If sleeping, wake—if feasting, rise beforeI turn away. It is the hour of fate,And they who follow me reach every stateMortals desire, and conquer every foeSave death; but those who doubt or hesitate,Condemned to failure, penury and woe,Seek me in vain and uselessly implore.I answer not, and I return no more!
Ingalls was a native of Haverhill, Massachusetts. Somewhere about 1880, being in Boston, he gave an interview to one of the papers in which he commented very severely on the want of able leadership in the Republican Party in Massachusetts. I suppose the criticism was directed at me, although he did not mention my name. In 1880 Massachusetts gave a Republican majority of 48,697, and Kansas a Republican majority of 41,897. Mr. Ingalls's leadership in Kansas had been manifested very largely in the control of official patronage. He said in the Senate that he and his colleague sought to get rid of all Democrats in office in Kansas as with a fine-toothed comb.
So far as I had been concerned, and so far as the Republican leaders in Massachusetts had been concerned, with the exception of General Butler, a different policy had been adopted. We had never attempted to make a political instrument of official patronage. There had never been anything like a "boss" or a machine. Our State politics had been conducted, and our candidates for office nominated, after the old fashion of a New England town meeting. When an election approached, or when a great measure or political question was to be decided, men who were influential consulted together informally, ascertained the public sentiment, deferred to it, if it seemed to be right, and did what they could to persuade it and guide it by speech and discussion in the press, if it needed guidance, and trusted, hardly ever in vain, to the intelligence of the people for the result. I do not know but the diminution of the comparative importance of the towns, and the change of the Commonwealth and cluster of cities and manufacturing villages, and the influx of other elements than that of the old New England stock may not bring about, or if indeed it is not already bringing about, a different conduct of affairs. But I have never adopted any other method, and I have never desired that my public life or influence should survive the introduction of any other method in Massachusetts. Mr. Ingalls's methods and mine have been tested by their results. The people of Kansas are largely of Massachusetts origin. I believe if her leading men had pursued Massachusetts methods she would to a great extent have repeated Massachusetts history. Our method of political management and control has been vindicated by the fact that the Commonwealth has been kept true to its ancient faith, except in a very few years when accidental causes have caused the election of a Democratic Governor. Those elections were protests against an attempt to depart from the old-fashioned method of ascertaining the will of the people in selecting Republican candidates. Massachusetts has kept the succession of United States Senators unbroken, and has had a Republican delegation in the House ever since the party came into power, with two exceptions. She has in general maintained her great Republican majority. On the other hand Kansas has been represented in turn by Democrats and Populists and Socialists and the advocates of fiat money and free silver.
Senator Cockrell of Missouri entered the Senate two years before I did, and has been there ever since. He is a man of great sincerity and integrity, of great influence with his own party, and highly esteemed by his Republican associates. He can generally be depended upon for a fair vote, certainly always for an honest and incorruptible vote, and to do full justice to a political opponent. He used for many years to prepare one speech, in each session, in which he went over the political issues of the two parties in a violent and extreme fashion. He would give us the whole history of the year and point out the imperfections and weakness and atrocity of the party in power in a most unsparing fashion. This speech he would frank home to Missouri. He seemed to think his duty as a Democratic politician was done, and he would betake himself to statesmanship the rest of the year. I think he has of late discontinued that practice. I do not want what I have said to be taken too seriously. There is scarcely a member of either side in either House who would be more missed from the public service, if anything were to happen to him, than Mr. Cockrell, nor for whom all men have a kindlier and more affectionate regard. Like Mr. Allison, he knows the mechanism of administration and legislation through and through. He would be entirely competent to fill a chair of public administration in any college, if, as I hope may be done, such chairs shall be established.
When Justin Morrill died, not only a great figure left the Senate Chamber—the image of the ancient virtue of New England— but an era in our national history came to an end. He knew in his youth the veterans of the Revolution and the generation who declared independence and framed the Constitution, as the young men who are coming to manhood to-day know the veterans who won our victories and the statesmen who conducted our policy in the Civil War. He knew the whole history of his country from the time of her independence, partly from the lips of those who had shaped it, partly because of the large share he had in it himself. When he was born Washington had been dead but ten years. He was sixteen years old when Jefferson and Adams died. He was twenty-two years old when Charles Carroll died. He was born at the beginning of the second year of Madison's Presidency, and was a man of twenty-six when Madison died. In his youth and early manhood the manners of Ethan Allen's time still prevailed in Vermont, and Allen's companions and comrades could be found in every village. He was old enough to feel in his boyish soul something of the thrill of our great naval victories, and of the victory at New Orleans in our last war with England, and, perhaps, to understand something of the significance of the treaty of peace of 1815. He knew many of the fathers of the country as we knew him. In his lifetime the country grew from seventeen hundred thousand to thirty-six hundred thousand square miles, from seventeen States to forty-five States, from four million people to seventy-five million. To the America into which he was born seventeen new Americas had been added before he died.
A great and healthful and beneficent power departed from our country's life. If he had not lived, the history of the country would have been different in some very important particulars; and it is not unlikely that his death changed the result in some matters of great pith and moment, which are to affect profoundly the history of the country in the future. The longer I live, the more carefully I study the former times or observe my own time, the more I am impressed with the sensitiveness of every people, however great or however free, to an individual touch, to the influence of a personal force. There is no such thing as a blind fate; no such thing as an overwhelming and pitiless destiny. The Providence that governs this world leaves nations as He leaves men, to work out their own destiny, their own fate, in freedom, as they obey or disobey His will.
Man is his own star; and the soul that canRender an honest and a perfect manCommands all life, all influence, all fate;Nothing to him falls early or too late.Our acts our angels are, or good or ill;Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.
It is wonderful what things this man accomplished alone, what things he helped others to accomplish, what things were accomplished by the political organization of which he was a leader, which he bore a very large part in accomplishing.
Mr. Morrill's public life was coincident with the advent of the Republican Party to National power. His first important vote in the House of Representatives helped to elect Mr. Banks to the office of Speaker, the first National victory of a party organized to prevent the extension of slavery. From that moment, for nearly half a century, Vermont spoke through him in our National Council, until, one after another, almost every great question affecting the public welfare has been decided in accordance with her opinion.
It would be impossible, even by a most careful study of the history of the country for the last forty years, to determine with exactness what was due to Mr. Morrill's personal influence. Many of the great policies to which we owe the successful result of the Civil War—the abolition of slavery, the restoration of peace, the new and enlarged definition of citizenship, the restoration of order, the establishment of public credit, the homestead system, the foundation and admission of new States, the exaction of apology and reparation from Great Britain, the establishment of the doctrine of expatriation, the achievement of our manufacturing independence, the taking by the United States of its place as the foremost nation in the world in manufacture and in wealth, as it was already foremost in agriculture, the creation of our vast domestic commerce, the extension of our railroad system from one ocean to the other—were carried into effect by narrow majorities, and would have failed but for the wisest counsel. When all these matters were before Congress there may have been men more brilliant or more powerful in debate. But I can not think of any wiser in counsel than Mr. Morrill. Many of them must have been lost but for his powerful support. Many owed to him the shape they finally took.
