From "The Speeches and Addresses of William E. Russell." Copyrighted 1893, by Little, Brown and Company, Boston, publishers.
As I stand here to-night, a Democrat, speaking to Democrats, and to men whose conscience party could not bind,—men who carry their sovereignty each under his own hat,—there comes vividly back to me the stirring words with which the chairman opened a similar meeting on the eve of the great battle of 1884, "This is a union meeting;" and, as he spoke, the minds of his hearers went back to war days, when principle was placed above party, and patriotism above partisanship.
Our union is not for the triumph of any man, but for the triumph of ideas; for a living faith, a progressive spirit. It is of that to-night I speak.
It has often been said that there was little difference between the two parties. Perhaps that was the criticism of honest men, whose earnest desire for honest candidates led them to look no farther. To-day every intelligent man in Massachusetts knows that there is a wide difference between the parties,—all the difference that there is between standing still and moving forward. I do not believe that this difference is accidental. It is the natural evolution of the history and purpose of the parties. A political prophet of a generation ago, who knew this history, who had studied the Democratic faith, had seen the birth of the Republican party and its purpose, could have predicted the position of the parties to-day. The Democratic party is old enough to have outlived and defeated all other parties, young enough to represent the progressive spirit of to-day. It must be founded on vital principles and have a living faith. Its creed from its first to its thirty-ninth article is an abiding trust in the people, a belief that men, irrespective of the accident of birth or fortune, have a right to a voice in the government that rules them. Its principles are the equality and freedom of all men in affairs of State and before the altar of their God,—that there should be allowed the greatest possible personal liberty, that a government least felt is best, that it should lightly and never unnecessarily impose its burdens of taxation and restriction, that in its administration there should be simplicity, purity, and economy, and in its form it should be closely within the reach and control of the people.
Progress, merely as progress, is nothing; but progress that sees the changes of a generation,—a blessed, lasting peace in place of the horrors and burdens of civil war, a reunited, loyal country; progress that hears the demand of the people for pure and economic administration, for relief from restrictions and taxation; progress that feels the discontent and suffering of great masses of the people,—this progress, if willing and ready to shape into legislation the new wishes and the new wants, rises to the height of statesmanship.
From a speech opening the National Democratic Convention, at Baltimore,Maryland, June, 1912.
It is not the wild and cruel methods of revolution and violence that are needed to correct the abuses incident to our Government as to all things human. Neither material nor moral progress lies that way. We have made our Government and our complicated institutions by appeals to reason, seeking to educate all our people that, day after day, year after year, century after century, they may see more clearly, act more justly, become more and more attached to the fundamental ideas that underlie our society. If we are to preserve undiminished the heritage bequeathed us, and add to it those accretions without which society would perish, we shall need all the powers that the school, the church, the court, the deliberative assembly, and the quiet thought of our people can bring to bear.
We are called upon to do battle against the unfaithful guardians of our Constitution and liberties and the hordes of ignorance which are pushing forward only to the ruin of our social and governmental fabric.
Too long has the country endured the offenses of the leaders of a party which once knew greatness. Too long have we been blind to the bacchanal of corruption. Too long have we listlessly watched the assembling of the forces that threaten our country and our firesides.
The time has come when the salvation of the country demands the restoration to place and power of men of high ideals who will wage unceasing war against corruption in politics, who will enforce the law against both rich and poor, and who will treat guilt as personal and punish it accordingly.
What is our duty? To think alike as to men and measures? Impossible! Even for our great party! There is not a reactionary among us. All Democrats are Progressives. But it is inevitably human that we shall not all agree that in a single highway is found the only road to progress, or each make the same man of all our worthy candidates his first choice.
It is possible, however, and it is our duty to put aside all selfishness, to consent cheerfully that the majority shall speak for each of us, and to march out of this convention shoulder to shoulder, intoning the praises of our chosen leader—and that will be his due, whichever of the honorable and able men now claiming our attention shall be chosen.
At the National Democratic Convention, Baltimore, Maryland, June, 1912.
The New Jersey delegation is commissioned to represent the great cause of Democracy and to offer you as its militant and triumphant leader a scholar, not a charlatan; a statesman, not a doctrinaire; a profound lawyer, not a splitter of legal hairs; a political economist, not an egotistical theorist; a practical politician, who constructs, modifies, restrains, without disturbance and destruction; a resistless debater and consummate master of statement, not a mere sophist; a humanitarian, not a defamer of characters and lives; a man whose mind is at once cosmopolitan and composite of America; a gentleman of unpretentious habits, with the fear of God in his heart and the love of mankind exhibited in every act of his life; above all a public servant who has been tried to the uttermost and never found wanting—matchless, unconquerable, the ultimate Democrat, Woodrow Wilson.
New Jersey has reasons for her course. Let us not be deceived in our premises. Campaigns of vilification, corruption and false pretence have lost their usefulness. The evolution of national energy is towards a more intelligent morality in politics and in all other relations. The situation admits of no compromise. The temper and purpose of the American public will tolerate no other view. The indifference of the American people to politics has disappeared. Any platform and any candidate not conforming to this vast social and commercial behest will go down to ignominious defeat at the polls.
Men are known by what they say and do. They are known by those who hate and oppose them. Many years ago Woodrow Wilson said, "No man is great who thinks himself so, and no man is good who does not try to secure the happiness and comfort of others." This is the secret of his life. The deeds of this moral and intellectual giant are known to all men. They accord, not with the shams and false pretences of politics, but make national harmony with the millions of patriots determined to correct the wrongs of plutocracy and reestablish the maxims of American liberty in all their regnant beauty and practical effectiveness. New Jersey loves Woodrow Wilson not for the enemies he has made. New Jersey loves him for what he is. New Jersey argues that Woodrow Wilson is the only candidate who can not only make Democratic success a certainty, but secure the electoral vote of almost every State in the Union.
New Jersey will indorse his nomination by a majority of 100,000 of her liberated citizens. We are not building for a day, or even a generation, but for all time. New Jersey believes that there is an omniscience in national instinct. That instinct centers in Woodrow Wilson. He has been in political life less than two years. He has had no organization; only a practical ideal—the reestablishment of equal opportunity. Not his deeds alone, not his immortal words alone, not his personality alone, not his matchless powers alone, but all combined compel national faith and confidence in him. Every crisis evolves its master. Time and circumstance have evolved Woodrow Wilson. The North, the South, the East, and the West unite in him. New Jersey appeals to this convention to give the nation Woodrow Wilson, that he may open the gates of opportunity to every man, woman, and child under our flag, by reforming abuses, and thereby teaching them, in his matchless words, "to release their energies intelligently, that peace, justice and prosperity may reign." New Jersey rejoices, through her freely chosen representatives, to name for the presidency of the United States the Princeton schoolmaster, Woodrow Wilson.
