to esti mate. It is enough to say that the results were vast in their beneficence. But the wrongs and burdens which it swept away were known by the sharp experience of actual suffering only to the generations which had endured them. The succeeding genera tion had never felt the hardships and oppressions which had perished, but were keenly alive to all the evils which survived. Hence the inevitable tendency to doubt the worth of any great movement which has come, done its work, and gone, asserted itself; for there are no social or political panaceas, although mankind never ceases to look for them and expect them. To a period of enthusiasm, aspiration, and faith, resulting in great changes and in great benefits to humanity, a period of scepticism and reaction almost always succeeds. The work goes on, what has been accomplished is made sure, much good is done, but the spirit of the age alters. The new generation inclined to the view of science and history that there were ineradicable differences between the races of men. They questioned the theory that opportunity was equivalent to capacity ; they refused to believe that a people totally ignorant or to whom freedom and self-government were un- SENATOR hoar 201 known could carry on successfully the complex machinery of constitutional and representative gov ernment which it had cost the English-speaking peoples centuries of effort and training to bring forth. To expect this seemed to the new time as unreasonable as to believe that an Ashantee could regulate a watch because it was given to him, or an Aruwhimi dwarf run a locomotive to anything but wreck because the lever was placed in his hands. Through all these shifting phases of thought and feeling Mr. Hoar remained unchanged, a man of '48, his ideals unaltered, his faith in the quick per fectibility of humanity unshaken, his hopes for the world of men still glowing with the warmth and light of eager youth. And when all is said, when science and scepticism and experience have spoken their last word, the ideals so cherished by him still stand as noble and inspiring as the faith upon which they rested was beautiful and complete. The man who steered his course by stars like these could never lose his reckoning or be at variance with the eternal verities which alone can lift us from the earth. His own experience, moreover, although mingled with disappointments, as is the common fate of man, could but confirm his faith and hope. He had dreamed dreams and seen visions in his youth, but he had beheld those dreams turn to reality and those visions come true in a manner 202 SENATOR HOAR rarely vouchsafed. He had seen the slave freed and the Union saved. He had shared with his country men in their marvellous onward march to prosperity and power. He had seen rise up from the revolt of 1848 a free and united Italy, a united Germany, a French republic, a free Hungary. He would have been a cynic and a sceptic indeed if he had wavered in his early faith. And so his ideals and the tri umphs they had won made him full of confidence and courage, even to the end. He, too, could say: " I find earth not gray, but rosy ; Heaven not grim, but fair of hue. Do I stoop ? I pluck a posy. Do I stand and stare ? All 's blue." This splendid optimism, this lofty faith in his country, this belief in humanity never failed. They were with him in his boyhood ; they were still with him, radiant and vital, in the days when he lay dying in Worcester. It was all part of his philosophy of life, knit in the fibres of his being and pervading his most sacred beliefs. To him the man who could not recognize the limitations of life on earth was as com plete a failure as the man who, knowing the limita tions, sat down content among them. To him the man who knew the limitations but ever strove toward the perfection he could not reach was the victorious soul, the true servant of God. As Browning wrote in his old age, he, too, might have said that he was — SENATOR HOAR 203 " One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake." He had an unusually fortunate and happy life. He was fortunate in the knowledge of great work done, happy in never knowing idleness or the distress of wondering painfully how to pass away the short time allowed to us here, or the miserable craving for constant excitement so marked at the present mo ment. His vacations were filled, as were his work ing hours. He travelled wisely and well, and the Old World spoke to him as she does to those only who know her history. He was a lover of nature. He rejoiced in the beauties of hill and stream and for est, of sea and sky, and delighted to watch the flight of the eagle or listen to the note of the song-birds, in whose name he wrote the charming petition which brought them the protection of the law in Massachusetts. He was a scholar in the wide, generous, unspecial- ized sense of an older and more leisurely age than this. His Greek and Latin went with him through life, and the great poets and dramatists and historians of antiquity were his familiar friends. His knowl edge of English literature was extraordinary, — as extensive as it was minute and curious. His books 204 SENATOR HOAR were his companions, an unfailing resource, a pleas ure never exhausted. To him history had unrolled her ample page, and as antiquarian and collector he had all the joys which come from research and from the gradual acquisition of those treasures which appeal to the literary, the historic, or the artistic sense. Any man of well-balanced mind who is wedded to high ideals is sure to possess a great loyalty of soul. It is from such men that martyrs have been made, — the true martyrs whose blood has been the seed of churches and across whose fallen bodies great causes have marched to triumph. But it is also from men of this stamp, whose minds are warped, that the fanatics, the unreasoning and mischievous extremists likewise come, those who at best only ring an alarm bell, and who usually are thoroughly harmful, not only to the especial cause they cham pion, but to all other good causes, which they en tirely overlook. There is, therefore, no slight peril in the temperament of the thorough-going idealist, unless it is balanced and controlled, as it was with Mr. Hoar, by sound sense and by an appreciation of the relation which the idealist and his ideals bear to the universe at large. It was said of a brilliant contemporary of Mr. Hoar, like him an idealist, that " if he had lived in the Middle Ages, he would have gone to the stake for a principle under a misappre hension as to the facts." Mr. Hoar would have gone SENATOR HOAR 205 to the stake socially, politically, and physically rather than yield certain profound beliefs. But if he had made this last great sacrifice, he would have known just what he was doing, and would have been under no misapprehension as to the facts. Loyalty to his ideals, moreover, was not his only loyalty. He was by nature a partisan ; he could not hold faiths or take sides lightly or indifferently. He loved the great party he had helped to found in that strongest of all ways, with an open-eyed and not a blind affection. He more than once differed from his party ; he sometimes opposed it on particular measures ; he once, at least, parted with it on a great national issue ; but he never would leave it ; he never faltered in its support. He believed that two great parties were essential bulwarks of responsi ble representative government. He felt that a man could do far more and far better by remaining in his party, even if he thought it wrong in some one par ticular, than by going outside and becoming a mere snarling critic. No man respected and cherished genuine independence more than he, and no man more heartily despised those who gave to hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness the honored name of independence. Nothing could tear him from the great organization he had helped and labored to build up. If any one had ever tried to drive him out, he would have spoken to Republicans as Webster 206 SENATOR HOAR did to the Whigs in 1842 at Faneuil Hall, when he said : "lama Whig ; I always have been a Whig, and I always will be one ; and if there are any who would turn me out of the pale of that communion, let them see who will get out first." Mr. Hoar's high ideals and unswerving loyalty were not confined to public life and public duty. He was not of those who raise lofty standards in the eyes of the world and then lower and forget them in the privacy of domestic life and in the beaten way of friendship. He was brought up in days when " plain living and high thinking" was not the mere phrase which it has since become, but a real belief, and to that belief he always adhered. He cast away a large income and all hope of wealth for the sake of the public service. He had no faculty for saving money and no desire to attempt it. If he made a large fee in an occasional case, if his pen brought him a handsome reward, it all went in books or pictures, in the hospitality he loved to exercise, and in the most private charities, always far beyond his means. He once said that he had been more than thirty years in public life and all he had accumulated was a few books. But there was no bitterness, no repining in the words. He respected riches wisely used for the public good, but he was as free from vulgar admiration as he was from the equally vulgar SENATOR HOAR 207 hatred of wealth. He was, in a word, simply in different to the possession of money — a fine attitude, never more worthy of consideration and respect than in these very days. His love for his native land was an intense and mastermg emotion. His country rose before his imagination hke some goddess of the infant world, the light of hope shining in her luminous eyes, a sweet smile upon her lips, the sword of justice in her fearless hand, her broad shield stretched out to shelter the desolate and oppressed. Before that gra cious vision he bowed his head in homage. His family and friends — Massachusetts, Concord, Har vard College, Worcester — he loved and served them all with a passion of affection in wliich there was no shadow of turning. His pride in the Senate, in its history and its power, and his affection for it were only excelled by his jealous care for its dignity and its prerogatives. He might at times criticise its actions, but he would permit no one else to do so or to reflect in his presence upon what he regarded as the greatest legislative body ever devised by man, wherem the ambassadors of sovereign States met together to guard and to advance the fortunes of the republic. Beneath a manner sometimes cold, sometimes absent-minded, often indifferent, beat one of the tenderest hearts in the world. He had known many men in his day — all the great pubhc men, 208 SENATOR HOAR all the men of science, of letters, or of art — and his judgments upon them were just and generous, yet at the same time shrewd, keen, and by no means over-lenient. But when he had once taken a man within the circle of his affections he idealized him immediately ; there was thenceforth no fleck or spot upon him, and he would describe him in glow ing phrases which depicted a being whom the world perhaps did not know or could not recognize. It was easy to smile at some of his estimates of those who were dear to him, but we can only bow in reve rence before the love and loyalty which inspired the thought — for these are beautiful qualities which can never go out of fashion. He was a fearless and ready fighter ; he struck hard and did not flinch from the return. His tongue could utter bitter words, which fell like a whip and left a scar behind, but he cherished no resentments, he nursed no grudges. As the shadows lengthened he softened, and grew ever gentler and more tolerant. The caustic wit gave place more and more to the kindly humor which was one of his greatest attributes. In the latter days he would fain have been at peace with all men, and he sought only for that which was good in every one about him. He died in the fulness of years, with his affections unchilled, his fine intellect undimmed. He met death with the calm courage with which he had faced the trials of life. SENATOR HOAR 209 "He took his shrivelled hand without resistance, And found him smiling as his step drew near." So he passed from among us, a man of noble character and high abilities. He did a great work ; he lived to the full the life of his time. He was a great Senator — a great public servant laboring to aid his fellow-men and to uplift humanity. " He has fought a good fight, he has finished his course, he has kept the faith." May we not say of him, in the words of one of the poets who inspired his imagination, in the noble language he so dearly loved : Koivov to8' a^os Tra.cn iroAtTats *HX#ev dcAirrajs- IIoAAuv SaKpvcov etrrat ttitwXos Tiov -yap /xeyaAiov aJ;ioTrev6ciii}p.a.i /xaWov ko.te)(Ovctiv. On all this folk, both low and high, A grief has fallen beyond men's fears. There cometh a throbbing of many tears, A sound as of waters falling ; For when great men die, A mighty name and a bitter cry Rise up from a nation calling. Note. — This English version of the last chorus in the Hippolytus of Euripides is taken from the remarkable and very beautiful transla tion of that tragedy by Professor Murray. U AMERICAN HISTORY1 A little more than thirty years ago a boy could enter Harvard College and after four years of study graduate with the highest honors without knowing of the existence of the Declaration of Inde pendence or when the Constitution of the United States was framed. And what was true of Harvard was true of other universities and colleges. Ameri can history, although sometimes imperfectly taught, was not included in the scheme of the higher educa tion. Boys entering college were required to know something of the " glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome," but they were permitted to remain in complete ignorance of all that related to the history of their own country. During the four years of the college course they had opportunity to study the history of England and Europe, but never to learn aught of the United States. This condition of education, which seems so melancholy now, was really the result of a general attitude of mind which was even then passing away, but which had once been predominant. The usual opinion dur- 1 I am indebted to the kindness of the editor and publishers of the Reader Magazine for permission to reprint this article here. AMERICAN HISTORY 211 ing the first half of the nineteenth century seems to have been that there was no American history * worth telling, apart from the adventures of the earliest settlers, and the events of the Revolution, which were both connected so closely with the history of Europe that they might fairly be deemed of some importance. Among the most highly educated por tion of the community, the ignorance was, compara tively speaking, densest, and for the very obvious reason that the history of democracy, a new thing then in the world, was entirely different in its attri butes and conditions from the history with which everybody had been familiar for many centuries. To conceive of a history destitute of kings and nobles and traditions, unillumined by the splendor of a court, without those particular lights and shades which the contrast of ranks alone can give, was very difficult, because it involved a new idea. Time is always required to enable people to grasp the propo sition that because a thing is different from that to which they have been accustomed it is not necessarily inferior. Habit and prescription, although in their very nature never fully realized nor perfectly under stood, are forces of enormous power among men and nations. American history had also to contend with femi nine indifference, and women influence largely the success of historic writings, as they do that of other 212 AMERICAN HISTORY books. Macaulay knew precisely the test of popu larity and wide circulation when he said that he wanted his history to take the place of the novel on every young lady's table. To suppose, therefore, that women would easily or at once take interest in the seemingly stern, gray story of State building and war, of law-making and constitutions, stripped, as it was in America, of all the glitter and romance and refinement which clung about the history of monarchies and empires to which they had always been accustomed, would have been to expect too much. " Fishers and choppers and ploughmen " constituting a State in Emerson's stirring verse, were very fine, but they seemed unlikely to have a history as interesting or to leave memoirs as entertaining as those of the Courts of St. James and Versailles, which educated Americans were wont to read. The truth was that the higher education to which I have al luded was defective in regard to the history of the United States simply because that history during the first half of the nineteenth century had neither audience nor demand either at home or abroad. Here and there a state historical society or local antiquarians or the descendants of some of the great men who fought the Revolution and made the Con stitution collected material, gathered traditions, or edited* letters and memoirs, but these efforts were commonly regarded as amiable idiosyncracies, quite AMERICAN HISTORY 213 harmless but not designed for general use. Nothing indeed illustrates better this attitude of mind toward American history at that time than the fact that Prescott and Motley devoted their brilliant talents to Spain and Holland at a period which had no con nection, or at best a very slight one, with the vast region which was one day to be the United States. The truth was that educated people did not think, as a rule, that the United States had any history worth considering, just as they likewise thought that, while we undoubtedly had public men, they were not to be seriously considered as statesmen in the sense of European Mmisters or English Parliamentary leaders. They were unable to realize that the organ ization of a nation and the development of a new country by a great democracy demanded power, ability, and statesmanship of a very high and strong variety. It was all different, it was new, and it was not therefore really important, tried by the fashions and the standards of the Old World. The colonial habit of mind died hard in regard to American history, as it did in many other ways. Yet even then there were a few men who saw what a field was open to the historian in the story of the United States and of the colonies out of which the United States had been developed. Richard Hildreth, working only on public documents, news papers, printed books, pamphlets and Congressional 214 AMERICAN HISTORY debates, produced his history of the United States from the earliest settlements down to his own time. The volumes are dry, without literary quality or charm, almost unreadable indeed as literature, and yet Hildreth's work, considering his material, is very accurate and remains as a comprehensive book of reference more valuable than many which have suc ceeded it. Mr. Bancroft attained to much wider success and to greater fame. He had the advantage of an unoccupied field to cultivate and a smaller and less hurried world to appeal to than is the case to-day and so his labors achieved a success impossible now to much better work. He brought to his task the best education and training which the universities of the United States and of Germany could afford, a keen mind, vigorous abilities, an intense love of country and an unwearied industry. His history is diffuse ; there is an inordinate space given to the affairs of contemporary Europe, and in the earliest edition there was much turgid writing in praise of the principles of democracy and the rights of man, as expounded by Rousseau and Jefferson. But Mr. Bancroft rendered, nevertheless, an incalculable ser vice to American history by the vast mass of original matter which he brought to light and use and by the manner in which he gave unity and co-ordination to the history of the colonies. So wide indeed were his researches and so extensive was his material that AMERICAN HISTORY 215 even his long and industrious life did not enable him to get beyond the period of the Confederation. To the same time we owe Mr. Palfrey's history of New England, a work of the highest and most admirable scholarship, of the best type of historical work, but somewhat dry in narration and necessarily covering only one group of the colonies which in the future were to form United States. In Francis Parkman, of a later generation than Bancroft or Palfrey, American literature found its first really great historian, one fairly entitled to a place in the small group from which Thucydides, Tacitus, and Gibbon stand forth as the pre-eminent and hitherto unrivalled exemplars. Mr. Parkman not only had untiring industry and the capacity for sifting evidence and marshalling facts, drawn in many cases from the dark corners of forgotten manuscripts, but he possessed also the power of compression, the reserved but vigorous style, and above all the imagi nation, which enabled him to make history live and have a meaning, without which life and meaning it will surely die and be buried among incoherent annals and scientific catalogues of facts. In a series of vol umes he gradually drew a noble picture of the mighty struggle of races, which ended in giving North America to the English-speaking people. The drama spread over a continent, the actors who flitted across the vast stage were Indians and Jesuits, courtiers of 216 AMERICAN HISTORY Louis XIV, and sober Puritans of New England, French adventurers and sturdy Dutch traders from the Mohawk and the Hudson, all with the wilderness as a background and a future beyond imagination as the prize for which they blindly strove. Parkman made the world comprehend not only that American history was important, but that if it did not have the precise kind of picturesqueness to which that of Europe had accustomed us, it had a picturesqueness of its own, a light and color and a dramatic force not less impressive because they differed in kind from what had gone before. Parkman began his work under the old conditions of indifference and inattention. When he brought his brilliant volumes to an end those conditions had entirely changed. The strong department of Ameri can History which has grown up at Cambridge in the last thirty years of the century is merely a sign of the complete alteration in opinion and feeling which had taken place not only in the universi ties and in the schools, but in the public mind after the close of the Civil War. Nothmg in our earlier days, for example, showed more conclusively the national indifference to the past than the reckless destruction of landmarks and historic buildings. Now every effort is made to preserve all that remains which gives to past events a local habitation. Amer icans have learned, too late unfortunately in many AMERICAN HISTORY 217 instances, that the fields and the woods, the buildings and the streets, which have been the scenes of mem orable events, have not only inestimable worth his torically and sentimentally, but that they are also pecuniarily valuable, to take a very practical view, to any community lucky enough to possess them. In the same way books ranging from the most ex tensive histories to antiquarian monographs, rich in minute learning upon some single incident, have mul- ' tiplied almost beyond belief. Biographies, compila tions of essays by specialists, general histories and manuals of all sorts have been duplicated and re duplicated until we seem in danger almost of losing sight of the city on account of the number of houses which cut off our view. The whole of our history, from the first voyage of Columbus to the last admin istration at Washington, has been examined and written about in some fashion. In the old days the period between the landings at Plymouth and James town and the Declaration of Independence, and that which stretched forward from the surrender at York- town might have been labelled, like portions of the maps so familiar a generation ago, the " Great Ameri can Desert." And people dwelt contented with their " Desert " and their ignorance. But the settlements have spread, and as they spread have subdued and conquered. " The Great American Desert " is no more; irrigation threatens its last stronghold, and 218 AMERICAN HISTORY the unopened tracts of the history of the United States have all been roamed over and explored. Most of the exploration and examination has resulted merely in what is so dear to the purely scientific historian, vast masses of catalogued facts where hterature is excluded, and one fact is just as good and important as any other, simply because it is a fact. These heaps of information, some of it valueless, much of it undigested, still only partly assorted, are the neces sary conditions for real history written by one capable and understanding man, endowed with the historic imagination as distinct from the huge aggregations of special articles, immensely valuable as books of reference, but having the same relation to history in its highest sense that the English dictionary bears to the plays of Shakespeare or the verse of Milton. Out of this mass of material thus fervently and indiscrim inately collected in the last forty years have come two histories of the highest type in scholarship, research, and original thought, — Mr. Henry Adams's " History of the United States During the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison," and that of Mr. Rhodes cov ering tjie period subsequent to the Compromise of 1850. In addition to these we have many excel lent biographies and monographs, as well as some admirable presentations and brilliant pictures of cer tain epochs and movements like those of Mr. Fiske and Mr. McMaster, which are read by every one and AMERICAN HISTORY 219 which are even more necessary than the highly scien tific catalogues, stripped according to rule of