But he has left many a personal monument in our legislation, in the glory of which no others can rightfully claim to rival him. To him is due the great tariff, that of 1861, which will always pass by his name, of which every protective tariff since has been but a modification and adjustment to conditions somewhat changed, conditions which in general, so far as they were favorable, were the result of that measure. To him is due the first antipolygamy bill, which inaugurated the policy under which, as we hope and believe, that great blot on our National life has been forever expunged. The public buildings which ornament Washington, the extension of the Capitol grounds, the great building where the State, War and Navy Departments have their home, the National Museum buildings, are the result of statutes of which he was the author and which he conducted from their introduction to their enactment. He was the leader, as Mr. Winthrop in his noble oration bears witness, of the action of Congress which resulted in the completion of the Washington Monument after so many years' delay. He conceived and accomplished the idea of consecrating the beautiful chamber of the old House of Representatives as a Memorial Hall where should stand forever the statues of the great men of the States. So far, of late, as the prosperity and wise administration of the Smithsonian Institution has depended upon the action of Congress it has been due to him. Above all, the beautiful National Library building, unequalled among buildings of its class in the world, was in a large measure the result of his persistent effort and powerful influence, and stands as an enduring monument to his fame. There can be no more beautiful and enviable memorial to any man than a portrait upon the walls of a great college in the gallery where the figures and faces of its benefactors are collected. Mr. Morrill deserves this expression of honor and gratitude at the hands of at least one great institution of learning in every American State. To his wise foresight is due the ample endowment of Agricultural or Technical colleges in every State in the Union.
He came from a small State, thinly settled—from a frontier State. His advantages of education were those only which the public schools of the neighborhood afforded. All his life, with a brief interval, was spent in the same town, nine miles from any railroad, except when absent in the public service. But there was no touch of provincialism in him. Everything about him was broad, national, American. His intellect and soul, his conceptions of statesmanship and of duty expanded as the country grew and as the demands upon him increased. He was in every respect as competent to legislate for fifty States as for thirteen. He would have been as competent to legislate for an entire continent so long as that legislation were to be governed, restrained, inspired by the principles in which our Union is founded and the maxims of the men who builded it.
He was no dreamer, no idealist, no sentimentalist. He was practical, wise, prudent. In whatever assembly he was found he represented the solid sense of the meeting. But still he never departed from the loftiest ideals. On any question involving righteousness or freedom you would as soon have had doubt of George Washington's position as of his. He had no duplicity, no indirection, no diplomacy. He was frank, plain-spoken, simple-hearted. He had no faculty for swimming under water.
His armor was his honest thoughtAnd simple truth his utmost skill.
The Apostle's counsel to his young disciple will serve for a lifelike portraiture of Justin Morrill:
"Be sober-minded:"Speak thou the things which become sound doctrine:"In all things showing thyself a pattern of good works:in doctrine shewing uncorruptness, gravity, sincerity;"Sound speech that can not be condemned; that he that isof the contrary part may be ashamed, having no evil thingto say of you."
If you wish to sum up the quality of Justin Morrill in a single word, mind, body, and soul, that word would be Health. He was thoroughly healthy, through and through, to the center of his brain, to his heart's core. Like all healthy souls, he was full of good cheer and sunshine, full of hope for the future, full of pleasant memories of the past. To him life was made up of cheerful yesterdays and confident to-morrows. But with all his friendliness and kindliness, with all his great hold upon the love and respect of the people, with all his large circle of friends, with all his delight in companionship and agreeable converse, he dared to be alone. He found good society enough always, if no other were at hand, in himself. He was many times called upon to espouse unpopular causes and unpopular doctrines. From the time when in his youth he devoted himself to the anti-slavery cause, then odious in the nostrils of his countrymen, to the time when in the last days of his life he raised his brave voice against a policy upon which the majority of his political associates seemed bent, he never yielded the conclusions of his own judgment or the dictates of his own conscience to any majority, to any party dictation, or to any public clamor. When Freedom, Righteousness and Justice were on his side he considered himself in the majority. He was constant in his attendance on the worship of a small and unpopular religious denomination. He never lost his good nature, his courage, or his supreme confidence in the final triumph of truth.
Mr. Morrill was not a great political leader. Great political leaders are not often found in the Senate nowadays. He was contented to be responsible for one man; to cast his share of the vote of one State; to do his duty as he conceived it, and let other men do theirs as they saw it. But at least he was not a great political follower. He never committed himself to the popular currents, nor studied the vanes to see how the winds were blowing, nor sounded the depths and the shallows before he decided on his own course. There was no wire running to his seat from any centre of patronage or power. To use a felicitous phrase, I think of Senator Morgan of Alabama, he did not "come out of the door and cry 'Cuckoo!' when any clock struck elsewhere."
Mr. Morrill was a brave man—an independent man. He never flinched from uttering his thought. He was never afraid to vote alone. He never troubled himself about majorities or administrations, still less about crowds or mobs or spasms of popular excitement. His standard of excellence was high. He was severe, almost austere, in his judgments of other men. And yet, with all this, everybody liked him. Everybody who came to know him well loved him. It seems strange that he never incurred enmities or provoked resentments. I suppose the reason is that he never had any controversy with anybody. He did not mingle in the discussion of the Senate as a debater. He uttered his opinion and gave his reasons as if he were uttering judgments. But he seldom or never undertook to reply to the men who differed from him, and he rarely, if ever, used the weapons of ridicule or sarcasm or invective, and he never grew impassioned or angry. He had, in a high degree, what Jeremy Taylor calls "the endearment of prudent and temperate speech."
He was one of the men that Washington would have loved and Washington would have leaned upon. Of course I do not compare my good friend with him to whom no man living or that ever lived on earth can be compared. And Mr. Morrill was never tried or tested by executive or by military responsibilities. But the qualities which belonged to Washington belonged to him—prudence, modesty, sound judgement, simplicity, absolute veracity, absolute integrity, disinterestedness, lofty patriotism. If he is not to be compared with Washington, he was at least worthy to be the countryman of Washington, and to hold a high place among the statesmen of the Republic which Washington founded.
Neither ambition nor hatred, nor the love of ease nor the greed of gain, nor the desire of popularity, nor the love of praise, nor the fear of unpopularity found a place in that simple and brave heart.
Like as a ship that through the ocean wideBy conduct of some star doth make her way—
no local attraction diverted the magnet in his soul, which ever pointed to the star of day.