From "The Speeches and Addresses of William E. Russell." Copyrighted, 1894, by Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Publishers
For the honor and privilege of addressing this gathering of Young Democracy I am deeply grateful. With earnestness and enthusiasm, with devotion to the party and its principles, and with unflinching loyalty to its glorious leaders, Young Democracy meets to-day for organization and action. Gladly it volunteers in a campaign where its very faith is at stake; impatiently it awaits the coming of the battle.
We fight for measures, not men; the principles of government, not men's characters, are to be discussed; a nation's policy, not personal ambition, is to be determined.
Thank God, we enter the fight with a living faith, founded upon principles that are just, enduring, as old as the nation itself, yet ever young, vigorous, and progressive, because there is ever work for them to do. Our party was not founded for a single mission, which accomplished, left it drifting with no fixed star of principle to guide it. It was born and has lived to uphold great truths of government that need always to be enforced. The influence of the past speaks to us in the voice of the present. Jefferson and Jackson still lead us, not because they are glorious reminiscences, but because the philosophy of the one, the courage of the other, the Democracy of both, are potent factors in determining Democracy to-day.
We believe that a government which controls the lives, liberties, and property of a people in its administration should be honest, economical, and efficient; and in its form a local self-government kept near to the power that makes and obeys it. To safeguard the rights and liberty of the individual, the Democratic party demands home rule. Democracy stands beside the humblest citizen to protect him from oppressive government; it is the bulwark of the silent people to resist having the power and purpose of government warped by the clamorous demands of selfish interests. Its greatest good, its highest glory, is that it is, and is to be, the people's party. To it government is a power to protect and encourage men to make the most of themselves, and not something for men to make the most out of.
And, lastly, we believe in the success, the glory, and the splendid destiny of this great Republic. It leaped into life from the hands of Democrats. More than three-quarters of a century it has been nurtured and strengthened by Democratic rule. Under Democratic administrations, in its mighty sweep, it has stretched from ocean to ocean, not as a North and South and East and West, but now as a glorious Union of sovereign States, reunited in love and loyalty, a great nation of millions of loyal subjects.
The faith we profess is distinctly an American faith; the principles we proclaim are distinctly American principles, and have been from their first utterance in the Declaration of Independence to their latest in the platform of the St. Louis Convention; the policy they demand of us as Democrats is emphatically an American policy.
Our great leader lives in the faith we profess. He speaks in the principles we assert. He leads because we follow Democracy, its faith, its principles, and its policy and hail him as the foremost Democrat of the Nation. Thus comes victory. Thus victory means something. Thus power and responsibility go together, and the only influence behind him are the wishes, the rights, and the welfare of the great American people. In such a cause, with such a leader, there is no room for failure.
"To doubt would be disloyalty,To falter would be sin."
What can be more monstrous than that we, as we call ourselves, to some extent, an educated, a moral, and a Christian nation—at a moment when an accident of this kind occurs, before we have made a representation to the American government, before we have heard a word from it in reply—should be all up in arms, every sword leaping from its scabbard, and every man looking about for his pistols and his blunderbusses? I think the conduct pursued—and I have no doubt just the same is pursued by a certain class in America—is much more the conduct of savages than of Christian and civilized men. No, let us be calm. You recollect how we were dragged into the Russian war—how we "drifted" into it. You know that I, at least, have not upon my head any of the guilt of that fearful war. You know that it cost one hundred millions of money to this country; that it cost at least the lives of forty thousand Englishmen; that it disturbed your trade; that it nearly doubled the armies of Europe; that it placed the relations of Europe on a much less peaceful footing than before; and that it did not effect a single thing of all those that it was promised to effect.
Now, then, before I sit down, let me ask you what is this people, about which so many men in England at this moment are writing, and speaking, and thinking, with harshness, I think with injustice, if not with great bitterness? Two centuries ago, multitudes of the people of this country found a refuge on the North American continent, escaping from the tyranny of the Stuarts and from the bigotry of Laud. Many noble spirits from our country made great experiments in favor of human freedom on that continent. Bancroft, the great historian of his own country, has said, in his own graphic and emphatic language, "The history of the colonization of America is the history of the crimes of Europe."
At this very moment, then, there are millions in the United States who personally, or whose immediate parents have at one time been citizens of this country. They found a home in the Far West; they subdued the wilderness; they met with plenty there, which was not afforded them in their native country; and they have become a great people. There may be persons in England who are jealous of those States. There may be men who dislike democracy, and who hate a republic; there may be those whose sympathies warm only toward an oligarchy or a monarchy. But of this I am certain, that only misrepresentation the most gross, or calumny the most wicked, can sever the tie which unites the great mass of the people of this country with their friends and brethren beyond the Atlantic.
Now, whether the Union will be restored or not, or the South achieve an unhonored independence or not, I know not, and I predict not. But this I think I know—that in a few years, a very few years, the twenty millions of freemen in the North will be thirty millions, or even fifty millions—a population equal to or exceeding that of this kingdom. When that time comes, I pray that it may not be said among them, that in the darkest hour of their country's trials, England, the land of their fathers, looked on with icy coldness and saw unmoved the perils and calamities of her children. As for me, I have but this to say: I am but one in this audience, and but one in the citizenship of this country; but if all other tongues are silent, mine shall speak for that policy which tends, and which always shall tend, to generous thoughts, and generous words, and generous deeds, between the two great nations who speak the English language, and from their origin are alike entitled to the English name.
There has been no great day of hope for Ireland, no day when you might hope completely and definitely to end the controversy till now—more than ninety years. The long periodic time has at last run out, and the star has again mounted into the heavens. What Ireland was doing for herself in 1795 we at length have done. The Roman Catholics have been emancipated—emancipated after a woeful disregard of solemn promises through twenty-nine years, emancipated slowly, sullenly, not from good will, but from abject terror, with all the fruits and consequences which will always follow that method of legislation. The second problem has been also solved, and the representation of Ireland has been thoroughly reformed; and I am thankful to say that the franchise was given to Ireland on the readjustment of last year with a free heart, with an open hand; and the gift of that franchise was the last act required to make the success of Ireland in her final effort absolutely sure. We have given Ireland a voice; we must all listen for a moment to what she says. We must all listen, both sides, both parties—I mean as they are divided on this question—divided, I am afraid, by an almost immeasurable gap. We do not undervalue or despise the forces opposed to us. I have described them as the forces of class and its dependents; and that as a general description—as a slight and rude outline of a description—is, I believe, perfectly true. You have power, you have wealth, you have rank, you have station, you have organization. What have we? We think that we have the people's heart; we believe and we know we have the promise of the harvest of the future. As to the people's heart, you may dispute it, and dispute it with perfect sincerity. Let that matter make its own proof. As to the harvest of the future, I doubt if you have so much confidence; and I believe that there is in the breast of many a man who means to vote against us to- night a profound misgiving, approaching even to a deep conviction, that the end will be as we foresee, and not as you do—that the ebbing tide is with you, and the flowing tide with us. Ireland stands at your bar, expectant, hopeful, almost suppliant. Her words are the words of truth and soberness. She asks a blessed oblivion of the past, and in that oblivion our interest is deeper than even hers. My right honorable friend, the member for East Edinburgh, asks us tonight to abide by the traditions of which we are the heirs. What traditions? By the Irish traditions? Go into the length and breadth of the world, ransack the literature of all countries, find, if you can, a single voice, a single book—find, I would almost say, as much as a single newspaper article, unless the product of the day,—in which the conduct of England towards Ireland is anywhere treated except with profound and bitter condemnation. Are these the traditions by which we are exhorted to stand? No; they are a sad exception to the glory of our country. They are a broad and black blot upon the pages of its history; and what we want to do is to stand by the traditions of which we are the heirs in all matters except our relations with Ireland, and to make our relations with Ireland to conform to the other traditions of our country. So we treat our traditions, so we hail the demand of Ireland for what I call a blessed oblivion of the past. She asks also a boon for the future; and that boon for the future, unless we are much mistaken, will be a boon to us in respect of honor, no less than a boon to her in respect of happiness, prosperity, and peace. Such, sir, is her prayer. Think, I beseech you, think well, think wisely, think, not for the moment, but for the years that are to come, before you reject this Bill.
