XIV. CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS AND THE PRESIDENTIAL SUCCESSION BILL
When I entered the Senate, I found one very serious inconvenience and one very great public danger in existing conditions.
The great inconvenience grew out of the fact that by the Constitution the session of Congress must end on the fourth of March every other year. A third of the Senate goes out at the same time, and every fourth year the Presidential term ends. That session of Congress meets, according to our usage, on the first Monday of December. The meeting cannot well come much earlier without preventing the members of the two Houses of Congress from taking part in the political campaign, where they are justly expected by the people to give an account of their stewardship, and to discuss the questions to be considered by the people in the election. So there are but thirteen weeks in which to pass fourteen or fifteen great Appropriation Bills, making it impossible to deal with any other great subject except by unanimous consent. The result is also that the Appropriation Bills are put in the power of a very few men indeed. The House has to submit to the dictation of the Appropriation Committee, and cannot be allowed to debate, or even to have a separate vote on matters which nearly the whole House would like to accomplish, if there were time, but which the Chairman of the Appropriation Committee, who is usually omnipotent with his associates, may happen to dislike. On the other hand, in the Senate, where there is no cloture rule, any single member, or at best, a very few members, can defeat an Appropriation Bill and compel an extra session by exercising their right of uncontrolled debate.
Besides; people from all parts of the country like to attend the inauguration of a new President. The fourth of March is at an inclement season, and is apt to be an inclement day, and it may come on Saturday or Sunday or Monday. So persons who attend may be obliged to be away from home over Sunday, and a great many persons have lost their health or life from exposure in witnessing the inauguration.
I prepared a Constitutional amendment providing that the inauguration should take place on the last Thursday in April. I have reported this to the Senate several times. It has always passed that body with scarcely a dissenting vote, on debate and explanation. If that had been adopted, if the session were to begin in the middle of November, a week after the November elections-- which could be accomplished by an act of Congress--instead of thirteen weeks, to which the session is now limited, there would be a session of twenty-three or twenty-four weeks. This would give time for the consideration of such legislation as might be needful. It would probably, also, permit the shortening somewhat of the long session, which not infrequently extends to July or August. But the plan has never found much favor in the House. Speaker Reed, when he was in power, said rather contemptuously, that "Congress sits altogether too long as it is. The less we have of Congress, the better."
The public danger is found in the fact that there is no provision in the Constitution for the case where the President-elect dies before inauguration. The provision is:
"In case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the same shall devolve on the Vice-President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice-President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability shall be removed, or a President shall be elected."
Strictly construed, it is only in the case of the death, inability, etc., of a President, that a Vice-President can succeed, or in the case of the death, inability, etc., of the President and Vice-President both, that Congress has power to declare on whom the office shall devolve. It must be a President and Vice-President that die; not merely a President and Vice- President-elect. That his is not an imaginary danger is shown by the fact of the well-known scheme to assassinate Lincoln on his way to the seat of the Government, and also by the fact that either the President or the Vice-President has died in office so many times in the recollection of men now living. President Harrison died during his term; President Taylor died during his term; Vice-President King died during Pierce's term; Vice-President Wilson died during Grant's term; President Garfield died during his term; Vice-President Hendricks died during Cleveland's term; Vice-President Hobart died during McKinley's term, and President McKinley during his own second term. So within sixty years eight of these high officials have died in office; five of them within thirty years; four of them within twenty years.
I have also drawn and repeatedly procured the passage through the Senate of an amendment to the Constitution to protect the country against this danger. That also has failed of attention in the House. I suppose it is likely that nothing will be done about the matter until the event shall happen, as is not unlikely, that both President and Vice-President- elect shall become incapacitated between the election and the time for entering upon office.
I was more successful in providing against another situation that might prove quite awkward. In Washington's Administration Congress exercised, as far as it could, the power given by the Constitution to provide against the death or disability of both the President and Vice-President, if it should happen after they had entered upon office, as follows:
"In case of removal, death, resignation or inability of both the President and the Vice-President of the United States, the President of the Senate, or, if there is none, then the Speaker of the House, for the time being, shall act as President, until the disability is removed or a President elected."
There is a tradition that when this awkward arrangement was made, the proposition that the Secretary of State should succeed in the case of such vacancy was defeated by the suggestion that Mr. Jefferson had too much power and consequence already. The arrangement seemed to me clearly objectionable. In the first place the Vice-President, who, it is supposed, has died or become incapable, is the Constitutional President of the Senate. The Senate, under the practice and construction of its power which prevailed down to a very recent period, only elected a President pro tempore when the Vice-President vacated the chair. His office terminated when the Vice-President resumed it, and there was no Constitutional obligation on the Senate to elect a President pro tempore at all. So it was quite uncertain whether there would be a President pro tempore of the Senate at any particular time, especially when the Senate was not in session. There have been two instances where the President of the Senate has refused to vacate the chair, for the reason that he did not desire to have a President pro tempore elected, and thereby have an honor conferred on a member of another party than his own. That happened once in the case of Vice-President Gerry, and again, within my personal knowledge, in the case of Vice-President Arthur. When he succeeded to the Presidency there was no President of the Senate who would have taken his place if he too had happened to be assassinated. So of the Speaker of the House. For a great many years the first session of a newly-elected House of Representatives has begun in December. There is no Speaker from the previous fourth of March until that time. Beside, the Senate, whose members hold office for six years and of whom only one-third goes out every two years, is very apt to have a majority whose political opinions are opposed to those which have prevailed in the last Presidential election. So, if the President and Vice-President both die before taking their seats, the President of the Senate is quite likely to bring into the Executive Office opinions which the people have just rejected in the election.
On the other hand, the Secretary of State is always a member of the party that has prevailed in the last election, and is usually the member of the party, next to the President himself, highest in its confidence. Our Secretaries of State, with rare exceptions, have been among the very ablest public men of the country. Among them have been Timothy Pickering, John Marshall, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Martin Van Buren, Edward Livingston, Louis McLane, John Forsyth, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, James Buchanan, John M. Clayton, Edward Everett, Elihu B. Washburne, Hamilton Fish, William M. Evarts, James G. Blaine, Thomas F. Bayard, John Sherman, and John Hay. These men, with scarcely an exception, have been among the very foremost statesmen of their time. Several of them have been Presidents of the United States, and a good many more of them have been prominent candidates for the Presidency. On the other hand, the list of Presidents of the Senate contains few names of any considerable distinction. Another objection to the arrangement was the fact that the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House might be changed at the will of the body that elected them. So the acting President might be displaced at the will of a political body. There is a good deal of reason, also, for claiming that if Congress declare that the officer shall act as President, he must discharge the duties of his office and the duties of the President at the same time, a burden which would be very hard for one man to support. Accordingly I drew and introduced the existing law, which reads as follows:
"Be it enacted, etc., That in case of removal, death, resignation or inability of both the President and Vice-President of the United States, the Secretary of State, or if there be none, or in case of his removal, death, resignation or inability, then the Secretary of the Treasury, or if there be none, or in the case of his removal, death, resignation or inability, then the Secretary of War, or if there be none, or in case of his removal, death, resignation or inability, then the Attorney-General, or if there be none, or in case of his removal, death, resignation or inability, then the Secretary of the Interior, shall act as President until the disability of the President or Vice-President is removed or a President shall be elected:
"Provided, That whenever the powers and duties of the office of President of the United States shall devolve upon any of the person named herein, if Congress be not then in session, or if it would not meet in accordance with law within twenty days thereafter, it shall be the duty of the person upon whom said powers and duties shall devolve to issue a proclamation convening Congress in extraordinary session, giving twenty days' notice of time of meeting.
"Sec. 2. That the preceding section shall only be held to describe and apply to such officers as shall have been appointed by the advice and consent of the Senate to the offices therein named, and such as are eligible to the office of President under the Constitution, and not under impeachment by the House of Representatives of the United States at the time the powers and duties of the office shall devolve upon them respectively.
"Sec. 3. That sections one hundred and forty-six, one hundred and forty-seven, one hundred and forty-eight, one hundred and forty-nine and one hundred and fifty of the Revised Statutes are hereby repealed. (January 19, 1886)."
There was some objection to it at first. It was resisted very strenuously to the end by Senator Edmunds. But after full discussion it passed the Senate with few dissenting votes.
In the House Mr. Reed, afterward Speaker, appealed without success to the political feeling of his associates, demanding to know if they would rather have Mr. Bayard, who was then Secretary of State, than John Sherman, who then happened to be President of the Senate, for President of the United States. But the House, also, by a large majority, passed the measure.
XV. PRESIDENT CLEVELAND'S JUDGES
I earnestly supported William B. Hornblower against the opposition of Senator Hill, when he was nominated by Mr. Cleveland for Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States. I was then on the Judiciary Committee. I made very careful inquiry, and had reason to believe that the best lawyers in New York thought highly of him. Judge Gray told me that Mr. Hornblower had argued a case in the Court not long before, and that as the Judges walked out Judge Blatchford said to him: "I hope you have as good a man in your Circuit to succeed you, when the time comes, as we have in ours in Mr. Hornblower to succeed me."
I did not, however, support Mr. Wheeler H. Peckham. The newspapers circulated the story extensively that--to use the phrase of one of them--I "led the opposition." That was not true. I expected to vote for Mr. Peckham until just before the vote was taken. I had communicated my expectation to support him to Senator Vilas, who had charge of the case. I thought before the vote was taken it was my duty to tell him I had changed my mind. So I went round to his seat and told him. Nobody else knew my purpose till I voted.
I had no political sympathy with Senator Hill, still less with the claim often imputed to the Senate by writers of newspapers, but of which I have never seen the slightest evidence, that Senators have the right to dictate such appointments. But I thought Mr. Cleveland ought not to have made such an appointment without consulting Mr. Hill, who was a lawyer of eminence and knew the sentiment of the majority of the Democratic Party. Mr. Cleveland had nominated in succession two persons to an office which ought to be absolutely non- partisan, who belonged to a very small company of men devoted to his personal fortunes, who had bitterly attacked Mr. Hill. I should not, however, have deemed this objection sufficient to justify a vote against Mr. Peckham, but for the fact that I became satisfied he was a man of strong prejudices, with little of the judicial temper or quality about him, and quite likely to break down under the strain of heavy responsibility.
I urged Mr. Vilas to ask President Cleveland to send in the name of Mr. Hornblower again, having some hope that the Senate would reconsider its action in his case. But President Cleveland solved the difficulty quite skilfully by sending in the name of Senator White of Louisiana, a most admirable gentleman and Judge, and afterward, when there came another vacancy, that of Rufus W. Peckham of New York, both of whom were confirmed, I believe, without an objection.
I just referred to Senator William F. Vilas, of Wisconsin. I should like to put on record my great esteem for his character as a man, and the excellence of his service as a Senator. He was on the Judiciary Committee while I was Chairman, and also for a time when his party had the majority. He was industrious, wise, conservative, courteous, and fair, a most admirable lawyer, full of public spirit, well acquainted with the mechanism of the Government, and doing always much more than his full share of the work of the Committee and of the Senate. I hope the country may have again the benefit of his great ability in some department of the public service.
Chief Justice Fuller said with singular felicity:
"Mr. Justice Lamar always underrated himself. This tendency plainly sprung from a vivid imagination. With him the splendid passions attendant upon youth never faded into the light of common day, but they kept before him as an ideal, the impossibility of whose realization, as borne in upon him from time to time, opposed him with a sense of failure. Yet the conscientiousness of his work was not lessened, nor was the acuteness of his intellect obscured by these natural causes of his discontent; nor did a certain Oriental dreaminess of the temperament ever allure him to abandon the effort to accomplish something that would last after his lips were dumb."
Matthew Arnold says in one of his essays that Americans lack distinction. I have a huge liking for Matthew Arnold. He had a wonderful intellectual vision. I do not mean to say that his three lectures on translating Homer are the greatest literary work of our time. But I think, on the whole, that I should rather have the pair of intellectual eyes which can see Homer as he saw him, than any other mental quality I can think of. But Mr. Arnold has never seemed to me to be fortunate in his judgment about Americans. He allows this quality of distinction to Grant, but denies it, for all the world, to Abraham Lincoln. The trouble with Mr. Arnold is that he never travelled in the United States, when on this side the Atlantic. He spent his time with a few friends who had little love for things American. He visited a great city or two, but never made himself acquainted with the American people. He never knew the sources of our power, or the spirit of our people.
Yet there is a good deal of truth in what he says of the Americans of our time. It is still more true of the Englishmen of our time. The newspaper, and the telegraph, and the telephone, and the constant dissemination of news, the public library and the common school and college mix up all together and tend to make us, with some rare and delightful exceptions, eminently commonplace. Certainly the men who are sent to Congress do not escape this wearying quality. I know men who have been in public office for more than a generation, who have had enormous power and responsibility, to whom the country is indebted for safety and happiness, who never said a foolish thing, and rarely ever when they had the chance failed to do a wise one, who are utterly commonplace. You could not read the story of their public career without going to sleep. They never said anything worth quoting, and never did anything that any other equally good and sensible man would not have done in their place. I have a huge respect for them. I can never myself attain to their excellence. Yet I would as lief spend my life as an omnibus horse as live theirs.
But we have occasionally some delightful exceptions. It so happens that some of the best, most attractive men I have known, were from the South. They are men who stood by the Southern people through thick and thin during the Rebellion, and in resisting every attempt on the part of the victorious Northern majority to raise the colored people to a political equality. They have all of them, I believe, been Free Traders. In general they have opposed the construction of the Constitution which has prevailed in New England and throughout the North, and in which I have myself always believed.
I have never had much personal intimacy with any of them. I have had some vigorous conflicts with one or two of them. Yet I have had from each before our association ended, assurances of their warm personal regard. One of them, perhaps, on the whole, the most conspicuous, is Lucius Q. C. Lamar. His very name, Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus, indicates that his father must have looked for his example for his son to follow far away from the American life about him.
Lamar was one of the most delightful of men. His English style, both in conversation and in public speaking, was fresh and original, well adapted to keep his hearers expectant and alert, and to express the delicate and subtle shades of meaning that were required for the service of his delicate and subtle thought.
He had taken the part of the South with great zeal. He told me shortly before he left the Senate that he thought it was a great misfortune for the world that the Southern cause had been lost. He stood by his people, as he liked to call them, in their defeat and in their calamity without flinching or reservation. While he would, I am sure, have done nothing himself not scrupulously honorable, and while there was nothing in his nature of cruelty, still less of brutality, yet he did not stop to inquire into matters of right and wrong when a Southerner had got into trouble, by reason of anything a white Democrat had done in conflict with the National authority. Yet Mr. Lamar desired most sincerely the reconciliation of the sections, that the age-long strife should come to an end and be forgotten, and that the whole South should share the prosperity and wealth and refinement and contentment, which submission to the new order of things would bring.
He was a far-sighted man. He was not misled by temporary excitement or by deference to the majority of his political friends who were less far-sighted than he, into any mistakes. When there was an attempt to break faith in regard to what was called the Wheeler compromise in the Democratic House, Mr. Lamar interposed and prevented it. Just after the count under the Electoral Commission had been completed, there was a very dangerous movement to delay action on the returns from Vermont, which would have prevented the completion of the work before the 4th of March. Mr. Lamar put forth all his powerful influence among his Democratic associates on the floor of the House, and saved the peace of the country. He knew very well that the cause of the South, as he would have called it, and the cause of the Democratic Party itself, would not be promoted by a new civil convulsion, still less by any breach of faith.
He voted against the free coinage of silver in spite of the fact that the people of his State earnestly favored it, and against the express instructions of its Legislature. In 1874, at a time when the passions of the Civil War seemed to blaze higher, and the angry conflict between the sections seemed to blaze higher even than during the war itself, he astonished and shocked the people of the South by pronouncing a tender and affectionate eulogy on Charles Sumner. He testified to Sumner's high moral qualities, to his intense love of liberty, to his magnanimity, and to his incapacity for a personal animosity, and regretted that he had restrained the impulse which had been strong on him to go to Mr. Sumner and offer him his hand and his heart with it. It would have been almost impossible for any other man who had done either of these things to go back to Mississippi and live. But it never shook for a moment the love for Lamar of a people who knew so well his love for them.
Afterward Mr. Lamar was made an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. I voted against him--in which I made a mistake--not because I doubted his eminent integrity and ability, but because I thought that he had little professional experience and no judicial experience, and that his health-- he was then beginning to show signs of the disease which ended his life shortly after--was not sufficient for undertaking the great study and the labor which the new office would require. He was not long on the Bench, and was not greatly distinguished as a Judge. But he wrote a few opinions which showed his great intellectual capacity for dealing with the most complicated legal questions, especially such are apt to arise in patent cases.
He was a delightful man in ordinary conversation. He had an infinite wit and great sense of humor. He used to tell delightful stories of queer characters and events that had come within his own observation. My relations to him for a good while were entirely antagonistic. We had some very sharp controversies. He would never tolerate any expression, in his presence, of disrespect to Jefferson Davis. He would always meet the statement that Mr. Davis was a traitor with a vigorous denial. When I made a motion excepting Jefferson Davis from the benefit of the bill to pension the soldiers of the Mexican War, Mr. Lamar compared him to Prometheus, and me to the vulture preying upon his liver. He was the last person from whom I should have expected an expression of compliment, or even of kindness in those days. Yet when the question of my reelection was pending in 1883 and the correspondent of a newspaper which was among my most unrelenting and unscrupulous opponents thought he might get some material which would help him in his attacks, called upon Mr. Lamar in the Democratic cloak room, and asked him what he thought of me, Mr. Lamar replied in language which seems almost ridiculous to quote, and which was inspired only by his indignation at the attempt to use him for such a purpose: "Sir, Massachusetts has never been more powerfully represented in the Senate, not even in the time of Daniel Webster, than by Mr. Hoar."
It was with feeling of great pleasure that in 1886 I saw Harvard confer her highest honor on this delightful Mississippian.
He was, in his time, I think, the ablest representative, certainly among the ablest, of the opinions opposed to mine. He had a delightful and original literary quality which, if the lines of his life had been cast amid other scenes than the tempest of a great Revolution and Civil War, might have made him a dreamer like Montaigne; and a chivalrous quality that might have made him a companion of Athos and D'Artagnan.