all beauty of style and all human interest, and which are read by no one. To have brought so much pure gold as this out of the incalculable mass of " huddling silver little worth " is highly creditable to American letters and American history. It is an excellent record, not bettered elsewhere in the same period either in form or in the net contribution to human knowledge, and to the comprehension of the meaning of man upon earth. Historians and learned societies, antiquarians, and biographers, however, cannot make history unless the material for it exists, nor can they by their efforts alone develop from nothing a real interest in it among the people at large. The popular feeling which creates the interest and manifests itself, not merely in the sale of histories and biographies, but by the enthusiasm shown in the celebration of local anni versaries, in numberless addresses, usually forgotten at once, except in the town or village commemorated, in the passion for genealogies and family histories, in the preservation and erection of monuments, springs from causes deep down among the people themselves. This activity and this earnestness in all things pertaining to the past are sound and whole some, and also full of meaning. It is a commonplace to say that a people which cares nothing for its past 220 AMERICAN HISTORY has no present and deserves no future. But it is not quite so obvious that widespread interest in history is the proof of national consciousness and of the abid ing sense that a nation has come to its place in the world. While we looked to Europe for all our inspiration in art and letters, in thought and in politics, it was not to be expected that we should consider our own doings of much consequence or worthy of a serious place in history. Nor were those doings in them selves of much importance, for colonies are mere appendages, and what chiefly concerns mankind is the tree, not the dependent shoots which push up from spreading roots. The history of the American colonies intrinsically was not very important nor, apart from a certain air of adventure and rude pic turesqueness, very generally interesting. But when the colonies became an independent State the case altered at once. It became important to know and understand the origin and the past of the new nation in all its details. The ways of life, the habits and customs of the tribes which wandered in the forests of Scandinavia and Germany are not in themselves very valuable, and are certainly not entertaining. But research exhausts itself, and wisely, too, in the effort to find the minutest facts which shall throw light upon the origin and history of the people from whom have come not only the dominant races of AMERICAN HISTORY 221 Western Europe, but the Western civilization which has crossed oceans and subjugated continents. To take a concrete example, the island of Jamaica, now and always a dependent colony, is historically negli gible, but the little State of Rhode Island deserves the careful attention of the historian because of her part and influence in founding, making, and guiding a nation. Many years, however, passed before we emerged wholly from the colonial condition. Long after we had become independent politically, the old colonial habits of thought, as strong as they were impalpable, clung fast about us. Only step by step did we shake off the provincial spirit and rid ourselves of the bated breath of the colonists. We did not come to a full national consciousness until we had passed through the awful trial of the Civil War. Then we realized what we were, and the trembling deference to foreign opinion, the sensitive outcry against foreign criticism, as well as the uneasy self-assertion and bragging which accompanied them, fell from us as the burden fell from the shoulders of Christian. There was still much to do, but the old colonial habit of mind was shattered beyond recovery. It lingered on here and there, it dies hard, but it is dying, and now is nearly dead. With the coming of a true national consciousness came the interest in the past and in history. It was 222 AMERICAN HISTORY apparent that the United States was one of the most considerable facts of the age, when its consolidation had once been effected and all peril of dissolution had departed with the crushing out of the forces which aimed at separation. Anything which helped to ex plain this fact became, therefore, of intense interest. As the years passed on, the fact grew larger. In due time a not very serious war revealed to the world what had happened, and it appeared that the fact known as the United States had, and was destined to have in many various ways, a strong and increasing influence upon all the other facts known as the nations of the earth. Thus did it become more than ever obvious that the explanation of the United States to be found in the history of the past four centuries was worthy of the best efforts of the historian. The pride in what the country is spurs men on to pride in all who shared in making the nation. From the abor tive attempts of the earliest adventurers, from the feeble settlements clinging to the Atlantic seaboard, on through the confused and seemingly petty history of the colonies, and of the scattered people and small States struggling out of revolution and dissension to a larger national life, to those who saved the Union from disintegration, and still on to those who have carried her power forward to the Pacific, and made a great nation where there was none before, — all alike have come to possess deep meaning and importance. AMERICAN HISTORY 223 Hence the rise of American history, and, what is more important, of the general interest in that his tory, which may be trusted to separate the wheat from the chaff, and give us not only knowledge, but also something worthy to take a place in literature by the manner in which the knowledge is communi cated to men. Nearly thirty years ago one of the greatest writers of the nineteenth century said, " Le monde est entraine" par un penchant irresistible vers l'Americanisme, vers le regne de ce que tous comprennent et apprecient." 1 But that which the penetrating intellect of Renan detected so soon after our Civil War, the influence the United States was destined to have upon the rest of the world, was not perceived by ordinary observers. Whether Renan was right or wrong about the nature of the influence is not important. The point is that he saw it coming and called attention to what others were for many years wholly unable to see or even to imagine. Now, however, signs are not wanting that the inhabitants of England and Europe are be ginning to think that the history of a people who have made a great and powerful nation, to whom the future in large measure belongs, is worthy of consideration, and that it may not be amiss to know something of the men who have led and guided that people in the 1 Preface to "Melanges d'histoire et de voyages," par Ernest Renan. Paris. 1878. 224 AMERICAN HISTORY past, and who lead and guide them now. There is evident, even on the other side of the Atlantic, a dawning idea that this knowledge may be perhaps as useful and even as illuminating as to trace the fortunes of some petty and wholly effaced Italian city despot or the personal intrigues of forgotten courtiers. It has been a great and interesting change. There is no longer danger that the history of the United States will be neglected. We are much more likely to suffer from too much zeal and from useless accu mulations and needless repetitions. But as Webster said that in his profession he always found there was plenty of room at the top, so is there still ample opportunity, in many periods and phases of American history yet untouched, for the rare historian who, in the largest and finest sense, can write history which shall rest upon learning and also become a part of the literature of mankind. CERTAIN PRINCIPLES OF TOWN GOVERNMENT J "Great nations," says Ruskin in the preface to "St. Mark's Rest," "write their autobiographies in three manuscripts, — the book of their deeds, the book of their words, and the book of their art." We of the United States have only just begun to write a little in the third of these volumes, but we may console ourselves thereon with two reflections: first, that States ripen long and slowly (it took Venice seven hundred years) before they develope a beautiful and original art ; and secondly, that we have already here and there a building like the Capitol at Washington which will serve to tell our posterity that the noble and permanent in architecture was at least known among us in our first century of national existence. In the second volume, the book of words, much more has been written. The total gift may not yet be large, but we have made a real addition to the lit erature of the English-speaking peoples and we can show three or four shining names which are fixed stars in the literature of the world. Still we cannot 1 An address delivered at the celebration of the two hundredth anni versary of the establishment of the Town of Brookline, Massachusetts. 16 226 CERTAIN PRINCIPLES OF TOWN GOVERNMENT as yet read long in our second volume. Letters, like art, take much time for full development ; even more time is needed to obtain the richness and variety so necessary to a really great literature, which cannot, like a man, be satisfied, still less complete, with only a " single book." And so we come back to Ruskin's first volume, that which all nations must write and write well before they can hope to bring forth either a literature or an art which shall be at once their own and also worthy of the world's considerate ad miration. Our autobiography as written in our book of deeds reaches back over only three hundred years, but, nevertheless, many pages have been filled be cause the deeds have been many and of grave import to mankind, as we and the rest of the world are just beginning rightly to understand. Among the deeds of serious meaning and result so inscribed in the indelible past, that of founding and organizing these New England towns in the forest clearing or by the sounding sea was one of the most considerable, a fact growing daily more evident to those who turn from the roar of the torrent of Ameri can life to seek in the stillness of the days that are dead the sources of the mighty stream. These re curring celebrations exhibit not only the proper pride in home and birthplace which all men should possess, but also show by their very multiplication a wide spread feeling that the New England town deserves CERTAIN PRINCIPLES OF TOWN GOVERNMENT 227 attention as an example of a system which has had a profound effect on the history, the government, and the political thoughts and habits of the people of the United States. This due attention may be rendered in two ways ; either by setting forth in scrupulous de tail the history of each town, or through the consider ation of the features which are common to all the towns alike and therefore part of the general devel opment of the State and country. Both are important, for it is a serious mistake to make light of local his tory because it moves in a restricted field and of ne cessity deals with small things. The value of local history depends upon the way in which it is re garded and upon the results which flowed from it. Montaigne says that one secret of happiness is to in terest one's self in the life about one and that to the philosopher a village fulfils this purpose as well as a capital city, because the great book of human nature lies open alike in both. The real test, however, is in the results. Events intrinsically unimportant assume a vast significance if they mark the beginnings of empires. The brawls and quarrels of two aborigi nal tribes planted, let us imagine, upon Corey's Hill and upon the opposite slope where the Aspinwall house stood would be devoid of any human interest now because the Indians founded and developed nothing. But if you will shift the scene to another country, call the two hills Palatine and Quirinal, and 228 CERTAIN PRINCIPLES OF TOWN GOVERNMENT the aboriginal tribes who occupied them Romans and Sabines, then the brawls and fights assume an intense interest. The little valley for which they contended in those dim, forgotten days became the Roman Forum, the spring around which they fought was the Fountain of Juturna, where the great twin brethren watered their horses after the battle of Lake Regillus, and the agreement which the fighting tribes then reached was the foundation of the empire of Rome. Around those obscure events and misty figures tradi tion has gathered thickly. They have formed the theme of the poet, the painter, and the sculptor in all the generations since. The learning of the world has sought out everything which could throw light upon that dim region of history while archseology laying bare forgotten ruins sunk deep in earth has labored patiently to reconstruct that vanished time, and has proved in these later days the reality of men and