I was bitterly reproached by some worthy persons, who I suppose will always find matter for bitter reproach in everything said or done on public matters. They charged me with speaking one way and voting another. But I am content to leave the case on its merits, and on the record.
The war went on. The feeling of the country was deeply excited. President McKinley made his famous Western journey. He was greeted by enthusiastic throngs. The feeling in that part of the country in favor of a permanent dominion over the Philippine Islands was uttered by excited crowds, whom he addressed from the platform and the railroad cars as he passed thorough the country. But the sober, conservative feeling, which seldom finds utterance in such assemblies, did not make itself heard.
The President returned to Washington, undoubtedly in the honest belief that the country demanded that he acquire the Philippine Islands, and that Congress should govern them.
I have never attributed publicly, or in my own heart, to President McKinley any but the most conscientious desire to do his duty in what, as the case seems to me, was an entire change of purpose. Many military and naval officers, from whose reports he had to get his facts almost wholly, insisted that the Philippine people were unfit for self-government. After the unhappy conflict of arms the solution of the problem seemed to be to compel the Philippine people to unconditional submission. It would not be just or fair that I should undertake to state the reasons which controlled the President in adopting the conclusions to which I did not myself agree. I am merely telling my own part in the transaction.
When I got back to Washington, at the beginning of the session in December, 1898, I had occasion to see the President almost immediately. His purpose was to make a Treaty by which, without the assent of their inhabitants, we should acquire the Philippine Islands. We were to hold and govern in subjection the people of the Philippine Islands. That was pretty well understood.
The national power of Spain was destroyed. It was clear that she must submit to whatever terms we should impose. The President had chosen, as Commissioners to negotiate the Treaty, five gentlemen, three of whom, Senators Cushman K. Davis, and William P. Frye and Whitelaw Reid, the accomplished editor of the New YorkTribune,former Minister to France, were well known to be zealous for acquiring territory in the East. Mr. Frye was said to have declared in a speech not long before he went abroad that he was in favor of keeping everything we could lay our hands on. I suppose that was, however, intended as a bit of jocose extravagance, which that most excellent gentleman did not mean to have taken too seriously.
Mr. Day, the Secretary of State, and Senator Gray of Delaware, were understood to be utterly opposed to the policy of expansion or Imperialism.
I do not know about Mr. Day. But it appeared, when three years afterward the correspondence between the Commissioners and the Department of State became public, that Mr. Day expressed no objection to the acquisition of Luzon, but objected to a peremptory demand for the whole Philippine Island group, thereby—to use his language—"leaving us open to the imputation of following agreement to negotiate with demand for whole subject matter of discussion ourselves."
The public impression as to Senator Gray is confirmed by the following remonstrance, which appears in the same correspondence:
PEACE COMMISSIONERS TO MR. HAY[Telegram]
PARIS, October 25, 1898.
The undersigned cannot agree that it is wise to take Philippine Islands in whole or in part. To do so would be to reverse accepted continental policy of the country, declared and acted upon throughout our history. Propinquity governs the case of Cuba and Porto Rico. Policy proposed introduces us into European politics and the entangling alliances against which Washington and all American statemen have protested. It will make necessary a navy equal to largest of powers; a greatly increased military establishment; immense sums for fortifications and harbors; multiply occasions for dangerous complications with foreign nations, and increase burdens of taxation. Will receive in compensation no outlet for American labor in labor market already overcrowded and cheap; no area for homes for American citizens; climate and social conditions demoralizing to character of American youth; new and disturbing questions introduced into our politics; church question menacing. On whole, instead of indemnity—injury.
The undersigned cannot agree that any obligation incurred to insurgents is paramount to our own manifest interests. Attacked Manila as part of legitimate war against Spain. If we had captured Cadiz and Carlists had helped us, would not owe duty to stay by them at the conclusion of war. On the contrary, interests and duty would require us to abandon both Manila and Cadiz. No place for colonial administration or government of subject people in American system. So much from standpoint of interest; but even conceding all benefits claimed for annexation, we thereby abandon the infinitely greater benefit to accrue from acting the part of a great, powerful, and Christian nation; we exchange the moral grandeur and strength to be gained by keeping our word to nations of the world and by exhibiting a magnanimity and moderation in the hour of victory that becomes the advanced civilization we claim, for doubtful material advantages and shameful stepping down from high moral position boastfully assumed. We should set example in these respects, not follow in the selfish and vulgar greed for territory which Europe has inherited from mediaeval times. Our declaration of war upon Spain was accompanied by a solemn and deliberate definition of our purpose. Now that we have achieved all and more than our object, let us simply keep our word. Third article of the protocol leaves everything concerning the control of the Philippine Islands to negotiation between the parties.
It is absurd now to say that we will not negotiate but will appropriate the whole subject-matter of negotiation. At the very least let us adhere to the President' instructions and if conditions require the keeping of Luzon forego the material advantages claimed in annexing other islands. Above all let us not make a mockery of the injunction contained in those instructions, where, after stating that we took up arms only in obedience to the dictates of humanity and in the fulfillment of high public and moral obligations, and that we had no design of aggrandizement and no ambition of conquest, the President among other things eloquently says:
"It is my earnest wish that the United States in making peace should follow the same high rule of conduct which guided it in facing war. It should be as scrupulous and magnanimous in the concluding settlement as it was just and humane in its original action."
This and more, of which I earnestly ask a reperusal, binds my conscience and governs my action.
GEORGE GRAY.WEDNESDAY, 12.30, night.
Senator Gray afterward signed the Treaty, defended it in debate, and voted for its ratification. He vigorously defended his vote on the floor of the Senate, chiefly by the argument that when he learned that it was the purpose of the United States to expel Spain from the Philippine Islands, he concluded it was our duty to remain there for the protection of the people against foreign rapacity and against domestic anarchy. He claimed that he had been influenced in coming to this conclusion very considerably by the fact that I was reported to have said that under no circumstances would we give back the Philippine people to Spain. That was true. I believed then, and believe now, that it was our duty to deliver them from Spain, to protect them against her, or against the cupidity of any other nation until her people could have tried fully the experiment of self- government, in which I have little doubt they would have succeeded.
When I saw President McKinley early in December, 1898, he was, I suppose, committed to the policy to which he adhered. He greeted me with the delightful and affectionate cordiality which I always found in him. He took me by the hand, and said: "How are you feeling this winter, Mr. Senator?" I was determined there should be no misunderstanding. I replied at once: "Pretty pugnacious, I confess, Mr. President." The tears came into his eyes, and he said, grasping my hand again: "I shall always love you, whatever you do."
I found we differed widely on this great subject. I denounced with all the vigor of which I was capable the Treaty, and the conduct of the war in the Philippine Islands, in the Senate, on the platform, in many public letters, and in articles in magazines and newspapers. But President McKinley never abated one jot of his cordiality toward me. I did not, of course, undertake to press upon him my advice in matters affecting the Philippine Islands, about which we differed so much. But he continued to seek it, and to take it in all other matters as constantly as ever before.