His eulogy on Calhoun, with whom in general he sympathized, was a masterpiece of eloquence, but his eulogy on Charles Sumner, which probably no other man in the South could have uttered without political death, was greater still. It was a good omen for the country. At the moment he uttered it, I suppose Charles Sumner was hated throughout the South with an intensity which in this day of reconciliation it is almost impossible to conceive. Yet Mr. Lamar in his place in the House of Representatives dared to utter these sentences:
"Charles Sumner was born with an instinctive love of freedom, and was educated from his earliest infancy to the belief that freedom is the natural and indefeasible right of every intelligent being having the outward form of man. In him, in fact, this creed seems to have been something more than a doctrine imbibed from teachers, or a result of education. To him it was a grand intuitive truth, inscribed in blazing letters upon the tablet of his inner consciousness, to deny which would have been for him to deny that he himself existed. And along with the all-controlling love of freedom he possessed a moral sensibility keenly intense and vivid, a conscientiousness which would never permit him to swerve by the breadth of a hair from what he pictured to himself as the path of duty. Thus were combined in him the characteristics which have in all ages given to religion her martyrs, and to patriotism her self-sacrificing heroes."
After speaking of the kindness of Mr. Sumner to the South, and his spirit of magnanimity, he added:
"It was my misfortune, perhaps my fault, personally never to have known this eminent philanthropist and statesman. The impulse was often strong upon me to go to him and offer him my hand, and my heart with it, and to express to him my thanks for his kind and considerate course toward the people with whom I am identified. If I did not yield to that impulse, it was because the thought occurred that other days were coming in which such a demonstration might be more opportune and less liable to misconstruction. Suddenly and without premonition, a day as come at last to which, for such a purpose, there is no to-morrow. My regret is therefore intensified by the thought that I failed to speak of him out of the fulness of my heart while there was yet time."
That Mr. Lamar well understood what was to be the effect of this wonderful speech upon the whole country is shown by his letter to his wife the next day, in which he says: "I never in all my life opened my lips with a purpose more single to the interests of our Southern people than when I made this speech."
I said of this speech in an article in the _North American Review:_
"The eloquent words of Mr. Lamar so touched the hearts of the people of the North that they may fairly be said to have been of themselves an important influence in mitigating the estrangements of a generation."
The following letter explains my absence from the Senate when Judge Lamar's death was announced:
WASHINGTON, D. C., January 29, 1893
My Dear Madam:
I was kept in bed, under the orders of my physician, the day the death of your husband was announced to the Senate. I regret exceedingly that I could not be in my place to express my sense of the great public loss and my warm personal admiration for his great qualities of intellect and of heart. I served with him in the House of Representatives for more than four years, and in the Senate for more than eight years. It was a stormy and exciting time. We differed widely on very grave questions, and this difference was more than once very sharply manifested in public; but the more I knew him, the more satisfied I became of the sincerity of his patriotism, of his profound and far-sighted wisdom, of the deep fountain of tenderness in his affectionate and simple heart, and of his brave and chivalrous quality of soul. I was more than once indebted to him for very great kindness indeed, under circumstances when I do not think he supposed it would ever come to my knowledge.
Some of his judgments on the Supreme Bench are characterized by marvellous beauty and felicity of style. He maintained his place on that great tribunal to the satisfaction of his friends and that admiration of his countrymen, in spite of failing health and of the fact that the best years of his life had been given to other studies than that of the law.
It is a good omen for our country that the friends and disciples of Charles Sumner unite with the people of Mississippi in their reverence for this noble and manly character.
I am faithfully yours, GEORGE F. HOAR Mrs. Lamar.
XVI. SOME SOUTHERN SENATORS
Another most delightful Democrat, with whom it was my pleasure to form quite intimate relations, was Senator Howell E. Jackson of Tennessee. He had been in the Confederate service. I think he did not approve Secession, but like most others who dwelt in the South, thought his allegiance primarily due to his State. He was an admirable lawyer, faithful, industrious, clear-headed and learned in the law. He had been a Whig before the war, and, like other Southern Whigs, favored a moderate protective tariff. He was anxious to have the South take her place as a great manufacturing community, for which her natural resources of iron and coal and her great water power gave her such advantages. He was opposed to the Republican measures of Reconstruction and to placing the negro on a political equality with the whites. But he also discountenanced and condemned any lawless violence or fraud.
Senator Jackson was appointed Judge of the United States Circuit Court by President Cleveland. He held that office when a vacancy on the Bench of the Supreme Court came by the death of Justice Lamar. The election of 1892 had resulted in the choice of President Cleveland. The Democrats in the Senate were determined that no Republican who should be nominated by President Harrison should be confirmed, and did not mean, if they could help it, that the place should be filled during the December session. The only way to get such a confirmation would be for the Republican majority to put the question ahead of all other subjects, to go into Executive session every day as soon as the Senate met, and remain there until the judgeship was disposed of. The Democrats must then choose between defeating the Appropriation Bills, and compelling an extra session, which the in-coming Administration would not like. In order to do that, however, the small Republican majority must hold together firmly, and be willing to take the risk of an extra session.
I called on President Harrison and urged upon him the appointment of Judge Jackson. I represented that it was desirable that there should be some Democrats upon the Bench, and that they should be men who had the confidence of their own part of the country and of the country at large; that Judge Jackson was a man of admirable judicial quality; that he had the public confidence in a high degree, and that it would be impossible for the Democratic Party to object to his selection, while it would strengthen the Bench. So I thought that even if we could put one of our men there without difficulty, it would be wise to appoint Jackson.
President Harrison was very unwilling, indeed, to take this view. He answered me at first in his rough impulsive way, and seemed very unwilling even to take the matter into consideration. But after a considerable discussion he asked me to ascertain whether the Republicans would be willing, if he sent in a Republican name, to adopt the course above suggested, and transact no other business until the result was secured, even at the risk of defeating the Appropriation Bills and causing an extra session. I went back to the Senate and consulted a good many Senators. Nearly all of them said they would not agree to such a struggle; that they thought it very undesirable indeed; that the effect would be bad. So it was clear that nothing could be accomplished in that way. I went back to the White House and reported. I got the authority of the gentlemen I had consulted to tell the President what they said. The result was the appointment of Judge Jackson, to the great satisfaction of the country. He was a very industrious and faithful Judge. But his useful life came to an end soon afterward, I suppose largely as the result of overwork in his important and laborious office.
The Attorney-General said of Mr. Justice Jackson: "He was not so much a Senator who had been appointed Judge, as a Judge who had served for a time as a Senator."
I served with Senator Jackson on the Committee on Claims, and on the Committee on the Judiciary. We did not meet often in social life. He rarely came to my room. I do not remember that I ever visited him in his home. But we formed a very cordial and intimate friendship. I have hardly known a nature better fitted, morally or intellectually, for great public trusts, either judicial or political, than his. In the beginning, I think the framers of the Constitution intended the Senate to be a sort of political Supreme Court, in which, as a court of final resort, the great conflicts which had stirred the people, and stirred the Representatives of the people in the lower House, should be decided without heat and without party feeling. It was, I have been told, considered a breach of propriety to allude to party divisions in early debates in the Senate, as it would be now deemed a breach of propriety to allude to such divisions in the Supreme Court of the United States.
Howell E. Jackson had this ancient Senatorial temperament. He never seemed to me to be thinking of either party or section or popular opinion, or of the opinion of other men; but only of public duty.
He never flinched from uttering and maintaining his opinions. He never caressed or cajoled his political antagonists. It is a great tribute to his personal quality that he owed his election as Senator to his political opponents who, when his own party was divided, joined a majority of his party to elect him. He also, as has been said, owed his appointment as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court to the impression which his probity and ability had made on his political opponents. When sick with a fatal illness he left a sick bed to take his place upon the Bench at the call of duty when the Income Tax case was to be decided. There is no doubt that the effort hastened his death. I do not agree with the conclusion to which he came on that great occasion. But the fact that he came to that conclusion is enough to make me feel sure that there were strong reasons for it, which might well convince the clearest understanding, and be reconciled with the most conscientious desire to do right.
No list of the remarkable Senators of my time would be complete which did not contain the name of Senator Vest of Missouri. He was not a very frequent speaker, and never spoke at great length. But his oratoric powers are of a very high order. On some few occasions he has made speeches, always speaking without notes, and I suppose without previous preparation so far as expression and style go, which have very deeply moved the Senate, though made up of men who have been accustomed to oratory and not easily stirred to emotion. Mr. Vest is a brave, sincere, spirited and straightforward man. He has a good many of the prejudices of the old Southern Secessionist. I think those prejudices would long ago have melted away in the sunshine of our day of returning good feeling and affection, but for the fact that his chivalrous nature will not permit him to abandon a cause or an opinion to which he has once adhered, while it is unpopular. He is like some old cavalier who supported the Stuarts, who lived down into the days of the House of Hanover, but still toasted the King over the water.
Among the most interesting characters with whom it has been my fortune to serve is Senator John W. Daniel of Virginia. Our ways of life, and in many particulars our ways of thinking, are far apart. But I have been led to form a great respect for his intellectual qualities, and for his sincere and far- sighted patriotism.
Mr. Daniel came into the Senate in 1887. He had been known as a very eminent lawyer at the Virginia Bar, author of two excellent law books. He had served a single term in the National House of Representatives. He had won a National reputation there by a very beautiful and brilliant speech at the completion of the Washington Monument. There were two notable orations at the time, one by Mr. Daniel and one by Robert C. Winthrop. These gentlemen were selected for the purpose as best representing two sections of the country. Mr. Winthrop was, beyond all question, the fittest man in the North for such a task. I have a special admiration for the spirit and eloquence with which he performed such duties. To my mind no higher praise could be given Mr. Daniel's address than that it is worthy of that company.
I had occasion to look at Mr. Winthrop's address some little time ago, and, opening the volume containing it in the middle, I read a page or two with approval and delight thinking it was Mr. Winthrop's. But I found, on looking back to the beginning that it was Senator Daniel's.
Mr. Daniel speaks too rarely in the Senate. He is always listened to with great attention. He speaks only on important questions, to which he always makes an important contribution. He has the old-fashioned Virginia method of speech, now nearly passed away,--grave, deliberate, with stately periods and sententious phrases, such, I suppose, as were used in the Convention that adopted the Constitution, or in that which framed or revised the Constitution of Virginia.
Mr. Daniel was a Confederate soldier. He is a Virginian to his heart's core. He looks with great alarm on the possibility that the ancient culture and nobility of the South, and the lofty character of the Virginian as he existed in the time of Washington and Marshall and Patrick Henry may be degraded by raising what he thinks an inferior race to social or even political equality.
But he retains no bitterness or hate or desire for revenge by reason of the conflict of the Civil War. He delivered an address before the President of the United States, the Supreme Court, the representatives of foreign Governments, the two Houses of Congress and the Governors of twenty-one States and Territories, on the 12th of December, 1900, on the occasion of the celebration of the Centennial Anniversary of establishing the seat of Government at Washington. That remarkable address was full of wise counsel to his countrymen. Coming from a representative of Virginia, who had borne arms and been badly wounded in the Civil War, it had a double value and significance. Mr. Daniel declared the cheering and hopeful truth that great races are made of a mixture of races, and that the best and bravest blood of the world's great races is mixed in the American. He appealed eloquently to the circumstances which should stir the heart of the whole people to a new and loftier love of country. He pointed out that the differences in forty- five great Commonwealths are not greater than ought to be expected, and indeed not greater than is healthy. He pointed out the National strength, the power of our great Republic stands at the dawn of a new century, with every man under its flag a freeman and ready to defend it. He called upon his countrymen to stand by the Monroe Doctrine, to be ready to defend it, if need be, in arms. He then specially appealed to the people to foster the inventive genius of the country, and repeated Mr. Jefferson's lofty prophecy that in some future day--
"The farthest star in the heavens will bear the name of Washington, and the city he founded be the Capital of the universal Republic."
Isham G. Harris entered the Senate the same day I did. I counted him always among my friends, although we had some sharp passages. I cannot describe him better than by reprinting here what I said of him in the Senate after his death.
"Mr. President, the great career of Senator Harris is well known to his countrymen. He has been for more than a generation a striking and conspicuous figure in our public life. His colleague, his successor, the men of his own political faith, the people of the great State which he served and honored and loved so long, will, each in their own way, portray his character and record their esteem and affection.
"My tribute must be that of a political opponent. So far as I have been able to exert any influence upon the history of my country during the long conflict now happily past, it has been in opposition to him, to the party to which he belonged, to the opinions which he held, I am sure, quite as zealously and conscientiously as I hold my own.
"We entered the Senate on the same day. He was a Southerner, a Democrat and a Confederate. I was born and bred in New England, a Republican, and an Abolitionist. We rarely spoke in the same debate except on different sides. Yet I have no memory of him that is not tender and affectionate, and there is nothing that I can honestly say of him except words of respect and of honor.
"He was a typical Southerner. He had the virtues and the foibles that belonged to that character in the generation the last of whom are now passing from the stage of public action. He was a man of very simple and very high qualities. He was a man of absolute frankness in public behavior and in private dealing. The thought that was in his heart corresponded absolutely with the utterance of his lips. He had nothing to conceal. I was about to say he was a man without the gift of diplomacy; but he was a man with the gift of the highest diplomacy--directness, simplicity, frankness, courage--qualities which make always their way to their mark and to their goal over all circumlocutions and ambiguities.
"He was a man of brief, clear and compact speech. He would sum up in a few vigorous and ringing sentences the argument to which other men would give hours or days. He had an instinct for the hinge or turning point of a debate.
"He was a man of absolute integrity and steadfastness. What he said, that he would do. Where you left him, there, so long as he lived, you would find him when you came back. He was a man of unflinching courage. He was not afraid of any antagonist, whether in the hall of debate or on the field of battle.
"He was an acknowledged master of parliamentary law, a system upon which not only the convenient procedure of legislative bodies largely depends, but which has close relations to Constitutional Liberty itself. How often a few simple and clear sentences of his have dispersed the clouds and brought order out of confusion in this Chamber.
"His great legislative experience made him invaluable as a servant of his own State, of the country and as a counsellor to his younger associates.
"He was a pleasant man in private intercourse. He had great sense of humor, a gift of portraiture, a good memory. So he brought out of the treasure-house of his varied experience abundant matter for the delight of young and old. There is no man left in the Senate who was better company in hours of recreation.
"His influence will be felt here for a long time. His striking figure will still seem to be hovering about the Senate Chamber, still sitting, still deliberating, still debating.
"Mr. President, it is delightful to think how, during the lives of the men who took part in the great conflict which preceded and followed the Civil War and the greater conflict of the war itself, the old bitterness and estrangements are all gone. Throughout the whole land the word 'countryman' has at last become a title of endearment. The memory of the leaders of that great conflict is preserved as tenderly by the men who fought with them as by the men who followed them. Massachusetts joins with Tennessee in laying a wreath on the tomb of her great soldier, her great Governor, her great Senator. He was faithful to truth as he saw it; to duty as he understood it; to Constitutional Liberty as he conceived it.
"If, as some of us think, he erred, his error was that of a brave man ready to give life and health and hope to the unequal struggle.
To his loved cause he offered, free from stain, Courage and faith; vain faith and courage vain.
"And, Mr. President, when he returned to his allegiance, he offered to the service of his reunited country the same zeal and devotion he had given to the Confederacy. There was no reserved or half-hearted loyalty. We could have counted on his care for the honor and glory of his country, on his wise and brave counsel, in this hour of anxiety, with an unquestioning confidence. So Massachusetts to-day presses the hand of Tennessee and mourns with her for her great citizen who has departed."
James B. Eustis of Louisiana was of old Massachusetts stock. His father was graduated at Harvard, and went to New Orleans, where he acquired great distinction at the bar, and as Chief Justice of that State. Senator Eustis's great-uncle was General Eustis, an eminent solider of the Revolutionary War, and afterward Governor of Massachusetts.
Senator Eustis seemed somewhat indolent, and to take very little interest indeed in what was going on, except on some few occasions when he bore himself in debate with remarkable ability. I think his grave, scholarly style, and his powerful reasoning, the propriety, dignity and moderation with which he dealt with important subjects, made him nearly the finest example of Senatorial behavior I have ever known. He once made a speech in Executive session, on a topic which was suggested suddenly and he could not have anticipated, on the character and history of French diplomacy, which was marvellous alike for his profound and accurate knowledge of the subject and the beauty and grace of his discourse.
I was not intimate with him in Washington. But I met him in Paris, while he was Ambassador there under President Cleveland's Administration. I have delightful memories of his hospitality, especially of one breakfast, where there was but one other guest beside myself, in a beautiful room overlooking the Seine and the Place de la Concorde.
If I were to select the one man of all others with whom I have served in the Senate, who seems to me the most perfect example of the quality and character of the American Senator, I think it would be Edward C. Walthall of Mississippi. I knew him personally very little. I do not now remember that I ever saw him, except in the Capitol, or in the Capitol grounds. I had, I dare say, some pleasant talks with him in the Senate Chamber, or the cloak room. But I remember little of them now. He rarely took part in debate. He was a very modest man. He left to his associates the duty of advocating his and their opinions, unless he was absolutely compelled by some special reason to do it himself. When he did speak the Senate listened to a man of great ability, eloquence and dignity. I once heard him encounter William M. Evarts in debate. Evarts made a prepared speech upon a measure which he had in charge. Walthall's reply must have been unpremeditated and wholly unexpected to him. I think Evarts was in the right and Walthall in the wrong. But the Mississippian certainly got the better of the encounter.
It is a remarkable truth, which impresses itself upon me more and more the longer I live, that men who are perfectly sincere and patriotic may differ from each other on what seem the clearest principles of morals and duty, and yet both sides be conscientious and patriotic. There is hardly a political question among the great questions that have excited the American people for the last half century on which we did not differ from each other. The difference was not only as to the interpretation of the Constitution, and the welfare of the people, but seemed to go down to the very roots of the moral law.
Yet what I have just said about him is without exaggeration. I have the right to believe that he entertained the kindliest and most cordial feeling of regard for me. Not long before he died, President McKinley sent for me to come to the White House. He wished to talk with me about what he should do in dealing with Cuba. He was then holding back the popular feeling, and resisting a demand which manifested itself among Republicans in both Houses of Congress for immediate and vigorous action which would without doubt have brought on the war with Spain without delay. He hoped then that the war might be avoided. I had to go to the Capitol before complying with the President's request, as it was shortly before the time for the session. As I was leaving the Capitol to go to the White House, I met Senator Walthall. He said, "You seem to be going the wrong way this morning," or something like that. I said, "Yes, I am going to see the President." Senator Walthall said; "I wish you would be good enough to say to him from me that he may depend upon the support of the Democrats in the Senate, with only one or two exceptions," whom he named, "to support him in his efforts to avoid war, and to accomplish a peaceful solution of the difficulties in regard to Cuba." I undertook to give the message. And just as we were parting, Senator Walthall turned and said to me that he wished to tell me how highly he regarded me, and how sensible he was, notwithstanding my very strong Northern feeling, of my appreciation of the character of the Southern people, and my desire to do them full justice. He added that he regarded it one of the most pleasant things that had happened to him in life that he had had the pleasure of serving with me. I do not now remember that I ever spoke to him again. He did not come to the Senate Chamber very often afterward. I have thought since that this unwonted expression of deep feeling from a gentleman not wont to wear his heart upon his sleeve toward his political opponent, and a man with whom he so often disagreed, was due to a premonition, of which he was perhaps unconscious, that the end of his life was near, and to the kindly and gentle emotions which in a brave and affectionate heart like his the approach of death is apt to bring.