As I just said, he was one of the men that Washington would have loved and that Washington would have leaned upon. If we do not speak of him as a man of genius, he had that absolute probity and that sound common sense which are safer and better guides than genius. These gifts are the highest ornaments of a noble and beautiful character; they are surer guides to success and loftier elements of true greatness than what is commonly called genius. It was well said by an early American author,* now too much neglected, that—
"There is no virtue without a characteristic beauty. To do what is right argues superior taste as well as morals; and those whose practice is evil feel and inferiority of intellectual power and enjoyment, even where they take no concern for a principle. Doing well has something more in it than the mere fulfilling of a duty. It is a cause of a just sense of elevation of character; it clears and strengthens the spirits; it gives higher reaches of thought. The world is sensible of these truths, let it act as it may. It is not because of his integrity alone that it relies on an honest man, but it has more confidence in his judgment and wise conduct, in the long run, than in the schemes of those of greater intellect who go at large without any landmarks of principle. So that virtue seems of a double nature, and to stand oftentimes in the place of what we call talent."
[Footnote]* Richard H. Dana, the elder.[End of Footnote]
He was spared the fate of so many of our great New England statesmen, that of closing his life in sorrow and in gloom. His last days were days of hope, not of despair. Sumner came to his seat in the Senate Chamber as to a solitude. When he was struck with death there was found upon his table a volume of Shakespeare with this passage, probably the last printed text on which his eyes ever gazed, marked with his own hand:
Would I were dead! if God's good will were so;For what is in this world, but care and woe?
The last days of Samuel Adams were embittered by poverty, sickness, and the death of his only son.
Daniel Webster laid wearily down his august head in disappointment and sorrow, predicting with dying breath that the end had come to the great party to whose service his life was given.
When John Quincy Adams fell at his post in the House of Representatives a great newspaper declared that there could not be found in the country another bold enough or bad enough to take his place.
But Mr. Morrill's last days were filled with hope and not with despair. To him life was sweet and immortality assured. His soul took its flight
On wings that fear no glance of God's pure sight,No tempest from his breath.
And so we leave him. His life went out with the century of which he saw almost the beginning. What the future may have in store for us we cannot tell. But we offer this man as an example of an American Senator and American citizen than which, so far, we have none better. Surely that life has been fortunate. He is buried where he was born. His honored grave is hard by the spot where his cradle was rocked. He sleeps where he wished to sleep, in the bosom of his beloved Vermont. No State ever mourned a nobler son; no son was ever mourned by a nobler State. He enjoyed to a ripe old age everything that can make life happy—honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,
The love of friends without a single foe,Unequalled lot below.
He died at home. The desire of the wise man,
Let me die in my nest,
was fulfilled to him. His eyes in his old age looked undimmed upon the greatness and the glory of his country, in achieving which he had borne so large a part.
I was appointed upon the Committee on Privileges and Elections,March 9, 1877, and have continued a member of it ever since.
I was appointed on the same day a member of the Committees on Claims, Indian Affairs and Agriculture. I made a special study in the vacation of 1877, expecting to master, as well as I could, the whole Indian question, so that my service on that Committee might be of some value. But I was removed from the Committee on Indian Affairs, by the Committee who made the appointments, in the following December. This was very fortunate, for the country and for the Indians. Mr. Dawes, my colleague, not long after was placed upon the Committee. He was a most intelligent, faithful and stanch friend of the Indians during the remainder of his lifetime. He was ready, at the Department and on the floor of the Senate, and wherever he could exert an influence to protect and baffle any attempt to wrong them. His quiet and unpretending service to this unfortunate and oppressed race entitles him to a very high place in the affectionate remembrance of his countrymen.
The Committee on Agriculture was then of little importance. I remained a member of it for a few years, and then gave it up for some service in which my constituents were more immediately interested.
In December, 1878, I was put on the Committee on Patents, and remained upon it for a little while. The Committee had to deal occasionally with special cases of applications for extension of patents by statute, which demanded a knowledge of the patent law, and industry and sound judgment on the part of the Senator to whom they were committed for report. But they were not of much public interest or importance.
In December, 1879, I was put on the Committee on the Revision of the Laws; in December, 1883, on the Joint Committee on the Library; in December, 1884, on the Committee of the Judiciary, of which I have been a member ever since; in December, 1888, on the Committee on Relations with Canada; in December, 1891, on the Committee on Woman Suffrage; in December, 1895, on the Committee on Rules.
I was on the Committee on Claims for ten years, from March 9, 1877, to March 4, 1887. It is impossible to establish by the record the part any man performs, who is a member of a deliberative body consisting of several persons, in influencing its decisions, or in establishing the principles on which they are based. But I believe I may fairly claim, and that I could cite my associates on the Committee to bear testimony, that I had a great deal to do, and much more than any other person, in settling the doctrines upon which the Senate acted in dealing with the great questions of the claims of individuals and States and corporate bodies growing out of the War. Upon the rules then established the Government claims amounting to hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars were decided. The victorious Republic dealt justly and generously with the vanquished and misguided men who had assailed it and sought its destruction.
The general doctrines by which Congress was governed were these:
1. No rightful claim accrued to anybody for the destruction or injury to property by military movements, or operations, in a country which was the theatre of war.
2. A fair price was to be paid for supplies for the use of the Army in the field (1) to loyal persons, (2) to disloyal persons, if it were shown by a certificate of the officer who took them, or otherwise, that they were taken with the purpose of paying for them. Inhabitants of States in rebellion were presumed to be disloyal, unless their loyalty were shown affirmatively.
3. A like rule was followed in determining the questions of payment for the use of buildings, occupied as soldiers' quarters, or for other official purposes, by the Army, or injury to them caused by such occupation.
4. Property taken by the Army was paid for at its actual value to the Government, and not necessarily at its value to owner.
5. No claim accrued by reason of the destruction of property whether of loyal or disloyal persons, to prevent its falling into the hands of the enemy.
6. An exception to the principle above stated, founded not on any strict principle or established law or conduct of Governments, but on sound public policy, was adopted in the case of institutions of charity, education and religion.
I first affirmed that doctrine in the House of Representatives, in the case of the College of William and Mary of Virginia, against the almost unanimous opinion of my political associates. I thought that such a principle would be a great protection to such institutions in all future wars, that it would tend to heal the bitter recollections of the Civil War and the estrangements then existing between the sections of the country. I have lived to see the doctrine thoroughly established, the College of William and Mary rebuilt by the Government, and every church and school and hospital which suffered by the military operations of the Civil War reimbursed, if it has presented its claim.
If I have been able to render any public service, I look upon that I have rendered upon the Committee on Claims, although it has attracted but little attention, and is not of a nature to make great public impression, as perhaps more valuable than any other.
The duties of that Committee, when I was upon it, were very laborious. I find that in the first session of the first Congress, I made reports in seventeen cases, each of them involving a study of the evidence, a finding of the facts, and an investigation, statement and consideration of important principles of law, in most cases to be applied to a novel state of facts. I think that winter's work upon the Committee on Claims alone required more individual labor than that required to perform the duties of his office by any Judge of a State Court, of which I have any knowledge; and that the amount of money, and importance of the principles involved very far exceeded that involved in the aggregate of the cases in the Supreme Court of any State for a like period.
I was a member of the Committee on the Library for several years. For two or three years I was its acting Chairman during the summer, and in that capacity had to approve the accounts of the Congressional Library, and the National Botanic Garden.