The case before the court is not of ordinary importance, nor of everyday occurrence. It affects not this college only, but every college, and all the literary institutions of the country. They have flourished hitherto, and have become in a high degree respectable and useful to the community. They have all a common principle of existence, the inviolability of their charters. It will be a dangerous, a most dangerous experiment to hold these institutions subject to the rise and fall of popular parties, and the fluctuations of political opinions. If the franchise may be at any time taken away, or impaired, the property also may be taken away, or its use perverted. Benefactors will have no certainty of effecting the object of their bounty; and learned men will be deterred from devoting themselves to the service of such institutions, from the precarious title of their offices. Colleges and halls will be deserted by all better spirits, and become a theater for the contentions of politics. Party and faction will be cherished in the places consecrated to piety and learning.
When the court in North Carolina declared the law of the State, which repealed a grant to its university, unconstitutional and void, the legislature had the candor and the wisdom to repeal the law. This example, so honorable to the State which exhibited it, is most fit to be followed on this occasion. And there is good reason to hope that a State which has hitherto been so much distinguished for temperate counsels, cautious legislation, and regard to law, will not fail to adopt a course which will accord with her highest and best interests, and in no small degree elevate her reputation.
It was for many and obvious reasons most anxiously desired that the question of the power of the legislature over this charter should have been finally decided in the State court. An earnest hope was entertained that the judges of the court might have reviewed the case in a light favorable to the rights of the trustees. That hope has failed. It is here that those rights are now to be maintained, or they are prostrated forever.
This, sir, is my case. It is the case, not merely of that humble institution, it is the case of every college in the land. It is more. It is the case of every eleemosynary institution throughout our country—of all those great charities formed by the piety of our ancestors, to alleviate human misery, and scatter blessings along the pathway of life. It is more! It is, in some sense, the case of every man among us who has property, of which he may be stripped, for the question is simply this: Shall our State legislatures be allowed to take that which is not their own; to turn it from its original use, and to apply it to such ends or purposes as they in their discretion shall see fit?
Sir, you may destroy this little institution; it is weak; it is in your hands! I know it is one of the lesser lights in the literary horizon of our country. You may put it out. But, if you do so, you must carry through your work! You must extinguish, one after another, all those greater lights of science, which, for more than a century, have thrown their radiance over our land!
It is, sir, as I have said, a small college, and yet there are those who love it.
Sir, I know not how others may feel, but for myself, when I see my Alma Mater surrounded, like Cęsar, in the senate house, by those who are reiterating stab after stab, I would not, for this right hand, have her turn to me, and say,et tu quoque, mi fili! And thou too, my son!
Gentlemen of the Jury,—It is true that the offense charged in the indictment in this case is not capital; but perhaps this can hardly be considered as favorable to the defendants. To those who are guilty, and without hope of escape, no doubt the lightness of the penalty of transgression gives consolation. But if the defendants are innocent, it is more natural for them to be thinking upon what they have lost by that alteration of the law which has left highway robbery no longer capital, than what the guilty might gain by it. They have lost those great privileges in their trial, which the law allows, in capital cases, for the protection of innocence against unfounded accusation. They have lost the right of being previously furnished with a copy of the indictment, and a list of the government witnesses. They have lost the right of peremptory challenge; and, notwithstanding the prejudices which they know have been excited against them, they must show legal cause of challenge, in each individual case, or else take the jury as they find it. They have lost the benefit of assignment of counsel by the court. They have lost the benefit of the Commonwealth's process to bring in witnesses in their behalf. When to these circumstances it is added that they are strangers, almost wholly without friends, and without the means for preparing their defense, it is evident they must take their trial under great disadvantages.
But without dwelling on these considerations, I proceed, Gentlemen of the Jury, to ask your attention to those circumstances which cannot but cast doubts on the story of the prosecutor.
The jury will naturally look to the appearances exhibited on the field after the robbery. The portmanteau was there. The witnesses say that the straps which fastened it to the saddle had been neither cut nor broken. They were carefully unbuckled. This was very considerate for robbers. It had been opened, and its contents were scattered about the field. The pocket book, too, had been opened, and many papers it contained found on the ground. Nothing valuable was lost but money. The robbers did not think it well to go off at once with the portmanteau and the pocket book. The place was so secure, so remote, so unfrequented; they were so far from the highway, at least one full rod; there were so few persons passing, probably not more than four or five then in the road, within hearing of the pistols and the cries of Goodridge; there being, too, not above five or six dwelling-houses, full of people, within the hearing of the report of a pistol; these circumstances were all so favorable to their safety, that the robbers sat down to look over the prosecutor's papers, carefully examined the contents of his pocket book and portmanteau, and took only the things which they needed! There was money belonging to other persons. The robbers did not take it. They found out it was not the prosecutor's, and left it. It may be said to be favorable to the prosecutor's story, that the money which did not belong to him, and the plunder of which would seem to be the most probable inducement he could have to feign a robbery, was not taken. But the jury will consider whether this circumstance does not bear quite as strongly the other way, and whether they can believe that robbers could have left this money, either from accident or design.