I could hardly venture to repeat this story, to which there is no other witness than my own, but for some letters in my possession from Mr. Walthall's daughter and friends in which the writers quote even stronger expressions of his regard.
I heard a great deal of him from Senator Lamar, who loved him as a brother, and almost worshipped him as a leader. Senator Lamar told me that he thought Walthall the ablest military genius of the Confederacy, with the exception of Lee, and, I think, of Stonewall Jackson. Indeed, I think he expressed doubt whether either exception could be made. He said that if anything had happened to Lee, Walthall would have succeeded to the chief command of the Confederate forces. General Walthall seemed to me the perfect type of the gentleman in character and speech. He was modest, courteous and eager to be of service to his friends or his country. The description of the young Knight given us by Chaucer, the morning star of English poetry, still abides as the best definition of the gentleman.
Curteis he was, lowly and serviceable.
His colleague, Mr. Williams of Mississippi, after Walthall's death, described the Southern gentleman of our time in a sentence which deserves to stand by the side of Chaucer's:
"The ideal gentleman was always honest; spoke the truth; faced his enemy; fought him, if necessary; never quarrelled with him nor talked about him; rode well; shot well; used chaste and correct English; insulted no man--bore no insult from any; was studiously kind to his inferiors, especially to his slaves; cordial and hospitable to his equals; courteous to his superiors, if he acknowledged any; he scorned a demagogue, but loved his people."
I do not undertake to draw his portraiture. I suppose that whoever does that must describe a great soldier and a great lawyer, as well as a great Senator. I only state what I saw of him in the Senate Chamber. It was said of him by an eminent Republican Senator, his associate on the Committee on Military Affairs, that in dealing with questions which affected the right of Union soldiers, or growing out of service to the Union during the Civil War, no stranger could have discovered on which side of that great war he had ranged himself.
XVII. CUSHMAN KELLOGG DAVIS
I reprint here a paper read before the American Antiquarian Society shortly after Mr. Davis's death.
Cushman Kellogg Davis was born at Henderson, Jefferson County, New York, June 16, 1838, and died at St. Paul, Minnesota, November 27, 1900. On his mother's side he was descended from Robert Cushman and Mary Allerton, the last survivor of the company which came over in the Mayflower. He was graduated at the University of Michigan in 1857, and admitted to the Bar shortly before the breaking out of the Civil War. He enlisted at the beginning of the War and served as First Lieutenant of Company B, Eighth Wisconsin Regiment, until 1864, when he was compelled by physical infirmity to resign his commission. He was an excellent soldier. He sustained an injury to one of his eyes, which caused him much pain through life, until a few years before his death he lost the sight of that eye altogether.
After his return from the war, he began the practice of the law anew, in which he gained great distinction. For many years, and until his death, he was the acknowledged leader of the Bar of his State. He was a member of the State Legislature of Minnesota in 1867, United States District Attorney from 1868 till 1873, and Governor of the State in 1874 and 1875. He was one of the Regents of the State University of Minnesota from 1892 to 1898. In 1887 he was elected United States Senator, and reelected in 1893 and 1899. He held the office of Senator until his death. He was Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations from March, 1897, till his death. He was one of the Commissioners who negotiated the Treaty of Paris with Spain.
He was a great lover of books, of which he had a costly collection. He knew Shakespeare very thoroughly, and was the author of a book called "The Law of Shakespeare."
He was also a zealous and thorough student of the career of Napoleon, whose civic and military career he greatly admired. His mind was a marvellous storehouse of literary gems which were unknown to most scholars, but rewarded his diligent search and loving study of his books.
Many good stories are told by his companions of the Bar and in public life of his apt quotations. It is said that he once defended a Judge in an impeachment case. The point involved was the power of the court to punish for contempt, and Davis quoted in support of his position the splendid and well-known lines of Henry the Fourth, in the famous scene where the Chief Justice punishes the Prince of Wales for contempt of the judicial office and authority. For this anecdote, the writer is indebted to Senator Lodge. In the Senate, during the Hawaiian debate, he quoted this passage from Juvenal:
Sed quo cecidit sub crimine; quisnam Delator? quibus judiciis; quo teste probavit? Nil horum; verbosa et grandis epistola venit A Capreis. Bene habet; nul plus interrogo.
He then proceeded:
"My friend from Massachusetts (Mr. Hoar) requests me to translate that. He does not need it, of course. But another Senator (Mr. Washburn) suggests that some of the rest of us do. I will not attempt to give a literal translation, but I will give an accurate paraphrase, which will show its application. 'Into what crime has he fallen? By what informer has he been accused? What judge has passed upon him? What witness has testified against him? Not one or any of these. A verbose and turgid message has come over from Capri. That settles it. I will interrogate no further.'"
The most ardent admirers of the then President, Mr. Cleveland, could not help joining in the laugh.
Mr. Davis took great delight in his descent from the early settlers of Plymouth, and valued exceedingly the good will of the people of Massachusetts. The members of the Society who were fortunate enough to meet him will not forget their delight in his pleasant companionship, when he visited Massachusetts a few years ago to attend our meeting and contribute a paper to our Proceedings. He had hoped to repeat the visit.
I prefer, instead of undertaking to complete this imperfect sketch by a new portraiture of my honored friend, to add what I said in the Senate, when the loss of Mr. Davis was still recent:--
"Mr. President: There is no Senator who would not be glad to lay a wreath of honor and affection on the monument of Cushman K. Davis. That, however, is more especially the right of his colleague and his successor and the members of the great Committee where he won so much of his fame. I ought to say but a few words.
"The Senate, as its name implies, has been from the beginning, with few exceptions, an assembly of old men. In the course of nature many of its members die in office. That has been true of thirty-eight Senators since I came to the Capitol. Others, a yet larger number, die soon after they leave office. Of the men with whom I have served in this Chamber fifty- eight more are now dead, making in all ninety-six, enough and to spare to organize another Senate elsewhere. To that number has been added every Vice-President but two. Upon those who have died in office eulogies have been pronounced in this Chamber and in the House. The speakers have obeyed the rule demanded by the decencies of funeral occasions--nil de mortuis nisi bonum--if not the command born of a tenderer pity for human frailty--jam parce sepulto. But in general, with scarcely and exception, the portraitures have been true and faithful. They prove that the people of the American States, speaking through their legislative assemblies, are not likely to select men to represent them in this august assembly who are lacking in high qualities either of intellect or of character. However that may be, it is surely true of Mr. Davis that whatever has been or will be said of him to- day, or was said of him when the news of his death first shocked the country, is just what would have been said when he was alive by any man who knew him. I have served with him here nearly fourteen years. I have agreed with him and I have differed from him in regard to matters of great pith and moment which deeply stirred the feelings of the people, as they did mine, and doubtless did his own. I never heard any man speak of him but with respect and kindness.
"Of course, Mr. President, in this great century which is just over, when our Republic--this infant Hercules--has been growing from its cradle to its still youthful manhood, the greatest place for a live man has been that of a soldier in time of war and that of a statesman in time of peace. Cushman K. Davis was both. He did a man's full duty in both. No man values more than I do the function of the man of letters. No man reveres more than I do the man of genius who in a loving and reverent way writes the history of a great people, or the poet from whose lyre comes the inspiration which induces heroic action in war and peace. But I do not admit that the title of the historian or that of the poet to the gratitude and affection of mankind is greater than that of the soldier who saves nations, or that of the statesman who creates or preserves them, or who makes them great. I have no patience when I read that famous speech of Gladstone, he and Tennyson being together on a journey, when he modestly puts Mr. Tennyson's title to the gratitude of mankind far above his own. Gladstone, then Prime Minister, declared that Tennyson would be remembered long after he was forgotten. That may be true. But whether a man be remembered or whether he be forgotten; whether his work be appreciated or no; whether his work be known or unknown at the time it is accomplished, is not the test of its greatness or its value to mankind. The man who keeps this moral being, or helps to keep this moral being we call a State in the paths of justice and righteousness and happiness, the direct effect of whose action is felt in the comfort and happiness and moral life of millions upon millions of human lives, who opens and constructs great highways of commerce, who makes schools and universities not only possible but plenty, who brings to pass great policies that allure men from misery, and poverty, and oppression, and serfdom in one world, to free, contented, happy, prosperous homes in another, is a great benefactor to mankind, whether his work be accomplished with sounding of trumpets, or stamping of feet, or clapping of hands, or the roar and tumult of popular applause, or whether it be done in the silence of some committee room, and no man know it but by its results.
"I am not ready to admit that even Shakespeare worked on a higher plane, or was a greater power on earth, than King Alfred or George Washington, even if it be that he will survive them both in the memory of man. The name of every man but one who fought with Leonidas at Thermopylae is forgotten. But is AEschylus greater than Leonidas, or Miltiades, or Themistocles? The literature of Athens preserves to immortality the fame of its great authors. But it was Solon, and Pericles, and Miltiades that created and saved and made great the city, without which the poets could not have existed. Mr. Tennyson himself came nearer the truth than his friend, Mr. Gladstone, when he said:
He That, through the channels of the state, Conveys the people's wish, is great; His name is pure; his fame is free.
"There have been soldiers whose courage saved the day in great decisive battles when the fate of nations hung in the scale, yet whose most enduring monument was the column of smoke which rose when their death shot was fired. There have been statesmen whose silent influence has decided the issue when the country was at the parting of the ways, of whose service history takes no heed. The great Ohio Territory, now six imperial States, was twice saved to freedom by the almost unnoticed action of a single man. With all respect for the man of letters, we are not yet quite ready to admit that the trumpeter is better than the soldier, or the painter greater than the lion.
"There is no need of many words to sum up the life and character of Cushman Davis. His life was in the daylight. Minnesota knew him. His country knew him and loved him. He was a good soldier in his youth, and a great Senator in his maturer manhood. What can be said more, or what can be said better, to sum up the life of an American citizen? He offered his life for his country when life was all before him. His State and his country rewarded him with their highest honor. The great orator and philosopher of Rome declared in his youth, and repeated in his age, that death could not come prematurely to a man who had been Consul. This man surely might be accounted ready to die. He had discharged honorably life's highest duty, and his cup of honor and of glory was full.
"We are thinking to-day of something more than a public sorrow. We are mourning the loss of a close and delightful companionship, a companionship which lightened public care and gave infinite pleasure to private intercourse. If he had never held office, if his name had never been heard even beyond the boundaries of a single municipality, he would have been almost anywhere a favorite and foremost citizen. He was, in the first place, always a gentleman; and a true gentleman always gives tone to any company in which he is found, whether it be among the rulers of States or the humblest gathering of friendly neighbors. Lord Erskine said on a great occasion:
"'It is impossible to define in terms the proper feelings of a gentleman; but their existence has supported this country for many ages, and she might perish if they were lost,'
"Certainly our friend had this quality. He was everywhere a gentleman. He met every occasion in life with a simple and quiet courtesy. There was not much of deference in it. There was no yielding or supplication or timidity in it. I do not think he ever asked favors, though no man was more willing to grant them. But there is something more than this in the temper of which I am speaking. The man who possesses it gives unconsciously to himself or his associates tone to every circle, as I just said, in which he is found. So, wherever he was, his manner or behavior prevailed, whatever might have happened to the same men if they had been left alone.
"Senator Davis was a man who kept well his own counsel. He was a man to whom it was safe for other men to trust their counsel. His conversation, to which it was always a delight to listen, had no gossip in it. Still less had it ever anything of ill nature or sarcasm. He liked to share with a friend the pleasure he took in finding some flower or gem of literature which, for long ages till he found it in some out-of-the- way nook, had--
Blushed unseen, And wasted its sweetness on the desert air.
"He had what Jeremy Taylor calls, 'the great endearment of prudent and temperate speech.'
"His conversation was sparkling and witty and full of variety, but no spark from him was ever a cinder in the eye of his friend.
"He had a learning rare among public men, and, for its variety, rare, I think, among scholars. He would bring out bits of history, full of interest and instruction, from the most obscure sources, in common conversation. He was an excellent Latin scholar. He had read and mastered Tacitus, and a man who has mastered Tacitus has had the best gymnastic training of the intellect, both in vigor and style, which the resources of all literature can supply.
"One secret of his great popularity with his companions here-- a popularity I think unexcelled, indeed, I incline to think unequalled by that of any other man with whom I have served-- is that to which the late Justin Morrill owed so much. He never debated. He rarely answered other men's arguments, never with warmth or heat. But he was exceedingly tenacious of his own opinion. He was, in the things he stood for, as unyielding as flint and true as steel. But his flint or steel never struck out a spark by collision with any other. He spoke very rarely in debate in general; only when his official place on his committee, or something which concerned his own constituents especially, made speaking absolutely imperative. Then he gave his opinion as a judge gives it, or as a delegate to some great international council might be supposed to give it; responsible for it himself, but undertaking no responsibility for other men's opinion or conduct; never assuming that it was his duty or within his power to convert, or change, or instruct them, still less to chastise them. Whether that way be the best way for usefulness in a deliberative body, especially in a legislative body of a great popular government, I will not undertake now to say. Certainly it is not the common way here or elsewhere. It is very rare indeed, that any man possessing the great literary and oratorical power of Mr. Davis, especially a man to whom nobody ever thought of imputing timidity or undue desire to enjoy public favor, or want of absolute confidence in his own opinions, will be found to refrain from employing these qualities to persuade or convince other men.
"He had a rare and exquisite gift which, if he had been a man of letters and not a man engaged in a strenuous public life, would have brought him great fame. Once in a while he said something in private, and more rarely, though once or twice, in a public speech, which reminded you of the delicate touch of Hawthorne. His likening President Cleveland and Mr. Blount, looking upon the late royalty of the Sandwich Island with so much seriousness, to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza taking in great earnest the spectacle of a theatrical representation at a country fair and eager to rescue the distressed damsel, was one of the most exquisite felicities of the literature of the Senate.
"He had great pride in his ancestry, and was a great lover of the history of New England and Plymouth, from which they came, though he never gave himself airs on account of it. He was a descendant of Robert Cushman, the preacher of the Pilgrims, whose service was in a thousand ways of such value to the little colony at Plymouth. Yet it had never happened to him to visit the scenes with which the feet of his ancestors had been so familiar, until a few years ago he did me the honor to be my guest in Massachusetts, and spent a few days in visiting her historic places. He gazed upon Boston and Plymouth and Concord reverently as ever Moslem gazed upon Mecca or the feet of palmer stood by the holy sepulchre. That week to him was crowded with a delight with which few other hours in his life could compare. I had hoped that it might be my fortune and his that he might visit Massachusetts again, that her people might gather in their cities to do him honor, and might learn to know him better, and might listen to the sincere eloquence of his voice. But it was ordered otherwise.
"There are other things his country had hoped for him. She had hoped a longer and higher service, perhaps the highest service of all. But the fatal and inexorable shaft has stricken him down in the full vigor of a yet strenuous manhood. The great transactions in which he had borne so large a part still remain incomplete and their event is still uncertain.
"There is a painting which a great Italian master left unfinished. The work was taken up and completed by a disciple. The finished picture bears this inscription: 'What Titian left unfinished, Palma reverently completed, and dedicated to God.' So may our beloved Republic find always, when one servant leaves his work unfinished, another who will take it up and dedicate it to the country and to God."
XVIII. GEORGE BANCROFT
One of the most delightful friendships of my life was with George Bancroft, the famous historian. I never knew him until I went to Washington in 1877. But we established at once, as a matter of course, the relation of an intimate friendship. He was born in Worcester, to which he was much attached, though he had spent little of his life there after he had left college. Mrs. Bancroft had known my oldest brother and sister intimately, when she lived in Boston. I had learned from Mr. Emerson, who rarely gave his praise lightly, as well as from my own study, to value Mr. Bancroft very highly as a historian, which he soon found out.
I almost always found him waiting for me on the doorstep of my dwelling when I came from church the first Sunday after I reached Washington, at the beginning of a session. I have enjoyed many hours at his table, rendered delightful by the conversation of the eminent guests whom he gathered there, but by no conversation more delightful than his own.
Mr. Bancroft had two enthusiasms which made him a great historian-- an enthusiasm for truth which spared no labor and left no stores of information unsearched, and an enthusiastic love of country. He believed that the great emotions and motives which move a free people are the noble, not the mean motives. He has written and interpreted the history of the United States in that faith. I believe his work will endure so long as the love of liberty shall endure. I gave my estimate of him at a meeting of the American Antiquarian Society, of which we were both chosen Vice-Presidents, in October, 1880, just after the completion of his eightieth year and of his "History of the United States," as follows:
"It is not usual to discuss the report of the committee to propose a list of officers. But one of the names reported gives special interest to the occasion. On the third of this month of October, our honored associate Mr. Bancroft completed his eightieth year. At the same time he completed his 'History of the United States' to the formation of the Federal Constitution.
"This Society, while it is national and continental in the scope of its investigations, strikes down its roots into the soil of this locality, where its founder dwelt, and where its collections are kept.
"For both these reasons we cherish our relations to Mr. Bancroft. He was born within a few rods of this spot. He is descended by the mother's side from an old Worcester County family who were conspicuous in the administration of its public affairs long before the Revolution. His father was one of the six persons who petitioned for the act of incorporation of this Society, and one of its first members. His brother by marriage, Governor Davis, was your predecessor in the President' chair.
"These reasons would be enough to induce us to value our relation. But he has filled a highly honorable and conspicuous place in public life. He is, I believe, the senior person living who has been a member of the Cabinet. He is the senior among living persons who have filled important diplomatic stations. He has represented the United States at Berlin and at St. James.
"His history is, and doubtless will be, the great standard authority upon the important period which it covers. He is the only person living whose judgment would change the place in public estimation held by any of the great statesmen of the Revolutionary times. He has had the rare good fortune among men of letters, to have proposed to himself a great task, requiring a lifetime for its accomplishment, the successful achievement of which is enough to make any life illustrious, and to have lived to complete it with powers of body and mind undiminished. It is his fate to know, while alive, the estimate in which he will be held by posterity. In his case, that knowledge can be only a source of pleasure and satisfaction.