In order that it may not be supposed that I deceived myself in regard to President McKinley's kindly regard, I may perhaps be pardoned for saying that his close friend, Senator Hanna, has more than once assured me that McKinley's love for me was never abated, and for citing a sentence from an article by Charles Emory Smith, his trusted counsellor and able and accomplished Postmaster-General, in this Cabinet. Mr. Smith says:
"Senator Hoar was the earnest foe and critic of President McKinley's policy. But President McKinley had the warmest regard and consideration for him. Nothing, indeed, in public life was sweeter than the sentiment of these different and differing men toward each other. President McKinley was anxious to commission Senator Hoar as Minister to England, and proffered him the place. It was without any desire to remove him from the arena of contention—apprehension of such a reflection restrained the proffer for a time—though the contention had not then been fully developed."
After President McKinley's death I expressed the public sorrow and my own in an address to a vast audience of the people of my own city of Worcester, in Mechanics' Hall; and again, at the request of the Republican State Committee, at the Republican State Convention shortly afterward.
I have reason to know that both the addresses gave pleasure to many of the lamented President's closest and warmest friends throughout the country. I was afterward invited by the City Government of Worcester to deliver a historical eulogy on President McKinley before them. That office, it seemed to me, I ought to decline. It was not because I was behind any other man in admiration or personal affection for that lofty and beautiful character. But I thought that address, which was not only to utter the voice of public sorrow, but to give a careful and discriminating sketch of the public life of its subject, ought to be delivered by some person who agreed with him in regard to the most important action of his life. I could not well pass over the Philippine question. I could not well speak of it without stating my own opinion. I could not undertake to state President McKinley's opinion, conduct or policy, without expressing my disapproval of it, and if I did not do that, I could not state it without being thought by those who heartily approved it, not to have stated it justly and fairly.
I had repeatedly declared, during the preceding two years, both before and since his death, my highest admiration for the intellectual and moral qualities of my beloved friend, and my belief that he would have a very high place in history among the best and ablest men of the country.
But I thought the story of the important part of his life should be told from his point of view, and not from mine; that the reasons which governed him should be stated by a person sure to appreciate them fully. If a great Catholic Prelate were to die, his eulogy should not be pronounced by a Protestant. When Dr. Channing died, we did not select a Calvinist minister to pronounce his funeral sermon. When Charles Sumner died Mr. Schurz and Mr. Curtis, not some old Whig, and not some earnest supporter of General Grant, pronounced the eulogy. I suppose nobody would have dreamed of asking a Free Trader to pronounce the eulogy on President McKinley if he had died soon after the beginning of his first term. So I declined the office. The City did not ask anybody else to fill my place, or perform the task.
I will not now renew the debate about our treatment of the people of the Philippine Islands. My opinion has not at all changed. I think that under the lead of Mabini and Aguinaldo and their associates, but for our interference, a Republic would have been established in Luzon, which would have compared well with the best of the Republican Governments between the United States and Cape Horn. For years and for generations, and perhaps for centuries, there would have been turbulence, disorder and revolution. But in her own way Destiny would have evolved for them a force of civic rule best adapted to their need. If we had treated them as we did Cuba, we should have been saved the public shame of violating not only our own pledges, but the rule of conduct which we had declared to be self-evident truth in the beginning of our history. We should have been saved the humiliation of witnessing the subjection by Great Britain of the Boers in South Africa, without a murmur of disapproval, and without an expression of one word of sympathy for the heroic victims.
My term as Senator expired on the fourth of March, 1901. The election of Senator for the following term came in January of that year. I differed sharply from my colleague, Mr. Lodge, in this whole matter. But the people of Massachusetts, with the generous and liberal temper which ever distinguished that noble Commonwealth, desired that their Senators should act upon their own judgment, without any constraint.
A resolution was introduced at the session of the Legislature of 1899 by Mr. Mellen, Democratic member from Worcester, thanking me for my speech in opposition to the Spanish Treaty, endorsing the doctrine of that speech, and condemning the subjugation of the Philippine people by force of arms.
Charles G. Washburn, Republican member from Worcester, introduced a resolution commending my speech, and declaring it to be "A speech of the loftiest patriotism and eloquent interpretation of the high conception of human freedom which the fathers sought to preserve for all time in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution of the United States."
These resolution, if adopted, would, by implication, condemn the well-known opinion and action of my colleague. They were encountered by several others, none of which referred to either Senator, but expressed approval of the Spanish Treaty. One of them, however, presented in the House by Mr. Mills of Newburyport, declared that the Treaty ought to be ratified, and then the United States should fulfil to Porto Rico and the Philippine Islands the pledge of self-government and independence made to Cuba. Very wisely all these resolutions were referred to the Committee on Federal Relations, who reported this as a compromise:
Resolved,by the Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in General Court assembled, that Massachusetts, ever loyal in sympathy and support of the General Government, continues her unabated confidence in her Senators, and with a just pride in the eloquent and memorable words they have uttered, leaves them untrammeled in the exercise of an independent and patriotic judgment upon the momentous questions presented for their consideration.
The whole matter was then dropped. But the Legislature, and the generous people of Massachusetts whom they represented, acted upon the spirit of the Committee's Resolution. I was reelected without opposition. I had every Republican vote, and many Democratic votes, of the Legislature. My affectionate and cordial relations with my brilliant and accomplished colleague have never suffered an instant's interruption.
I think I am entitled to record, however, that this result was not accomplished by any abatement of my opposition to the policy of the Administration as to the Philippine Islands. I made a great many speeches within a few weeks of the Presidential election in 1900. The members of the Senate and House, of the Massachusetts Legislature, who were to choose a Senator, were to be chosen at the same time. I expressed my unchanged and earnest opposition of disapproval to the whole business at length.
In speaking of the habit of appealing to the love of the flag in behalf of this policy of conquest, I said that there was but one symbol more sacred than the American flag. That was the bread and wine which represented the body and blood of the Saviour of mankind; adding, that a man who would use an appeal to the flag in aid of the subjugation of an unwilling people, would be capable of using the sacramental wine for a debauch.
The week before the election of Senator came on a bill for the reorganization of the Army was before the Senate. That contained a provision for increasing the Army to a hundred thousand men, allowing the President, however, to reduce it to seventy thousand, and to raise it again if necessary, so it would in his discretion be elastic, within those limitations.
Mr. Bacon, of Georgia, who seemed to be the leader of the Democrats on that measure, inquired of the Republicans who were managing the bill, how many men they needed and what time would be required to put down the insurrection in the Philippine Islands. Senator Bacon said that they would give them the hundred thousand men, or any force they might demand for one or two or three or five years, or for any required time. But they were unwilling to give the President the power of expanding and contracting the army in time of peace. This was in full Senate.
I followed with a statement that I had no objection to giving the President this discretion, and did not disapprove the bill on that account. I thought the size of the Army in time of peace should be left largely to the opinion of the experts, especially General Miles, the famous soldier at the head of our Army, who thought the regular Army should consist of one hundred for every thousand of our population. That would be about eighty thousand then, and before long would require a hundred thousand men. But I said I was opposed to raising soldiers to carry on the war in the Philippine Islands. The only way to stop it that I knew was to refuse to vote for the Army Bill. I voted against it solely on that account.