The witnesses on the part of the prosecution have testified that the defendants, when arrested, manifested great agitation and alarm; paleness overspread their faces, and drops of sweat stood on their temples. This satisfied the witnesses of the defendants' guilt, and they now state the circumstances as being indubitable proof. This argument manifests, in those who use it, an equal want of sense and sensibility. It is precisely fitted to the feeling and the intellect of a bum-bailiff. In a court of justice it deserves nothing but contempt. Is there nothing that can agitate the frame or excite the blood but the consciousness of guilt? If the defendants were innocent, would they not feel indignation at this unjust accusation? If they saw an attempt to produce false evidence against them, would they not be angry? And, seeing the production of such evidence, might they not feel fear and alarm? And have indignation, and anger, and terror no power to affect the human countenance or the human frame?
Miserable, miserable, indeed, is the reasoning which would infer any man's guilt from his agitation when he found himself accused of a heinous offense; when he saw evidence which he might know to be false and fraudulent brought against him; when his house was filled, from the garret to the cellar, by those whom he might esteem as false witnesses; and when he himself, instead of being at liberty to observe their conduct and watch their motions, was a prisoner in close custody in his own house, with the fists of a catchpoll clenched upon his throat.
From the time of the robbery to the arrest, five or six weeks, the defendants were engaged in their usual occupations. They are not found to have passed a dollar of money to anybody. They continued their ordinary habits of labor. No man saw money about them, nor any circumstance that might lead to a suspicion that they had money. Nothing occurred tending in any degree to excite suspicion against them. When arrested, and when all this array of evidence was brought against them, and when they could hope in nothing but their innocence, immunity was offered them again if they would confess. They were pressed, and urged, and allured, by every motive which could be set before them, to acknowledge their participation in the offense, and to bring out their accomplices. They steadily protested that they could confess nothing because they knew nothing. In defiance of all the discoveries made in their house, they have trusted to their innocence. On that, and on the candor and discernment of an enlightened jury, they still rely.
If the jury are satisfied that there is the highest improbability that these persons could have had any previous knowledge of Goodridge, or been concerned in any previous concert to rob him; if their conduct that evening and the next day was marked by no circumstance of suspicion; if from that moment until their arrest nothing appeared against them; if they neither passed money, nor are found to have had money; if the manner of the search of their house, and the circumstances attending it, excite strong suspicions of unfair and fraudulent practices; if, in the hour of their utmost peril, no promises of safety could draw from the defendants any confession affecting themselves or others, it will be for the jury to say whether they can pronounce them guilty.
Published in Depew's "Library of Oratory," E. J. Bowen and Company,New York, publishers.
Who is John E. Cook?
He has the right himself to be heard before you; but I will answer for him. Sprung from an ancestry of loyal attachment to the American government, he inherits no blood of tainted impurity. His grandfather, an officer of the Revolution, by which your liberty, as well as mine, was achieved, and his gray-haired father, who lived to weep over him, a soldier of the war of 1812, he brings no dishonored lineage into your presence. Born of a parent stock occupying the middle walks of life, and possessed of all those tender and domestic virtues which escape the contamination of those vices that dwell on the frozen peaks, or in the dark and deep caverns of society, he would not have been here had precept and example been remembered in the prodigal wanderings of his short and checkered life.
Poor deluded boy! wayward, misled child! An evil star presided over thy natal hour and smote it with gloom.
In an evil hour—and may it be forever accursed!—John E. Cook met John Brown on the prostituted plains of Kansas. On that field of fanaticism, three years ago, this fair and gentle youth was thrown into contact with the pirate and robber of civil warfare.
Now look at John Cook, the follower. He is in evidence before you. Never did I plead for a face that I was more willing to show. If evil is there, I have not seen it. If murder is there, I am to learn to mark the lines of the murderer anew. If the assassin is in that young face, then commend me to the look of an assassin. No, gentlemen, it is a face for a mother to love, and a sister to idolize, and in which the natural goodness of his heart pleads trumpet-tongued against the deep damnation that estranged him from home and its principles.
John Brown was the despotic leader and John E. Cook was an ill-fated follower of an enterprise whose horror be now realizes and deplores. I defy the man, here or elsewhere, who has ever known John E. Cook, who has ever looked once fully into his face, and learned anything of his history, to lay his hand on his heart and say that he believes him guilty of the origin or the results of the outbreak at Harper's Ferry.
Here, then, are the two characters whom you are thinking to punish alike. Can it be that a jury of Christian men will find no discrimination should be made between them? Are the tempter and the tempted the same in your eyes? Is the beguiled youth to die the same as the old offender who has pondered his crimes for thirty years? Are there no grades in your estimations of guilt? Is each one, without respect to age or circumstances, to be beaten with the same number of stripes?
Such is not the law, human or divine. We are all to be rewarded according to our works, whether in punishment for evil, or blessings for good that we have done. You are here to do justice, and if justice requires the same fate to befall Cook that befalls Brown, I know nothing of her rules, and do not care to learn. They are as widely asunder, in all that constitutes guilt, as the poles of the earth, and should be dealt with accordingly. It is in your power to do so, and by the principles by which you yourselves are willing to be judged hereafter, I implore you to do it!
Published in "Depew's Library of Oratory," E. J. Bowen and Company,New York, publishers
May it please your honors, and you gentlemen of the jury,—We have at length gone through the evidence in behalf of the prisoners. The witnesses have now placed before you that state of facts from which results our defense.
I stated to you, gentlemen, your duty in opening this cause—do not forget the discharge of it. You are paying a debt you owe the community for your own protection and safety: by the same mode of trial are your own rights to receive a determination; and in your turn a time may come when you will expect and claim a similar return from some other jury of your fellow subjects.
How much need was there for my desire that you should suspend your judgment till the witnesses were all examined? How different is the complexion of the cause? Will not all this serve to show every honest man the little truth to be attained in partial hearings? In the present case, how great was the prepossession against us? And I appeal to you, gentlemen, what cause there now is to alter our sentiments? Will any sober, prudent man countenance the proceedings of the people in King Street,—can any one justify their conduct,—is there any one man or any body of men who are interested to espouse and support their conduct?
Surely, no! But our inquiry must be confined to the legality of their conduct, and here can be no difficulty. It was certainly illegal, unless many witnesses are directly perjured: witnesses, who have no apparent interest to falsify,—witnesses who have given their testimony with candor and accuracy,—witnesses whose credibility stands untouched,—whose credibility the counsel for the king do not pretend to impeach or hint a suggestion to their disadvantage.
I say, gentlemen, by the standard of the law are we to judge the actions of the people who were the assailants and those who were the assailed and then on duty. And here, gentlemen, the rule we formerly laid down takes place. To the facts, gentlemen, apply yourselves. Consider them as testified; weigh the credibility of the witnesses— balance their testimony—compare the several parts of it—see the amount of it; and then, according to your oath, "make true deliverance according to your evidence." That is, gentlemen, having settled the facts, bring them truly to the standard of the law; the king's judges, who are acquainted with it, who are presumed best to know it, will then inspect this great standard of right and wrong, truth and justice; and they are to determine the degree of guilt to which the fact rises.