To that Committee were referred applications for the erection of monuments and statues and similar works throughout the country, including the District of Columbia, and the purchase of works for art for the Government. They used to have a regular appropriation of fifteen thousand dollars annually, to be expended at their discretion, for works of art. That appropriation was stopped some years ago.
My service on that Committee brought me into very delightful relations with Mr. Sherman and Mr. Evarts. I introduced and got through a bill for a monument and statue to Lafayette and, as acting Chairman of the Library Committee was, with the Secretary of War and the Architect of the Capitol, a member of the Commission who selected the artists and contracted for the statue and monument. A resolution to build the monument passed the Continental Congress, but was not carried into effect by reason of the poverty of the Confederacy in that day. In Washington's first Administration somebody called attention to the fact that the monument had not been built, to which my grandfather, Roger Sherman, answered: "The vote is the monument." I was led by the anecdote to do what I could to have the long-neglected duty performed. The statue and monument, by two French artists of great genius, now stands at one corner of Lafayette Square. The statue of Rochambeau has just been placed at another corner of that square.
I was also fortunate enough, when I was on the Library Committee, to secure the purchase of the Franklin Papers for the Department of State. William Temple Franklin, the Doctor's son, died in London, leaving at his lodgings a mass of valuable correspondence of his father, and other papers illustrating his life, especially in France. They were discovered in the possession of the keeper of his lodgings, many years after, by Henry Stevens, the famous antiquary and dealer in rare books. Stevens had got into difficulties about money, and had pledged the collection for about twenty-five thousand dollars. It had been offered to the Government. Several Secretaries of State, in succession, including Mr. Blaine, had urged Congress to buy it, but without avail.
One day Mr. Dwight, Librarian of the State Department, came to see me at the Capitol about some not very important matter. While I was talking with him, he said that the one thing he wished most was that Congress would buy the Franklin Papers. He added "I think if I were to die, the words 'Franklin Papers,' would be found engraved on my heart." I said I thought I could accomplish the purchase. So I introduced a resolution, had it referred to the Library Committee, and we had a hearing. It happened that Edward Everett Hale, who probably knew as much about the subject and the value of the papers as anybody, was then in Washington. At the same time John Russell Bartlett was here, who had charge of the famous Brown Collection in Rhode Island. They were both summoned before the Committee, and on their statement the Committee voted to recommend the passage of the resolution. It passed the Senate. The provision was then put upon the Sundry Civil Appropriation bill. With it, however, was a provision to buy the Rochambeau Papers, which had been sent to this county on the assurance of Mr. Sherman, who was Chairman of the Committee on the Library, that Congress would purchase them. There was also a provision for buying the papers of Vans Murray, Envoy to France in Napoleon's time; and for buying two other quite important manuscript collections. When the bill got to the House, all these things were stricken out. The Conference Committee had a great strife over them, the House refusing to put any of them in, and the Senate insisting upon all. At last they compromised, agreeing to take them alternately, including the first one, rejecting the second; including the third, rejecting the fourth, and so on. In this lottery the Franklin Papers were saved, and Mr. Sherman's Rochambeau Papers were stricken out, much to his disgust. But he got an appropriation for them in a subsequent Congress.
The Committee on Rules have the control of the Capitol, and the not very important power of assigning the rooms to the different Committees. Beyond that they have not, in general, much to do. There have been few important amendments to the rules in my time, of which I was the author of two.
One of them provides that an amendment to any bill may be laid on the table, on special motion, without carrying the bill itself with it. The motion to lay on the table not being debatable, this enables the Senate to dispose promptly of a good many propositions, which otherwise would consume a good deal of time in debate. There had been such a provision as to appropriation bills before. When I first suggested this change, Mr. Edmunds exclaimed in a loud whisper, "we won't do that." But I believe he approved it finally.
The other was an amendment relating to order in debate, made necessary by a very disagreeable occurrence, which ended in the exchange of blows in the Senate, by two Senators from the same State. I had long in mind to propose, when the occasion came, the last clause of this amendment. If Senators are to be considered to any degree as ambassadors of their States, it would seem proper that they should not be compelled to hear any reproachful language about the State they represent. Such attacks have given rise to a great deal of angry debate in both Houses of Congress.
The following is the amendment:
No Senator in debate shall directly or indirectly by any form of words impute to any Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator.
No Senator in debate shall refer offensively to any State of the Union.
I was also for several years a member of the Committee on Woman Suffrage. That Committee used to hear the advocates of Woman Suffrage who liked to have their arguments reported and sent through the mails as public documents under the franking privilege.
Although a very decided advocate of the extension of the right of suffrage to women, I have not thought that it was likely that that would be accomplished by an amendment to the National Constitution, or indeed that it was wise to attempt to do it in that way. The Constitution cannot be amended without the consent of three-fourths of the States. If a majority can be got in three-fourths of the States for such an amendment, their people would be undoubtedly ready to amend their State Constitutions by which, so far as each State is concerned, the object would be accomplished. So it seems hardly worth while to take the trouble of plying Congress with petitions or arguments.
But my longest service upon Committees has been upon the two great Law Committees of the Senate,—the Committee on Privileges and Elections, and the Committee on the Judiciary.
I have been a member of the Committee on Privileges and Elections since March 9, 1877. I was Chairman for more than ten years. I have been a member of the Committee on the Judiciary since December, 1884, and have been its Chairman since December, 1891, except for two years, from March 4, 1893, to March 4, 1895, when the Democrats held the Senate.
While I was Chairman it was of course my duty to represent and defend in debate the action of these Committees on all the important questions referred to them. I have also, by reason of my long service, now more than twenty-six years, on the Committee of Privileges and Elections, been expected to take part in the discussion of all the Election cases, and of all matters affecting the privileges and dignity of the Senate, and of individual Senators. The investigations into alleged outrages at the South, and wrongs connected with them, have been conducted by that Committee. So it has been my fortune to be prominent in nearly all of the matters that have come up in the Senate since I have been a member of it, which have excited angry sectional or political feeling. Matters of finance and revenue and protection, while deeply interesting the people, do not, in general, cause angry feeling on the part of the political leaders. To this remark, the state of mind of our friends, whom we are in the habit of calling Mugwumps, and who like to call themselves Independents, is an exception. They have commonly discussed the profoundest and subtlest questions with an angry and bitter personality which finds its parallel only in the theological treatises of the dark ages. It is lucky for some of us that they have not had the fires of Smithfield or of the Inquisition at their command.
So, at various times in my life, I have been the object of the most savage denunciation, sometimes from the Independent newspapers, sometimes from the Democratic newspapers, especially those in the South, and sometimes from the press of my own party whom I have offended by differing from a majority of my political friends.