events which earlier students had relegated to the domain of myth and fable. Those events remain as inherently insignificant in themselves as they were in the beginning, but that which came from them gives them a meaning and an interest beyond comparison. So is it here. The history of the towns and counties of Massachusetts and Virginia and of all the colonies which fringed the Atlantic sea-board seems trifling enough unless we lift our eyes and look out from it at the United States to-day. Then this story of the CERTAIN PRINCIPLES OF TOWN GOVERNMENT 229 days of small things takes on an importance which may well give us pause and which bids us search for the deeper meanings it contains. You may find those meanings here as in our other New England towns, for there is a great similarity in the history, the character, and the ruling principles of them all. The same spirit inspired every one of them in the early days. Here as elsewhere the space of ground upon which the town stands becomes visible to history, and detaches itself from the rest of the earth by the appearance of the Indians in the white man's records. " Ten Sagamores and many Indians " are mentioned in connection with this spot in 1633. Their dark figures show out for a moment against the background of hills and forests and then vanish, precursors of the fate of their race throughout a continent. Then we hear of a little hamlet by the Muddy River attached to the jurisdiction of Boston, where in 1686 the strong love of local self-government made itself felt and a degree of independence was obtained. Then the village returns to Boston and at last in 1705 the spirit of independence prevails, and the town is estab lished, giving us the anniversary which we commemo rate to-day. It was the eighty-third community in Massachusetts which thus attained to independence and self-government in 1705, "a poor little town" as it described itself in 1714, when it could not pay for a representative in the Great and General Court 230 CERTAIN PRINCIPLES OF TOWN GOVERNMENT because it had just built a church. But the right qualities were all there among that handful of farm ers. The " poor little town " grew and prospered. It did not fail when the crises came ; it took its share in the Revolution, in the formation of the Union of States, and in the great Civil War. No longer poor in 1860, but rich also in much better things than money it sent out thirty-four officers and seven hundred and twenty men, one hundred and thirty-five more than its quota, to fight for the preservation of the Union. Yet it still remains a town. Long ago fitted in wealth and population to become a city, able too, at any mo ment, to become an integral and important part of the great capital to which it had been attached in its days of infancy, Brookline still chooses to remain a town and to cling to town government. This unusual fact very forcibly suggests that nothing could be more meet on this day than to consider carefully what some at least of those principles and meanings of town governments are to which Brookline has so long been loyal. I shall venture to follow the path to which Brook- line's preference for the town system in this age of multiplying cities invites me, and I do it the more willingly because it is not for me to trace now the history of the town or try to draw a picture of its past and its people. That must be the work of some one who is to the manner born, even if time and CERTAIN PRINCIPLES OF TOWN GOVERNMENT 231 space did not alike forbid me to attempt it. To him who speaks here briefly on this day of commemora tion it is only permitted to glance at the larger as pects of the subject, at those which are typical in the past and which if understood aright should contain lessons for the present. Here we ought surely to find somethmg which will help us to comprehend the great country which we have built up from these lit tle coast settlements obscurely begun nearly three centuries ago. I say, " help us to understand our country," for without a right understanding of facts we cannot have veracity of mind or look facts in the face, and without veracity of mind and a clear-eyed vision of the facts about us no success, certainly no success worth having is even remotely possible. We brought to this new world and planted here the habits and traditions of an old civilization; but a transplanted civilization in a virgin soil is neces sarily very different from the same civilization in the regions where it was born and then developed in the slow process of the centuries. Much that it had in the old world was inevitably lost in the new. Much also in crossing the ocean suffered a sea change and took on new forms when it was once rooted and began to grow and flourish in a slowly conquered wilderness. The trouble with most of the criticism and with much else that has been written about the United States both at home and abroad is that 232 CERTAIN PRINCIPLES OF TOWN GOVERNMENT it has been devoted to telling us what we have lost by our migration and what is wanting here as com pared with Europe, instead of considering what we have, what we are, and what we should strive and hope to be. Such a method of criticism or of obser vation is inept as well as negative. To say that a newly transplanted civilization is in some respects crude or to point out, as I saw done recently, that New Hampshire lacks the picturesqueness conveyed by the presence of parsons and squires, leads nowhere, reiterates truisms, and teaches absolutely nothing. It is impossible to proceed by negations in describing a great nation, in discussing its history or in seeking to explain its meaning. Moreover, whether a given individual likes or dislikes the country and its people is a matter of personal taste, and of no possible con sequence except to the individual himself. The United States is a great fact in the world to-day, replete with force and pregnant with vast possibilities. What does it mean, socially and politically, economically and artistically, this great nation of ours, ever becoming more powerful and influential ? What does it all portend ? Whither are we going ; along what roads should we travel, and what guides should we follow ? What are the perils to be shunned, what the aspira tions which we should strive to fulfil ? These ques tions, which go to the very root of the matter, cannot be answered by saying very wisely that we have no CERTAIN PRINCIPLES OF TOWN GOVERNMENT 233 castles or no parsons or no squires, any more than we can regulate life in the tropics or make it practicable by merely declaring that the tropics, obviously ill arranged, have unfortunately neither snow nor frost. That which is needed is patient examination of what exists and careful study of the past from which the present has come. In my opinion much may be learned from the history of our New England towns which will help us to understand and thereby aid us to succeed in the conduct of this great nation, in whose upbuilding these towns have been a potent factor. The New England town as established here in the seventeenth century was a reversion to social, politi cal, and economic forms which our remote ancestors brought out from the German forests and which had been gradually lost through feudalism, through the rise of the trade guilds in the towns, and through the later development of despotic monarchies in Europe and in a less degree in England. We find here the town-meeting, the common land, the woodland, the right of pasture, exact reproductions of the mark- land, the ploughland, and the moot of the Saxon tun or hundred. It seems almost as if the mere presence of the American wilderness caused these exiled English to revive unconsciously the habits of their remote forefathers in the German forests. But this New England plan of local government by the direct voice of the people gathered in public meeting 234 CERTAIN PRINCIPLES OF TOWN GOVERNMENT can claim kinship with systems much older than any which their Teutonic ancestry is able to furnish. The town-meeting is closely akin to the comitia of Rome and to the Grecian agora. Rome started with a government by the direct voice of the citizens, and such was also the theory and practice of Athens. Greece planted her colonies in every island and along all the coasts of the Mediterranean, but they remained isolated and separate, they never could really unite, and even the conquests and the genius of Alexander the Great failed to consolidate and establish a Gre cian Empire. Rome, on the other hand, cemented and built up her empire, but her direct government by the people and then her republican forms were gradually sacrificed and finally perished in the pro cess. Coming to a later period we find that the town governments of the Middle Ages sank in Italy into the possession of small native and large foreign tyrants, while in the North of Europe the direct control of the citizens was replaced by that of guilds in the larger, and by feudal lords in the smaller towns. The English-speaking people not only re vived direct government by popular meetings here in America, but they preserved local self-government everywhere, saving themselves at the same time from Greek disintegration on the one hand and from the centralized tyranny of Rome on the other. This they accomplished by the application of the principle CERTAIN PRINCIPLES OF TOWN GOVERNMENT 235 of representation, and by this invention or application it has been possible to build up the United States and the British Empire which combine the control of vast areas and great populations with personal freedom and local self-government. The town-meet ing is profoundly interesting not simply as represent ing the ancient rule of the popular assembly, nor chiefly because in American hands it has proved the best system of local self-government ever devised. Its deepest significance lies in the fact that out of these towns and out of our self-governing communi ties everywhere we have been able to construct a solid fabric of State and nation. This has been accomplished politically speaking through the prin ciple of representation. Here in New England the towns as such received representation in the General Court, and their union made the colony. Thence we proceeded to the union of the Puritan colonies in the New England confederation of the seventeenth cen tury, which, although it did not endure, set the example for the union of all the colonies, which in turn developed first into the Confederation, and then into the great Union of the States. It is in New England and through such towns as this that the possibility of forming governments on a large scale composed of the representatives of self-governing local communities was first demonstrated, and the Senate of the United States, representing the States 236 CERTAIN PRINCIPLES OF TOWN GOVERNMENT themselves, is the lasting embodiment of this principle in our national system. The towns of New England teach us, therefore, not only the value of local self- government, but the far higher importance of politi cal union if we would have a powerful nation, and not a collection of jarring atoms out of which noth ing great, nothing of worth could ever come. Yet even more serious than the combination of local self-government with the union of States from which national life springs, is the balance between the two principles. The complete predominance of local self-government means disintegration ; and its undue diminution, still more its extinction would mean centralism accompanied by despotism thinly veiled. It is therefore of the utmost importance that the balance between these two great principles should be accurately maintained and the equilibrium between the immediate popular government by the town-meeting and government by representation care fully preserved. Local affairs belong to the local government, state and national policies to the gov ernment by representation. The substitution of rep resentative for direct government in local affairs, which the growth of population has made necessary, has not been a success, and our great cities reveal the evils which have resulted from the change. The loss of the direct popular action of the town-meeting has been followed by many bad results in the manage- CERTAIN PRINCIPLES OF TOWN GOVERNMENT 237 ment of the business of the cities, and it is a matter for careful consideration whether we cannot modify, if we are unable wholly to cure, the evils in our great municipalities by a reversion in some measure to the direct popular action of the town-meeting, which is in its essence a meeting of neighbors. It seems as if the political divisions of cities might be made in such a manner as to bring again into operation, partially at least, the neighborhood system. On the other hand, the methods of the town-meet ing should never be permitted to trench upon the representative government of State or nation. I do not mean by this the legislation which affects only a locality, a single city, or a town, and which is often referred to