"In this Mr. Bancroft resembles Gibbon. We all remember Gibbon's delightful account of the completion of his great work.
"In another thing, alone among great historians, Mr. Bancroft resembles Gibbon. As an artist he has accomplished that most difficult task of composing a history made up of many separate threads, which must keep on side by side, yet all be subordinate to one main and predominant stream. But his narrative never loses its constant and fascinating interest. No other historian, I believe, except Gibbon, has attempted this without becoming insufferably dull.
"Mr. Bancroft tells the story of thirteen States, separate, yet blending into one National life. It is one of the most wonderful things in our history, that the separate States having so much in common, have preserved so completely, even to the present time, their original and individual characteristics. Rhode Island, held in the hollow of the hand of Massachusetts; Connecticut, so placed that one would think it would become a province of New York; Delaware, whose chief city is but twenty-five miles from Philadelphia, yet preserve their distinctive characteristics as if they were states of the continent of Europe, whose people speak a different language. This shows how perfectly state rights and state freedom are preserved in spite of our National union, how little the power at the centre interferes with the important things that affect the character of a people. Why is it that little Delaware remains Delaware in spite of Pennsylvania, and little Rhode Island remains Rhode Island notwithstanding her neighbor Massachusetts?
What makes the meadow flower its bloom unfold? Because the lovely little flower is free Down to its roots, and in that freedom bold. And so the grandeur of the forest tree Comes, not from casting in a formal mould, But from its own divine vitality.
"But Mr. Bancroft is more fortunate than Gibbon. Gibbon wrote of decline, of decay, of dissolution, and death; of the days, to use his own words, 'when giants were becoming pigmies.' Bancroft tells the story of birth, and growth, and youth, and life. His name is to be inseparably associated with a great and interesting period in the world's history; with what in the proud imagination of his countrymen must ever be the greatest and most interesting of all periods, when pigmy villages were becoming giant States. I am sure that it is a delight to this assembly of distinguished scholars, assembled near his birthplace, to send him, at the completion of his great work, and of his eightieth year, their cordial salutation."
I went to see Mr. Bancroft on the evening of the last Sunday in December, 1890. He was sitting in his library up stairs. He received me in his usual emphatic manner, taking both my hands and saying, "My dear friend, how glad I am to see you!" He was alone. He evidently knew me when I went in, and inquired about Worcester, as he commonly did, and expressed his amazement at its remarkable growth.
I stayed with him about twenty or thirty minutes. The topics of our conversation were, I believe, suggested by me, and the whole conversation was one which gave evidence of full understanding on his part of what we were talking about. It was not merely an old man's memory of the past, but the fresh and vigorous thought on new topics which were suggested to him in the course of the conversation. I think he exhibited a quickness and vigor of thought and intelligence and spoke with a beauty of diction that no man I know could have surpassed.
I asked him if he could account for the interest in historical study among the older Harvard graduates, and mentioned the fact that the principal historians of this country, including himself, Prescott, Sparks, Motley, Palfrey and Parkman, were all Harvard men and were eminent at a time when there were scarcely any other eminent historical scholars in America. He did not directly answer this question, but said that his own inclination toward history, he thought, was due very much to the influence of his father. He said his father would have been a very eminent historian, if he had had material at his command, and that he had a remarkably judicious mind.
He spoke of some clergymen, especially the Unitarian clergymen, so many of whom belonged to Harvard at his time. He said he had little sympathy for the Unitarianism of his day, "for its theology, no; for its spirituality, yes."
He asked me about the Election Bill pending in the Senate. I spoke of the great storm of abuse I had had to encounter for advocating it, but said I thought on the whole the feeling between the different sections of the country and different political parties was better than it ever had been before in this country, and much better than that which now existed between different political parties in foreign countries. He cordially agreed to this, and made some observations which I do not now recall, but which were interesting and bright.
After we had talked together for some time, he said: "My memory is very poor: I cannot remember your first name." I said: "It is the same as yours, Mr. Bancroft--George." He paused a moment with an amused and puzzled look, and said: "What is your last name?" He had evidently known me very well during most of the preceding part of the interview.
I told his son about this conversation the day after Mr. Bancroft's death. He said that the presence of a visitor acted in this way as a stimulant, but that he had not lately shown much intelligence in the family, seeming lost and feeble.
XIX. VISITS TO ENGLAND [1860, 1868, 1871]
I was born within a mile of the spot where the War of the Revolution began. My ancestors and other kindred on both sides took an active and prominent part in the struggle with England. I am descended from the early Puritans of Massachusetts in every line of descent. So it will readily be believed that all my feeling and sympathy have been on the side of my country in the great controversy with England, which began with the exile of the Pilgrims in 1620 and continued, with little interruption, until our last great quarrel with her, which ended with the arbitration at Geneva. Yet I am a passionate lover of England. Before I ever went abroad, I longed to visit the places famous in her history, as a child longs to go home to his birthplace.
I have visited Europe six times. On each occasion I devoted the largest part of my time to Great Britain. The desire to see England again has increased with every visit. Certainly there is nothing like England, and there never has been anything like England in the world. Her wonderful history, her wonderful literature, the beauty of her architecture, the historic and poetic associations which cluster about every street and river and mountain and valley, her vigorous life, the sweetness and beauty of her women, the superb manhood of her men, her navy, her gracious hospitality, her courage and her lofty pride--although some single race of people may have excelled here in a single particular--make up a combination never equalled in the world. I am, of course, not to be understood to bring my own country into the comparison.
The first time I went abroad was in 1860. I had for a companion my friend from infancy, George M. Brooks, of Concord. We travelled like a couple of Bohemians, never riding where we could walk; lunching or dining where he happened to find ourselves when we were hungry; taking second or third class carriages on the railroads, and getting into conversation with anybody who would talk to us. I doubt whether I shall ever have in this world, or in another, a sensation more delicious than that I had when the old steamer, "America," steamed up the Channel toward the mouth of the Mersey, with the green shores of Ireland on one side and England on the other. I am afraid if I were to relate the story of that journey, it would be only to please myself by reviving its recollections, and not for the delight of my readers, so many of whom have a similar memory of their own.
We heard John Bright and Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston in a great debate in the House of Commons on the paper duties, and saw Lord Brougham walking backward and forward on the terrace by Brougham Castle, near Penrith. We saw Edinburgh and the Trosachs, and Abbotsford and Stirling. I had been a loving reader of Scott from my childhood, and was almost as much at home in Scotland as if I had been born in the Canongate or the Saltmarket. I had had a special fancy for reading and studying topographical books on London, and found myself, pretty soon, so much at home there that I think I could have made a very decent living as a guide.
We spent a month in Switzerland. I made the journey over the mountain passes on foot, keeping up with my companion, who had a horse or a mule. I could walk twenty-five or thirty miles a day without great fatigue.
Augustus Flagg of the famous book-selling firm of Little & Brown, with whom I had dealt a great deal, was on the ship when I went out. He went abroad to purchase books for his house. In those days the book-stalls in London were mines of rare treasures. They had not been much examined by collectors or dealers, and the men who kept them did not know the value of books that were almost priceless in the eyes of virtuosos. Mr. Flagg and I spent together a good many days in ransacking the old book-stalls and shops, some of them in out-of-the- way places in the old city, even below the Tower. I could not afford to buy a great many books then. But I knew something about them, and the experience was like having in my hands the costliest rubies or diamonds.
The journey each way, which now takes six or seven days, then took fourteen. The Cunard steamer, whose successor, with its bilge keel and its vastly greater size, is as comfortable, even in very rough weather, as the first class city hotel, was as disagreeable in rough weather, to a man unaccustomed to the ocean, as a fishing smack. But the passengers got well acquainted with one another. There was agreeable society on board, and the days passed pleasantly.
Among the passengers was Joseph Coolidge of Boston, father of Thomas Jefferson Coolidge, late Minister to France. Mr. Coolidge had been a great traveller in his day; had had some commercial occupations in the East, and was very pleasant company. His wife was a granddaughter of Mr. Jefferson. He told me that two of Mr. Jefferson's daughters--or granddaughters, I am not now absolutely sure which--had kept school and earned money, which they had applied to the payment of Mr. Jefferson's debts. The story was highly creditable to these Virginia ladies, who might well have thought that their illustrious ancestor's service might excuse his family from making sacrifices in discharge of such an obligation, if his countrymen at large did not feel its force.
I went over pretty much the same ground in 1868 with three ladies. I made both these journeys as an ordinary sightseer. I took few letters of introduction. I did not deliver those, except in one or two cases to American gentlemen living abroad.
One experience in this latter journey, however, it may be worth while to tell. I had a very pleasant friendship with Henry T. Parker, a Boston man and a graduate of Harvard, who had a comfortable property and had married an English lady and had settled in London. He found an occupation, congenial to his own taste, in buying books, as agent of some of the great libraries in the United States, including the Harvard Library and the Boston City Library. He was an intimate friend of Mr. Cox, the accomplished Librarian of the Bodleian, to whom he gave us letters.
Mr. Cox treated us with special courtesy and showed us many treasures of the Library, especially some wonderful illuminated manuscripts. One of them, the Duc de Monpensier, who had been at Oxford shortly before and who was an authority in such matters, felt confident was illustrated by Raphael. Mr. Cox had discovered, just before I was there, in some crypt where it had lain unknown for two hundred years, a touching letter from Clarendon, who was Chancellor of the University, which I think will move the heart of every man who loves the college where he was educated. The letter was written by Lord Clarendon just after he had landed at Calais, a hopeless exile, on his last flight from the country to which he was never again to return. The great orator, statesman, historian, lawyer, judge,--counsellor, companion and ancestor of monarchs,-- flying for his life, in his old age, into a foreign land, from the court of which, for a generation, he had been the ornament and head, soon as his feet touch a place of safety, thinks of his University. See the noble heart through the simple and stately rhetoric:
GOOD MR. VICE-CHANCELLOR;
Having found it necessary to transport myselfe out of England, and not knowing when it shall please God that I shall returne againe, it becomes me to take care that the University may not be without the service of a person better able to be of use to them than I am like to be, and I doe therefore hereby surrender the office of chancellor into the hand of said University, to the end that they may make choyce of some other person better qualified to assist and protect them, than I am. I am sure he can never be more affectionate to it. I desire you as the last suite I am likely to make to you, to believe that I doe not fly my country for guilt, and how passionately soever I am pursued, that I have not done anything to make the University ashamed of me, or to repent the good opinion they had once of me, and though I must have no mention in your publique devotions, (which I have always exceedingly valued,) I hope I shall always be remembered in your private prayers, as
Good Mr. Vice-Chancellor, Your affectionate servant, CLARENDON. CALAIS, this 7-17 Dec., 1667.
In 1871 I went abroad alone. I spent the whole time in England, except for a brief visit to Scotland. My purpose in going away was to get a vacation. I meant to do some studying in the British Museum, especially to make a thorough study of the conditions and economic principles affecting the strife between capital and labor, which then threatened both this country and England. I got a collection of the authorities and the references. But I did not find that I got a great deal of light from anything that had been written or said so far. I made a few very agreeable acquaintances. I had a letter to Thomas Hughes, and visited at his house. I found George W. Smalley, who had been a pupil in my office, established in a delightful house near London. He seemed to be on terms of intimacy with the famous Englishmen who were the leaders of both political parties, and with many eminent men of letters. I spent a delightful evening with Mr. Hughes at a club which I think was called the European Club, or something like that, where the members smoked clay pipes and drank beer. There seemed to be no other provision for the refreshment of the body or soul. But the conversation was very pleasant. The members sat together about a table, and the conversation was quite general and very bright. The talk turned, during the evening, on Scotsmen. The Englishmen present seemed to have something left of the old prejudice about Scotland with which Dr. Johnson was possessed. They imputed to the modern Scotsmen the same thrifty habit and capacity for looking after himself that prevailed a hundred years before, when Dr. Johnson and John Wilkes, who quarrelled about everything else, became reconciled when they united in abuse of their Northern neighbors. Sir Frederick Pollock cited a marginal note from the report of some old criminal case, to the following effect: "Possession of property in Scotland evidence of stealing in England."
I was guilty of one piece of stupid folly. Mr. Hughes kindly proposed to take me to see Carlyle. This was not very long after our war, when our people were full of indignation at Carlyle's bitter and contemptuous speech about us, especially his "American Iliad in a Nutshell." I was a little doubtful about what sort of a reception I should get, and declined the invitation. I have bitterly regretted this ever since. My brother visited Carlyle about 1846, bearing with him a letter from Emerson. Carlyle was very civil to him, and liked him very much, as appears by a letter from him to Mr. Emerson.
During the visit I heard a great debate between Gladstone and Disraeli. A brief account of it will be found in the chapter on "Some Famous Orators I have Heard."
A friend in Worcester gave me a letter to Mr. Wornum, the Director of the National Gallery, with whom he had been a fellow-pupil at Kensington. Mr. Wornum received me with great cordiality. He asked me to come to the Gallery the next day, when it would be closed to the public. He said he would be glad to show it to me then, when we would be free of interruption. He was the author of what I understand to be an excellent history of painting, and was regarded as the most competent judge in Europe of the value and merit of paintings. I suppose Parliament would at any time, on his sole recommendation, have given ten or twenty or perhaps fifty thousand guineas for a masterpiece. I shall never forget the delight of that day. He told me the history of the great paintings in the National Gallery, some of which had belonged to monarchs, popes, noblemen or famous merchants of almost all the countries in Europe. He said that while there were many larger galleries, the National Gallery was the best in the world as affording the best and most characteristic examples of every school of painting. I cannot remember much that was said in that long day, interrupted only by a pleasant lunch together. But it was a day full of romance. It was as if I had had in my hand the crown jewels of every potentate in the world, and somebody had told me the history of each gem. For this picture Francis the First, or Charles V., or Henry VIII. had been bidders. This had belonged to Lorenzo de Medici, or Pope Leo X. This had come from the famous collection of Charles I., scattered through Europe on his death; and this had belonged to some nobleman whose name was greater than that of monarchs.
Mr. Wornum spoke of his treasures with an enthusiasm which no worshipper at the throne of any Saint or Divinity could surpass. That day was among the few chiefest delights of my life.
XX. VISITS TO ENGLAND 1892
My next visit to England was in the spring of 1892. The winter before, I had a severe attack of iritis, which left my eyes in a very demoralized condition. I did not find much relief in this country, not, I suppose, because of want of skill in our ophthalmic surgeons, but because of the impossibility of getting any rest anywhere where I could be reached by telephone or telegraph. To a person who can bear an ordinary voyage there is no retreat like an ocean steamer. Telephone, telegraph, daily paper; call or visit of friend, client, or constituent; daily mail--sometimes itself, to a busy public man, enough for a hard day's work--all these are forgotten. You spend your ten days in an infinite quiet like that of Heaven. You sit in your deck-chair with the soft sea breeze on your forehead, as the mighty ocean cradle rocks you, and see the lace of an exquisite beauty that no Tyrian weaver ever devised, breaking over the blue or purple waves, with their tints that no Tyrian dye ever matched. Ah! Marconi, Marconi, could not you let us alone, and leave the tired brain of humanity one spot where this "hodge-podge of business and trouble and care" could not follow us and find us out?
On this journey I visited England, France and Switzerland. It so happened that I had had a good deal to do with the appointment of our Ministers to these three countries. Colonel John D. Washburn, a very accomplished and delightful gentleman, now dead, had been a pupil of mine as a law student. He lived in Worcester and had been a very eminent member of the Massachusetts Legislature. I think he would have been Governor of the State and had a very brilliant career but for a delicacy of organization which made him break down in health when under any severe strain of responsibility, especially such as involved antagonism and conflict. He was of a very friendly, gentle disposition, and disliked to be attacked or to attack other men. I told Mr. Blaine, the Secretary of State when Mr. Harrison's Administration came in, that I had but one favor to ask of it; that was, that he should send Washburn as Minister to Switzerland. I had two or three very pleasant days with him at Berne. But he had sent his family away and was preparing to resign his place. So I had not much opportunity of seeing Switzerland under his guidance.
Thomas Jefferson Coolidge, then Minister to France, had also been appointed on my very earnest recommendation. He was a great-grandson of Thomas Jefferson, a very able business man, highly esteemed throughout the country. His guidance was implicitly followed by many people in important business transactions. He had had the charge of the financial affairs of some large manufacturing corporations, and was understood to have extricated the Northern Pacific Railroad out of some serious difficulties, into which it fell again after he left its control. He had been a Democrat. But he had seen the importance of the protective policy to American interests, as would naturally be expected of a descendant of that high protectionist, Thomas Jefferson. He had no sympathies with any measures that would debase or unsettle the currency, and set his face and gave his powerful influence against all forms of fiat or irredeemable paper money, and the kindred folly of the free coinage of silver by this country alone, without the concurrence of the commercial nations of the world.
Soon after Mr. Harrison's Administration began, I received a message about nine o'clock one evening, asking me to go to the White House at once. I obeyed the summons. The President said he desired, if I had no objection, to send in the name of Dr. Loring of Massachusetts, as Minister to Portugal. I told him that I had no objection whatever; that Dr. Loring was an able man of agreeable manners, and had performed admirably every public duty he had undertaken. I said that the Doctor had felt a little disturbed, I thought, that I had refused to call a meeting of the Massachusetts delegation to press his name upon the President for a Cabinet office, to which President Harrison replied, "I put my foot on that pretty quick." Dr. Loring had been a great friend and supporter of Mr. Blaine, the Secretary of State. I conjectured, although the President did not say so, that the choice of Dr. Loring had been made at the Secretary's instance.
The President then said that he wanted to talk with me about the English Mission, which had troubled him a good deal. He mentioned the names of several prominent men in different parts of the country, including Robert Lincoln and Mr. Jewett, an eminent lawyer in Chicago, whose name was earnestly pressed upon him by the Senators from Illinois. I said that I had known Mr. Lincoln pretty well when he was in President Garfield's and Mr. Arthur's Cabinet, and thought very highly of him. He was a very modest man indeed, never pressing any claim to public consideration or office, either on his own account or as his father's son, and never seeking responsibility. But I had noticed that when he had anything to say or anything to do, he always said or did the wisest and best thing to be said or done under the circumstances. I do not know how much influence what I said had, but it seemed to gratify President Harrison exceedingly, and he stated that he was strongly inclined to appoint Mr. Lincoln.