I meant that if the Legislature of Massachusetts were to reelect me, no man should ever have it to say that I had bought my reelection by silence on this question, or concealed my opinion, however extreme it might be, until after election.
After my election I delivered an address before the two Houses of the Legislature, at their request, and was received with a most cordial enthusiasm.
Yet I think that if any leading Republican who had differed from me on this question, especially Governor Long, of whose brilliant administration of the Navy the people of the Commonwealth were so proud, had pressed his candidacy for the office in opposition to me, as has been the custom in like cases in other States, it is not unlikely that he would have been elected.
I have no doubt I should have found Governor Roger Wolcott a formidable competitor, if he had lived and been willing. Governor Wolcott had made a statement in public, quietly and briefly, as was his wont, expressing his sympathy with me when the question of the Treaty was under debate. Somewhat later he made a statement in the same way, expressing his opinion that the Administration should be supported. Both these declarations were in general terms. They were not inconsistent with each other. But death arrested the honorable and useful career of Roger Wolcott when he was still in the prime of life, in the strength of his noble manhood, a strength which seemed rapidly enlarging and growing as if in early youth.
I have not doubt that the subjugation of the Philippine Islands, the acquisition of a dependency to be held in subjection by the United States, the overthrow of the great doctrine that Governments rest on the consent of the governed; that all the painful consequences which have attended the war for the subjugation of that distant people, would have been avoided if the Democratic opposition had been hearty and sincere. The same spirit that defeated the Election bill in spite of the majority in its favor, would have easily accomplished that result. The Democratic Party, as a party, never meant business in this matter. I do not deny that many Democrats— I dare say a majority of the Democrats—were as earnestly and seriously opposed to the acquisition of the Philippine Islands as I was myself. But they never wielded their party strength in opposition to it. I said to one eminent Democratic leader early in the year 1900: "There is one way in which you can put an end to this whole business. If you can elect a Democratic House it will have power under the Constitution to determine the use to which the Army shall be put. In that way you compelled President Hayes to refrain from further support by military force of the Republican State Governments in the South." He answered: "Mr. Hoar, we shall never do anything as radical as that."
When Senator Bacon made the offer to the majority of the Senate to agree to give them all the military power they desired for the suppression of the resistance in the Philippines for as long a time as they should think it necessary, the entire Democratic Party in the Senate was in their seats, and there was no expression of dissent.
I think the Democratic Party feared the fate of the Federalists who opposed the War of 1812, and of the Democrats who opposed the War for the Union in 1861. This of course in the nature of things is but conjecture.
Seventeen of the followers of Mr. Bryan voted for the Treaty. The Treaty would have been defeated, not only lacking the needful two thirds, but by a majority of the Senate but for the votes of Democrats and Populists.
Senators Morgan and Pettus of Alabama, Senator McLaurin of South Carolina, Senator McEnery of Louisiana, were avowed supporters of the Treaty from the beginning.
Mr. Bryan in the height of the contest came to Washington for the express purpose of urging upon his followers that it was best to support the Treaty, end the War, and let the question of what should be done with our conquest be settled in the coming campaign. He urged upon them, as I was told by several Democrats at the time who did not take his advice, that the Democratic Party could not hope to win a victory on the financial questions at stake after they had been beaten on them in a time of adversity; and that they must have this issue for the coming campaign. He was besought by his wiser political associates to go away and leave the Senate to settle the matter. But he remained.
After that it became impossible, not only to defeat the Treaty, but to defeat the policy which had inspired it. The Treaty pledged that the Philippine Islands should be governed by Congress. It undertook obligations which require for their fulfillment, at least ten years' control of the Islands. It put the people of the Philippine Islands in the attitude of abandoning the Republic they had formed, and of acknowledging not only our supremacy but that they were neither entitled or fit to govern themselves or to carry on the war which had unfortunately broken out. I do not mean to imply that, as I have said, a large number of the Democratic Party both in public life and out of it, were not sincere and zealous in their opposition to this wretched business. But next to a very few men who controlled the policy of the Republican Party in this matter, Mr. Bryan and his followers who voted in the Senate for the Treaty are responsible for the results.
I have been blamed, as I have said already, because, with my opinions, I did not join the Democratic Party and help to elect Mr. Bryan. I disagreed with him and his party as to every other issue then pending before the American people. So differing from him, I found nothing in his attitude or that of his party, to induce me to support him, or even to inspire my confidence in their settlement of the question of Imperialism or expansion.
In my opinion, if he had been elected, he would have accepted the result, have put the blame for it on his predecessor in office, and matters would have gone on very much as they have under Republican control.
I have been told by many Senators who voted for the Treaty, that they regretted that vote more than any other act of their lives. Enough Senators have said this to me in person, not only to have defeated the Treaty, but if they had so voted, to have defeated it by a majority. A very eminent Republican Senator told me that more than twenty Senators, who voted for the Treaty, had given the same assurance to him. But they are very unwilling to make the declaration public. Several gentlemen, however, have publicly expressed their regret for their vote, as is well known, enough to have changed the result.
When I think of my party, whose glory and whose service to Liberty are the pride of my life, crushing out this people in their effort to establish a Republic, and hear people talk aboutgivingthem good Government, and that they are better off than they ever were under Spain, I feel very much as if I had learned that my father, or some other honored ancestor, had been a slave-trader in his time, and had boasted that he had introduced a new and easier kind of hand-cuffs or fetters to be worn by the slaves during the horrors of the middle passage.
I do not believe that there is a respectable or intelligent Filipino to-day, unless possibly some Macabebe scout, who would not get rid of the Government of the United States at once, if he could. Buencamino is said to be one of the ablest of their public men. He has been quoted as friendly to us, and is so. There is no doubt that he has so expressed himself. He has been appointed a member of the Taft Government, and has had committed to him the responsible and important duty of deciding the appointments to the offices which are to be filled by the native Filipinos, under the existing establishment. It is said by both sides that he is crafty and selfish and ambitious, and that he likes to be on the side that is the strongest. How that may be, I do not know. But he will not even pretend to accept the rule of the United States willingly. He appeared as a witness before a Committee of the House of Representatives, when in this country in 1902. He was asked whether his people approved the policy of the Democratic Party. He answered emphatically: "No. They do not wish to have the United States abandon them to the ambition or cupidity of foreign Governments." But he added: "Every Filipino is in favor of the policy advocated by Senator Hoar." "What!" said his inquirer, with great surprise, "Do you mean to say that every Filipino agrees with Senator Hoar in his views?" "Yes," replied the man, with great emphasis; "every Filipino agrees with Senator Hoar."
I mentioned this one day in conversation with President Roosevelt. He told me that Buencamino had said exactly the same thing to him.
General Miles told me on his return from his journey round the world that he saw many leaders of the Philippine people; that they spoke of me with great regard and attachment.