May it please your honors, and you gentlemen of the jury,—After having thus gone through the evidence and considered it as applicatory to all and every one of the prisoners, let us take once more a brief and cursory survey of matters supported by the evidence. And here let me ask in sober reason, what language more opprobrious, what actions more exasperating, than those used on this occasion? Words, I am sensible, are no justification of blows, but they serve as the grand clew to discover the temper and the designs of the agents; they serve also to give us light in discerning the apprehensions and thoughts of those who are the objects of abuse.
"You lobsters!"—"You bloody-back!"—"You coward!"—"You dastard!" are but some of the expressions proved. What words more galling? What more cutting and provoking to a soldier? But accouple these words with the succeeding actions,—"You dastard!"—"You coward!" A soldier and a coward!
This was touching "the point of honor and the pride of virtue." But while these are as yet fomenting the passions and swelling the bosom, the attack is made; and probably the latter words were reiterated at the onset; at least, were yet sounding in the ear. Gentlemen of the jury, for Heaven's sake, let us put ourselves in the same situation! Would you not spurn at that spiritless institution of society which tells you to be a subject at the expense of your manhood?
But does the soldier step out of his ranks to seek his revenge? Not a witness pretends it. Did not the people repeatedly come within the points of their bayonets and strike on the muzzles of the guns? You have heard the witnesses.
Does the law allow one member of the community to behave in this manner towards his fellow citizen, and then bid the injured party be calm and moderate? The expressions from one party were—"Stand off, stand off!"—"I am upon my station."—"If they molest me upon my post, I will fire."—"Keep off!"
These words were likely to produce reflection and procure peace. But had the words on the other hand a similar tendency? Consider the temper prevalent among all parties at this time. Consider the situation of the soldiery; and come to the heat and pressure of the action. The materials are laid, the spark is raised, the fire enkindles, all prudence and true wisdom are utterly consumed. Does common sense, does the law expect impossibilities?
Here, to expect equanimity of temper, would be as irrational as to expect discretion in a madman. But was anything done on the part of the assailants similar to the conduct, warnings, and declarations of the prisoners? Answer for yourselves, gentlemen! The words reiterated all around stabbed to the heart; the actions of the assailants tended to a worse end,—to awaken every passion of which the human breast is susceptible; fear, anger, pride, resentment, revenge, alternately take possession of the whole man.
To expect, under these circumstances, that such words would assuage the tempest, that such actions would allay the flames,—you might as rationally expect the inundations of a torrent would suppress a deluge, or rather that the flames of Aetna would extinguish a conflagration!
Gentlemen of the Jury,—This case has taken up much of your time, and is likely to take up so much more that I must hasten to a close. Indeed, I should not have troubled you, by being thus lengthy, but from a sense of duty to the prisoners; they who in some sense may be said to have put their lives in my hands; they whose situation was so peculiar that we have necessarily taken up more time than ordinary cases require. They, under all these circumstances, placed a confidence it was my duty not to disappoint, and which I have aimed at discharging with fidelity. I trust you, gentlemen, will do the like; that you will examine and judge with a becoming temper of mind; remembering that they who are under oath to declare the whole truth think and act very differently from bystanders, who, being under no ties of this kind, take a latitude which is by no means admissible in a court of law.
I cannot close this cause better than by desiring you to consider well the genius and spirit of the law which will be laid down, and to govern yourselves by this great standard of truth. To some purposes, you may be said, gentlemen, to be ministers of justice; and "ministers," says a learned judge, "appointed for the ends of public justice, should have written on their hearts the solemn engagements of his Majesty, at his coronation, to cause law and justice in mercy to be executed in all his judgments."
"The quality of mercy is not strained;It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven:…It is twice blessed;It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes."
I leave you, gentlemen, hoping you will be directed in your inquiry and judgment to a right discharge of your duty. We shall all of us, gentlemen, have an hour of cool reflection when the feelings and agitations of the day shall have subsided; when we shall view things through a different and a much juster medium. It is then we all wish an absolving conscience. May you, gentlemen, now act such a part as will hereafter insure it; such a part as may occasion the prisoners to rejoice. May the blessing of those who were in jeopardy of life come upon you—may the blessing of Him who is "not faulty to die" descend and rest upon you and your posterity.
Before the Court of King's Bench, 1781
Gentlemen,—You have now heard, upon the solemn oaths of honest, disinterested men, a faithful history of the conduct of Lord George Gordon, from the day that he became a member of the Protestant Association to the day that he was committed a prisoner to the Tower. And I have no doubt, from the attention with which I have been honored from the beginning, that you have still kept in your minds the principles to which I entreated you would apply it, and that you have measured it by that standard. You have, therefore, only to look back to the whole of it together; to reflect on all you have heard concerning him; to trace him in your recollection through every part of the transaction; and, considering it with one manly, liberal view, to ask your own honest hearts, whether you can say that this noble and unfortunate youth is a wicked and deliberate traitor, who deserves by your verdict to suffer a shameful and ignominious death, which will stain the ancient honors of his house forever.
The crime which the Crown would have fixed upon him is, that he assembled the Protestant Association round the House of Commons, not merely to influence and persuade Parliament by the earnestness of their supplications, but actually to coerce it by hostile, rebellious force; that, finding himself disappointed in the success of that coercion, he afterward incited his followers to abolish the legal indulgences to Papists, which the object of the petition was to repeal, by the burning of their houses of worship, and the destruction of their property, which ended, at last, in a general attack on the property of all orders of men, religious and civil, on the public treasures of the nation, and on the very being of the government.
To support a charge of so atrocious and unnatural a complexion, the laws of the most arbitrary nations would require the most incontrovertible proof. And what evidence, gentlemen of the jury, does the Crown offer to you in compliance with these sound and sacred doctrines of justice? A few broken, interrupted, disjointed words, without context or connection—uttered by the speaker in agitation and heat—heard, by those who relate them to you, in the midst of tumult and confusion—and even those words, mutilated as they are, in direct opposition to, and inconsistent with, repeated and earnest declarations delivered at the very same time and on the very same occasion, related to you by a much greater number of persons, and absolutely incompatible with the whole tenor of his conduct. Which of us all, gentlemen, would be safe, standing at the bar of God or man, if we were not to be judged by the regular current of our lives and conversations, but by detached and unguarded expressions, picked out by malice, and recorded, without context or circumstances, against us? Yet such is the only evidence on which the Crown asks you to dip your hands, and to stain your consciences, in the innocent blood of the noble and unfortunate youth who stands before you.
I am sure you cannot but see, notwithstanding my great inability, increased by a perturbation of mind (arising, thank God! from no dishonest cause), that there has been not only no evidence on the part of the Crown to fix the guilt of the late commotions upon the prisoner, but that, on the contrary, we have been able to resist the probability, I might almost say the possibility of the charge, not only by living witnesses, whom we only ceased to call because the trial would never have ended, but by the evidence of all the blood that has paid the forfeit of that guilt already; since, out of all the felons who were let loose from prisons, and who assisted in the destruction of our property, not a single wretch was to be found who could even attempt to save his own life by the plausible promise of giving evidence to-day.