I was told the next morning he sent for the two Illinois Senators, and told them that he had made up his mind to nominate Mr. Lincoln, and that one of them, Senator Farwell, was exceedingly offended. He was also much disturbed by President Harrison's attitude in regard to the appointment of the postmaster at Chicago. The result was that when President Harrison's name came up for another nomination, Mr. Farwell was opposed to him, and when he was with difficulty nominated for reelection, the State of Illinois voted for Cleveland. Senator Cullom, though not liking very well to have his opinion disregarded, was more discreet. He did not see fit to make the exercise of the President's rightful and Constitutional prerogative a reason for breaking off his friendly relations with the Administration, with whose principles he was in full accord. This is an instance of President Harrison's want of tact. I have little doubt that if, before finally announcing his intention, he had sent for the Illinois Senators--as Abraham Lincoln would have done, or as President McKinley would have done--gone over the whole ground with them, and told them his reasons and desire, they would have cheerfully acquiesced in the conclusion to which he had come, and their friendship with him would have been strengthened and not weakened.
After saying what was to be said about the English Mission, I said to President Harrison: "We have a gentleman in Massachusetts, whom I think it is very desirable indeed to place in some important public service; that is Thomas Jefferson Coolidge. He is a great-grandson of Mr. Jefferson." I said to the President the substance of what I have just stated above, about Mr. Coolidge. I added that while Mr. Coolidge would be an excellent person for the English Mission, which his uncle Mr. Stevenson had held, yet, of course, I did not think, under the circumstances, that it would be proper to make another important diplomatic appointment from Massachusetts just then; but I hoped that an opportunity might come later. President Harrison seemed to be much impressed with the suggestion, and said that he would bear it in mind.
When I went back to my room, it occurred to me that I had better speak to Mr. Blaine about it. If he first heard of it from the President he might think that I was trying to deal with the President about matters in his Department over his head and without consulting him. So I went round to the State Department early the next morning, and told Mr. Blaine what I had said to the President. I found that he knew all about Mr. Coolidge. I inadvertently spoke of him as grandson of Mr. Jefferson. Blaine immediately corrected me by saying, "great-grandson." He seemed to like the plan very well.
Nothing came of the matter at that time. But later, when the Pan-American Commission was appointed, the President, of his own motion, appointed Mr. Coolidge as one of the American representatives. Later, I happened to be one day at the White House, and President Harrison told me that Whitelaw Reid had announced his intention of resigning the French Mission before long. I reminded him of our conversation about Mr. Coolidge, and urged his name very strongly on him. He hesitated a good deal. I got the approval of every New England Senator but one to the proposal. The President still hesitated and seemed inclined to appoint Mr. Andrew D. White. But he finally yielded to the urgency for Mr. Coolidge. I should have been sorry if anything I had done had resulted in depriving the country of the service of Andrew D. White. I suppose him to be one of the very best representatives we ever had abroad. But an opportunity came soon after, to send him first to Russia, and then to Germany, where he has represented what is best in the character, ability, desire, interest and scholarship of the American people.
So we had two first-rate representatives abroad instead of one. Mr. Coolidge discharged his functions to the satisfaction of the Administration, and to the universal approval of his countrymen.
He received me when I visited Paris with a very cordial and delightful hospitality. I had the pleasure of meeting at his house at dinner M. Ribot, then Prime Minister of France and afterward President of the French Republic, and several others of the leading men in their public life. But I spoke French very imperfectly indeed, and understood it much less, when spoken by a Parisian. The conversation was, in general, in French. So I got very little knowledge of them by being in their society.
My visit in England gave me a good deal more to remember. Mr. Lincoln also received me with great cordiality. He gave a dinner at which several of the leaders of the Liberal Party were present; among them, Sir William Vernon Harcourt. I had letters to Sir William Vernon Harcourt, and to Lord Rosebery, and to Lord Coleridge, Lord Chief Justice of England. Sir William Vernon Harcourt and Lord Rosebery each called on me, and spent an hour at my room. But Parliament was dissolved just at that time, so the Liberal leaders had at once to begin the campaign which resulted in Mr. Gladstone's victory. So I had no opportunity to make an intimate acquaintance with either of them. I owed to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes an introduction to John Bellows, a Quaker, a most delightful gentleman, the first authority in his time on the Roman antiquities of Great Britain, a fine classical scholar and learned in old English literature and in the languages from which came the roots of our English tongue. I formed with him a close friendship which ended only with his death, in 1902. A year before he died he visited me in my home at Worcester, and received the degree of Master of Arts from Harvard. Mr. Bellows is the author of the wonderful French Dictionary.
I spent a few days with Lord Coleridge in Devon. His house at Ottery St. Mary's is close to the spot where Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born. I met there several of the race. I do not know whether they were living in the neighborhood or happened to be there on a visit.
I found in the church, close by, the tomb of John Sherman, one of my own kindred, I have no doubt, of the race which came from Colchester and Dedham in Essex, and Yaxley in Suffolk.
The Lord Chief Justice was much distressed lest he had done wrong in complying with General Butler's invitation to visit him at Lowell. He said that many of his American friends had treated him coldly afterward, and that his friend Richard Dana, whom he highly esteemed, had refused to call upon him for that reason.
I told him he did absolutely right, in my opinion. I said that General Butler was then Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and that an eminent person, holding a high official character, from a foreign country, could not undertake to question the personal character, or the title to be considered gentlemen, of the men whom the American people put into their high places.
Lord Coleridge said he received fifty guineas every morning for his services in the Tichborne trial. "But," he added, "my general practice in my profession was so much interrupted by it that I could not have got along that year but for my salary as Attorney-General."
He spoke with great pride of his cross-examination of the Claimant. He said one of the papers had complained that his cross-examination did no good to his case whatever. "But I made him admit that he sent his photograph to some person, as the photograph of Arthur Orton." He said the common people in England still held to the belief that the Claimant was the genuine Sir Roger Tichborne, and, by a curious contradiction, this feeling was inspired largely by their sympathy with him as a man of humble birth. I said, "Yes, I think that is true. I heard somebody, a little while ago, say that they heard two people talking in the cars, and one of them said to the other, 'They wouldn't give him the estate, because he was the son of a poor butcher.'" This very much amused the Lord Chief Justice.
I asked him about the story I had heard and had verified some time before, of the connection, in the person of Lady Rolle, between two quite remote periods. Lady Rolle was alive until 1887, maintaining her health so that she gave dinner parties in that year, shortly before she died. She was the widow of Mr. Rolle, afterward Lord Rolle, who made a violent attack on Charles James Fox in 1783. He was then thirty-two years old. From him the famous satire, the Rolliad, took its name. When he went to pay his homage to Queen Victoria at her Coronation in Westminster Abbey, he was quite feeble, and rolled down the steps of the throne. The young Queen showed her kindness of heart by jumping up and going to help him in person. Some of the English told the foreigners present at the ceremonial that that was part of the ceremony, and that the Rolles held their lands on the tenure of going through that performance at every coronation. Lady Rolle was married to her husband in 1820. He was then sixty-nine, and she a young girl of twenty years old. He was eighty or ninety years old when he died, and she survived as his widow for many years. Something came up on the subject of longevity which induced me to refer to this story and ask Lord Coleridge if it were true. We were then riding out together; "Yes," said he, "there," pointing to a dwelling-place in full sight, "is the house where she lived."
His Lordship asked me about an American Judge with whom he had some acquaintance. I told him that I thought his reputation was rather that of a jurist than a Judge. "Oh, yes," said he, "a jurist is a man who knows something about the law of every country but his own."
Lord Coleridge had a good reputation as a story-teller. It was pleasant to get an auditor who seemed to like to hear the stories which have got rather too commonplace to be worth telling over here. He had a great admiration for President Lincoln, and was eager to hear anything anybody had to tell of him. I told him the famous story of Lincoln's reply to the man who had left with him his poem to read, when he gave it back. "If anybody likes that sort of thing, it's just the sort of thing they'd like." I overheard his Lordship, as he circulated about the room, a little while afterward, repeating the story to various listeners.
He thought Matthew Arnold the greatest living Englishman. He spoke with great respect of Carlyle. He said: "Emerson was an imitator of Carlyle, and got his thoughts from him." I could not stand that. It seemed to me that he had probably never read a page of Emerson in his life, and had got his notion from some writer for a magazine, before either of these great men was well known. I took the liberty of saying, with some emphasis, "Emerson was a far profounder and saner intellect than Carlyle." To which he said, "Why, what do you say?" I repeated what I had said, and he received the statement with great politeness, but, of course, without assent.
During this summer I paid a visit to Moyle's Court, near Southampton, formerly owned by Lady Alice Lisle, whose daughter married Leonard Hoar, President of Harvard College. Leonard Hoar was the brother of my ancestor, John Hoar of Concord, and the son of Charles Hoar, Sheriff of Gloucester. There is a statement in an old account of some Puritan worthies that I have seen, to the effect that John Hoar and Leonard married sisters. If that be true, John Hoar's wife, Alice, was a daughter and namesake of Lady Alice Lisle. Although I should like to believe it, I am afraid that the claim cannot be made good. Lady Alice Lisle was a lady of large wealth and good lineage. Her husband was John Lord Lisle, who was Lord Justice under Cromwell, and one of the Judges in the trial of Charles I. He drew the indictment and sentence of the King, and sat next to Bradshaw at the trial, and directed and prompted him in difficult matters. He was murdered one Sunday morning on his way to church when in exile at Lausanne, Switzerland, on the Lake of Geneva, by three ruffians, said to be sent for that purpose by Queen Henrietta. Lady Alice Lisle was a victim of the brutality of Jeffries. After Monmouth's rebellion and defeat, she gave shelter and food to two fugitives from Monmouth's army. The report of her trial is in Howell. There was no proof that she knew that they were fugitives from Monmouth's army, although she supposed one of them was a Dissenting minister. There had been no conviction of the principals, which the English law required before an accessory after the fact could be found guilty. She suggested this point at the trial, but it was overruled by Jeffries. He conducted the case with infinite brutality. She was a kindly old lady, of more than seventy years. She slept during part of the trial, probably being fatigued by the journey, in which she had been carried on horseback from Moyle's Court to Winchester, and the sleepless nights which would naturally have followed. She was sentenced to be burned at the stake. But the sentence was commuted to beheading, at the intercession of the gentry of the neighborhood. She had disapproved of the execution of the King; said she had always prayed for him, and had a son in the King's army. Macaulay's account of the story is familiar to all readers of English history.
I was received at the old house with great kindness by Mrs. Fane, wife of the present proprietor. It is a beautiful old house with carved oak partitions, with a dining room rising to the roof. Lady Lisle's chamber and the place where the two fugitives were concealed are still shown. Mrs. Fane had gathered some local traditions which are not found in print. One old lady, who had been well known to persons now living, had received some of them from her grandmother, who was cotemporary with Lady Alice.
The lady was very popular with her tenants in the neighborhood. The messenger who came from Winchester to arrest her took her on horseback behind him, according to the custom of the time. The horse cast a shoe. The messenger was for pressing on without regard to the suffering of the animal. She insisted that he should stop and have the horse shod. The man roughly refused. She said: "I have made no outcry, on my own account. But everybody here loves me. If you do not stop, I shall cry out. You will never get away with me alive." The fellow was frightened and consented to stop at a smithy. When the smith had finished his work, Lady Lisle said: "I will be back this way in two or three days, and I will pay you." To this the messenger said: "Yes, you will be back this way in two or three days, but without your head."
The headless body was brought back from Winchester after the trial. The next day, when the household were at dinner, a man came to the outside and thrust into the dining room window a basket, containing her head. This was said to be for "greater indignity."
Lady Lisle had known Hicks, one of the persons whom she relieved, before. When the court was sitting for the trial of Charles I., she went up to London to expostulate with her husband. She arrived at his lodgings just as he was setting out in a procession, with some state, for Westminster Hall, where the trial was held. As she approached to speak to him, he did not recognize her in the soiled dress in which she had travelled, and motioned her away rather roughly. It was said that she was overcome by the press in the crowd and fell to the ground. Hicks, who was a Dissenting minister, raised her up and took her to his own lodging near by in the Strand. She said to him that she could not recompense him there, but if he would come to Hampshire, or to the Isle of Wight, where she had property, she would be glad to repay him.
Saturday, October 22, 1892, with Mrs. Hoar and her sister, Mrs. Rice, I went from Southampton to Ringwood, about twenty miles, and thence drove to Ellingham Church, about two miles and a half. The church is a small but very beautiful structure of stone, with a small wooden belfry. The tomb of Lady Alice Lisle is a heavy, flat slab of gray stone, raised about two or three feet from the ground, bearing the following inscription:
Here lies Dame Alicia Lisle and her daughter Ann Harfeld who dyed the 17th of Feb. 1703-4 Alicia Lisle dyed the second of Sept. 1685.
It is close to the wall of the church, on the right of the porch. In the church is seen the old Lisle pew of carved oak, now the pew of the Earl of Normanton. Opposite the pew is the pulpit, also of carved black oak, apparently ancient. The church contains a tablet to the memory of the former owner of Moyle's Court, who died in 1622.
Moyle's Court is about a mile and a half from Ellingham Church. The drive is along a beautiful lane shaded by trees whose branches meet from the two sides, through a beautiful and fertile country, adorned by herds of fine cattle. Moyle's Court is a large two-story building, consisting of two square wings connected by the main building. The wings project from the main building in front, but the whole forms a continuous line in the rear. As you approach it, you pass numerous heavy, brick outbuildings, including several farmhouses, one of which is quite large, and apparently of great antiquity. We were received by Mrs. Fane with the greatest courtesy. She said that the landed estate connected with Moyle's Court is very large, now or recently yielding the Earl of Normanton seven thousand pounds a year.
The present occupant of Moyle's Court, Frederick Fane, Esq., came there about twenty-one years before. The house was then much dilapidated, but he has restored it in a style in keeping with the ancient architecture. The principal room is a dining hall, rising from the ground some twenty-five feet in height, with a gallery at one end, on a level with the second story. The walls of this room are of beautiful, carved oak, the front of the gallery being ancient, and as it existed in the time of Lady Alice Lisle. The staircase, also of fine, carved oak, is of equal antiquity. The carved oak in the passages and some of the other rooms has been restored by Mr. Fane from material found in the attic. There is also a curious old kitchen, with a large fireplace, with a closet in the chimney where it is said one of the persons succored by Lady Alice Lisle was found hidden. In the cellar is a curiously carved head on a stone beam, which seemed as if it might formerly have supported a mantel-piece or shelf. It is said that this portion of the cellar was once a chapel.
Some of the chambers have been named by Mr. Fane from persons connected with the tragedy--Dame Alicia, Monmouth, Nelthrop, Hicks, Tryphena--these names being inscribed on the doors. The room is shown where Lady Lisle is said to have been seized.
The old tombstone over the grave of Leonard Hoar and his wife, at the Quincy burial-ground, in Massachusetts, is almost an exact copy of that over Lady Alice Lisle, at Ellerton near Moyle's Court. They were doubtless selected by the same taste. Mrs. Leonard Hoar, whose maiden name was Bridget Lisle, was connected quite intimately with three of the great tragedies in the history of English liberty. Her father, as has been said, was murdered at Lausanne. Her mother was murdered under the form of the mock judgment of Jeffries, at Winchester. Her niece married Lord Henry Russell, son of the Duke of Bedford, and brother of Lord William Russell, the story of whose tragic death is familiar to every one who reads the noble history of the struggle between liberty and tyranny which ended with the Revolution of 1688.
Bridget Hoar married again after the death of her husband, President Hoar. Her second husband was a Mr. Usher, who seems to have been insane. She lived with him very unhappily, then separated from him and went back to England, staying there until he died. She then came back to Boston and died, May 25, 1723. At her own request she was buried at the side of her first husband. A great concourse of the clergy and the principal citizens, including the Governor, attended her funeral.
It was my good fortune to be instrumental, after this visit, in correcting an evil which had caused great annoyance to our representatives abroad for a good many years.
The Americans have never maintained their representatives abroad with a dignity becoming a great power like the United States. The American Minister is compelled by our rules to wear a dress which exposes him to be mistaken for a waiter at any festive gathering. Distinctions of rank are well established in the diplomatic customs of civilized nations. It is well understood that whether a representative of a county shall be an Ambassador, a Minister Plenipotentiary, a Minister Resident, or a Charge' d'affaires, depends on the sense of its rank among the nations of the world of the country that sends him. For many years all argument was lost on Congress. The United States representative must not adopt the customs as to dress of the effete monarchies of the old world. To send an Ambassador instead of a Minister was to show a most undemocratic deference to titles, abhorrent to every good republican. There had been several attempts to make a change in this matter, always unsuccessful, until I went abroad in 1892.
When I was in London in that year, I saw a great deal of Mr. Lincoln. He told me how vexatious he found his position. When the Minister for Foreign Affairs received the diplomatic representatives of other countries at the Foreign Office, Ambassadors were treated as belonging to one rank, or class, and the Ministers as to a lower one. The members of each class were received in the order of their seniority. We change our Ministers with every Administration. So the Minister of the United States is likely to be among the juniors. He might have to wait all day, while the representatives of insignificant little States were received one after another. If, before the day ended, his turn came, some Ambassador would arrive, who would get there, perhaps, five minutes before it was time for Mr. Lincoln to go in, he had precedence at once. So the representative of the most powerful country on earth might have to lose the whole day, only to repeat the same experience on the next.
An arrangement was made which partly cured the trouble by the Minister for Foreign Affairs receiving Mr. Lincoln, on special application, informally, at his residence, on some other day. But that was frequently very inconvenient. And, besides, it was not always desirable to make a special application for an audience, which would indicate to the English Government that we attached great importance to the request he might have to make, so that conditions of importance would be likely be attached to it by them. It was quite desirable, sometimes, to mention a subject incidentally and by the way, rather than to make it matter of a special appointment.
When I got to Paris, I found Mr. Coolidge complaining of the same difficulty. I told our two Ministers that when I got home I would try to devise a remedy. Accordingly I proposed and moved as an amendment to the Consular and Diplomatic Appropriation Bill, the following clause:
"Whenever the President shall be advised that any foreign government is represented, or is about to be represented in the United States, by an Ambassador, Envoy Extraordinary, Minister Plenipotentiary, Minister Resident, Special Envoy, or Charge' d'affairs, he is authorized, in his discretion, to direct that the representatives of the United States to such government shall bear the same designation. This provision shall in no wise affect the duties, powers, or salary of such representative."
This had the hearty approval of Senators Allison and Hale, the leading members of the Committee on Appropriations, and was reported favorably by that Committee.
Senator Vest was absent when the matter came up, and it passed without opposition. Mr. Vest announced, the next day, that he had intended to oppose it. I am afraid if he had, he would have succeeded in defeating it.