the inhabitants of such localities for ac ceptance or rejection. Such laws are in their nature measures of local self-government, and come obviously and clearly within the principles of the town system. They are easily distinguished from other measures of general application to the entire people of the State, and it is these latter which should never be withdrawn from the full representative control. The essence of representative government is responsibility, and when that responsibility ceases representative government becomes anarchy and we are fairly on the way to such scenes as were enacted during the French Revo lution, when the Paris mob, breaking into the As sembly or the Convention, dictated the passage of 238 CERTAIN PRINCIPLES OF TOWN GOVERNMENT laws. The control of the electors over the represent ative is direct, and if he does not satisfy them he can be replaced ; but it is not to be forgotten that he repre sents not merely the people of his own district, but in due proportion the people of the entire State. If re sponsibility is taken from him by compelling him to vote for measures solely because they have secured a certain number of petitioners, or if he is at liberty to refer measures of all sorts to popular vote, he ceases to be representative and becomes a mere machine of record. When responsibility vanishes representative government is at an end, and all the safeguards of debate and discussion, of deliberate action, of amend ment or compromise, are gone forever. Legislative anarchy would ensue, and we might easily find our selves in a position where the mob of a single large city would dominate legislation, and laws would be thrust upon us ruinous to the State itself and to the best interests of the entire people of the State. No constitutional change or statutory arrangement should ever be permitted which would take from the repre sentative the responsibility of final action by his own vote or allow him to shift that responsibility onto a reference to a popular vote, where amendment or mod ification so essential to wise legislation is absolutely impossible. From these same town governments of New Eng land which have had such success and such an influ- CERTAIN PRINCIPLES OF TOWN GOVERNMENT 239 ence upon the history and political development of the United States another great lesson may also be learned, even more important than that which I have just suggested, by examining the limits which the men of the town-meeting set to the action of govern ment and to the duties which government should undertake. In the beginning, and entirely in accordance with the belief and practice of the time, the settlers of New England established a state church. They carried this theory in the ardor of their religious zeal to its extremest verge, for they actually made the church and State one. The freeman and voter of the colony at the outset could be such only by being also a member of the church. The meeting-house was the church, the corner-stone of every organized town, and the people who governed the one controlled the other. The most extreme features of the system, as well as the rigid intolerance which it implied, were largely modified before the seventeenth century had closed, but the influence of the church on politics continued ; and it was not until two hundred years after the settlement of Plymouth that the last vestiges of the union of the church and State in Massachusetts were removed by constitutional amendment. It was a long struggle, and the results, which embodied a policy adopted from the outset by Pennsylvania and now universal in the United States, cannot be over- 240 CERTAIN PRINCIPLES OF TOWN GOVERNMENT estimated. The State in America withdrew entirely from all connection with the religion of the people. We were the first to establish this great principle, to which the rest of Western civilization is coming slowly and with halting steps. We hardly realize now what a revolution we wrought, but we must never forget its meaning. The State meddles with no man's conscience, and every man is free to follow his own religious convictions. But let it be remem bered that this noble attitude of the State is a corol lary of the proposition that no church as such must meddle with the State, that religious ^beliefs must be kept out of politics, and that no dollar of the public money contributed by all the people must be expended for the benefit of any sect including only a part of the people. Easy forgetfulness of this truth, any relaxation in the line which separates church and State made either by the church or State strikes at the very roots of our institutions, and would open the door to let uncounted evils rush in upon us. The struggle for the separation of church and State in the towns of New England was long and severe, for our people are naturally and wisely conservative. But in other directions the same tendencies to restrict the powers of the government are apparent. The communal features of the earliest settlements, so in teresting historically, faded rapidly away only to sur vive here and there as curious monuments in what CERTAIN PRINCIPLES OF TOWN GOVERNMENT 241 were known as commons, rights of pasture, and the like. Apart from these the New England towns adopted with extraordinary unanimity the principle that the government should be as limited in its func tions as was possible, and that the largest scope should be given to the individual man to work out his own fortune here and 'his own salvation hereafter. They believed, or came by experience to believe, that this was the only safe principle, whether from the stand point of practical government or from that of democ racy and popular sovereignty. How successful, how wise, how strong this doctrine has proved is shown by what the United States is to-day. Under this theory of government, this country has been built up, our vast prosperity attained, and all our triumphs as a people won. In view of the past let us beware how we depart from the principles, practices, and beliefs of our forefathers. I say this not because the sphere of governmental action has been inevitably enlarged by the growth and development of the country, but because it is seriously proposed to extend the sphere of governmental action in State, in nation, and in municipalities in ways which are not at all inevitable, but which are advocated openly for the purpose of destroying our old system of restricted government joined to large individual liberty, and replacing it with another and totally different arrangement. The system proposed is not new. It is one of the 16 242 CERTAIN PRINCIPLES OF TOWN GOVERNMENT oldest schemes for the abolition of all existing evils ever devised, and in one form or another has been tried and failed at intervals almost since the begin nings of human history. The new system is really that which we have developed and built upon here. Thus far modern democracy, which since our war for independence and the French Revolution has been steadily taking possession of the world of Western civilization, has proceeded upon the American theory of the least possible interference by government and the largest possible individual liberty compatible with the rights of others. The measure of its success can be gauged by contrasting the United States with Russia, the former the most perfect exponent of the modern system, the latter a fairly complete example of the old theory embodied in what is in its essence a military and religious socialism where the govern ment is everything and the individual nothing. The breakdown of the Russian system under modern eco nomic conditions is going on before our eyes to-day and where it will end no man can say; but this is not what concerns us. Our interest and welfare lie in determining whither the movements for larger gov ernmental action are tending here. That they lead toward the system of Russia and away from the prin ciple upon which we have built up the United States is undoubted. But it is not easy to draw the line. No hard and fast rule can be laid down, and hence CERTAIN PRINCIPLES OF TOWN GOVERNMENT 243 the enormous difficulty of the problem. The "let alone " theory, carried to its full extreme, ends in anarchy and in the condition of the savages of Tierra del Fuego. The governmental theory, carried to its extreme, ends in the despotism of Russia or of Rome ; for, call the system socialism or by any other fine name you please, governments are composed of men, and if you concentrate all powers and all business in government you concentrate it in the hands of the men who compose the government and they become despots, at first in fact and at last in name, and then the people are condemned to ignorance and pov erty or beguiled by bread and games if they grow turbulent. Socialists and anarchists are often spoken of together as if they were similar. They are really the antipodes of each other. The socialist would have the government everything, the anarchist would destroy all government. Somewhere between these extremes lies the path of safety. It may be narrow and of uncertain bound aries, but it gives a firm footing and it is on that ground that we have won our success and preserved our freedom. To us, indeed to the world at this period, it is all-important to understand what that safe ground is, to define it so far as we can. Let us make an attempt here to-day to find that definition in broad outline at least. There are certain things which from universal ex- 244 CERTAIN PRINCIPLES OF TOWN GOVERNMENT perience and by general consent everybody agrees must be done by government ; that is, by the combined force of the community organized politically. For example, it is agreed by all that the army and navy must be organized, paid, and controlled, and peace abroad and order at home must be maintained by the govern ment. It is also agreed that the government shall provide opportunities for education for all children, but that on the other hand it shall not build churches or interfere with any man's religion. We might go on enumerating the recognized functions of the government, and on the other side the fields from which it is excluded, but we can sum it all up by say ing that the American theory has hitherto been that of the old New England town, to leave to individual effort everything possible, and use the government or the combined forces of the community only when it is absolutely necessary to do so. There can be no doubt that to this liberty of individual action and to the spirit of enterprise which it has generated are due the vast material success of the United States and an economic organization which in energy and force surpasses any other. The economic success of the various nations is in fact proportioned to the degree of individual liberty existing among the people. Those like the United States and England, where this liberty is largest, have been the most successful ; those where the paternal system is the most extreme, as in Russia, CERTAIN PRINCIPLES OF TOWN GOVERNMENT 245 have fallen behind in the race ; yet we see none the less at this moment a marked movement to revert to extreme forms of paternalism. This is due no doubt in large measure to the actions of the great combina tions of capital which modern conditions have devel oped. The belief that combinations so vast should not and cannot be allowed to operate unchecked and unwatched is not only natural, but sound and right. But there is a wide distinction between government supervision and regulation of these enormous agencies for the conduct of business and government owner ship and operation of such agencies. The one is a necessity in the pubhc interest developed by modern conditions ; the other is a revolution in our entire theory and practice of government. Government ownership of the railroads of this country, to take but a single instance, would mean in its fulfilment the destruction of the institutions we have known and loved, and under which our liberties have been won and preserved. You may call the system social ism or anything else you choose, but when the govern ment owns and controls all the business agencies, the men who by any means come to control the govern ment are your masters and mine. We should have an oligarchy composed of a few office-holders, a despot at their head, and all below on one sordid level where hope had perished and ambition was dead. There is no reason whatever to suppose that under such con- 246 CERTAIN PRINCIPLES OF TOWN GOVERNMENT ditions poverty would disappear. There is every reason to believe that it would be made uniform and universal. Poverty is a terrible evil which all right- minded men should labor to alleviate and to reduce, but it can hardly be lessened by a system which would destroy all wealth by removing every possible desire for its creation or increase. Yet even the ex tinction of the worst forms of poverty, were that possible, would be a heavy price to pay for the de struction of hope, of striving, of the effort to lift one's self and one's fellows a