June 17, 1902, an eminent Hindoo scholar, published a long article in theJapan Times,in which he said:
"The speech of Mr. Hoar, though an address to his own countrymen, is a message of hope to the whole world which sank with despondency at the sight of Republican America behaving like a cruel, tyrannical and rapacious Empire in the Philippines and particularly to the broken-hearted people of Asia who are beginning to lose all confidence in the humanity of the white races. Or is it that they have lost it already? Hence all papers in Asia should reprint his speech, translate it, and distribute it broadcast. Let it be brought home to the Asiatic people so that they may work and worship their champion and his forefathers. Thanks to the awakening in America, thanks to the forces that are at work to chase out the degenerating, demoralizing passion for territorial aggrandizement from the noble American mind and save it for itself and the world at large from the cancer of Imperialism."
I am afraid I am committing an offence against good taste in repeating such laudations. But it must be remembered that a public man who has to encounter so much bitter reviling and objurgation, is fairly entitled to have a little extravagance on the other side that the balance may be even. I would rather have the gratitude of the poor people of the Philippine Islands, amid their sorrow, and have it true that what I may say or do has brought a ray of hope into the gloomy caverns in which the oppressed peoples of Asia dwell, than to receive a Ducal Coronet from every Monarch in Europe, or command the applause of listening Senators and read my history in a Nation's eyes.
At first there can seem nothing more absurd than the suggestion of my Asiatic friend that the people of Asia should worship their champion and his ancestors. But on second thought, it is fair to say that while no human being can be entitled to be worshipped by any other, yet that we got our love of Liberty from our ancestors, or at any rate that is where I got mine, and that they are entitled to all the credit.
Among the great satisfactions in the life of public men is that of sometimes being instrumental in the advancement to places of public honor of worthy men, and of being able to have a great and salutary influence upon their lives. I have always held to the doctrine of what is called Civil Service Reform, and have maintained to the best of my ability the doctrine of the absolute independence of the Executive in such matters, as his right to disregard the wishes and opinions of members of either House of Congress, and to make his appointments, executive and judicial, without advice, or on such advice as he shall think best. But, at the same time, there can be no doubt that the Executive must depend on some advice other than his own, to learn the quality of men in different parts of this vast Republic, and to learn what will be agreeable to public opinion and to the party which is administering the Government and is responsible for its administration. He will, ordinarily, find no better source of such information than in the men whom the people have shown their own confidence by entrusting them with the important function of Senator or Representative. He will soon learn to know his men, and how far he can safely take such advice. He must be careful to see to it that he is not induced to build up a faction in his party, or to fill up the public offices with the partisans of ambitious but unscrupulous politicians. When I entered the House of Representatives, before the Civil Service Reform had made any progress, I addressed and had put on file with the Secretary of the Treasury a letter in which I said that I desired him to understand when I made a recommendation to him of any person for public office, it was to be taken merely as my opinion of the merit of the candidate, and not as an expression of a personal request; and that if he found any other person who would in his judgment be better for the public service, I hoped he would make the selection without regard to my recommendation.
I have never undertaken to use public office as personal patronage, or to claim the right to dictate to the President of the United States, or that the executive was not entirely free, upon such advice as he saw fit, or without advice, if he thought fit, in making his selection for public office.
It has been my good fortune to have influenced, or I think I may fairly say, procured the appointment to public office of many gentlemen who would not have been appointed without my active efforts. I have no reason to be ashamed of one of the list. I believe that the following gentlemen, beside others less distinguished, who have been very satisfactory, able and faithful public servants, owe their appointment to my original suggestion, or would not have been appointed without my earnest efforts.
Charles Devens, Attorney-General; Alanson W. Beard, Collectorof the Port of Boston; Horace Gray, first to the office ofReporter of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, and laterto that of Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the UnitedStates; J. Evarts Greene, Postmaster of Worcester; ThomasL. Nelson, Judge of the District Court of Massachusetts; FrancisC. Lowell, Judge of the District Court of Massachusetts; HowellE. Jackson, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of theUnited States; John D. Washburn, Minister to Switzerland.
I think I may also fairly claim that the election of William B. Washburn as Governor of Massachusetts was due not only to the fact that I originally proposed him as a candidate, but to my active efforts in the campaign which preceded the Convention which nominated him.
There is no man in this list of greater ability or of higher quality of manhood than Evarts Greene. Mr. Greene was compelled by the illness of his wife to remain fast-bound in one spot, instead of going to some large city where his great talent would have commanded a very high place indeed in his profession as editor. When he edited the WorcesterSpy,it was one of the most influential Republican newspapers in the country. TheSpygot into pecuniary difficulties. Mr. Greene, with some reluctance, accepted the office of Postmaster, an office which, according to usage in such cases, was in my gift.
Just before Postmaster-General Wanamaker, whose executive ability no man will question, went out of office, he requested Mr. Greene to send to the Department an account of the improvements he had made and proposed in the post-office service. This was sent in a circular all over the country to other like post-offices.
Just before Mr. Greene died, President Roosevelt visited Worcester. In passing the post-office, where the persons employed in the service were collected, he stopped and said he was glad to see "what we have been accustomed to consider the record post-office." This, as may well be believed, gave Mr. Greene great satisfaction.
The longer I live, the more highly I have come to value the gift of eloquence. Indeed, I am not sure that it is not the single gift most to be coveted by man. It is hard, perhaps impossible, to define, as poetry is impossible to define. To be a perfect and consummate orator is to possess the highest faculty given to man. He must be a great artist, and more. He must be a great actor, and more. He must be a master of the great things that interest mankind. What he says ought to have as permanent a place in literature as the highest poetry. He must be able to play at will on the mighty organ, his audience, of which human souls are the keys. He must have knowledge, wit, wisdom, fancy, imagination, courage, nobleness, sincerity, grace, a heart of fire. He must himself respond to every emotion as an AEolian harp to the breeze. He must have
An eye that tears can on a sudden fillAnd lips that smile before the tears are gone.
He must have a noble personal presence. He must have, in perfection, the eye and the voice which are the only and natural avenues by which one human soul can enter into and subdue another. His speech must be filled with music, and possess its miraculous charm and spell,
Which the posting winds recall,And suspend the river's fall.
He must have the quality which Burke manifested when Warren Hastings said, "I felt, as I listened to him, as if I were the most culpable being on earth"; and which made Philip say of Demosthenes, "Had I been there he would have persuaded me to take up arms against myself."
He has a present, practical purpose to accomplish. If he fail in that he fails utterly and altogether. His object is to convince the understanding, to persuade the will, to set aflame the heart of his audience or those who read what he says. He speaks for a present occasion. Eloquence is the feather that tips his arrow. If he miss the mark he is a failure, although his sentences may survive everything else in the permanent literature of the language in which he speaks. What he says must not only accomplish the purpose of the hour, but should be fit to be preserved for all time, or he can have no place in literature, and a small and ephemeral place in human memory.