What can overturn such a proof as this? Surely a good man might, without superstition, believe that such a union of events was something more than natural, and that a Divine Providence was watchful for the protection of innocence and truth.
I may now, therefore, relieve you from the pain of hearing me any longer, and be myself relieved from speaking on a subject which agitates and distresses me. Since Lord George Gordon stands clear of every hostile act or purpose against the Legislature of his country, or the properties of his fellow-subjects—since the whole tenor of conduct repels the belief of thetraitorous intentioncharged by the indictment—my task is finished. I shall make no address to your passions. I will not remind you of the long and rigorous imprisonment he has suffered; I will not speak to you of his great youth, of his illustrious birth, and of his uniformly animated and generous zeal in Parliament for the Constitution of his country. Such topics might be useful in the balance; yet, even then, I should have trusted to the honest hearts of Englishmen to have felt them without excitation. At present, the plain and rigid rules of justice and truth are sufficient to entitle me to your verdict.
Arthur Alfred Lynch, otherwise Arthur Lynch, the jury have found you guilty of the crime of high treason, a crime happily so rare that in the present day a trial for treason seems to be almost an anachronism— a thing of the past. The misdeeds which have been done in this case, and which have brought you to the lamentable pass in which you stand, must surely convince the most skeptical and apathetic of the gravity and reality of the crime. What was your action in the darkest hour of your country's fortunes, when she was engaged in the deadly struggle from which she has just emerged? You joined the ranks of your country's foes. Born in Australia, a land which has nobly shown its devotion to its parent country, you have indeed taken a different course from that which was adopted by her sons. You have fought against your country, not with it. You have sought, as far as you could, to dethrone Great Britain from her place among the nations, to make her name a byword and a reproach, a synonym for weakness and irresolution. Nor can I forget that you have shed the blood, or done your best to shed the blood, of your countrymen who were fighting for their country. How many wives have been made widows, how many children orphans, by what you and those who acted under your command have done, Heaven only knows! You thought it safe at that dark hour of the Empire's fate, when Ladysmith, when Kimberley, when Mafeking, were in the very jaws of deadly peril—you thought it safe, no doubt, to lift the parricidal hand against your country. You thought she would shrink from the costly struggle wearied out by her gigantic efforts, and that, at the worst, a general peace would be made which would comprehend a general amnesty and cover up such acts as yours and save you from personal peril. You misjudged your country and failed to appreciate that, though slow to enter into a quarrel, however slow to take up arms, it has yet been her wont that in the quarrel she shall bear herself so that the opposer may beware of her, and that she is seldom so dangerous to her enemies as when the hour of national calamity has raised the dormant energies of her people—knit together every nerve and fiber of the body politic, and has made her sons determined to do all, to sacrifice all on behalf of the country that gave them birth. And against what a Sovereign and what a country did you lift your hand! A Sovereign the best beloved and most deeply honored of all the long line of English Kings and Queens, and whose lamented death was called back to my remembrance only yesterday as a fresh sorrow to many an English household. Against a country which has been the home of progress and freedom, and under whose beneficent sway, whenever you have chosen to stay within her dominions, you have enjoyed a liberty of person, a freedom of speech and action, such as you can have in no other country in Europe, and it is not too much to say in no other country in the world. The only—I will not say excuse, but palliation that I can find for conduct like yours is that it has been for some years past the fashion to treat lightly matters of this kind, so that men have been perhaps encouraged to play with sedition and to toy with treason, wrapt in a certain proud consciousness of strength begotten of the deep-seated and well-founded conviction that the loyalty of her people is supreme, and true authority in this country has slumbered or has treated with contemptuous indifference speeches and acts of sedition. It may be that you have been misled into the notion that, no matter what you did, so long as your conduct could be called a political crime, it was of no consequence. But it is one thing to talk sedition and to do small seditious acts, it is quite another thing to bear arms in the ranks of the foes of your country, and against it. Between the two the difference is immeasurable. But had you and those with whom you associated yourself succeeded, what fatal mischief might have been done to the great inheritance which has been bequeathed to us by our forefathers—that inheritance of power which it must be our work to use nobly and for good things; an inheritance of influence which will be of little effect even for good unless backed by power, and of duty which cannot be effectually performed if our power be shattered and our influence impaired. He who has attempted to do his country such irreparable wrong must be prepared to submit to the sentence which it is now my duty to pronounce upon you. The sentence of this Court—and it is pronounced in regard to each count of the indictment—is that you be taken hence to the place from which you came, and from thence to a place of execution, there to be hanged by the neck until you are dead.
From the Official Records of the Trial in the United States Senate, 1868
Andrew Johnson has disregarded and violated the laws and Constitution of his own country. Under his administration the government has not been strengthened, but weakened. Its reputation and influence at home and abroad have been injured and diminished. Ten States of this Union are without law, without security, without safety; public order everywhere violated, public justice nowhere respected; and all in consequence of the evil purposes and machinations of the President. Forty millions of people have been rendered anxious and uncertain as to the preservation of public peace and the perpetuity of the institutions of freedom in this country. All classes are oppressed by the private and public calamities which he has brought upon them. They appeal to you for relief. The nation waits in anxiety for the conclusion of these proceedings. Forty millions of people, whose interest in public affairs is in the wise and just administration of the laws, look to this tribunal as a sure defense against the encroachments of a criminally minded Chief Magistrate.
Will any one say that the heaviest judgment which you can render is any adequate punishment for these crimes? Your office is not punishment, but to secure the safety of the republic. But human tribunals are inadequate to punish those criminals who, as rulers or magistrates, by their example, conduct, policy, and crimes, become the scourge of communities and nations. No picture, no power of the imagination, can illustrate or conceive the suffering of the poor but loyal people of the South. A patriotic, virtuous, law-abiding chief magistrate would have healed the wounds of war, soothed private and public sorrows, protected the weak, encouraged the strong, and lifted from the Southern people the burdens which now are greater than they can bear.
Travelers and astronomers inform us that in the southern heavens, near the southern cross, there is a vast space which the uneducated call the hole in the sky, where the eye of man, with the aid of the powers of the telescope, has been unable to discover nebulae, or asteroid, or comet, or planet, or star, or sun. In that dreary, cold, dark region of space, which is only known to be less than infinite by the evidences of creation elsewhere, the Great Author of celestial mechanism has left the chaos which was in the beginning. If this earth were capable of the sentiments and emotions of justice and virtue, which in human mortal beings are the evidences and the pledge of our Divine origin and immortal destiny, it would heave and throw, with the energy of the elemental forces of nature, and project this enemy of two races of men into that vast region, there forever to exist in a solitude eternal as life, or as the absence of life, emblematical of, if not really, that "outer darkness" of which the Savior of man spoke in warning to those who are the enemies of themselves, of their race, and of their God. But it is yours to relieve, not to punish. This done and our country is again advanced in the intelligent opinion of mankind. In other governments an unfaithful ruler can be removed only by revolution, violence, or force. The proceeding here is judicial, and according to the forms of law. Your judgment will be enforced without the aid of a policeman or a soldier. What other evidence will be needed of the value of republican institutions? What other test of the strength and vigor of our government? What other assurance that the virtue of the people is equal to any emergency of national life?