little higher which alone makes life worth having. If like the European Socialists you carry the old, old system which you would reimpose upon mankind to its logical extreme, you must seek the destruction of nationality and dis pense with the love of country. In an economic age like our own, when adoration of money is an ever present peril beware how you destroy patriotism, one of the few great ideals left to men, for it is by faith and ideals alone that man has been able to rise to higher things. The founders of these towns, the statesmen who made the republic, were men of deep religious faith, lovers of freedom and of their fellow- men, ready to sacrifice all in loyalty to their native land. We have entered into their great inheritance. Let us not cast away that which was best and noblest in it. I am well aware that the argument for individual CERTAIN PRINCIPLES OF TOWN GOVERNMENT 247 liberty is called the argument of the successful. But where would men or nations be if they took as their guides and exemplars only those who had failed ? Would not such a course lead to failure and defeat ? The teaching of history seems to me to prove that there are no short cuts to universal happiness, no panaceas for all human evils. When the short cuts have been tried they have led usually to quagmires, or to desolate walls of rock which could not be scaled. The panaceas have inevitably turned out to be quack medicines, which made the last state of those who put faith in them worse than the first. History demonstrates that every real advance which has been made has come slowly and by long and patient labor. It is quite true that this is a hard doctrine and offers no brilliant and enticing promises, but it is at least true, and it deceives no one by visions as unreal as the dreams of the opium eater. In the long run an uncomfortable truth, as has been well said, is a better companion than an agreeable false hood. There have always been much suffering, many evils in the world ; some have been removed, others have been alleviated, many still remain. We can make them better, we can help humanity only by the slow and steady processes which have served us in the past. It is every man's part to address himself to this work, but no man will do it if you take from him every hope and leave him to grope along upon a 248 CERTAIN PRINCIPLES OF TOWN GOVERNMENT dull level from which neither he nor his neighbor can ever rise. The New England towns fought their hard battle with savage and wilderness, and won. They were a plain folk these founders of the towns, but they had faith and hope, lofty ideals, and a fine self-confidence; you may look far before you will find a nobler or wiser lesson than they teach. Can we do better than take that lesson of the fathers to heart on days like this when we celebrate the foun dation of one of these liberty-loving, self-governing, independent communities whose principles and beliefs have made New England, yes, the United States, what it is to-day? FRANKLIN » Many years ago, when in London for the first time, I remember being filled with the indignant as tonishment of which youth alone is capable at seeing upon the pedestal of a statue placed in a public square the single word " Franklin." A Boston boy, born within a stone's throw almost of the birthplace of " Poor Richard," I had never deemed it possible that any Franklin but one could be referred to by that name alone without further definition or qualification. I knew, of course, who the subject of the British statue was, a brave naval officer and bold explorer, who had lost his life in a futile effort to achieve an almost equally futile object. But I had a vague impression that " heroic sailor souls " had very fortunately been not uncommon among English- speaking people, whereas I had supposed that men like Benjamin Franklin had been rather rare among the people of any race. I have passed the British statue many times since then. My youthful and indig nant astonishment has long since vanished, and the 1 I am indebted to the courtesy of the editor and publishers of the Independent for permission to reprint this article, which appeared in that periodical in January, 1906. 250 FRANKLIN humor of the inscription has become very apparent to me. I know now that the inscription merely repre sents a solid British habit of claiming everything, ignoring the rest of mankind, and enlarging to the utmost their own achievements, both great and small, upon the entirely sound principle that a constant and fearless assertion of one's own virtues will lead a con siderable proportion of a very busy and somewhat indifferent world to take one at one's own valuation. The highly humorous side of describing Sir John as the only Franklin, and relegating to obscurity a man who achieved greatness in literature, in science, in politics, and in diplomacy, and who was one of the most brilliant figures in a brilliant century, has come in the lapse of time to give me no little real pleasure. I have also learned that my early estimate of the man commonly referred to outside of England as " Franklin " was not only vague, but, although right in direction, was still far short of the truth, which a better knowledge enables me to substitute for an ill-defined belief. Two hundred years have elapsed since his birth in the little house on Milk Street in Boston, and as the anniversary of that event is now being celebrated, it is well worth while' to pause for a moment and consider him. Few men, be it said, better deserve consideration, for he not only played a great part in shaping events and influencing FRANKLIN 251 human thought, but he represents his time more completely, perhaps, than any other actor in it, some thing which is always in and of itself a memorable feat. Franklin's time was the eighteenth century, which his long life nearly covered. When he was born Anne was Queen, and England, agitated by dynastic struggles, was with difficulty making head against the world-wide power of Louis XIV. When Franklin died France had been driven from North America, the British Empire had been divided, his own being one of the master hands in the division, the United States of America had started on their career as a nation, and the dawning light of the French Rev olution was beginning to redden the skies. Mar vellous changes these to be enclosed within the span of one brief human life, and yet they were only part of the story. The truth is that the eighteenth century was a very remarkable period. Not so very long ago this statement would have been regarded as a rather silly paradox, and in a little while it will be looked upon as a commonplace. But as yet we are not wholly free from the beliefs of our fathers in this respect. The nineteenth century, in its lusty youth and robust middle age, adopted as part of its creed the belief that its predecessor upon the roll of time, from whose loins it sprang, deserved only the contempt and hatred of mankind. Incited 252 FRANKLIN thereto by the piercing invectives of the Romantic school, brimming over with genius, and just then in possession of the earth, and by the clamors of Thomas Carlyle, the nineteenth century held that the eighteenth was a period of shams and conven tions, of indifference and immorality, of unspeakable oppressions and of foul miseries hidden behind a gay and glittering exterior, the heyday of a society which in a word deserved the fate of the cities of the plain. This view was true enough, so far as it went; but it was by no means the whole story. It had the fascination of simplicity and of convenience which half-truths nearly always possess ; but as Mr. Speaker Reed once said, "half-truths are simple, but the whole truth is the most complicated thing on earth." The time has now come when we may begin to ap proximate the whole truth. Indeed, before the nine teenth century had closed it had begun to modify its opinions and to be less sure about the total de pravity of its progenitor. Under the skilful manip ulations of bric-a-brac dealers the art and furniture of the eighteenth century have become and are now the fashion. It is a pretty trivial art at best, very inferior to that which the nineteenth century, in France at least, has produced ; but it is always pleasant to observe the whirligig of time bring in its revenges, and it must be admitted that the eighteenth- FRANKLIN 253 century furniture is an indescribable improvement over the dreadful taste known as Victorian, but which really came forth like the Goths and Vandals of old time from the heart of Germany, to submerge and ruin a careless and unsuspecting world. Still, what ever their merits may be, the eighteenth century in pictures and chairs and tables is again in high fashion, and perhaps we can now begin to see also that it had its great side as well as its bad one, and that it was in reality a very wonderful time. It is usually said as beyond dispute that it had no poetry in the nobler and more imaginative sense ; and if by poetry is meant the immortal work of the Elizabethans on the one hand, and of the Romantic school on the other, we may be sure that, speaking broadly, the eighteenth century, like Audrey, was not poetical. Yet none the less this unpoetical, unimag inative century produced Gray and Burns in Great Britain, Chenier and Gilbert in France, the first part of " Faust " — enough glory in itself for many centu ries — and the " Wallenstein Trilogy" in Germany. It was, too, the century of Bach and Handel and Haydn ; it gave birth to Mozart and Beethoven, — something of a record for an unimaginative century in the most imaginative of arts. Even those who decry it most admit its greatness in prose, where it developed a style which culminated in Gibbon and Burke. In pure intellect it can hardly be surpassed 254 FRANKLIN by any of its fellows, for it was the century of Immanuel Kant. It was likewise the century of Louis XV, perhaps the meanest thing that acci dent ever cast upon a throne, but it was also the century of Frederick the Great. It was illustrated in its youth by the Regent Orleans, and illuminated at its close by George Washington. It was the cen tury of Casanova, most typical and amusing of rascals, and it was equally the century of John Wes ley. It was a time when men persecuted for a religion in which they had no faith, and sneered at the doctrines of the church to which they conformed. The classes revelled in luxury, and the masses were sunk in poverty. Corruption ran riot in the public service, and the oppression of the people was without limit on the Continent, where the lettre de cachet of the French king flung men into prison, and wretched Ger man princelings sold their subjects to die in foreign wars that they might build ugly palaces and main tain still more ugly mistresses. Yet in those evil days more was done to set free human thought and strike off the shackles of priestly rule than in any century which history records. More was then done to give men political liberty and build up constitu tional government than in all the previous centuries, for it was the century of Montesquieu and Rousseau and the Federalist, of the revolt of the American Colo nies and of the French Revolution. It was the FRANKLIN 255 century of kings and nobles, yet it gave birth to modern democracy. The spirit of revolt went side by side with the spirit of reaction and convention. There were indeed two voices in the eighteenth century. We know which one truly foretold the coming days. But which was the true voice of the time ? Was it Vol taire, pleading the cause of the Calas family, or that of Foulon, declaring that the people might eat grass ? Which was the true leader, George Washington at Valley Forge, or George III hiring Indians and Hes sians to carry out his mother's injunction, " George, be a king "? It was veritably a wonderful century, full of meaning, rich in intellect, abounding in contradictions. It produced, too, many great men, but none more fully representative than Benjamin Franklin of all that made it memorable. He reflected at once its greatness and its contradictions, although not its evil side, because in those years of change and ferment he was ranged with the children of light, and was ever reaching out for new and better things. Of pure English stock, born in a community where Puritanism was still dominant, where religion was rigid and mo rality austere, he was an adventurer in his youth, a liberal always, a free-thinker in religion, the moralist of common-sense, and pre-eminently the man of the world, at home in all societies and beneath every sky. He had the gift of success, and he went on and up 256 FRANKLIN from the narrow fortunes of a poor, hard-working family until he stood in the presence of kings and shaped the destinies of nations. The Puritanism to which he was born fell away from him at the start, and in his qualities and his career it seems as if he reproduced the type of the men of Elizabeth's time who founded Virginia and New England ; for he had all the versatility, the spirit of