When it went to the House, the Committee on Appropriations consented to retain the amendment, and it was favored by Mr. Hitt of Illinois, who had, himself, represented the country abroad and knew all about such matters. There was a little opposition in the House. But it was quieted without great difficulty. Vice-President Morton, who had, himself, represented the country at Paris, went personally to the House and used his great influence in favor of the proposition. Mr. Blount of Georgia, a very influential Democrat, threatened to make a strong opposition. But the gentlemen who favored it said to him: "Now you are going out of the House, but your countrymen will not long let you stay in retirement. You will be summoned to important public service somewhere. It is quite likely that your political friends will call you to one of these important diplomatic places, where you will be in danger of suffering the inconvenience yourself, if the present system continue." Mr. Blount was pacified. And the measure which I think would have been beaten by a pugnacious opposition in either House of Congress, got through.
Among the most impressive recollections of my life is the funeral of Tennyson in Westminster Abbey. I got a seat at the request of the American Minister by the favor of Archdeacon Farrar, who had charge of the arrangements. It was a most impressive scene. I had a seat near the grave, which was in the Poets' Corner, of which the pavement had been opened. The wonderful music; the stately procession which followed the coffin through the historic West entrance, in the most venerable building in the world, to lay the poet to sleep his last sleep with England's illustrious dead of more than a thousand years,
In those precincts where the mighty rest, With rows of statesmen and with walks of Kings,
to which
Ne'er since their foundation came a nobler guest,
was unspeakably touching and impressive. The solemn burial service was conducted by the aged Dean, doomed, not long after, to follow the beloved poet to his own final resting-place near by.
The choir sang two anthems, both by Tennyson--"Crossing the Bar" and "Silent Voices"--the music of the latter by Lady Tennyson.
The grave lay next to Robert Browning's, hard by the monument to Chaucer. I looked into it and saw the oaken coffin with the coronet on the lid.
The pall-bearers were the Duke of Argyle, Lord Dufferin, Lord Selbourne, Lord Rosebery, Mr. Jowett, Mr. Lecky, Mr. Froude, Lord Salisbury, Dr. Butler, Head of Trinity, Cambridge, Sir James Paget, Lord Kelvin and the United States Minister. The place of Mr. Lincoln, who had gone home on leave of absence, was taken by Mr. Henry White.
After depositing the body, the bearers passed the seat where I sat, one by one, pressing through between two rows of seats, so that their garments touched mine as they went by.
The day was cloudy and mournful, blending an unusual gloom with the dim religious light of the Abbey. But just as the body was let down into the earth, the sun came out for a moment from the clouds, cheering and lightening up the nave and aisles and transepts of the mighty building. As the light struck the faces of the statues and the busts, it seemed for a moment that the countenances changed and stirred with a momentary life, as if to give a welcome to the guest who had come to break upon their long repose. Of course it was but an idle imagination, begot, perhaps, of the profound excitement which such a scene, to the like of which I was so utterly unaccustomed, made upon me. But as I think of it now, I can hardly resist the belief that it was real.
It was my good fortune during this journey to become the purchaser of Wordsworth's Bible. It was presented to him by Frederick William Taber, the famous writer of hymns. While it is absolutely clean, it bears the mark of much use. It was undoubtedly the Bible of Wordsworth's old age. On my next visit to England I told John Morley about it. He said, if it had been known, I never should have been allowed to take it out of England. It bears the following inscription in Taber's handwriting:
William Wordsworth From Frederick Wm Taber, In affectionate acknowledgment of his many kindnesses, and of the pleasure and advantage of his friendship. Ambleside. New Year's Eve. 1842. A. D. Be stedfast in thy Covenant, and be conversant therein, and wax old in thy work. Ecclesiasticus XI. 20.
XXI. VISITS TO ENGLAND 1896
In 1896 I found myself again utterly broken down in health and strength. I had, the November before, a slight paralysis in the face, which affected the muscles of the lower lid of one of my eyes, causing a constant irritation in the organ itself. After a time this caused a distortion of the lips, which I concealed somewhat by a moustache. But it operated, for a little while, as an effective disguise. When I came home during the winter, an old conductor on the Boston & Albany Railroad, whom I had known quite well, when he took my ticket looked at me with some earnestness and said, "Are you not related to Senator Hoar?" To which I answered, "I am a connection of his wife, by marriage."
I found I must get rid of the work at home, if I were to get back my capacity for work at all. So I sailed for Southampton before the session of Congress ended. It was the only time I had absented myself from my duties in Congress, except for an urgent public reason, for twenty-seven years and more.
I saw a good many interesting English people. It is not worth while to give the details of dinners and lunches and social life, unless something of peculiar and general interest occur. Almost every American who can afford it goes abroad now. Our English kinsmen are full of hospitality. They have got over their old coldness with which they were apt to receive their American cousins, although they were always the most delightfully hospitable race on earth when you had once got within the shield of their reserve.
I remember especially, however, a very pleasant Sunday spent on the Thames, at the delightful home of William Grenfell, Esq., which I mention because, by a fortunate accident, the visit had some very interesting consequences. There I met Sir John Lubbock, now Baron Avebury, famous for his writings on financial questions and on Natural History, especially for his observations of the habits of ants. He told me, if I am not mistaken, that he had personally watched the conduct and behavior of more than fifteen thousand individual ants. There was a company of agreeable English ladies and gentlemen. They played games in the evening after dinner, as you might expect of a company of American boys and girls of sixteen or eighteen years old.
Mr. Grenfell was a famous sportsman. His house was filled with the trophies of his skill in hunting. I was told that he had crossed the Channel in a row-boat.
Sir John Lubbock invited me to breakfast with him a few days afterward in St. James Square. There I met a large number of scientific men, among them the President of the Geographical Society, and the Presidents or Heads of several other of the important British Societies. I was presented to all these gentlemen. But I found I could not easily understand the names, when they were presented. Englishmen usually, even when they speak the language exactly as we do, have a peculiar pronunciation of names, which makes it very hard for an American ear to catch them. I could not very well say, "What name did you say?" or ask the host to repeat himself. So I was obliged to spend the hour in ignorance of the special dignity of most of the illustrious persons whom I met.
Just behind my chair hung a full-length portrait of Admiral Boscawen, a famous naval officer connected with our early history. For him was named the town of Boscawen in New Hampshire, where Daniel Webster practised law. The house where we were had been his. I think he was in some way akin to the host.
I sailed for home on Wednesday. The Friday night before, I dined with Moreton Frewen, Esq., an accomplished English gentleman, well known on this side of the Atlantic. Mr. Frewen had been very kind and hospitable to me, as he had been to many Americans. He deserves the gratitude of both nations for what he has done to promote good feeling between the two countries by his courtesy to Americans of all parties and ways of thinking. He has helped make the leading men of both countries know each other. From that knowledge has commonly followed a hearty liking for each other.
I mention this dinner, as I did the visit to Mr. Grenfell, because of its connection with a very interesting transaction. The guests at the dinner were Sir Julian Pauncefote, afterward Lord Pauncefote, the British Ambassador to the United States, who was then at home on a brief visit; Sir Seymour Blaine, an old military officer who had won, as I was told, great distinction in the East, and two Spanish noblemen.
The soldier told several very interesting stories of his military life, and of what happened to him in his early days.
Of these I remember two. He said that when he was a young officer, scarcely more than a boy, he was invited by the Duke of Wellington, with other officers, to a great ball at Apsley House. Late in the evening, after the guests had left the supper room, and it was pretty well deserted, he felt a desire for another glass of wine. There was nobody in the supper room. He was just pouring out a glass of champagne for himself, when he heard a voice behind him. "Youngster, what are you doing?" He turned round. It was the Duke. He said, "I am getting a glass of wine." To this the Duke replied, "You ought to be up-stairs dancing. There are but two things, Sir, for a boy like you to be doing. One is fighting; the other dancing with the girls. As for me I'm going to bed." Thereupon the Duke passed round the table; touched a spring which opened a secret door, in what was apparently a set of book-shelves, and disappeared.
Sir Seymour Blaine told another story which, I dare say, is well known. But I have never seen it in print. He said that just before the Battle of Talavera when the Duke, then Sir Arthur Wellesley, was in command in Spain, the English and French armies had been marching for many days on parallel lines, neither quite liking to attack the other, and neither having got the advantage in position which they were seeking. At last, one day, when everybody was pretty weary with the fatigues of the march, the Duke summoned some of his leading officers together and said to them: "You see that clump of trees (pointing to one a good distance away, but in sight from where they stood)--when the head of the French column reaches that clump of trees, attack. As for me I'm going to sleep under this bush." Thereupon the great soldier lay down, all his arrangements being made, and everything being in readiness, and took his nap while the great battle of Talavera-- on which the fate of Spain and perhaps the fate of Europe depended--was begun. This adds another instance to the list of the occasions to which Mr. Everett refers when he speaks of Webster's sleeping soundly the night before his great reply to Hayne.
"So the great Conde' slept on the eve of the battle of Rocroi; so Alexander slept on the eve of the battle of Arbela; and so they awoke to deeds of immortal fame!"
But this dinner of Mr. Frewen's had a very interesting consequence. As I took leave of him at his door about eleven o'clock, he asked me if there were anything more he could do for me. I said, "No, unless you happen to know the Lord Bishop of London. I have a great longing to see the Bradford Manuscript before I go home. It is in the Bishop's Library. I went to Fulham the other day, but found the Bishop was gone. I had supposed the Library was a half-public one. I asked the servant who came to the door for the librarian. He told me there was no such officer, and that it was treated in all respects as a private library. But I should be very glad if I could get an opportunity to see it." Mr. Frewen answered, "I do not myself know the Bishop. But Mr. Grenfell, at whose house you spent Sunday, a little while ago, is his nephew by marriage. He is in Scotland. But if I can reach him, I will procure for you a letter to his uncle." That was Friday. Sunday morning there came a note from Mr. Grenfell to the Bishop. I enclosed it to his Lordship in one from myself, in which I said that if it were agreeable to him, I would call at Fulham the next Tuesday, at an hour which I fixed. I got a courteous reply from the Bishop, in which he said that he would be glad to show me the "log of the Mayflower," as he called it. I kept the appointment, and found the Bishop with the book in his hand. He received me very courteously, and showed me a little of the palace. He said that there had been a Bishop's palace on that spot for more than a thousand years.
I took the precious manuscript in my hands, and examined it with an almost religious reverence. I had delivered the address at Plymouth, the twenty-first of December, 1895, on the occasion of the two hundred and seventy-fifth anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims upon the rock. In preparing for that duty I read carefully, with renewed enthusiasm and delight, the noble and touching story as told by Governor Bradford. I declared then that this precious history ought to be in no other custody than that of their children.
There have been several attempts to procure the return of the manuscript to this country. Mr. Winthrop, in 1860, through the venerable John Sinclair, Archdeacon, urged the Bishop of London to give it up, and proposed that the Prince of Wales, then just coming to this country, should take it across the Atlantic and present it to the people of Massachusetts. The Attorney-General, Sir Fitzroy Kelley, approved the plan, and said it would be an exceptional act of grace, a most interesting action, and that he heartily wished the success of the application. But the Bishop refused. Again, in 1869, John Lothrop Motley, the Minister to England, who had a great and deserved influence there, repeated the proposition, at the suggestion of that most accomplished scholar, Justin Winsor. But his appeal had the same fate. The Bishop gave no encouragement, and said, as had been said nine years before, that the property could not be alienated without an Act of Parliament. Mr. Winsor planned to repeat the attempt on his visit to England in 1887. When he was at Fulham the Bishop was absent, and he was obliged to go home without seeing him in person.
In 1881, at the time of the death of President Garfield, Benjamin Scott, Chamberlain of London, proposed again in the newspapers that the restitution should be made. But nothing came of it.
When I went abroad I determined to visit the locality on the borders of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, from which Bradford and Brewster and Robinson, the three leaders of the Pilgrims, came, and where their first church was formed, and the places in Amsterdam and Leyden where the emigrants spent thirteen years. But I longed especially to see the manuscript of Bradford at Fulham, which then seemed to me, as it now seems to me, the most precious manuscript on earth, unless we could recover one of the four gospels as it came in the beginning from the pen of the Evangelist.
The desire to get it back grew and grew during the voyage across the Atlantic. I did not know how such a proposition would be received in England. A few days after I landed I made a call on John Morley. I asked him whether he thought the thing could be done. He inquired carefully into the story, took down from his shelf the excellent though brief life of Bradford in Leslie Stephen's "Biographical Dictionary," and told me he thought the book ought to come back to us, and that he should be glad to do anything in his power to help. It was my fortune, a week or two after, to sit next to Mr. Bayard at a dinner given to Mr. Collins, by the American consuls in Great Britain. I took occasion to tell him the story, and he gave me the assurance, which he afterward so abundantly and successfully fulfilled, of his powerful aid. I was compelled, by the health of one of the party with whom I was travelling, to go to the Continent almost immediately, and was disappointed in the hope of an early return to England.
After looking at the volume and reading the records on the flyleaf, I said: "My Lord, I am going to say something which you may think rather audacious. I think this book ought to go back to Massachusetts. Nobody knows how it got over here. Some people think it was carried off by Governor Hutchinson, the Tory Governor; other people think it was carried off by British soldiers when Boston was evacuated; but in either case the property would not have changed. Or, if you treat it as booty, in which last case, I suppose, by the law of nations ordinary property does change, no civilized nation in modern times applies that principle to the property of libraries and institutions of learning."
The Bishop said: "I did not know you cared anything about it."
"Why," said I, "if there were in existence in England a history of King Alfred's reign for thirty years, written by his own hand, it would not be more precious in the eyes of Englishmen than this manuscript is to us."
"Well," said he, "I think myself that it ought to go back, and if it depended on me it would have gone back before this. But many of the Americans who have been here have been commercial people, and did not seem to care much about it except as a curiosity. I suppose I ought not to give it up on my own authority. It belongs to me in my official capacity, and not as private or personal property. I think I ought to consult the Archbishop of Canterbury. And, indeed," he added, "I think I ought to speak to the Queen about it. We should not do such a thing behind Her Majesty's back."
I said: "Very well, when I go home I will have a proper application made from some of our literary societies, and ask you to give it consideration."
I saw Mr. Bayard again and told him the story. He was at the train when I left London for the steamer at Southampton. He entered with great interest into the matter, and told me again he would do anything in his power to forward it.
When I got home I communicated with Secretary Olney about it, who took a kindly interest in the matter, and wrote to Mr. Bayard that the Administration desired he should do everything in his power to promote the application. The matter was then brought to the attention of the Council of the American Antiquarian Society, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Pilgrim Society of Plymouth and the New England Society of New York. These bodies appointed committees to unite in the application. Governor Wolcott was also consulted, who gave his hearty approbation to the movement, and a letter was despatched through Mr. Bayard.
Meantime, Bishop Temple, with whom I had my conversation, had himself become Archbishop of Canterbury, and in that capacity Primate of all England. His successor, Rev. Dr. Creighton, had been the delegate of Emanuel, John Harvard's College, to the great celebration at Harvard University in 1886, on the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of its foundation. He had received the degree of Doctor of Laws from the University, had been a guest of President Eliot, and had received President Eliot as his guest in England.
The full story of the recovery of the manuscript, in which the influence of Ambassador Bayard and the kindness of Bishop Temple, afterward Archbishop of Canterbury, had so large a part, is too long to tell here. Before the question was decided Archbishop Temple consulted Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, who took a deep interest in the matter, and gave the plan her cordial approval. I think, as I had occasion to say to the British Ambassador afterward, that the restoration of this priceless manuscript did more to cement the bonds of friendship between the people of the two countries than forty Canal Treaties. In settling Imperial questions both nations are thinking, properly and naturally, of great interests. But his restoration was an act of purest kindness. The American people, in the midst of all their material activities, their desire for wealth and empire, are a sentimental people, easily and deeply stirred by anything that touches their finer feelings, especially anything that relates to their history.
The Bishop was authorized to return the manuscript by a decree rendered in his own Court, by his Chancellor. The Chancellor is regarded as the servant of the Bishop, and holds office, I believe, at his will. But so does the King's Chancellor at the King's will. I suppose the arrangement by which the Chancellor determines suits in which his superior is affected may be explained on the same ground as the authority of the Lord Chancellor to determine suits in which the Crown is a party.
I was quite curious to know on what ground, legal or equitable, the decree for the restoration of the manuscript was made. I wrote, after the thing was over, to the gentleman who had acted as Mr. Bayard's counsel in the case, asking him to enlighten me on this subject. I got a very courteous letter from him in reply, in which he said he was then absent from home, but would answer my inquiry on his return. After he got back, however, I got a formal and ceremonious letter, in which he said that, having been employed by Mr. Bayard as a public officer, he did not think he was at liberty to answer questions asked by private persons. As the petition and decree had gone on the express ground that the application for the return of the manuscript was made by Mr. Bayard, not in his official, but only in his private capacity, as he had employed counsel at my request, and I had been responsible for their fees, I was, at first, inclined to be a little vexed at the answer. On a little reflection, however, I saw that it was not best to be too curious on the subject; that where there was a will there was a way, and probably there was no thought, in getting the decree, on the part of anybody concerned, to be too strict as to legalities. I was reminded, however, of Silas Wegg's answer to Mr. Boffin, when he read aloud to him and his wife evening after evening "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," which Silas had spoken of at first, as "The Decline and Fall of the Russian Empire." Mr. Boffin noticed the inconsistency, and asked Mr. Wegg why it was that he had called it "The Decline and Fall of the Russian Empire" in the beginning. To which Mr. Wegg replied that Mrs. Boffin was present, and that it would not be proper to answer that question in the presence of a lady.
The manuscript was brought to Massachusetts by Mr. Bayard, on his return to the United States at the end of his official term. It was received by the Legislature in the presence of a large concourse of citizens, to whom I told the story of the recovery. Mr. Bayard delivered the book to the Governor and the Legislature with an admirable speech, and Governor Wolcott expressed the thanks of the State in an eloquent reply. He said that "the story of the departure of this precious work from our shores may never in every detail be revealed; but the story of its return will be read of all men, and will become a part of the history of the Commonwealth. There are places and objects so intimately associated with the world's greatest men or with mighty deeds that the soul of him who gazes upon them is lost in a sense of reverent awe, as it listens to the voice that speaks from the past, in words like those which came from the burning bush, 'Put off thy shoes from off they feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.'