Mr. Chief Justice and Senators,—If indeed we have arrived at a settled conclusion that this is a court, that it is governed by the law, that it is to confine its attention to the facts applicable to the law, and regard the sole evidence of those facts to be embraced within the testimony of witnesses or documents produced in court, we have made great progress in separating, at least, from your further consideration much that has been impressed upon your attention heretofore. It follows from this that the President is to be tried upon the charges which are produced here, and not upon common fame.
I may as conveniently at this point of the argument as at any other pay some attention to the astronomical punishment which the learned and honorable manager, Mr. Boutwell, thinks should be applied to this novel case of impeachment of the President. Cicero I think it is who says that a lawyer should know everything, for sooner or later there is no fact in history, in science, or of human knowledge that will not come into play in his arguments. Painfully sensible of my ignorance, being devoted to a profession which "sharpens and does not enlarge the mind," I yet can admire without envy the superior knowledge evinced by the honorable manager. Indeed, upon my soul, I believe he is aware of an astronomical fact which many professors of that science are wholly ignorant of. But nevertheless, while some of his honorable colleagues were paying attention to an unoccupied and unappropriated island on the surface of the seas, Mr. Manager Boutwell, more ambitious, had discovered an untenanted and unappropriated region in the skies, reserved, he would have us think, in the final councils of the Almighty, as the place of punishment for convicted and deposed American Presidents.
At first I thought that his mind had become so "enlarged" that it was not "sharp" enough to discover the Constitution had limited the punishment; but on reflection I saw that he was as legal and logical as he was ambitious and astronomical, for the Constitution has said "removal from office," and has put no limit to the distance of the removal, so that it may be, without shedding a drop of his blood, or taking a penny of his property, or confining his limbs, instant removal from office and transportation to the skies. Truly, this is a great undertaking; and if the learned manager can only get over the obstacles of the laws of nature the Constitution will not stand in his way. He can contrive no method but that of a convulsion of the earth that shall project the deposed President to this infinitely distant space; but a shock of nature of so vast an energy and for so great a result on him might unsettle even the footing of the firm members of Congress. We certainly need not resort to so perilous a method as that. How shall we accomplish it? Why, in the first place, nobody knows where that space is but the learned manager himself, and he is the necessary deputy to execute the judgment of the court.
Let it then be provided that in case of your sentence of deposition and removal from office the honorable and astronomical manager shall take into his own hands the execution of the sentence. With the President made fast to his broad and strong shoulders, and, having already essayed the flight by imagination, better prepared than anybody else to execute it in form, taking the advantage of ladders as far as ladders will go to the top of this great Capitol, and spurning then with his foot the crest of Liberty, let him set out upon his flight, while the two houses of Congress and all the people of the United States shall shout, "Sic itur ad astra."
But here a distressing doubt strikes me; how will the manager get back? He will have got far beyond the reach of gravitation to restore him, and so ambitious a wing as his could never stoop to a downward flight. Indeed, as he passes through the constellations, that famous question of Carlyle by which he derides the littleness of human affairs upon the scale of the measure of the heavens, "What thinks Botes as he drives his dogs up the zenith in their race of sidereal fire?" will force itself on his notice. What, indeed, would Botes think of this new constellation?
Besides, reaching this space, beyond the power of Congress even "to send for persons and papers," how shall he return, and how decide in the contest, there become personal and perpetual, the struggle of strength between him and the President? In this new revolution, thus established forever, who shall decide which is the sun and which is the moon? Who determine the only scientific test which reflects the hardest upon the other?
Mr. Chief Justice and Senators, we have come all at once to the great experiences and trials of a full-grown nation, all of which we thought we should escape—the distractions of civil strife, the exhaustions of powerful war. We could summon from the people a million of men and inexhaustible treasure to help the Constitution in its time of need. Can we summon now resources enough of civil prudence and of restraint of passion to carry us through this trial, so that whatever result may follow, in whatever form, the people may feel that the Constitution has received no wound! To this court, the last and best resort for this determination, it is to be left. And oh, if you could only carry yourselves back to the spirit and the purpose and the wisdom and the courage of the framers of the government, how safe would it be in your hands? How safe is it now in your hands, for you who have entered into their labors will see to it that the structure of your work comports in durability and excellence with theirs. Indeed, so familiar has the course of the argument made us with the names of the men of the convention and of the first Congress that I could sometimes seem to think that the presence even of the Chief Justice was replaced by the serene majesty of Washington, and that from Massachusetts we had Adams and Ames, from Connecticut, Sherman and Ellsworth, from New Jersey, Paterson and Boudinot, and from New York, Hamilton and Benson, and that they were to determine this case for us. Act, then, as if under this serene and majestic presence your deliberations were to be conducted to their close, and the Constitution was to come out from the watchful solicitude of these great guardians of it as if from their own judgment in this court of impeachment.
Reprinted, with the author's permission, from a speech at a dinner ofThe Harvard Club of New York City.
There should be a proper amount of modesty in one called upon to address such an intelligent audience of educated men as I see before me, and I am conscious of it in the same sense as the patient who said to his physician, "I suffer a great deal from nervous dyspepsia, and I attribute it to the fact that I attend so many public dinners." "Ah, I see," said the doctor, "you are often called upon to speak, and the nervous apprehension upsets your digestion." "Not at all; my apprehension is entirely on account of the other speakers; I never say a thing;" and it is with some hesitation that I respond to your call.
Following out that line of thought, there is a great deal that is attractive in a gathering of College men. They have such a winsome and a winning way with them.
Richest in endowments, foremost in progress, honored by the renown of a long line of distinguished sons, the university that claims you is worthy of the homage and respect which it receives from the educated men of America.
The study of the development of the human race by educational processes which change by necessity under changing conditions and environment, is one of the most interesting that we can engage in. The greatest men of this country, or any other, have not always been made by the university, however it may be with the average. You cannot always tell by a man's degree what manner of man he is likely to be. But the value of a technical or academic training is apparent as time goes on, population increases, occupations multiply and compete, and the strife of life becomes more fierce and strenuous.