The orator must know how so to utter his thought that it will stay. The poet and the orator have this in common. Each must so express and clothe his thought that it shall penetrate and take possession of the soul, and, having penetrated, must abide and stay. How this is done, who can tell? Carlyle defines poetry as a "sort of lilt." Cicero finds the secret of eloquence in a
Lepos quidem celeritasque et brevitas.
One writer lately dead, who has a masterly gift of noble and stirring eloquence, finds it in "a certain collocation of consonants." Why it is that a change of a single word, or even of a single syllable, for any other which is an absolute synonym in sense, would ruin the best line in Lycidas, or injure terribly the noblest sentence of Webster, nobody knows. Curtis asks how Wendell Phillips did it, and answers his own question by asking you how Mozart did it.
When I say that I am not sure that this is not the single gift most to be coveted by man, I may seem to have left out the moral quality in my conception of what is excellent. But such is the nature of man that the loftiest moral emotions are still the overmastering emotions. The orator that does not persuade men that righteousness is on his side will seldom persuade them to think or act as he desires; and if he fail in that he fails in his object; and the orator who has not in fact righteousness on his side will in general fail so to persuade them. And even if in rare cases he do persuade his audience, he does not gain a permanent place in literature. Bolingbroke's speeches, though so enthusiastically praised by the best judges, have perished by their own worthlessness.
Although the danger of the Republic, and his own, still occupied his thoughts, Cicero found time in his old age to record, at the request of his brother Quintus, his opinion,de omni ratione dicendi.It is not likely that the treatise "de Oratore" or that "de Claris Oratoribus" will ever be matched by any other writer on this fascinating subject, except the brief and masterly fragment of Tacitus.
He begins by inquiring why it is that, when so many persons strive to attain the gift of eloquence, and its rewards of fame and wealth and power are so great, the number of those who succeed as orators is so small in comparison with the number of those who become great generals, or statesmen, or poets. I suppose this fact, which excited the wonder of Cicero, exists in our country and our time. There is a foreign country which is to us as a posterity. If we reckon those Americans only as great orators who are accepted in England as such, or who, belonging to past generations are so accepted now by their own countrymen, the number is very small. A few sentences of Patrick Henry are preserved, as a few sentences of Lord Chatham are preserved. The great thoughts of Webster justify, in the estimation of the reader, the fame he enjoyed with his own generation. The readers of Fisher Ames—alas, too few—can well comprehend the spell which persuaded an angry and reluctant majority to save the treaty to which the nation had pledged its faith, and, perhaps, the life of the nation itself. With these exceptions, the number of American orators who will live in history as orators can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
I have never supposed myself to possess this gift. The instruction which I had in my youth, especially that at Harvard, either in composition or elocution, was, I think, not only of no advantage, but a positive injury. Besides the absence of good training, I had an awkward manner, and a harsh voice. Until quite late in life I never learned to manage so that I could get through a long speech without serious irritation of the throat. But I have had good opportunity to hear the best public speaking of my time. I have heard in England, on a great field day in the House of Commons, Palmerston, Lord John Russell, and John Bright, and, later, Disraeli, Gladstone and Bernal Osborne. I have heard Spurgeon, and Bishop Wilberforce, and Dr. Guthrie in the pulpit.
At home I have heard a good many times Daniel Webster, Edward Everett, Rufus Choate, Robert C. Winthrop, John P. Hale, Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner, Richard H. Dana, Ralph Waldo Emerson, James G. Blaine, Lucius Q. C. Lamar, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, William M. Evarts, Benjamin F. Thomas, Pliny Merrick, Charles Devens, Nathaniel P. Banks, and, above all, Kossuth; and in the pulpit, James Walker, Edwards A. Park, Mark Hopkins, Edward Everett Hale, George Putnam, Starr King, and Henry W. Bellows. So, perhaps, my experience and observation, too late for my own advantage, may be worth something to my younger readers.
I am not familiar with the books which have been lately published which give directions for public speaking. So I dare say that what I have to advise is already well known to young men, and that all I can say has been said much better. But I will give the result of my own experience and observation.
In managing the voice, the speaker when he is engaged in earnest conversation, commonly and naturally falls into the best tone and manner for public speaking. Suppose you are sitting about a table with a dozen friends, and some subject is started in which you are deeply interested. You engage in an earnest and serious dialogue with one of them at the other end of the table. You are perfectly at ease, not caring in the least for your manner or tone of voice, but only for your thought. The tone you adopt then will ordinarily be the best tone for you in public speaking. You can, however, learn from teachers or friendly critics to avoid any harsh or disagreeable fashion of speech that you may have fallen into, and that may be habitual to you in private conversation.
Next. Never strain your vocal organs by attempting to fill spaces which are too large for you. Speak as loudly and distinctly as you can do easily, and let the most distant portions of your audience go. You will find in that way very soon that your voice will increase in compass and power, and you will do better than by a habit of straining the voice beyond its natural capacity. Be careful to avoid falsetto. Shun imitating the tricks of speech of other orators, even of famous and successful orators. These may do for them, but not for you. You will do no better in attempting to imitate the tricks of speech of other men in public speaking than in private speaking.
Never make a gesture for the sake of making one. I believe that most of the successful speakers whom I know would find it hard to tell you whether they themselves make gestures or not, they are so absolutely unconscious in the matter. But with gestures as with the voice, get teachers or friendly critics to point out to you any bad habit you may fall into. I think it would be well if our young public speakers, especially preachers, would have competent instructors and critics among their auditors, after they enter their profession, to give them the benefit of such observations and counsel as may be suggested in that way. If a Harvard professor of elocution would retain his responsibility for his pupils five or ten years after they got into active life he would do a great deal more good than by his instructions to undergraduates.
So far we have been talking about mere manner. The matter and substance of the orator's speech must depend upon the intellectual quality of the man.
The great orator must be a man of absolute sincerity. Never advocate a cause in which you do not believe, or affect an emotion you do not feel. No skill or acting will cover up the want of earnestness. It is like the ointment of the hand which bewrayeth itself.
I shall be asked how I can reconcile this doctrine with the practice of the law. It will be said the advocate must often defend men whom he believes to be guilty, or argue to the court propositions he believes to be unsound. This objection will disappear if we consider what exactly is the function of the advocate in our system of administering justice.