"The story here told is one of triumphant achievement, and not of defeat. As the official representative of the Commonwealth, I receive it, sir, at your hands. I pledge the faith of the Commonwealth that for all time it shall be guarded in accordance with the terms of the decree under which it is delivered into her possession as one of her chiefest treasures. I express the thanks of the Commonwealth for the priceless gift, and I venture the prophecy that for countless years to come and to untold thousands these mute pages shall eloquently speak of high resolve, great suffering and heroic endurance made possible by an absolute faith in the over-ruling providence of Almighty God."
The Bishop gave the Governor of Massachusetts the right to deposit the manuscript either in his office at the State House or with the Massachusetts Historical Society, of which Archbishop Temple and Bishop Creighton, who succeeded Bishop Temple in the See of London, were both Honorary members. The Governor, under my advice, deposited the manuscript in the State House. It seemed to him and to me that the Commonwealth, which is made up of the Colony which Bradford founded, and of which he was Governor, blended with that founded by the Puritans under Winthrop, was the fitting custodian of the life in Leyden of the founders of Plymouth, of the voyage across the sea, and of the first thirty years of the Colony here. It is kept in the State Library, open at the spot which contains the Compact made on board the Mayflower--the first written Constitution in history. Many visitors gaze upon it every year. Few of them look upon it without a trembling of the lip and a gathering of mist in the eye. I am told that it is not uncommon that strong men weep when they behold it.
XXII. SILVER AND BIMETALLISM
I was compelled, by the state of my health, to be absent from the country in the campaign which preceded the Presidential election of 1896, except for the last week or two. But, of course, I took a very deep interest indeed in the campaign. Mr. Bryan's theories, and those of his followers in many parts of the country, had thoroughly alarmed the business men of the Northern and Eastern States. But in the new States of the Northwest, especially in those that contained silver mines, a large majority of the people, without distinction of party, had become converts to the doctrine that the United States should coin silver at a ratio compared to gold of sixteen to one, and make the silver so coined legal tender in the payment of all debts, public and private. The price of silver as compared with that of gold had been constantly falling for several years past. This was attributed to the effect of the legislation which demonetized silver except to a limited amount. Several eminent Republicans, both in the Senate and in the House, as well as many others in private station, left the Republican Party on that issue. Several States that had been constantly and reliably Republican became Democratic or Populist, under the same influence.
The Democratic Platform of 1896 demanded the immediate restoration of the free coinage of gold and silver at the present ratio of 16 to 1, without waiting for the consent of any other nation. That doctrine was reaffirmed and endorsed in the Democratic National Platform for 1900.
There were two theories among the persons who desired to maintain the gold standard. One was entertained by the persons known as Gold Monometallists. They insisted that no value could be given to any commodity by legislation. They said that nothing could restore silver to its old value as compared with gold; that its fall was owing to natural causes, chiefly to the increased production. They insisted that every attempt to restore silver to its old place would be futile, and that the promise to make the attempt, under any circumstances, was juggling with the people, from which nothing but disaster and shame would follow. They justly maintained that, if we undertook the unlimited coinage of silver, and to make it legal tender, under the inevitable law long ago announced by Gresham, the cheaper metal, silver, would flow into the country where it would have a larger value for the purpose of paying debts, and that gold, the more precious metal, would desert the country where there would be no use found for it as long as the cheaper metal would perform its function according to law. From this, it was claimed, would follow the making of silver the exclusive basis of all commercial transactions; the disturbance of our commercial relations with other countries, and the establishment of a standard of value which would fluctuate and shrink as the value of silver fluctuated and shrunk. So that no man who contracted a debt on time could tell what would be the value of the coin he would be compelled to pay when his debt became due, and all business on earth would become gambling. They, therefore, demanded that the Republican Party should plant itself squarely on the gold standard; should announce its purpose to make gold the exclusive legal tender for the country, and appeal to the people for support in the Presidential election, standing on that ground.
To them their antagonists answered, that the true law was stated by Alexander Hamilton in his famous Report, accepted by all his contemporaries, and by all our statesmen of all parties down to 1873 or thereabouts, and recognised in the Constitution of the United States. That doctrine was, that the standard of value must necessarily be fixed by the agreement of all commercial nations. No nation could, without infinite suffering and mischief, undertake to set itself against the rule adopted by the rest of mankind. It was best, if the nations would consent to it, to have two metals instead of one made legal tender, at a ratio to be agreed upon by all mankind, establishing what was called Bimetallism. If this were done, the Gresham law could not operate, because there would be no occasion for the cheaper metal to flow into any one country by reason of its having a preference there in the payment of debts; and nothing which would cause the more precious metal to depart from any country by reason of its being at a disadvantage. If such a rule were adopted, and a proper ratio once established, it would be pretty likely to continue, unless there were a very large increase in the production of one metal or the other. If the supply of gold in proportion to silver were diminished a little, the corresponding demand for silver by all mankind would bring up its price and cure the inequality. So, if the supply of gold were to increase in proportion to silver, a like effect would take place.
If, however, the nations of the world were to agree on one metal alone, it was best that the most precious metal should be taken for that purpose.
The above, in substance, was the doctrine of Alexander Hamilton, the ablest practical financier and economist that ever lived, certainly without a rival in this country.
The duties specially assigned to me in the Senate and in the House related to other matters. But I made as thorough and faithful a study as I could of this great question, and accepted Hamilton's conclusions. I believed they were right in themselves, and thought the reasons by which they were supported, although the subject is complex and difficult, likely to find favor with the American people. Silver has always been a favorite metal with mankind from the beginning. While gold may be the standard of value, it is too precious to be a convenient medium of payment for small sums, such as enter into the daily transactions of ordinary life. It is said that you can no more have a double standard, or two measures of value, than you can have a double standard, or two measures of distance. But the compensating effect may be well illustrated by what is done by the makers of clocks for the most delicate measurements of time, such as are used for astronomical calculations. The accuracy of the clock depends upon the length of the pendulum and the weight which the pendulum supports. If the disk at the end of the pendulum be humg by a wire of a single metal, that metal expands and shrinks in length under changing atmospheric influences, and affects the clock's record of time. So the makers of these clocks resort to two or three wires of different metals, differently affected by the atmosphere. One of these compensates for and supplements the other, so that the atmospheric changes have much less effect than upon a single metal.
Beside the fact that I thoroughly believed in the soundness of bimetallism, as I now believe in it, I thought we ought not to give our antagonists who were pressing us so hard, and appealing so zealously to every debtor and every man in pecuniary difficulties, the advantage, in debate before the people, of arraying on their side all our great authorities of the past. We had enough on our hands to encounter Mr. Bryan and the solid South and the powerful Democratic Party of New York and the other great cities, and every man in the country who was uneasy and discontented, without giving them the right to claim as their allies Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington, and Oliver Ellsworth, and John C. Calhoun, and Daniel Webster, and Henry Clay, and Thomas H. Benton. I was, therefore, eager that the Republican Party should state frankly in its platform what I, myself, deemed the sound doctrine. It should denounce and condemn the attempt to establish the free coinage of silver by the power of the United States alone, and declare that to be practical repudiation and national ruin. But I thought we ought also to declare our willingness, if the great commercial nations of the earth would agree, to establish a bimetallic system on a ratio to be agreed upon.
Some of the enemies of the Republican Party, who could not adopt the Democratic plan for the free coinage of silver, without contradicting all their utterances in the past, denounced this proposal as a subterfuge, a straddle, an attempt to deceive the people and get votes by pledges not meant to be carried out.
I believed then, and I believe now, that we were right in demanding that the Republican Party should go into the campaign with the declaration I have stated.
It is true that you cannot give value to any commodity by law. It is as idle to attempt to make an ounce of silver worth as much as an ounce of gold by legislation, as it is to try to make one pound weigh two pounds, or one yard measure two yards. You cannot increase the price of a hat, or a coat, or a farm, by act of Congress. The value of every article, whether gold or silver, whether used as money or as merchandise, must depend upon the inexorable law of demand and supply. But you can, by legislation, compel the use of an article, which use will create a demand for it, and the demand will then increase its price. If Congress shall require that every soldier in the United States Army shall wear a hat or coat of a particular material or pattern, or shall enact that every man who votes shall come to the polls dressed in broadcloth, if there be a limited supply of these commodities, the price of the hat or the coat or the broadcloth will go up. So, when the nations of the world joined in depriving silver of one of its chief uses--that of serving the function of a tender for the payment of debts, the value of silver diminished because one large use which it had served before was gone. Whether this doctrine be sound or no, it was the result of as careful study as I ever gave in my life, to any subject, public or private. It was not only the doctrine of the Fathers, but of recent generations. It was the doctrine on which the Republicans of Massachusetts, a community noted for its conservatism and business sagacity, had planted the Commonwealth, and it was the doctrine on which the American people planted itself and which triumphed in the election of 1896.
I have been accused, sometimes, of want of sincerity, and, by one leading New England paper, with having an imperfect and confused understanding of the subject. Perhaps I may be pardoned, therefore, for quoting two testimonials to the value of my personal contribution to this debate. One came from Senator Clay of Georgia, one of the ablest of the Democratic leaders. After I had stated my doctrine in a brief speech in the Senate one day, he crossed the chamber and said to me that, while he did not accept it, he thought I had made the ablest and most powerful statement of it he had ever heard or read. The other came from Charles Emory Smith, afterward a member of President McKinley's Cabinet and editor of the Press, a leading paper in Philadelphia. I have his letter in which he says that he think an edition of at least a million copies of my speech on gold and silver should be published and circulated through the country. He also said, in an article in the Saturday Evening Post, June 14, 1902:
"In the great contest over the repeal of the Silver Purchase Act he made the most luminous exposition, both of what had been done, and the reasons for it; and what ought to be done, and the grounds for it, that was heard in the Senate."
It occurred to me that I could render a very great service to my country, during my absence, if I could be instrumental in getting a declaration from England and France that those countries would join with the United States in an attempt to reestablish silver as a legal tender.
It was well known that Mr. Balfour, Leader of the Administration in the House of Commons, was an earnest bimetallist. He had so declared himself in public, both in the House and elsewhere, more than once.
There had been a resolution, not long before, signed by more than two thirds of the French Chamber of Deputies, declaring that France was ready to take a similar action whenever England would move. I, accordingly, with the intervention of Mr. Frewen, the English friend I have just mentioned, arranged an interview with Mr. Balfour in Downing Street. We had a very pleasant conversation indeed. I told him that if he were willing, in case the United States, with France and Germany and some of the smaller nations, would establish a common standard for gold and silver, to declare that the step would have the approval of England, and that, although she would maintain the gold standard alone for domestic purposes, she would make a substantial and most important contribution to the success of the joint undertaking, that it would insure the defeat of the project for silver monometallism, from which England, who was so largely our creditor, would suffer, in the beginning almost as much as we would, and perhaps much more, and would avert the panic and confusion in the business of the world, which would be brought about by the success of the project.
I did not state to Mr. Balfour exactly what I thought the contribution of England to this result ought to be. He, on the other hand, did not tell me what he thought she would do. I did not, of course, expect that England would establish the free coinage of silver for her own domestic purposes. But I thought it quite likely that she would declare her cordial approval of the proposed arrangement between the other countries, and would reopen her India mints to the free coinage of the rupee, and maintain the silver standard for the Queen's three hundred million subjects in Asia. This contribution, I thought, if Great Britain went no farther, would give great support to silver, and would ensure the success of the concerted attempt of the other commercial nations to restore silver to its old place.
Mr. Balfour expressed his assent to my proposal, and entered heartily into the scheme. He said he would be very happy indeed to make such a declaration. I suggested to him that I had been authorized to say, by one or two gentlemen with whom I had talked, that, if he were willing, a deputation of the friends of Bimetallism would wait upon him, to whom he could express his opinion and purpose. He said he thought it would be better that he should write a letter to me, and that if I would write to him stating what I had said orally, he would answer it with such a statement as I desired. I told him I was going to Paris in a few days, and that I would write to him from Paris when I got there. The matter was left in that way. The next day, or the next day but one, a luncheon was given me at White's, the club famous for its memories of Pitt and Canning and the old statesmen of that time, and still the resort of many of the Conservative leaders of to-day. There were present some fifteen or twenty gentlemen, including several members of the Government. A gentleman who had known of my interview with Mr. Balfour, and sat at the table some distance from me, made some allusion to it which was heard by most of the guests. I said that I did not like to repeat what Mr. Balfour had said; that gentlemen in his position preferred, if their opinions were to be made public, to do it for themselves, rather than to have anybody else do it for them. To this, one member of the Government-- I think it was Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, but I will not undertake to be sure--said: "It is no secret that Mr. Balfour's opinions are those of a majority of Her Majesty's Government."
I went to Paris, and wrote at once the letter that had been agreed upon, of which I have in my possession a copy. I at once secured an introduction to M. Fougirot, the Member of the French Assembly who had drawn and procured the signatures to the resolution to which I just referred. That is, I am told, a not uncommon way in France of declaring the sense of the House in anticipation of a more formal vote. He entered heartily into the plan. He thought Germany would at once agree, at any rate, he was sure that Belgium, Spain, Italy and all the European commercial powers would come into the arrangement, and that the whole thing would be absolutely sure if Great Britain were to agree. I waited a week or two for the letter from Mr. Balfour. In the meantime I got a letter from Mr. Frewen, who told me that Mr. Balfour had shown him the letter he had written to me; that it was admirable, and eminently satisfactory. But no letter came. I waited another week or two, and then got another letter from Mr. Frewen, in which he said that he had taken no copy of Mr. Balfour's letter, and had returned the original, and asked me, if I had no objection, if I would give him a copy of it. I answered that I had heard nothing, whereupon Mr. Frewen wrote a note to Mr. Balfour, telling him that I had not heard. Mr. Balfour said that he had, after writing the letter, submitted it to a meeting of his colleagues; that one of them had expressed his most emphatic disapproval of the plan, and that he did not feel warranted in taking such a step against the objection of one of his colleagues. I gathered, from what I heard afterward, that Mr. Balfour wished he had sent he letter without communicating its contents. But of this I have no right to be sure. Mr. Balfour sent Mr. Frewen the following letter, which is now in my possession. It was, I suppose with his approval, sent to me.
10 DOWNING STREET, WHITEHALL, S. W. August 6, 1896.
DEAR MORETON FREWEN.
I think Senator Hoar has just reason to complain of my long silence. But, the truth is that I was unwilling to tell him that my hopes of sending him a letter for publication had come to an end, until I was really certain that this was the case. I am afraid however that even if I am able now to overcome the objections of my colleagues, the letter itself would be too late to do much good. Please let me know what you think on this subject.
Yours sincerely, ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR.
I never blamed him. He was in the midst of a good deal of difficulty with his Education Bill. Certainly there can be no obligation on the Leader of the English House of Commons to do anything that he is not sure is for the interests of his own country, or his own party, for the sake of benefitting a foreign country, still less for the sake of affecting its politics. Indeed, I suppose Mr. Balfour would have utterly and very rightfully disclaimed any idea of writing such a letter, unless he thought what was proposed would benefit England. When I went back to London, an offer was made me later to arrange another interview with Mr. Balfour, and see if something else could not be devised. This I declined. I thought I had gone as far as I properly could, with a due sense of my own dignity. The exigency at home had pretty much passed by.
A day or two after I got to Paris, after I had seen M. Fougirot, I cabled my colleague, Mr. Lodge, at St. Louis, where the delegates to the convention to nominate a President were then gathering, stating my hope that our convention would insert in its platform a declaration of the purpose of the Republican Party to obtain, in concert with other nations, the restoration of silver as a legal tender in company with gold, and that I had reason to feel sure that such a plan could be accomplished. This cable reached St. Louis on the morning the convention assembled. I do not know how much influence it had, or whether it had any, in causing the insertion of that plank in the platform. Such a plank was inserted. In my opinion it saved the Presidential election, and, in my opinion, in saving the Presidential election, it saved the country from the incalculable evil of the free coinage of silver.
After I came home, at the next winter's session, I told the story of what I had done, to a caucus of the Republican Senators. A Committee was thereupon appointed by John Sherman, President of the Caucus, to devise proper means for keeping the pledge of the National platform and establishing international bimetallism in concurrence with other nations. The Committee consisted of Messrs. Wolcott, Hoar, Chandler, Carter and Gear. They reported the Act of March 3, 1897, authorizing a commission to visit Europe for that purpose, of which Senator Wolcott was chairman.
A Commission was sent abroad by President McKinley, in pursuance of the pledge of the Republican National platform, to endeavor to effect an arrangement with the leading European nations for an international bimetallic standard. Senator Wolcott of Colorado, who was the head of this Commission, told me he was emboldened to undertake it by the account I had given. The Commission met with little success. I conjecture that the English Administration, although a majority of the Government, and probably a majority of the Conservative Party, were Bimetallists and favored an international arrangement on principle, did not like to disturb existing conditions at the risk of offending the banking interests at London, especially those which had charge of the enormous foreign investments, the value of which would be constantly increasing so long as their debts were payable, principal and interest, in gold, the value of which, also, was steadily appreciating.
It has been the fashion of some quite zealous--I will not say presumptuous, still less ignorant or shallow writers on this subject--to charge bimetallists with catering to a mischievous, popular delusion, for political purposes, or with shallowness in thinking or investigating. I have had my share of such criticism. All I have to say in reply to it is that I have done my best to get at the truth, without, so far as I am concerned, any desire except to get at and utter the truth. In addition to the authority of our own early statesmen, and to that of the eminent Englishmen to whom I have referred, I wish to cite that of my pupil and dear friend, General Francis A. Walker, who is declared by abundant European, as well as American authority, to be the foremost writer on money of modern times. He was a thorough believer in the doctrine I have stated.
He pointed out the danger, indeed the ruin, of undertaking to reestablish silver without the consent of foreign nations. But he declared that the happiness and, perhaps, the safety of the country rested on Bimetallism. He said:
"Indeed, every monometallist ought also to be a monoculist. Polyphemus, the old Cyclops, would be his ideal. Unfortunately our philosophers were not in the Garden of Eden at the time when the Creator made the mistake of endowing men with eyes in pairs. Perhaps it would not be too much to say that there are probably few men whose eyes do not differ from each other as to every element affecting vision by more than the degree from which gold and silver varied from the French standard of fifteen and a half to one for whole decades."
The German Imperial Parliament passed a resolution, in June, 1895, in favor of Bimetallism, and the Prussian Parliament passed a resolution favoring an international bimetallic convention, provided England joined it, May 22, 1895.