But such things are not to be taken too seriously. I have found in general that the men who deliver themselves with most bitterness and fury on political questions are the men who change their minds most easily, and are in general the most placable, and not uncommonly are the most friendly and pleasant men in the world in private intercourse. I account it my great good fortune that, although I have never flinched from uttering whatever I thought, and acting according to my own conviction of public duty, that, as I am approaching four score years, I have, almost without an exception, the good will of my countrymen, certainly if I may trust what they tell me when I meet in private intercourse men from different parts of the country, or what they are saying of me just now in the press. But it is quite possible that I may say or do something before I get through which will change all that. So whether my sunset, which is to come very soon, is to be clear or under a cloud, it is impossible even to guess.
During this period I have taken a leading part in all questions affecting the security of the right of suffrage conferred by the Constitution of the United States on the colored people, of honesty in elections, of questions affecting disputed titles to seats in the Senate, and the extension of suffrage to women.
A very interesting question, now happily almost forgotten, came up at the December session of 1878, and was renewed at the following March session of 1879.
In 1878 the Democrats had a majority in the House of Representatives, while the Republicans had the Presidency and the Senate. In March, 1879, there was a Democratic majority in the Senate and in the House, but a Republican President. The Democratic Party chafed exceedingly under the National laws for securing the purity of elections and for securing impartial juries in the courts of the United States. In the December session of 1878, the House inserted a provision repealing these laws. They insisted, in conference, on keeping in this provision, and refused to consent to the passage of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial Appropriation Bill, unless the Senate and the President would yield to their demand. Mr. Beck of Kentucky, one of the conferrees on the part of the Senate, representing what was then the Democratic minority, but what became at the March session the majority, stated the doctrine of the House, as announced by their conferrees—adding that he agreed with it—that unless the States should be allowed to conduct their own elections in their own way, free from all Federal interference, they would refuse under their Constitutional right to make appropriations to carry on the Government.
This was in defiance of the express provision of the Constitution that Congress might at any time alter the regulations prescribed by the State Legislatures as to time, place and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives.
Mr. Beck declared that that course would be adopted and adhered to, no matter what came of the Appropriation Bills. He was followed by Mr. Thurman of Ohio, the leader of his party in the Senate, and Chairman of the Judiciary when it came into power. He said it was a question upon which he had thought long and deeply, one of the gravest which ever arose for the consideration of the American Congress, and added:
"We claim the right, which the House of Commons in England established after two centuries of contest, to say that we will not grant the money of the people unless there is a redress of grievances . . . . England was saved from despotism and an absolute monarchy by the exercise of the power of the House of Commons to refuse supplies except upon conditions that grievances should be redressed . . . . It is a mistake to suppose that it was a fight simply between the Throne and the Commons; it was equally a fight between the Lords and the Commons; and the result of two centuries of contest in England was the rule that the House of Lords had no right to amend a Money Bill."
This startling proposition claimed that it was in the power of the House of Representatives to control the entire legislation of the country. It could, if the doctrine of Mr. Beck and Mr. Thurman had prevailed, impose any condition upon an appropriation for the Judges' salaries, for the salaries of all executive officers, for carrying on the courts, and for all other functions of the Government.
I made a careful study of this question and satisfied the Senate,—and I think I satisfied Mr. Beck and Mr. Thurman, —that the doctrine had no support in this country, and had no support even in England. An examination of Parliamentary history, which I studied carefully, afforded the material for giving a narrative of every occasion when the Commons exerted their power of withholding supplies as a means of compelling a redress of grievances, from the Conquest to the present hour. I did not undertake in a speech in the Senate to recite the authorities in full. But I summed up the result of the English and American doctrine in a few sentences, which may be worth recording here.
"First. The Commons never withheld the supplies as a means of coercing the assent of the Crown or the Lords tolegislation.
"Second. The supplies withheld were not the supplies needed for the ordinary functions of government, to which the ordinary revenues of the Crown were sufficient, but were for extraordinary occasions, as to pay the King's debts, or to conduct foreign wars.
"Third. That when the hereditary revenues of the Crown, or those settled on the King for life at the beginning of his reign, ceased to be sufficient for the maintenance of government and for public defence, the practice of withholding supplies ceased.
"Fourth. There has been no instance since the Revolution of 1688 of attaching general legislation to a bill for raising or appropriating money, and scarcely, if ever, such an instance before that date. When such an attempt has been made it has been resisted, denounced and abandoned, and the English Constitutional authorities, without exception, are agreed that such a proceeding is unwarrantable, revolutionary and destructive of the English Constitution.
"It is true that the luxury or ambition of Kings or their indulgent bounty to their favorites led them to assemble Parliament and to ask additional supplies from their subjects. It is also true that these requests furnished the occasion to the Commons to stipulate for redress of grievances. But the grievances so redressed had no relation to the laws of the Realm. These laws were made or altered by the free assent of the three estates in whom the law-making power vested by the Constitution. The grievances of which the Commons sought redress, whether from Tudor, Plantagenet or Stuart, were the improper use of prerogatives, the granting of oppressive monopolies, the waging of costly foreign wars, the misconduct of favorites and the like. The improvident expenditure of the royal patrimony, the granting the crown land or pensions to unworthy persons, is a frequent ground of complaint.
"But there is a broader and simpler distinction between the two cases. The mistake, the gross, palpable mistake, which these gentlemen fall into in making this comparison, lies at the threshold. The House of Commons, in its discretion, used to grant, and sometimes now grants, supplies to the King. The American Congress, in its discretion, never grants supplies to the President under any circumstances whatever. The only appropriation of the public money to which that term can properly apply, the provision for the President's compensation, is by design and of purpose placed wholly out of the power of Congress. The provision is peremptory that—
"'The President shall, at stated times, receive for his services a compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that period any other emolument from the United States, or any of them.'
"Alexander Hamilton, in No. 72 of the 'Federalist,' declares that the very purpose of this enactment is to put it beyond the power of Congress to compel the President 'to surrender at discretion his judgment to their inclinations.'"
Almost immediately after I entered the Senate the case came up of the title of William Pitt Kellogg to a seat in the Senate from Louisiana.
In January, 1877, a Republican Legislature was organized in Louisiana, which recognized Mr. Packard as the lawful Governor of the State. Packard had been elected, according to the claim of the Republicans, at the same election at which the Republican electors, who cast their votes for President Hayes, had been chosen. That Legislature elected Kellogg. When President Hayes refused to continue his support of the Republican government in Louisiana by military force, the Democrats organized the Legislature, a Democratic Governor took possession of power, and the Republican State Legislature melted away. It had done little or nothing, except to elect Mr. Kellogg.