I suppose it is needless to argue to persons of American or English birth that our system of administering justice is safer for the innocent and, on the whole, secures the punishment of guilt and secures private right better than any other that now exists or that ever existed among men. The chief distinction of the system we have inherited from England consists in two things: first, the function of the advocate, and second, that cases are decided not upon belief, but upon proof. It has been found that court or jury are more likely to get at truth if they have the aid of trained officers whose duty it shall be to collect and present all the arguments on each side which ought to be considered before the court or jury reach the decision. The man who seems clearly guilty should not be condemned or punished unless every consideration which may tend to establish innocence or throw doubt upon guilt has been fully weighed. The unassisted tribunal will be quite likely to overlook these considerations. Public sentiment approves the judgment and the punishment in the case of John W. Webster. But certainly he should never have been convicted without giving the fullest weight to his previous character and to the slightness of the temptation to the commission of such a crime, to the fact that the evidence was largely circumstantial, to the doubt of the identity of the body of the victim, and to the fact that the means or instrument of the crime which ordinarily must be alleged and proved in cases of murder could not be made certain, and could not be set forth in the indictment. The question in the American or English court is not whether the accused be guilty. It is whether he be shown to be guilty, by legal proof, of an offence legally set forth. It is the duty of the advocate to perform his office in the mode best calculated to cause all such considerations to make their due impression. It is not his duty or his right to express or convey his individual opinion. On him the responsibility of the decision does not rest. He not only has no right to accompany the statement of his argument with any assertion as to his individual belief, but I think the most experienced observers will agree that such expressions, if habitual, tend to diminish and not to increase the just influence of the lawyer. There was never a weightier advocate before New England juries than Daniel Webster. Yet it is on record that he always carefully abstained from any positiveness of assertion. He introduced his weightiest arguments with such phrases as, "It will be for the jury to consider," "The Court will judge," "It may, perhaps, be worth thinking of, gentlemen," or some equivalent phrase by which he kept scrupulously off the ground which belonged to the tribunal he was addressing. The tricks of advocacy are not only no part of the advocate's duties, but they are more likely to repel than to attract the hearers. The function of the advocate in the court of justice, as thus defined and limited, is tainted by no insincerity or hypocrisy. It is as respectable, as lofty, and as indispensably necessary as that of the judge himself.
In my opinion, the two most important things that a young man can do to make himself a good public speaker are:
First. Constant and careful written translations from Latin or Greek into English.
Second. Practice in a good debating society.
It has been said that all the greatest Parliamentary orators of England are either men whom Lord North saw, or men who saw Lord North—that is, men who were conspicuous as public speakers in Lord North's youth, his contemporaries, and the men who saw him as an old man when they were young themselves. This would include Bolingbroke and would come down only to the year of Lord John Russell's birth. So we should have to add a few names, especially Gladstone, Disraeli, John Bright, and Palmerston. There is no great Parliamentary orator in England since Gladstone died. I once, a good many years ago, studied the biographies of the men who belonged to that period who were famous as great orators in Parliament or in Court, to find, if I could, the secret of their power. With the exception of Lord Erskine and of John Bright, I believe every one of them trained himself by careful and constant translation from Latin or Greek, and frequented a good debating society in his youth.
Brougham trained himself for extemporaneous speaking in the Speculative Society, the great theatre of debate for the University of Edinburgh. He also improved his English style by translations from the Greek, among which is his well-known version of the "Oration on the Crown."
Canning's attention, while at Eton, was strongly turned to extemporaneous speaking. They had a debating society, in which the Marquis of Wellesley and Charles Earl Grey had been trained before him, in which they had all the forms of the House of Commons—Speaker, Treasury benches, and an Opposition. Canning also was disciplined by the habit of translation.
Curran practised declamation daily before a glass, reciting passages from Shakespeare and the best English orators. He frequented the debating societies which then abounded in London. He failed at first, and was ridiculed as "Orator Mum." But at last he surmounted every difficulty. It was said of him by a contemporary: "He turned his shrill and stumbling brogue into a flexible, sustained, and finely modulated voice; his action become free and forcible; he acquired perfect readiness in thinking on his legs; he put down every opponent by the mingled force of his argument and wit; and was at last crowned with the universal applause of the society and invited by the president to an entertainment in their behalf." I am not sure that I have seen, on any good authority, that he was in the habit of writing translations from Latin or Greek, but he studied them with great ardor and undoubtedly adopted, among the methods of perfecting his English style, the custom of students of his day of translation from these languages.
Jeffrey joined the Speculative Society, in Edinburgh, in his youth. His biographer says that it did more for him than any other event in the whole course of his education.
Chatham, the greatest of English orators, if we may judge by the reports of his contemporaries, trained himself for public speaking by constant translations from Latin and Greek. The education of his son, the younger Pitt, is well known. His father compelled him to read Thucydides into English at sight, and to go over it again and again, until he had got the best possible rendering of the Greek into English.
Macaulay belonged to the Cambridge Union, where, as in the society of the same name at Oxford, the great topics of the day were discussed by men, many of whom afterward became famous statesmen and debaters in the Commons.
Young Murray, afterward Lord Mansfield, translated Sallust and Horace with ease; learned great part of them by heart; could converse fluently in Latin; wrote Latin prose correctly and idiomatically, and was specially distinguished at Westminster for his declamations. He translated every oration of Cicero into English and back again into Latin.
Fox can hardly have been supposed to have practised much in debating societies, as he entered the House of Commons when he was nineteen years old. But it is quite probably that he was drilled by translations from Latin and Greek into English; and in the House of Commons he had in early youth the advantage of the best debating society in the world. It is said that he read Latin and Greek as easily as he read English. He himself said that he gained his skill at the expense of the House, for he had sometimes tasked himself during the entire session to speak on every question that came up, whether he was interested in it or not, as a means of exercising and training his faculties. This is what made him, according to Burke, "rise by slow degrees to be the most brilliant and accomplished debater the world ever saw."
Sir Henry Bulwer's "Life of Palmerston" does not tell us whether he was trained by the habit of writing translations or in debating societies. But he was a very eager reader of the classics. There is little doubt, however, considering the habit of his contemporaries at Cambridge, and that he was ambitious for public life, and represented the University of Cambridge in Parliament just after he became twenty-one, that he belonged to a debating society and that he was drilled in English composition by translation from the classics.
Gladstone was a famous debater in the Oxford Union, as is well known, and was undoubtedly in the habit of writing translations from Greek and Latin, of which he was always so passionately fond. He says in his paper on Arthur Hallam that the Eton debating club known as the Society supplied the British Empire with four Prime Ministers in fourscore years.
The value of the practice of translation from Latin or Greek into English, in getting command of good English style, in my judgment, can hardly be stated too strongly. The explanation is not hard to find. You have in these two languages and especially in Latin, the best instrument for the most precise and most perfect expression of thought. The Latin prose of Tacitus and Cicero, the verse of Virgil and Horace, are like a Greek statue, or an Italian cameo—you have not only exquisite beauty, but also exquisite precision. You get the thought into your mind with the accuracy and precision of the words that express numbers in the multiplication table. Ten times one are ten—not ten and one one-millionth. Having got the idea into your mind with the precision, accuracy, and beauty of the Latin expression, you are to get its equivalent in English. Suppose you have knowledge of no language but your own. The thought comes to you in the mysterious way in which thoughts are born, and struggles for expression in apt words. If the phrase that occurs to you does not exactly fit the thought, you are almost certain, especially in speaking or rapid composition, to modify the thought to fit the phrase. Your sentence commands you, not you the sentence. The extemporary speaker never gets, or easily loses, the power of precise and accurate thinking or statement, and rarely attains a literary excellence which gives him immortality. But the conscientious translator has no such refuge. He is confronted by the inexorable original. He cannot evade or shirk. He must try and try and try again until he has got the exact thought expressed in its English equivalent. This is not enough. He must get an English expression if the resources of the language will furnish it, which will equal as near as may be the dignity and beauty of the original. He must not give you pewter for silver, or pinchbeck for gold, or mica for diamond. This practice will soon give him ready command of the great riches of his own noble English tongue. It will give a habitual nobility and beauty to his own style. The best word and phrase will come to him spontaneously when he speaks and thinks. The processes of thought itself will grow easier. The orator will get the affluence and abundance which characterize the great Italian artists of the Middle Ages, who astonish us as much by the amount and variety of their work as by its excellence.