adventure, the enormous vitality and splendid con fidence in life and in the future which characterized that great epoch. Yet he had also the calmness, the self-control, the apparent absence of enthusiasm which were the note of his own time. The restlessness of mind which marked the Elizabethans was his in a high degree, but it was masked by a cool and calcu lating temperament rarely found in the days of the great Queen. Franklin was born not only a Puritan Englishman, but a colonist ; yet never was there a man with less of the colonist or the provincial about him. A condi tion of political dependence seems for some mysteri ous reason to have a depressing effect upon those who remain continuously in that condition. The soil of a dependency appears to be unfavorable to the produc tion of ability of a high type in any direction until the generation arrives which is ready to set itself free. Franklin was a colonial subject until he was seventy, and yet no more independent man than he lived in FRANKLIN 257 that age of independent thought. He rose to the highest distinction in four great fields of activity, any one of which would have sufficed for a life's ambition ; he moved easily in the society of France and England, he appeared at the most brilliant court in Europe, and no one ever thought of calling him provincial. The atmosphere of a dependency never clung to him, nor in the heyday of aristocracy was his humble origin ever remembered. The large-mindedness, the complete independence, the entire simplicity of the man dispersed the one and destroyed the memory of the other. Modern history contains very few examples of a man who, with such meagre opportunities and con fined for many years to a province far distant from the centres of civilization, achieved so much and showed so much ability in so many different ways as Franklin. With only the education of the common school and forced to earn his living while still a boy, he became a man of wide learning, pre-eminent in science, and a writer, in the words of one of the first of Enghsh critics,1 " of supreme literary skill." His autobiography is one of the half-dozen great auto biographies which are a perennial joy. His letters are charming, and his almanacs (was there ever a more unlikely vehicle for good literature ?) were translated into many languages, delighted with their 1 Mr. Augustine Birrell, in his essay on " Old Booksellers." 17 258 FRANKLIN homely wisdom and easy humor thousands who thought of America only as the abode of wolves and Indians, and made the name of "Poor Richard" familiar to the civilized world. Yet literature, where he attained such a success, winning a high place in the literary history not only of his own country, but of his age and his language, was but his pastime. The intellectual ambition of his life was found in science, and he went so far in that field that the history of one of the great natural forces, which in its de velopment has changed the world, cannot be written without giving one of the first places of pioneer and discoverer to the printer of Boston and Philadelphia. Yet neither literature nor science, either of which is quite enough to fill most lives, sufficed for Franklin. He began almost at the very beginning to take a share in public affairs. His earliest writings when a printer at the case dealt with political questions. He then entered the politics of the city, thence he passed to the larger concerns of the great Province of Pennsylvania, and at every step he showed a ca pacity for organization, an ability for managing men and a power of persuasive speech rarely equalled. He had a way of carrying measures and securing practical and substantive results which excites pro found admiration, since nothing is more difficult than such achievements in the whole range of public service. This is especially true where the man who FRANKLIN 259 seeks results is confronted by active opposition or by that even more serious obstacle, the inertness or indifference of the community. Yet nothing pleased Franklin more than such a situation as arose when in time of war he overcame the Quaker opposition to putting the province in a state of defence. His method was not as a rule that of direct attack. He preferred to outwit his opponents, an operation which gratified his sense of humor ; and a favorite device of his was to defeat opposition by putting forward anonymously arguments apparently in its behalf, which, by their irony and extravagance, utterly dis credited the cause they professed to support. To his success in the field of public discussion he added that of administration when he became Postmaster- General for the colonies and organized the service, and then again when he represented Pennsylvania and later other provinces as their agent in London. It was there in England that he defended the cause of the colonies before both Parliament and Ministers when resistance to taxation began. He came home an old man, verging on seventy, to take his place as one of the chief leaders in the Revolution. These leaders of revolution were, as a rule and as is usual at such periods, young men, and yet there was not one among them all with greater flexibility of mind or more perfect readiness to bring on the great change than Franklin. He returned again to Europe 260 FRANKLIN to seek aid for his country in the war, and it was chiefly due to him that the French alliance, which turned the scale, was formed. When the war drew to a close it was he who began alone the task of making peace. He had nearly completed the work when his colleagues appeared in Paris and by incau tious words broke the web so carefully spun. Patient and undisturbed, Franklin began again. Again he played one English faction against the other. Again he managed France, turning to good advantage the vigorous abilities of Adams and the caution of Jay. Finally, boldly disregarding the instructions of Con gress, he emerged from all complications with a triumphant peace. Even then his work was not done. He came back to America to govern in Pennsylvania and to share in making the Constitution of the United States, thus exhibiting the power to build up as well as to pull down, something most uncommon, for the man of revolution is rarely a constructive statesman. He closed his great career by setting his hand to the Constitution of the United States, as he had already done to the Declaration of Independence. Yet after his achievements and services have all been recounted we still come back to that which was most remarkable, — the manner in which he at once influenced and reflected' his time. The eighteenth century has for long been held up to scorn as desti- FRANKLIN 261 tute of enthusiasm, lacking in faith and ideals, in different and utterly worldly. Franklin was certainly devoid of enthusiasm, and yet one unbroken purpose ran strongly through his life and was pursued by him with a steadiness and force which are frequently wanting in enthusiasts. He sought unceasingly the improvement of man's condition here on earth. Whether it was the invention of a stove, the paving of Philadelphia, the founding of a library, the movement of storms, the control of electrio currents, or the de fence of American liberty, he was always seeking to instruct and help his fellow-men and to make their lot a better and happier one. The morals he preached were indeed worldly ; there never was a bit of moral ity, more purely of the account-book kind than the familiar aphorism about honesty, and yet it may be doubted whether all the pulpits in America did more to make men honest and thrifty, and to develop good and sober citizens than the uninspired preach ings of " Poor Richard." He was a sceptic, as were nearly all the great men of the century, but his honest doubt helped to free the human mind and dispel the darkness which had stayed the march of intellect. He never scoffed at religion; he did not hesitate to appeal to it at a great crisis to sway the minds of his fellows, but he suffered no dogmas to stand in the way of that opening of the mind which he believed would advance the race and soften by its 262 FRANKLIN discoveries the hard fate of humanity. He was con servative by nature in accordance with the habit of the time, but that which was new had no terrors for him, and he entered upon the path of revolution with entire calmness when he felt that revolution had become necessary to the welfare and happiness of his people. There was nothing inevitable about the American Revolution at the particular time at which it came. It would have failed indeed on the field of battle had it not been for George Washington. But when the British Government, among their many blunders, insulted Franklin and rejected his counsel they cast aside the one man whose wisdom might have saved the situation, and, so far as they could, made the revolt of the colonies unavoidable. It was an indifferent, cold-blooded century, and both epithets have been applied to Franklin, no doubt with some justice. But it is never fair to judge one century or its people by the standards of another. Franklin was a man of extraordinary self-control combined with a sense of humor which never deserted him and which is easily mistaken for cold-blooded indifference. He signed the Declaration of Independence, it is said, with a jest ; yet no man measured its meaning or felt its gravity more than he. He stood silent in the Cock- Pit while the coarse invective of Wedderburne beat about his head, and made no reply. The only re- FRANKLIN 263 venge he took, the only answer he ever made, if tra dition may be believed, was to wear when he signed the treaty acknowledging American independence the same coat of Manchester velvet which he wore when the pitiless abuse of England's Attorney-General was poured out upon him. He was not a man who dis played emotion — it was not the fashion of his time. He was a philosopher and a stoic. Perhaps, as Mr. Birrell says, he was neither loving nor tender-hearted, yet he managed both in his life and in the disposition of his property to do many kindnesses and much good to those to whom the battle of life was hardest. His sympathies were keen for mankind rather than for the individual, but that again was the fashion of his time — a fashion which shattered many oppressions gray with the age of centuries and redressed many wrongs. Franklin was very human, far from perfect in more than one direction. It is easy enough to point out blemishes in his character. But as a public man he sought no private ends, and his great and versa tile intellect was one of the powerful influences which in the eighteenth century wrought not only for polit ical liberty, but for freedom of thought, and in so doing rendered services to humanity which are a blessing to mankind to-day. We accept the blessings and forget too often to whose labors in a receding past they are due. We owe a vast debt to the great 264 FRANKLIN men of the eighteenth century who brought out of the shams and conventions and oppressions of that time the revolutions in politics, in society, and in thought the fruits of which we of to-day now enjoy. To no one of these men is the world's debt larger than to Franklin. THE UNITED STATES AT ALGECIRAS1 The presence of delegates- from the United States at the Morocco Conference at Algeciras gave rise to more or less discussion, both in the United States and Europe. The Democratic opposition in the Senate attacked the administration of President Roosevelt for sending delegates to this Conference, while in Europe there has been much speculation as to the reasons for the action of the United States, especially in view of the well-known Monroe Doctrine. The Democratic criticism proceeded on the theory that the presence of American delegates at Algeciras involved a disregard both of Washington's warning against " entangling alliances," and also of the principles laid down in the Monroe Doctrine. The discussion in Europe, on the other hand, seems to be chiefly concerned with the meaning of this participa tion by the United States in a European Conference not wholly or chiefly commercial in its purposes. The domestic criticism was based upon an errone ous and twisted conception both of Washington's advice and of the principles of the Monroe Doctrine, 1 1 am indebted to Mr. Whelpley the representative of " Potentia" in the United States, for permission to republish this article. 