Under these circumstances, the Democrats on the Committee on Privileges and Elections, and in the Senate, claimed that the recognition of the Democratic Governor had an ex post facto operation which determined the title and right of the Legislature who undertook to elect Mr. Spofford, Mr. Kellogg's competitor. The Republicans, on the other hand, claimed that nothing which occurred afterward could operate to determine the question of the lawfulness of the Kellogg Legislature, or its power to elect a Senator. That must be settled by the law and the fact. Upon these we thought Kellogg's title to be clear. Kellogg was seated. But when the Democrats got a majority, two years later, the Committee on Privileges and Elections, under the lead of Benjamin H. Hill of Georgia, undertook to set aside this judgment, and to seat Mr. Spofford. Mr. Hill made a long and, it is unnecessary to say, an able report, setting forth the view taken by himself and by the majority of the Committee, and recommended the admission of Mr. Spofford. I advised the Republican minority to decline to follow the Democrats into the discussion of the evidence, and to put the case alone and squarely on the authority of the previous judgment of the Senate. This I did in the following report:
The undersigned, a minority of the Committee on Privilegesand Elections, to whom was referred the memorial of HenryM. Spofford, claiming the seat now occupied by William PittKellogg, submit the following as their views:
On the 30th day of November, 1877, the Senate passed the following resolutions.
"Resolved,That William Pitt Kellogg is, upon the merits of the case, entitled to a seat in the Senate of the United States from the State of Louisiana for the term of six years, commencing on the 4th of March, 1877, and that he be admitted thereto on taking the proper oath.
"Resolved,That Henry M. Spofford is not entitled to a seat in the Senate of the United States."
The party majority in the Senate has changed since Mr. Kellogg took the oath of office in pursuance of the above resolution. Nothing else has changed. The facts which the Senate considered and determined were in existence then, as now. It is sought, by a mere superiority of numbers, for the first time, to thrust a Senator from the seat which he holds by virtue of the express and deliberate final judgment of the Senate.
The act which is demanded of this party majority would be, in our judgment, a great public crime. It will be, if consummated, one of the great political crimes in American history, to be classed with the Rebellion, with the attempt to take possession by fraud of the State Government of Maine, and with the overthrow of State Governments in the South, of which it is the fitting sequence. Political parties have too often been led by partisan zeal into measures which a sober judgment might disapprove; but they have ever respected the constitution of the Senate.
The men whose professions of returning loyalty to the Constitution have been trusted by the generous confidence of the American people are now to give evidence of the sincerity of their vows. The people will thoroughly understand this matter, and will not likely to be deceived again.
We do not think proper to enter here upon a discussion of the evidence by which the claimant of Mr. Kellogg's seat seeks to establish charges affecting the integrity of that Senator. Such evidence can be found in abundance in the slums of great cities. It is not fit to be trusted in cases affecting the smallest amount of property, much less the honor of an eminent citizen, or the title to an object of so much desire as a seat in the Senate. This evidence is not only unworthy of respect or credit, but it is in many instances wholly irreconcilable with undisputed facts, and Mr. Kellogg has met and overthrown it at every point.
The Democratic majority presented their report, without asking to have it read. Then we of the minority presented ours, and had it read. It attracted the attention of the Senate and of the country. My report contains but a few sentences. That of the Democratic minority occupies eight columns of very fine print in the Congressional Record. The result was that some of the Southern Democrats, including Mr. Bayard of Delaware, General Gordon of Georgia, General Wade Hampton of South Carolina, and Mr. Pendleton, of Ohio, refused to support their associates in the extreme measure of unseating a Senator when nothing had happened to affect the judgment which seated him, except that the majority of the Senate had changed. Some of the Democratic gentlemen, however, while resting upon the old judgment of the Senate, and while refusing to set that aside, thought the Democratic charges made out on the evidence, and that Mr. Kellogg's conduct and character deserved the severest denunciation. Senator Pendleton, of Ohio, however, with a courage and manliness that did him infinite credit, after stating what his Democratic brethren said: "I am bound to say that I have read the evidence carefully, and there is nothing in it that in the least warrants any imputation upon the integrity of that Senator."
In speaking of my Committee service, perhaps I ought to say that I was appointed one of the Regents of the Smithsonian Institution in the year 1881. I liked the position exceedingly. I was very much interested in the work of the Institution, and enjoyed meeting the eminent scholars and men of science who were its members. After I had been a member a year or two a very eminent Republican Senator complained that I was getting more than my share of the prominent places in the gift of the Senate, and specified the Regency of the Smithsonian Institution as an instance. I thought there was great justice in the complaint, and accordingly I resigned and Justin S. Morrill was put in my place. It was a very fortunate thing. Mr. Morrill's influence secured the construction of the National Museum building, which I do not think it likely that I could have accomplished. That Museum was then in charge of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.
A somewhat similar thing happened to me later. In the year 1885 the Nominating Committee of the Senate, of which Senator Allison was then Chairman, proposed my name for the Committee on Foreign Relations. I should have liked that service very much. I should have liked to study the history of our diplomacy, and the National interests specially in charge of that Committee, better than anything else I can think of. But I was then a member of the Committees on the Judiciary, Privileges and Elections, Library, Patents and the Select Committee to Inquire into the Claims of Citizens of the United States against Nicaragua, no one of which I desired to give up. On the other hand, Senator Frye of Maine, a very able Senator to whom the Republicans of Massachusetts were under special obligations for his services in their campaigns, was not at that time placed in positions on Committee service such as his ability and merit entitled him to. Accordingly I told the Committee I thought they had better amend their report and put Mr. Frye on the Committee on Foreign Relations instead of myself. That was done.
I incline to think that if that had not been done, and I had remained on the Committee for Foreign Relations, that I could have defeated the Spanish Treaty, prevented the destruction of the Republic in the Philippine Islands, and the commitment of this country to the doctrine that we can govern dependencies under our Constitution, in which the people have no political or Constitutional rights but such as Congress choose to recognize.
I am not sure that modesty or disinterestedness has much place in the matter of the acceptance of high political office. We often hear a gentleman say: "I am not fit to be Judge; I am not fit to be Governor, or Senator, or member of Congress. I think other men are better qualified, and I will not consent to stand in their way." This is often said with the utmost sincerity. But anybody who acts on such a feeling ought to remember that if he accept the office, it will not be filled by a worse man than he; if he accept the office, it being a political office, he is sure that the office will be filled by a man who will desire to accomplish, and will do his best to accomplish, the things he thinks for the public good. He should also remember, so far as the matter of ability is concerned, that other men are likely to be much better judges of his capacity than he is himself. If men are likely often to overrate their own capacity, they are also very often likely to underrate it.
Let me not be understood as commending the miserable self- seeking which too often leads men to urge their own claims without regard to the public interests. A man who is his own candidate is commonly a very bad candidate for his party.
One vote, more than once, would have saved the country from what I think its wretched policy in regard to the Philippine Islands. There was just one vote to spare when the Spanish Treaty was ratified. One Senator waited before voting until the roll-call was over and the list of the votes read by the clerk, before the finally voted for the treaty. He said he did not wish to butt his head against the sentiment of his State if he could do no good; but if his vote would defeat it, he should vote against it. If there had been one less vote, his vote would have defeated it. The Treaty would have been lost, in my opinion, if Senator Gray, one of the Commissioners who made it, who earnestly protested against it, but afterward supported it, had not been a member of the Commission. The resolution of Mr. Bacon, declaring our purpose to recognize the independence of the Philippine people, if they desired it, was lost also by a single vote. The Philippine Treaty would have been lost but for Mr. Bryan's personal interposition in its behalf. It would have been defeated, in my judgment, if Speaker Reed, a man second in influence and in power in this country to President McKinley alone, had seen it to be his duty to remain in public life, and lead the fight against it.