The value of translation is very different from that of original written composition. Cicero says:
"Stilus optimus et praestantissimus dicendi effector ac magister."
Of this I am by no means sure. If you write rapidly you get the habit of careless composition. If you write slowly you get the habit of slow composition. Each of these is an injury to the style of the speaker. He cannot stop to correct or scratch out. Cicero himself in a later passage states his preference for translation. He says that at first he used to take a Latin author, Ennius or Gracchus, and get the meaning into his head, and then write it again. But he soon found that in that way if he used again the very words of his author he got no advantage, and if he used other language of his own, the author had already occupied the ground with the best expression, and he was left with the second best. So he gave up the practice and adopted instead that of translating from the Greek.
But to go back to what makes an orator. As I have said, his object is to excite the emotions which, being excited, will be most likely to impel his audience to think or act as he desires. He must never disgust them, he must never excite their contempt. He can use to great advantage the most varied learning, the profoundest philosophy, the most compelling logic. He must master the subject with which he has to deal, and he must have knowledge adequate to illustrate and adorn it. When every other faculty of the orator is acquired, it sometimes almost seems as if the voice were nine-tenths, and everything else but one-tenth, of the consummate orator. It is impossible to overrate the importance to his purpose of that matchless instrument, the human voice.
The most fastidious critic is by no means the best judge, seldom even a fairly good judge, of the public speaker. He is likely to be a stranger to the emotion which the orator inspires and excites. He is likely to fall into mistakes like that which Goldwin Smith makes about Patrick Henry. Mr. Smith ridicules Henry's speech and action and voice. The emotion which the great Virginian stirred in the breasts of his backwoodsmen seems very absurd to this cultured Englishman. The bowing and changes of countenance and gesticulating of the orator seem to him like the cheapest acting. Yet to us who understand it, it does not seem that Patrick Henry in the old church at Richmond need yield the palm to Chatham in St. Stephen's Chapel, either for the grandeur of his theme or of his stage, or the sublimity of his eloquence.
Matthew Arnold had the best pair of intellectual eyes of our time. But he sometimes made a like mistake as a critic of poetry. He speaks slightingly of Emerson's Fourth of July Ode—
Oh tenderly the haughty dayFills his blue urn with fire;One morn is in the mighty heaven,And one in our desire.
What did the Englishman know of the Fourth of July emotion which stirred all Americans in the days when the country had just escaped destruction, and was entering upon its new career of freedom and of glory? What could he understand of that feeling, full of the morning and of the springtime, which heard the cannon boom and the bells ring, with stirring and quickened pulse, in those exultant days? Surely there never was a loftier stroke than that with which the New England poet interpreted to his countrymen the feeling of that joyous time—the feeling which is to waken again when the Fourth of July comes round on many anniversaries:
Oh tenderly the haughty dayFills his blue urn with fire;One morn is in the mighty heaven,And one in our desire.
It is often said that if a speech read well it is not a good speech. There may be some truth in it. The reader cannot, of course, get the impression which the speaker conveys by look and tone and gesture. He lacks that marvellous influence by which in a great assembly the emotion of every individual soul is multiplied by the emotion of every other. The reader can pause and dwell upon the thought. If there be a fallacy, he is not hurried away to something else before he can detect it. So, also, more careful and deliberate criticism will discover offences of style and taste which pass unheeded in a speech when uttered. But still the great oratoric triumphs of literature and history stand the test of reading in the closet, as well as of hearing in the assembly. Would not Mark Anthony's speech over the dead body of Caesar, had it been uttered, have moved the Roman populace as it moves the spectator when the play is acted, or the solitary reader in his closet? Does not Lord Chatham's "I rejoice that America has resisted" read well? Do not Sheridan's great perorations, and Burke's, in the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, read well? Does not "Liberty and Union, Now and Forever!" read well? Does not "Give me Liberty or Give me Death!" read well? Does not Fisher Ames's speech for the treaty read well? Do not Everett's finest passages read well?
There are examples of men of great original genius who have risen to lofty oratory on some great occasion who had not the advantage of familiarity with any great author. But they are not only few in number, but the occasions are few when they have risen to a great height. In general the orator, whether at the Bar, or in the pulpit, or in public life, who is to meet adequately the many demands upon his resources, must get familiarity with the images and illustrations he wants, and the resources of a fitting diction, by soaking his mind in some great authors which will alike satisfy and stimulate his imagination, and supply him with a lofty expression. Of these I suppose the best are, by common consent, the Bible, Shakespeare, and Milton. It is a maxim that the pupil who wishes to acquire a pure and simple style should give his days and nights to Addison. But there is a lack of strength and vigor in Addison, which perhaps prevents his being the best model for the advocate in the court-house or the champion in a political debate. I should rather, for myself, recommend Robert South to the student. If the speaker, whose thought have weight and vigor in it, can say it as South would have said it, he may be quite sure that his weighty meaning will be expressed alike to the mind of the people and the apprehension of his antagonist.
There is one great difference between the condition of the American orator and that of the orator of antiquity. The speaker, in the old time, addressed an audience about to act instantly upon the emotions or convictions he had himself caused. Or he spoke to a Judge who was to give no reason for his opinion. The sense of public responsibility scarcely existed in either. The speech itself perished with the occasion, unless, as in some few instances, the orator preserved it in manuscript for a curious posterity. Even then the best of them had discovered that not eloquence, but wisdom, is the power by which states grow and flourish.
"Omnia plena consiliorum, inania verborum.
"Quid est tam furiosum quam verborum vel optimorum atque ornatissimorum sonitus inanis nulla subjecta sententia nec scientia?"
Cicero's oratory is to excite his hearers, whether Judge or popular assembly, for the occasion. Not so in general with our orator. The auditor is ashamed of excitement. He takes the argument home with him: He sleeps on it. He reads it again in the newspaper report. He hears and reads the other side. He discusses with friends and antagonists. He feels the responsibility of his vote. He expects to have to justify it himself. Even the juryman hears the sober statement of the Judge, and talks the case over with his associates of the panel in the quiet seclusion of the jury-room. The Judge himself must state the reasons for his opinions, which are to be read by a learned and critical profession and by posterity. The speaker's argument must be sounded, and rung, and tested, and tried again and again, before the auditor acts upon it. Our people hear some great orators as they witness a play. The delight of taste, even intellectual gratification, caused by what is well said, is one thing. Conviction is quite another. The printing-press and the reporter, the consultation in the jury-room, the reflection in the Judge's chamber, the delay of the election to a day long after the speech, are protections against the mischief of mere oratory, which the ancients did not enjoy.