266 THE UNITED STATES AT ALGECIRAS while the foreign speculation seems to have been due partly to ignorance of American action toward Mo rocco in the past, and partly to a wrong idea as to the well-settled policy of the United States in regard to its foreign relations. It is not, perhaps, surprising, that the very active part taken by the United States in protecting her commerce in the Mediterranean, and the highly efficient and effective war which she waged with the Barbary States more than a century ago, should now be forgotten. But it is a little odd that both at home and abroad the fact that the United States in 1863 and again in 1880 joined with the European Powers in making treaties with Morocco should apparently be entirely overlooked, for that fact was at once the reason and the precedent for American action during the past year. The Treaty of 1863 related to the establishment of a lighthouse under international protection at Cape Spartel, and that of 1880 was an elaborate arrangement for de fining the rights and providing for the protection of foreigners in Morocco, and also for opening the ports of Morocco to the subjects and citizens of the signa tory Powers on terms of the most favored nation. When Moroccan affairs again appeared in the field of international politics as a subject of discussion, and it became necessary to settle the questions which had thus arisen, it was a matter of course that all the signatories to the treaty of 1880 should be invited to THE UNITED STATES AT ALGECIRAS 267 take part, and the United States was accordingly asked by the Sultan of Morocco to send delegates to Algeciras. In fact, it was understood that some of the signatories of 1880 refused to accept the in vitation unless all were asked, and especially unless the United States was invited. There was, therefore, nothing new or startling in the fact that the United States should have been asked to take part in a conference to settle the affairs of Morocco, for this was merely the contin uance of a policy which had been in existence for more than forty years. The United States had very naturally shared in the previous conferences, and treaties because the protection of her citizens and of her commercial interests in Morocco were involved. When the commercial as well as the political relations of Morocco with the rest of the world were again in dispute, the United States, in view of her previous action, could neither be excluded from a conference to settle this question, nor would it have been right for her to absent herself. The point made, however, by those in America who opposed this action by the United States was that the Morocco Conference in volved military and political as well as commercial questions, and that the great Powers of Europe were deeply concerned in these military and political differences, which had become so serious as even to threaten war. There was really nothing in this point 268 THE UNITED STATES AT ALGECIRAS which should have caused any objection to the pres ence of the United States at Algeciras, and even the briefest consideration of the foreign policy of the United States will show the soundness of this assertion. Washington's warning against " entangling alli ances," so much invoked against permitting the United States to share in the Algeciras Conference, was due to the trouble which had been caused by the treaty of alliance between France and the United States, made when the American colonies were en gaged in the War of Independence against England. When fifteen years later the French Revolution in volved France in war with the other European Powers and with Great Britain, she insisted that the United States was bound to take part with her in these hostilities. Washington's Administra tion held that the treaty with France bound the United States only in case of defensive war, and that the war in which France was then engaged was offensive ; but this decision and the neutrality policy put forward by Hamilton and adopted by Washington in consequence of it were very unpopular in the United States, and led to many serious diffi culties. It was with these facts strongly in his mind that Washington, in his Farewell Address, laid down so strongly the proposition that the United States should hold itself free from all " entangling alliances," THE UNITED STATES AT ALGECIRAS 269 and to the policy thus impressed upon his country men by the first President the United States has ever since rigidly adhered. It is not worth while to discuss whether this policy, strictly enforced, is abstractly wise or not. The American people for more than a hundred years have not only believed in its wisdom, but have faithfully observed it, and there is no im mediate probability that it will ever or ought ever to be departed from. The Monroe Doctrine, which was merely the cor ollary of Hamilton's and Washington's neutrality policy, declared, broadly speaking, that Europe must not interfere with the Governments established in America, and that no portion of the American hemis phere was open to any further colonization. It also reiterated the allegiance of the United States to the doctrine of Washington, as expressed in the policy of neutrality and in the avoidance of "entangling alliances." The policy of Washington, however, does not in the least exclude, and never has been held to ex clude, the United States from agreements with one or more European Powers as to matters affecting trade and commerce, or from international conventions which are entered into for the improvement of condi tions in war or for the promotion of the world's peace. The following list of treaties with European Powers and of international agreements upon such subjects shows by the mere enumeration 270 THE UNITED STATES AT ALGECIRAS what the attitude of the United States has been in this respect for many years. In 1863 the United States joined with certain countries of Europe in a general treaty as to tariff dues on the river Scheldt. In 1866 she joined with France, Great Britain, and the Netherlands in a tariff treaty with Japan. In 1899 she made a joint treaty with Germany and Great Britain for the settlement of the Samoan ques tion. The United States joined hi international con ventions in 1864 relating to wounded in time of war ; again in 1868 on the same subject; in 1875 on weights and measures ; in 1883 as to industrial prop erty; in 1884 as to submarine cables; in 1886 as to the exchange of official documents ; in 1890 as to cus toms tariffs ; in 1890 as to the African slave trade ; in 1899 in a general treaty for the exclusion of spirituous liquors from Africa; in 1901 she was one of the signers of the protocol with China at the close of the Boxer insurrection ; and in 1899 united in all the Hague Conventions. Any other policy, indeed, than that disclosed by these treaties and conventions would be childish in the extreme, and Washington, who was not only a great statesman, but one of the wisest of men, would have been the last to suggest that the principle laid down by him in his Farewell Address was so fatuous as to exclude the United States from such agreements as those just enumerated. THE UNITED STATES AT ALGECIRAS 271 The theory that the Monroe Doctrine shuts us out from participation in any European engagement of any kind whatever is equally unfounded. The Mon roe Doctrine is not international law. It is the policy of the United States, which exsits because the United States maintains it, and proposes to maintain it by force if necessary. Like the peace of the United States it depends upon the American navy. The fact that the navy of the United States is now, in ships built and building, the third in the world, and in point of fighting power a close third, proves the serious determination of the American people to uphold the Monroe Doctrine. That doc trine, formulated by John Quincy Adams, com mands assent primarily by the support of the United States, and also, as the American people believe, by its own intrinsic reasonableness. It is the balance-of-power policy applied to the Western Hemisphere, and the United States will uphold it as the balance of power is upheld by the nations of Europe, and because it is absolutely essential to her own peace and safety. But the fact that we do not and will not permit Europe to interfere in affairs which solely concern the American conti nents is no reason why we should not make with the Powers of Europe such agreements as have been described which affect trade or commerce or the peace of the world. If we were to seek for terri- 272 THE UNITED STATES AT ALGECIRAS torial possession in Europe, or if we were to engage ourselves in European alliances which might involve us in war, then, indeed, we should violate both the policy of Washington and of the Monroe Doctrine, but we have not done, and have no intention of doing either. And the explicit reservation on these points made by our delegates on signing the protocol at Algeciras illustrates and demonstrates our policy. We seek in fact no territory anywhere, and desire none, least of all in Europe. For strategic reasons we were ready to buy the Danish Islands a few years ago, and are ready to do so now. But when Den mark, yielding to outside pressure, declined to ratify the treaty, we found no fault. We are perfectly content that Denmark should retain her islands, but it must be distinctly understood that if she sells we are the only purchaser, and the attempt of any other Power to take those islands or any other American territory, especially in the Caribbean Sea or along the route of the Canal, would be regarded by the American people as practically an act of war. I repeat, we seek no territory anywhere and we desire none ; in Europe it could not be forced upon us, and our only purpose in any dealings relating to European affairs would be, as has just been shown at Algeciras, to protect our own commercial interests and to advance the cause of peace and good-will among the nations. We do not pretend to be more THE UNITED STATES AT ALGECIRAS 273 disinterested or more unselfish than our neighbors but in the nature of things, so far as Europe is con cerned, our objects can only be peace, commerce, and good relations. We were at Algeciras because we were signatories to the previous treaties and because our commercial interests were involved in the settle ment of the recent differences. It is also true that the influence of the United States was used there as it was used last June, when the Moroccan troubles began, for the promotion of the world's peace, and this also is no departure either from the policy of the Farewell Address or from the Monroe Doctrine. Under the Hague Convention, to which the United States was a signatory, each nation has the right to offer its good offices for the settlement of differences between other signatory nations. President Roose velt exercised this right in the summer of 1905 to bring about a conclusion of the war between Russia and Japan. His brilliant success commanded the ad miration and gratitude not only of his own country men, but of the world. It would be a melancholy thing indeed if the moral influence of the United States could not be exerted for such a purpose. It was in conformity with this same policy that the influence of the United States has been used through out the Moroccan question to prevent war, if there was any danger of it, between two great Powers, both friends of the United States, the conflict be- 18 274 THE UNITED STATES AT ALGECIRAS tween whom would have been a most dire misfortune, which would have called down upon the aggressor the reprobation of civilized mankind. This was the whole case so far as the United States at Algeciras was concerned. The appearance there of the American delegates was in strict con formity with the attitude which the United States bas always taken in regard to affairs in Europe, and beyond the line so strictly observed hitherto the United States will not go, and cannot be drawn. But the policy of the United States is peace. She wishes not only to maintain her own peace, but the peace of the world is to her of the first importance. She will always use her influence to maintain the world's peace, acting in accordance with the language and spirit of the Hague Convention. She will be drawn into no alliances, defensive or offensive, with any nation anywhere, and into no wars by connection with any European Power. Yet at the same time she will not hesitate to use her moral influence to prevent wars if her good offices can prevent them, either between the Powers of Europe or in any portion of the civilized globe where her efforts can rightfully be exercised.1 1 Copyright in Great Britain and the United States, 1906. Books by Henry Cabot Lodge A FIGHTING FRIGATE and other essays and addresses 12mo. $1.50 net " A very attractive volume, touching on history, biography, international law, and travel, in a style that allures the reader from page to page." — Philadelphia Press " His language is chaste, his periods are sonorous, and his logical grasp of his subject is always that of a man able to see salient features and to marshal them in progress to defined results." — The Literary Digest *' This volume not only acquaints the student with men and principles conspicuous in American history, but well shows Senator Lodge's scholarship, clearness of reasoning, and agree ableness of style." — Buffalo Express "A collection of positive and increasing value to the students of American affairs." — Boston Transcript " From the purely literary standpoint the book deserves un qualified and unstinted praise. 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