Many in these days seem to prefer notoriety to fame, because it runs along the line of least resistance. A man has to climb for fame, but he can get notoriety by an easy tumble. And others forget the one essential necessary to success, of personal effort, and, assuming there is a royal road to learning, are content with the distinction of a degree from a university, without caring for what it implies, and answer as the son did to his father who asked him: "Why don't you work, my son? If you only knew how much happiness work brings, you would begin at once." "Father, I am trying to lead a life of self-denial in which happiness cuts no figure; do not tempt me."
But notwithstanding all these tendencies, the level of mankind is raised at these fountains of learning, the tone is higher, and the standards are continually advanced. The discipline and the training reaches and acts upon a willing and eager army of young recruits and works its salutary effect, like that upon a man who listened with rapt attention to a discourse from the pulpit and was congratulated upon his devotion, and asked if he was not impressed. "Yes," he replied, "for it is a mighty poor sermon that doesn't hit me somewhere."
However discouraging the action of our governing bodies through the obstruction and perverse action of an ignorant or corrupt majority or minority in them may be in the administration of great public affairs, the time at last comes when the nation arouses from its lethargy, shakes off its torpor, shows the strain of its blood, and follows its trained and intelligent leaders, like the man who, in a time of sore distress, after the ancient fashion, put ashes on his head, rent his garments, tore off his coat, his waistcoat, his shirt, and his undershirt, and at last came to himself. At such times, by the universal voice of public opinion and amid hearty applause of the whole people, we welcome to public office and the highest responsible stations such men as our universities have given to the country. It matters not to what family we belong—Harvard, Yale, Columbia, or Princeton—we are all of us one in our welcome to them, for they represent the university spirit and what it teaches—honor, high- mindedness, intelligence, truthfulness, unselfishness, courage, and patriotism.
Reprinted with the author's permission
Mr. President and Gentlemen,—I came here to-night with some notes for a speech in my pocket, but I have been sitting next to General Butler, and in the course of the evening they have mysteriously disappeared. The consequence is, gentlemen, that you may expect a very good speech from him and a very poor one from me. When I read this toast which you have just drunk in honor of Her Gracious Majesty, the Queen of Great Britain, and heard how you received the letter of the British Minister that was read in response, and how heartily you joined in singing "God Save the Queen," when I look up and down these tables and see among you so many representatives of English capital and English trade, I have my doubts whether the evacuation of New York by the British was quite as thorough and lasting as history would fain have us believe. If George III, who certainly did all he could to despoil us of our rights and liberties and bring us to ruin—if he could rise from his grave and see how his granddaughter is honored at your hands to-night, why, I think he would return whence he came, thanking God that his efforts to enslave us, in which for eight long years he drained the resources of the British Empire, were not successful.
The truth is, the boasted triumph of New York in getting rid of the British once and forever has proved, after all, to be but a dismal failure. We drove them out in one century only to see them return in the next to devour our substance and to carry off all the honors. We have just seen the noble Chief Justice of England, the feasted favorite of all America, making a triumphal tour across the Continent and carrying all before him at the rate of fifty miles an hour. Night after night at our very great cost we have been paying the richest tribute to the reigning monarch of the British stage, and nowhere in the world are English men and women of character and culture received with a more hearty welcome, a more earnest hospitality, than in this very state of New York. The truth is, that this event that we celebrate to-day, which sealed the independence of America and seemed for a time to give a staggering blow to the prestige and the power of England, has proved to be no less a blessing to her own people than to ours. The latest and best of the English historians has said that, however important the independence of America might be in the history of England, it was of overwhelming importance in the history of the world, and that though it might have crippled for a while the supremacy of the English nation, it founded the supremacy of the English race. And in the same spirit we welcome the fact that those social, political, and material barriers that separated the two nations a century ago have now utterly vanished; that year by year we are being drawn closer and closer together, and that this day may be celebrated with equal fitness on both sides of the Atlantic and by all who speak the English tongue.
From "Modern Eloquence," Vol. I, Geo. L. Shuman and Company, Chicago, publishers.
When I was conversing recently with Lord Tennyson, he said to me: "It is bad for us that English will always be a spoken speech, since that means that it will always be changing, and so the time will come when you and I will be as hard to read for the common people as Chaucer is to-day." You remember what opinion your brilliant humorist, Artemus Ward, let fall concerning that ancient singer. "Mr. Chaucer," he observed casually, "is an admirable poet, but as a spellist, a very decided failure."
To the treasure house of that noble tongue the United States has splendidly contributed. It would be far poorer to-day without the tender lines of Longfellow, the serene and philosophic pages of Emerson, the convincing wit and clear criticism of my illustrious departed friend, James Russell Lowell, the Catullus-like perfection of the lyrics of Edgar Allan Poe, and the glorious, large-tempered dithyrambs of Walt Whitman.
These stately and sacred laurel groves grow here in a garden forever extending, ever carrying further forward, for the sake of humanity, the irresistible flag of our Saxon supremacy, leading one to falter in an attempt to eulogize America and the idea of her potency and her promise. The most elaborate panegyric would seem but a weak impertinence, which would remind you, perhaps too vividly, of Sydney Smith, who, when he saw his grandchild pat the back of a large turtle, asked her why she did so. The little maid replied: "Grandpa, I do it to please the turtle." "My child," he answered, "you might as well stroke the dome of St. Paul's to please the Dean and chapter"
I myself once heard, in our Zoological gardens in London, another little girl ask her mamma whether it would hurt the elephant if she offered him a chocolate drop. In that guarded and respectful spirit is it that I venture to tell you here to-night how truly in England the peace and prosperity of your republic is desired, and that nothing except good will is felt by the mass of our people toward you, and nothing but the greatest satisfaction in your wealth and progress.
Between these two majestic sisters of the Saxon blood the hatchet of war is, please God, buried. No cause of quarrel, I think and hope, can ever be otherwise than truly out of proportion to the vaster causes of affection and accord. We have no longer to prove to each other, or to the world, that Englishmen and Americans are high-spirited and fearless; that Englishmen and Americans alike will do justice, and will have justice, and will put up with nothing else from each other and from the nations at large. Our proofs are made on both sides, and indelibly written on the page of history. Not that I wish to speak platitudes about war. It has been necessary to human progress; it has bred and preserved noble virtues; it has been inevitable, and may be again; but it belongs to a low civilization. Other countries have, perhaps, not yet reached that point of intimate contact and rational advance, but for us two, at least, the time seems to have come when violent decisions, and even talk of them, should be as much abolished between us as cannibalism.
I ventured, when in Washington, to propose to President Harrison that we should some day, the sooner the better, choose five men of public worth in the United States, and five in England; give them gold coats if you please, and a handsome salary, and establish them as a standing and supreme tribunal of arbitration, referring to them the little family fallings-out of America and of England, whenever something goes wrong between us about a sealskin in Behring Strait, a lobster pot, an ambassador's letter, a border tariff, or an Irish vote. He showed himself very well disposed toward my suggestion.