So I think it is rarely safe for a man who is in political life for public, and not for personal ends, and who values the political principles which he professes, to decline any position of power, either from modesty, doubt of his own ability, or from a desire to be generous to other men.
My twenty years' service on the Committee on the Judiciary, so far as it is worth narrating, will appear in the account of the various legal and Constitutional questions which it affected.
I have throughout my whole public political life acted upon my own judgment. I have done what I thought for the public interest without much troubling myself about public opinion. I always took a good deal of pride in a saying of Roger Sherman's. He was asked if he did not think some vote of his would be very much disapproved in Connecticut, to which he replied that he knew but one way to ascertain the public opinion of Connecticut; that was to ascertain what was right. When he had found that out, he was quite sure that it would meet the approval of Connecticut. That in general has been in my judgment absolutely and literally true of Massachusetts. It has required no courage for any representative of hers to do what he thought was right. She is apt to select to speak for her, certainly those she sends to the United States Senate, in whose choice the whole Commonwealth has a part, men who are in general of the same way of thinking, and governed by the same principles as are the majority of her people. When she has chosen them she expects them to act according to their best judgement, and not to be thinking about popularity. She likes independence better than obsequiousness. The one thing the people of Massachusetts will not forgive in a public servant is that he should act against his own honest judgment to please them. I am speaking of her sober, second thought. Her people, like the rest of mankind, are liable to waves of emotion and of prejudice. This is true the world over. It is as true of good men as of bad men, of educated as of ignorant men, whenever they are to act in large masses. Alexander Hamilton said that if every Athenian citizen had been a Socrates, still every Athenian assembly would have been a mob. So I claim no credit that I have voted and spoken as I thought, always without stopping to consider whether public opinion would support me.
The only serious temptation I have ever had in my public life came to me in the summer of 1882, when the measure known as the River and Harbor Bill was pending. The bill provided for an expenditure of about eighteen million dollars. Of this a little more than four million was for the execution of a scheme for the improvement of the Mississippi River and its tributaries, which had been recommended by President Arthur in a special message. All the other appropriations put together were a little less than fourteen million dollars. The bill passed both Houses. President Arthur vetoed it, alleging as a reason that the measure was extravagant; that the public works provided for in it were of local interest, not for the advantage of international or interstate commerce; and that it had got through by a system of log-rolling, the friends of bad schemes in one State joining with the friends of bad schemes in another, making common cause to support the bill. He added that in that way, the more objectionable the measure, the more support it would get. The press of the country, almost without exception, supported the President. The reasons which applied to each improvement were not well understood by the public. So the conductors of the newspapers naturally supposed the President to be in the right in his facts. The Democratic newspapers were eager to attack Republican measures. Where there were factions in the Republican Party, the Republican papers of one faction were ready to attack the men who belonged to the other. The independent newspapers welcomed any opportunity to support their theory that American public life was rotten and corrupt. So when the question came up whether the bill should pass notwithstanding the objections of the President, there was a storm of indignation throughout the country against the men who supported it.
But the committees who had supported it and who had reported it, and who knew its merits, and the men who had voted for it in either House of Congress, could not well stultify themselves by changing their votes, although some of them did. I was situated very fortunately in that respect. I had been absent on a visit to Massachusetts when the bill passed. So I was not on record for it. I had given it no great attention. The special duties which had been assigned to me related to other subjects. So when the measure came up in the Senate I had only an opinion founded on my general knowledge of the needs of the country and the public policy, that it was all right. My reelection was coming on. I was to have a serious contest, if I were a candidate, with the supporters of General Butler, then very powerful in the State. He, in fact, was elected Governor in the election then approaching. My first thoughts were that I was fortunate to have escaped this rock. But when the vote came on I said to myself: "This measure is right. Is my father's son to sneak home to Massachusetts, having voted against a bill that is clearly righteous and just, because he is afraid of public sentiment?" Senator McMillan, the Chairman of the Committee who had charge of the bill, just before my name was called, asked me how I meant to vote. I told him I should vote for the bill, because I believed it to be right, but that it would lose me the support of every newspaper in Massachusetts that had been friendly to me before. I voted accordingly. The vote was met by a storm of indignation from one end of Massachusetts to the other, in which every Republican newspaper in the State, so far as I know, united. The SpringfieldRepublicanand the BostonHerald,as will well be believed, were in glory. The conduct of no pick- pocket or bank robber could have been held up to public indignation and contempt in severer language than the supporters of that bill. A classmate of mine, an eminent man of letters, a gentleman of great personal worth, addressed a young ladies' school, or some similar body in Western Massachusetts, on the subject of the decay of public virtue as exemplified by me. He declared that I had separated myself from the best elements in the State.
The measure was passed over the President's veto. But it cost the Republican Party its majority in the House of Representatives. A large number of the member of the House who had voted for it lost their seats. If the question of my reelection had come on within a few weeks thereafter, I doubt whether I should have got forty votes in the whole Legislature. If I had flinched or apologized, I should have been destroyed. But I stood to my guns. I wrote a letter to the people of Massachusetts in which I took up case by case each provision of the bill, and showed how important it was for the interest of commerce between the States, or with foreign countries, and how well it justified the moderate expenditure. I pointed out that the bill had been, in proportion to the resources of the Government, less in amount than those John Quincy Adams and Daniel Webster had formerly advocated; that Mr. Webster, with the single exception of his service for preserving the Union, prided himself on his support of this policy of public improvement more than on anything else in his life, and had made more speeches on that subject than on any other. Mr. Adams claimed to be the author of the policy of internal improvements. So that it was a Massachusetts policy, and a Massachusetts doctrine. I asked the people of Massachusetts to consider whether they could reasonably expect to get their living by manufacture, to which nearly the whole State was devoted, bringing their raw material and their fuel and their iron and coal and cotton and wool from across the continent, and then carrying the manufactured article back again to be sold at the very places where the material came from, in competition with States like Pennsylvania and New York and Ohio and Indiana, unless the cost of transportation was, so far as possible, annihilated.
I concluded by saying that I knew they would not come to my way of thinking that afternoon or that week, but that they were sure to come to it in the end. With very few exceptions the letter did not change the course of the newspapers, or of the leading men who had zealously committed themselves to another doctrine. But it convinced the people, and I believe it had a very great effect throughout the country, and was the means of saving the policy of internal improvements from destruction.
Mr. Clapp, of the BostonJournal,with a manliness that did him infinite credit, declared publicly in its columns that he had been all wrong, and that I was right. The WorcesterSpy,edited by my dear friend and near kinsman, Evarts Greene, had with the rest of the press attacked my vote. Mr. Greene himself was absent at the time, so the paper was then in charge of an associate. When Mr. Greene returned I asked him to spend an afternoon at my house. That was before my letter came out. I had sent to Washington for all the engineers' reports and other documents showing the necessity of every item of the bill. Mr. Greene made a careful study of the bill and agreed with me.