I heard a debate in the House of Commons in 1860, on the paper duties, in which Lord John Russell, Palmerston, Gladstone, and John Bright took part. Gladstone's part was not very prominent. I now remember little that he said. His image, as it then appeared, is effaced by his later appearance on a much greater occasion. Bright spoke admirably, both in manner and matter. He was an Independent, through giving general support to the measures of the Government, in which Palmerston and Lord Russell were the leaders. He complained bitterly of their acquiescence in what he thought the unconstitutional attitude of the House of Lords, in refusing to consent to the abolition of the paper duties, for which the House of Commons had voted. But the Government, though they had tried to abolish the duty, were very glad to hold on to the revenue. Bright had none of the English hesitation, and frequent punctuation of sentences with—"er"—"er"—which has led some one, speaking of English orators, to say that "to err" is human. He reminded me in general, in look, voice, and manner, of the late Richard H. Dana, although he sometimes threw more passion and zeal into his speech than Dana ever indulged. Periods followed each other in easy and rapid flow. He had a fine voice and delivery, easily filling the hall from his place below the gangway.
Palmerston, in his jaunty and off-hand way, rebuked Bright for desiring to make the House of Commons adopt a resolution which would only show its own helplessness. On the whole, he seemed to me to get the better of the debate. Bright could not persuade the House, or the people of England, to make a great constitutional question out of the paper duties, especially after the powerful speech of Lord Lyndhurst, who, then more than ninety years old, argued for the side of the Lords with a power that no other speaker on the subject rivalled.
I heard Gladstone again in 1871, when there was a great struggle between him and Disraeli over the Parliamentary and Municipal Elections Bill. I visited the House with Thomas Hughes, to whom I was indebted for much courtesy while in London, and had a seat on the floor just below the gallery, where a few strangers are, or were then, admitted by special card from the Speaker.
Bernal Osborne, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, Sir Stafford Northcote, Gladstone, and Disraeli took part in the debate. The bill was introduced by Mr. Gladstone's Government. The question that night was on a motion to strike out the provision for the secret ballot; so the opponents of the Government had to close in support of the motion. The report of Hansard purports to be in the first person. But I can testify from memory that it is by no means verbally accurate. I have no doubt the speeches were taken down in short-hand. The phonetic system was then used. But the report seems to be about like those which our good short-hand reporters used to make before that invention. The speeches are well worth studying by a person who wishes to get an idea of the intellectual and literary quality of these champions. There is no great passage in any one of them. But the capacity and quality of power appear distinctly. Osborne was full of a shrewd and delightful wit, without the vitriolic flavor which often appears in the sarcasm of Disraeli. Gladstone showed his power of elevating the discussion to a lofty plane, which his opponent never reached, although Disraeli launched at him many a keen shaft from below. Mr. Hughes sat by me most of the night, and occasionally brought and introduced to me some eminent person whom he thought I would like to know.
The members of our National House of Representatives, however turbulent or disorderly, never would submit to the fashion of treating a speaker whom they do not want to hear which prevails in the House of Commons. When Mr. Gladstone got through, the night was far spent, and the House evidently wanted to hear Disraeli, then vote and go home. Mr. Plunket, a member for the University of Dublin, who seemed an intelligent and sensible man, rose, wishing to correct a statement of Mr. Gladstone's, which he thought had done him an injustice. Disraeli rose about the same time, but bowed and gave way. The House did not like it. Poor Plunket's voice was drowned in the storm of shouts—"Sit down. Sit down. Dizzy, Dizzy," in which my friend, Mr. Hughes, although of Gladstone's party, joined at the top of his lungs. I think the Bedlam lasted five minutes. But Plunket stood his ground and made his correction.
Although Bernal Osborne was a man of great wit and sense, and Sir Stafford Northcote and Sir Michael Hicks-Beach were then, as the latter is now, very eminent characters, yet the only speakers who belonged to the rank of the great orators were Gladstone and Disraeli. I will not undertake to add another description of Gladstone to the many with which every reader of mine is thoroughly familiar. The late Dr. Bellows resembled him very nearly, both in his way of reasoning and his manner of speech. Persons who have heard Dr. Bellows at his best will not deem this comparison unworthy.
Gladstone was terribly in earnest. He began his speech by a compliment to Northcote, his opponent, for whom he had shown his esteem by sending him to the United States as one of the Joint High Commission to make the Alabama Treaty. But when Mr. Gladstone was well under way, Sir Stafford interposed a dissent from something he said by calling out "No, no"— a very frequent practice in the House. Gladstone turned upon him savagely, with a tone of anger which I might almost call furious: "Can the gentleman tolerate no opinion but his own, that he interjects his audible contradiction into the middle of my sentence?" The House evidently did not like it. Hughes, who agreed with Gladstone, said to me: "What a pity it is that he cannot control his temper; that is his great fault."
There are no passages in this speech of Gladstone that can be cited as among the best examples of the great style of the orator. But there are several that give a good idea of his manner, and show something of the argument in two or three sentences: "I am not at all ashamed of having said, and I will say it again, that this is a choice of evils. I do not say that the proposal for a secret ballot is open to no objections whatever. I admit that open voting has its evils as well as its merits. One of these merits is that it enables a man to discharge a noble duty in the noblest possible manner. But what are its demerits? That by marking his vote you expose the voter to be tempted through his cupidity and through his fears. We propose, by secret voting, to greatly diminish the first of these, and we hope to take away the second. We do not believe that the disposition to bribe can operate with anything like its present force when the means of tracing the action of the man bribed are taken away, because men will not pay for that they do not know they will ever receive."
"I think it is too late for the honorable gentleman to say, 'We are passing through an experiment; wait for more experiment.'" "We have already been debating this subject for forty years; we have plenty of time on our hands; it is a Godsend to have anything to fill up our vacant hours; and therefore let us postpone the subject in order that it may be dealt with in future years."
The great quality of Gladstone, as of Sumner, is his profound seriousness. He makes the impression on his hearers, an impression made, but not so strongly, upon his readers, that the matter he is discussing is that upon which the foundations of heaven and earth rest.
It would be a great mistake to hold Disraeli cheap. He turned the tables upon Osborne, who had gone into several, what Disraeli called, archaeological details, with respect to the antiquity of the ballot, and had cited a proclamation of Charles I. prohibiting the ballot in all corporations, either in the city of London or elsewhere, which Disraeli said "was done with the admirable view of identifying the opinions of those who sit on this side of the House with the political sentiments of that monarch. But there was another assertion of the principle that the ballot should be open that the gentleman has not cited. That occurred in the most memorable Parliament that ever sat in England—the Long Parliament . . . . They wished it therefore to be exercised, not to satisfy the self-complacency of the individual, but with due respect for common-sense and the public opinion of the country, and influenced by all those doctrines and all that discipline of party which they believed to be one of the best securities for public liberty."