The BostonHeraldalso obtained all the material from Washington and sent it to a very able gentleman who, though not taking any part in the ordinary conduct of theHerald,was called upon for services requiring special ability and investigation. They asked him to answer my letter. He spent five days in studying the matter, and then wrote to the managing editor of the paper than Mr. Hoar was entirely right, and that he should not write the article desired. TheHerald,however, did not abandon its position. It kept up the war. But I ought to say it so far modified its action that it supported me for reelection the next winter.
The SpringfieldRepublicansaw and seized its opportunity. It attacked the River and Harbor Bill savagely. It said: "Mr. Hoar is a candidate for reelection and has dealt himself a very severe blow. The Commonwealth was prepared to honor Messrs. Crapo and Hoar anew. To-day it pauses, frowns and reflects." So it kept up the attack. It had previously advocated the selection of Mr. Crapo as candidate for Governor. It bitterly denounced me. Mr. Crapo had himself voted for the River and Harbor Bill. It could not consistently maintain its bitter opposition to me, because of my vote, while supporting Mr. Crapo. So it declared it could no longer support him.
When the State Convention came the feeling was still strong, though somewhat abated. I had been asked by the Committee, a good while before, to preside at the Convention. This I did. I was received rather coldly when I went forward. But I made no apologies. I began my speech by saying: "It gives me great pleasure to meet this assembly of the representatives of the Republicans of Massachusetts. I have seen these faces before. They are faces into which I am neither afraid nor ashamed to look." The assembly hesitated a little between indignation at the tone of defiance, and approval of a man's standing by his convictions. The latter feeling predominated, and they broke out into applause. But the resolutions which the Committee reported contained a mild but veiled reproof of my action.
Mr. Crapo was defeated in the Convention. I have no doubt he would have been nominated for Governor, but for his vote for the River and Harbor Bill. His successful competitor, Mr. Bishop, was a gentleman of great personal worth, highly esteemed throughout the Commonwealth, and of experience in State administration. But it was thought that his nomination had been secured by very active political management, concerted at the State House, and that the nomination did not fairly represent the desire of the people of the Commonwealth. Whatever truth there may have been in this, I am very sure that Mr. Crapo's defeat could not have been compassed but for his vote for the River and Harbor Bill. The result of the above feeling, however, was that the Republican campaign was conducted without much heart, and General Butler was elected Governor.
When the election of Senator came in the following winter, I was opposed by what remained of the feeling against the River and Harbor Bill. My principal Republican competitors were Mr. Crapo, whose friends rightly thought he had been treated with great injustice; and Governor Long, a great public favorite, who had just ended a brilliant and most acceptable term of service as Governor. Governor Long had presided at a public meeting where President Arthur had been received during the summer, and had assured him that his action had the hearty approval and support of the people of the Commonwealth. I had, of course, no right to find the least fault with the supporters of Governor Long. He would have been in every way a most acceptable and useful Senator. I ought to say that, as I understood it, he hardly assumed the attitude of a candidate for the place, and declared in a public letter or speech that he thought I ought to be reelected. So, after a somewhat earnest struggle I was again chosen.
One curious incident happened during the election. The morning after the result was declared, a story appeared in the papers that Mr. Crapo's supporters had been led to come over to me by the statement that one of them had received a telegram from him withdrawing his name, and advising that course. The correspondent of one of the papers called upon Mr. Crapo, who answered him that he had never sent any such telegram to Boston. So it was alleged that somebody who favored me had brought about the result by this false statement. A newspaper correspondent called on me in Washington, and asked me about the story. I told him that I had not heard of the story, but that if it turned out to be true I, of course, would instantly decline the office. A full investigation was made of the matter, and it turned out that Mr. Crapo had sent such a telegram to a member of the Legislature in New Bedford, who had taken it to Boston and made it known.
The next winter, at my suggestion, a resolution was passed calling upon the Secretary of War, Mr. Lincoln, to specify which items in the River and Harbor Bill of the previous winter were not, in his opinion, advisable, or did not tend to promote international or interstate commerce. He replied specifying a very few items only, amounting altogether to a very few thousand dollars. This reply was made by the Secretary of War, as he told me in private afterward, by the express direction of the President, and after consultation with him. That ended the foolish outcry against the great policy of internal improvement, which has helped to make possible the marvels of our domestic commerce, one of the most wonderful creations of human history. The statistics of its vast extent, greater now, I think, than all the foreign commerce of the world put together, from the nature of the case, never can be precisely ascertained. It is not only wonderful in its amount, but in its origin, its resources, and in its whole conduct. All its instrumentalities are American. It is American at both ends, and throughout all the way. This last year a bill providing for an expenditure of sixty millions, nearly four times the amount of that which President Arthur, and the newspapers that supported him, thought so extravagant, passed Congress without a murmur of objection, and if I mistake not, without a dissenting vote.
I should like to put on record one instance of the generosity and affection of Mr. Dawes. He had not voted when his name was called, expecting to vote at the end of the roll-call. He meant to vote against the passage of the bill over the veto. But when he heard my vote for it, he saw that I was bringing down on my head a storm of popular indignation, and made up his mind that he would not throw the weight of his example on the side against me. So, contrary to his opinion of the merits of the bill, he came to my side, and voted with me.
I suppose a good many moralists will think that it is a very wicked thing indeed for a man to vote against his convictions on a grave public question, from a motive like this, of personal friendship. But I think on the whole I like better the people, who will love Mr. Dawes for such an act, than those who will condemn him. I would not, probably, put what I am about to say in an address to a Sunday-school, or into a sermon to the inmates of a jail or house of correction. I cannot, perhaps, defend it by reason. But somehow or other, I am strongly tempted to say there are occasions in life where the meanest thing a man can do is to do perfectly right. But I do not say it. It would be better to say that there are occasions when the instinct is a better guide than the reason. At any rate, I do not believe the recording angel made any trouble for Mr. Dawes for that vote.
Much of what I have said in the preceding chapter is, in substance, applicable to my vote on another matter in which I had been compelled to take an attitude in opposition to a large majority of my own party and to the temporary judgment of my countrymen: that is the proposed legislation in violation of the Treaty with China; the subsequent Treaty modifying that negotiated in 1868 by Mr. Seward on our part, and Mr. Burlingame for China; and the laws which have been enacted since, upon the subject of Chinese immigration. I had the high honor of being hung in effigy in Nevada by reason of the report that I had opposed, in secret Session of the Senate, the Treaty of 1880. My honored colleague, Mr. Dawes, and I were entirely agreed in the matter. Mr. Dawes complained good-naturedly to Senator Jones, of Nevada, that he had been neglected when the Nevada people had singled me out for that sole honor, to which Mr. Jones, with equal good-nature, replied that if Mr. Dawes desired, he would have measures taken to correct the error, which had inadvertently been made.