The great increase in the gold product of the world, and the constant diminution in the value of silver, have put an end to the danger of the movement for the free coinage of silver, and made the question purely academic or theoretic, at any rate for a good while to come. The same causes have diminished the desire for a bimetallic standard, and make the difficulty of establishing a parity between silver and gold, for the present, almost insuperable. So the question which excited so much public feeling throughout the world for nearly a quarter of a century, and endangered not only the ascendancy of the Republican Party, but the financial strength of the United States, has become almost wholly one of theory and ancient history.
After leaving Paris I spent a few delightful weeks at Innsbruck in Austria, and Reichenhall in Germany, both near the frontier between those two countries. The wonderful scenery and the curious architecture and antiquity of those towns transport one back to the Middle Ages. But I suppose they are too well known now, to our many travellers, to make it worth while to describe them. I went to those places for the health of a lady nearly allied to my household. She was under the care of Baron Liebig, one of the most famous physicians in Germany, the son of the great chemist. I got quite well acquainted with him. He was a very interesting man. He had a peculiar method of dealing with the diseases of the throat and lungs like those under which my sister-in-law suffered. He had several large oval apartments, air-tight, with an inner wall made of porcelain, like that used for an ordinary vase or pitcher. From these he excluded all the air of the atmosphere, and supplied its place with an artificial air made for the purpose. The patients were put in there, remaining an hour and three quarters or two hours each day--I do not know but some of them for a longer time. Then they were directed to take long walks, increasing them in length day by day, a considerable part of the walk being up a steep hill or mountain. I believe his method was of very great value to the patient who was in my company. The Baron thought he could effect a complete cure if she could stay with him several months. But that was impossible.
XXIII. VISITS TO ENGLAND 1899
I visited England again in 1899. I did not go to the Continent or Scotland. My wife consulted a very eminent London physician for an infirmity of the heart. He told her to go to the Isle of Wight; remain there a few weeks; then to go to Boscombe; stay a few weeks there; then to Malvern Hills, and thence to a high place in Yorkshire, which, I believe, is nearly, if not quite, the highest inhabited spot in England. This treatment was eminently advantageous. But to comply with the doctor's direction took all the time we had at our command before going home.
We had a charming and delightful time in the Isle of Wight. We stayed at a queer little Inn, known as the "Crab and Lobster," kept by Miss Cass, with the aid of her sister and niece. We made excursions about the island. I saw two graves side by side which had a good deal of romance about them. One was the grave of a woman. The stone said that she had died at the age of one hundred and seven. By its side was the grave of her husband, to whom she had been married at the age of eighteen, and who had died just after the marriage. So she had been a widow eighty-nine years, and then the couple, separated in their early youth, had come together again in the grave.
We found a singular instance of what Americans think so astonishing in England, the want of knowledge by the people of the locality with which they were familiar in life, of persons whose names have a world-wide reputation. In a churchyard at Bonchurch, about a mile from our Inn at Ventnor, is the grave of John Stirling--the friend of Emerson--of whom Carlyle wrote a memoir. Sterling is the author of some beautiful hymns and other poems, including what I think is the most splendid and spirited ballad in English literature, "Alfred the Harper." Yet the sexton who exhibited the church and the churchyard did not seem to know anything about him, and the booksellers near by never had heard of him. The sexton showed, with great pride, the grave of Isaac Williams, author of the "Shadow of the Cross" and some other rather tame religious poetry. He was a devout and good man, and seemed to be a feeble imitator of Keble. I dare say, the sexton first heard of Sterling and saw his grave when we showed it to him.
The scenery about Boscombe and the matchless views of the Channel are a perpetual delight, especially the sight, on a clear day, of the Needles.
We did not find it necessary to obey the doctor's advice to go to Yorkshire. After leaving Boscombe, I spent the rest of my vacation at Malvern Hills, some eight or nine miles north of Worcester, and some twenty miles from Gloucester.
The chief delight of that summer--a delight that dwells freshly in my memory to-day, and which will never be forgotten while my memory endures--was a journey through the Forest of Dean, in a carriage, in company with my friend--alas, that I must say my late friend!--John Bellows, of Gloucester. He was, I suppose, of all men alive, best qualified to be a companion and teacher of such a journey. He has written and published for the American Antiquarian Society an account of our journey-- a most delightful essay, which I insert in the appendix. He tells the story much better than I could tell it. My readers will do well to read it, even if they skip some chapters of this book for the purpose. I am proud and happy in this way to associate my name with that of this most admirable gentleman.
I visited Gloucester. I found the houses still standing where my ancestors dwelt, and the old tomb in the Church of St. Mary de Crypt, with the word Hoare cut in the pavement in the chancel.
My ancestors were Puritans. They took an active part in the resistance to Charles I., and many traces are preserved of their activity in the civic annals of Gloucester. Two of my name were Sheriffs in those days. There were two other Sheriffs whose wives were sisters of my direct ancestors. Charles Hoar, my direct ancestor, married one of the Clifford family, the descendant of the brother of Fair Rosamond, and their arms are found on a tomb, and also on a window in the old church at Frampton-on-Severn, eight miles from Gloucester, where the Cliffords are buried. The spot where fair Rosamond was born, still, I believe, belongs to the Clifford family.
I got such material as I could for studying the history of the military operations which preceded the siege and capture of Worcester and the escape of Charles II. Several of the old houses where he was concealed are shown, as also one in Worcester from which he made his escape out of the window when Worcester was stormed, just as Cromwell's soldiers were entering at the door.
Shakespeare used to pass through Gloucester on his way to London. Some of his celebrated scenes are in Gloucestershire. The tradition is that Shakespeare's company acted in the yard of the New Inn, at Gloucester, an ancient hostelry still standing, a few rods only from the Raven Tavern, which belonged to my ancestors, and is mentioned in one of their wills still extant. I have no doubt my kindred of that time saw Shakespeare, and saw him act, unless they had already learned the Puritanism which came to them, if not before, in a later generation.
I purchased, some years ago, some twenty ancient Gloucestershire deeds, of various dates, but all between 1100 and 1400. One of them was witnessed by John le Hore. It was of lands at Wotton-under-Edge in Gloucestershire. I have in my possession a will of Thomas Hore of Bristol, dated 1466, in which he mentions his wife Joanna, and his daughters Joanna and Margery, and his sons Thomas and John. These names--Thomas, John, Joanna and Margery--are the names of members of the family who dwelt in the city of Gloucester in later generations. So I have little doubt that Thomas was of the same race, although there is a link in the pedigree, between his death and 1560 or 1570 which I cannot supply. This Thomas bequeaths land at Wotton-under-Edge, so I conjecture that John also was of the same race. A large old black oak chest bound with iron, bequeathed by Thomas to Bristol in 1466, is still in the possession of the city.
I was very much gratified that the people of the old City of Gloucester were glad to recognize the tie of kindred which I, myself, feel so strongly. I received a handsome box, containing a beautifully bound copy of an account of the City from the Traders' Association of the City of Gloucester. This account of the matter appears in the Echo, a local paper of July 4, 1899.
GLOUCESTER CITY. GLOUCESTER TRADERS' ASSOCIATION. INTERESTING PRESENTATION
On Monday evening a largely attended public meeting was held in the Guildhall under the auspices of the Gloucester Traders' Association for the purpose of hearing addresses on "The municipal electricity supply." Mr. D. Jones (president) occupied the chair, and there were also present on the platform the Mayor (Mr. H. R. J. Braine), City High Sheriff (Mr. A. V. Hatton), Councillors Holborook, Poole and several members of the association.
The Chairman said that in his position as president of the association it was his pleasurable duty to present a copy of their guide to Mr. G. F. Hoar, the distinguished member of the United States Government, who had always taken a great interest in their historic City.--The presentation consisted of a handsomely carved box made by Messrs. Matthews and Co. from pieces of historic English oak supplied by Mr. H. Y. J. Taylor. On the outside of the cover are engraved the City arms, and a brass plate explaining the presentation. A beautifully printed copy of the well-known guide, bound in red morocco, has been placed within, and on the inside of the cover there is the following illuminated address:
"To the Hon. G. F. Hoar, of Worcester, Mass., Senator of the United States of America. Sir,--The members of the Traders' Association, Gloucester, England, ask your acceptance of a bound copy of their guide to this ancient and historic City, together with this box made from part of a rafter taken from the room in which Bishop Hooper was lodged the night before his burning, and from oak formerly in old All Saints' Church, as souvenirs of the regard which the association entertains for you and its recognition of your ardent affection for the City of Gloucester, the honored place of the nativity of the progenitor of your family, Charles Hoar, who was elder Sheriff in 1634; and may these sincere expressions also be typical of the sterling friendship existing between Great Britain and America."
"Senator Hoar had been unable to attend the meeting, and the presentation was entrusted to the American Vice-Consul, Mr. E. H. Palin, to forward to him. Remarking on the presentation, the Mayor expressed his regret that Mr. Hoar had been unable to accept the high and important position of American Ambassador which had been offered to him. Addresses on the installation of the electric light were then given by Mr. Hammond, M.I.C.E., and Mr. Spencer Hawes."
I was invited by the Corporation of the City to visit them in the fall and receive the freedom of the City, which was to be bestowed at the same time on Sir Michael Hicks-Beach. But I had arranged to return to the United States before the time fixed for the ceremonial. So I was deprived of that great pleasure and honor.
I had a great longing to hear the nightingale. I find in an old memorandum that I heard the nightingale in Warwickshire in 1860, somewhere about the twentieth of May. But the occurrence, and the song of the bird, have wholly faded from my memory. When I was abroad in 1892 and '96 I hoped to hear the song. But I was too late. Mrs. Warre, wife of the Rector of Bemerton, George Herbert's Parsonage, told me that the nightingales were abundant in her own garden close to the Avon, but that they did not sing after the beginning of the nesting session which, according to a note to White's "History of Selborne," lasts from the beginning of May to the early part of June. Waller says:
Thus the wise nightingale that leaves her home, Pursuing constantly the cheerful spring, To foreign groves does her old music bring.
There are some counties in England where the bird is not found. It is abundant in Warwickshire, Gloucester and the Isle of Wight. It is not found in Scotland, Derbyshire or Yorkshire or Devon or Cornwall. Attempts to introduce it in those places have failed. The reason is said to be that its insect food does not exist there.
I utterly failed to hear the nightingale, although I was very close upon his track. On the night of the fifth of June at Freshwater, close to Tennyson's home, we were taken by a driver, between eleven and twelve at night, to two copses in one of which he said he had heard the nightingale the night before; and at the other they had been heard by somebody, from whom he got the information, within a very few days. But the silence was unbroken, notwithstanding our patience and the standing reward I had offered to anybody who would find one that I could hear. Two different nights shortly afterward, I was driven out several miles past groves where the bird was said to be heard frequently. Nothing came of it. May 29, at Gloucester, I rode with my friend, H. Y. J. Taylor, Esq., an accomplished antiquary, out into the country. We passed a hillside where he said he had heard the nightingale about eleven o'clock in the daytime the week before. Shakespeare says:
The nightingale, if she should sing by day, When every goose is cackling, would be No better a musician than the wren.
But the nightingale does sometimes sing by day. Mr. Taylor says that on the morning he spoke of the whole field seemed to be full of singing birds. There were larks and finches and linnets and thrushes, and I think other birds whose name I do not remember. But when the nightingale set up his song every other bird stopped. They seemed as much spellbound by the singing as he was, and Philomel had the field to himself till the song was over. It was as if Jenny Lind had come into a country church when the rustic choir of boys and girls were performing.
The nightingale will sometimes sing out of season if his mate be killed, or if the nest with the eggs therein be destroyed.
He is not a shy bird. He comes out into the highway and will fly in and out of the hedges, sometimes following a traveller. And the note of one bird will, in the singing season, provoke the others, so that a dozen or twenty will sometimes be heard rivalling one another at night, making it impossible for the occupants of the farmhouses to sleep.
The superstition is well known that if a new-married man hear the cuckoo before he hear the nightingale in the spring, his married peace will be invaded by some stranger within the year. But if the nightingale be heard first he will be happy in his love. It is said that the young married swains in the country take great pains to hear the nightingale first. We all remember Milton's sonnet:
O nightingale, that on yon bloomy Spray Warbl'est at eve, when all the woods are still, Thou with fresh hope the Lover's heart dost fill, While the jolly hours lead on propitious May, They liquid notes that close the eye of Day, First heard before the shallow Cuckoo's bill Portend success in love; O, if Jove's will Have linkt that amorous power to thy soft lay, Now timely sing, ere the rude bird of hate Foretell my hopeless doom in some Grove nigh; As thou from year to year hast sung too late For my relief; yet hadst no reason why, Whether the Muse, or Love, call thee his mate, Both them I serve, and of their train am I.
I had a funny bit of evidence that this superstition is not entirely forgotten. A very beautiful young lady called upon us in London just as we were departing for the Isle of Wight. I told her of my great longing to hear the nightingale, and that I hoped to get a chance. She said that she had just come from one of her husband's country estates; that she had not seen a nightingale or heard one this year, although they were very abundant there. She said she had seen a cuckoo, which came about the same time. I suppose she observed a look of amusement on my countenance, for she added quick as lightning, "But he didn't speak."
I made this year a delightful visit to Cambridge University. I was the guest of Dr. Butler, the Master of Trinity, and his accomplished wife, who had, before her marriage, beaten the young men of Cambridge in all of the examinations. Dr. Butler spoke very kindly of William Everett, with whom he had been contemporary at Cambridge. He told me that Edward Everett, when he received his degree at Oxford, was treated with great incivility by the throng of undergraduates, not because he was an American, but because he was a Unitarian. I told this story afterwards to Mr. Charles Francis Adams. He confirmed it, and said that his father had refused the degree because he did not wish to expose himself to a like incivility.
I dined in the old hall of Trinity, and met many very eminent scholars. I saw across the room Mr. Myers, the author of the delightful essays, but did not have an opportunity to speak to him. I was introduced, among other gentlemen, to Aldus Wright, Vice or Deputy Master, eminent for his varied scholarship, and to Mr. Frazer, who had just published his admirable edition of Pausanias.
A great many years ago I heard a story from Richard H. Dana, illustrating the cautious and conservative fashions of Englishmen. He told me that when the Judges went to Cambridge for the Assizes they always lodged in the House of the Master of Trinity, which was a royal foundation, the claim being, that as they represented the King, they lodged there as of right. On the other hand the College claims that they are there as the guests of the College, and indebted to its hospitality solely for their lodging. When the Judges approach Cambridge, the Master of Trinity goes out to meet them, and expresses the hope that they will make their home at the College during their stay; to which the Judges reply that "They are coming." The Head of the College conducts them to the door. When it is reached, each party bows and invites the other to go in. They go in, and the Judges stay until the Assize is over. This ceremony has gone on for four hundred years, and it never yet has been settled whether the Judges have a right in the Master's house, or only are there as guests and by courtesy. I suppose that in the United States both sides would fight that question until it was settled somehow. Each would say: "I am very willing to have the other there. But I want to know whether he has any right there." I asked about the truth of this story. Dr. Butler said it was true and seemed, if I understood him aright, to think the Judges' claim was a good one. Mr. Wright, the Deputy Master, to whom I also put the question, spoke of it with rather less respect.
XXIV. A REPUBLICAN PLATFORM
I have had occasion several times to prepare the Republican platform for the State Convention. The last time I undertook the duty was in 1894. I was quite busy. I shrunk from the task and put it off until the time approached for the Convention, and it would not do to wait any longer. So I got up one morning and resolved that I would shut myself up in my library and not leave it until the platform was written. Accordingly I sat down after breakfast, with the door shut, and taking a pencil made a list of topics about which I thought there should be a declaration in the platform.
I wrote each at the top of a separate page on a scratch- block, intending to fill them out in the usual somewhat grandiloquent fashion which seems to belong to that kind of literature. I supposed I had a day's work before me.
It suddenly occurred to me: Why not take these headings just as they are, and make a platform of them, leaving the Convention and the public to amplify as they may think fit afterward. Accordingly I tore out the leaves from the scratch- block, and handed them to a secretary to be put into type. The whole proceeding did not take fifteen minutes.
The sense of infinite relief that the Convention had when, after listening a moment of two, they found I was getting over what they expected as a rather tedious job, with great rapidity, was delightful to behold. I do not believe there was ever a political platform received in this country with such approval, certainly by men who listened to it, as that:
PLATFORM
"The principles of the Republicans of Massachusetts are as well known as the Commonwealth itself; well known as the Republic; well known as Liberty; well known as Justice.
Chief among them are:
An equal share in Government for every citizen.
Best possible wages for every workman.
The American market for American labor.
Every dollar paid by the Government, both the gold and the silver dollars of the Constitution, and their paper representatives, honest and unchanging in value and equal to every other.
Better immigration laws.
Better naturalization laws.
No tramp, Anarchist, criminal or pauper to be let in, so that citizenship shall not be stained or polluted.
Sympathy with Liberty and Republican government at home and abroad.
Americanism everywhere.
The flag never lowered or dishonored.
No surrender in Samoa.
No barbarous Queen beheading men in Hawaii.
No lynching.
No punishment without trial.
Faith kept with the pensioner.
No deserving old soldier in the poorhouse.
The suppression of dram drinking and dram selling.
A school at the public charge open to all the children, and free from partisan or sectarian control.
No distinction of birth or religious creed in the rights of American citizenship.
Devotion paramount and supreme to the country and to the flag.
Clean politics.
Pure administration.
No lobby.
Reform of old abuses.
Leadership along loftier paths.
Minds ever open to the sunlight and the morning, ever open to new truth and new duty as the new years bring their lessons."
I ought to explain one phrase in this platform, which I have since much regretted. That is the phrase, "No barbarous Queen beheading men in Hawaii." It was currently reported in the press that the Queen of Hawaii, Liliuokalani, was a semi- barbarous person, and that when Mr. Blount, Mr. Cleveland's Commissioner, proposed to restore her government and said that amnesty should be extended to all persons who had taken part in the revolution, she had said with great indignation, "What, is no one to be beheaded?" and that upon that answer Mr. Blount and Mr. Cleveland had abandoned any further purpose of using the power of the United States to bring the monarchy back again. That, so far as I knew, had never been contradicted and had obtained general belief.
I ought not to have accepted the story without investigation. I learned afterward, from undoubted authority, that the Queen is an excellent Christian woman; that she has done her best to reconcile her subjects of her own race to the new order of things; that she thinks it is better for them to be under the power of the United States than under that of any other country, and that they could not have escaped being subjected to some other country if we had not taken them; and that she expended her scanty income in educating and caring for the children of the persons who were about her court who had lost their own resources by the revolution. I have taken occasion, more than once, to express, in the Senate, my respect for her, and my regret for this mistake.
XXV. OFFICIAL SALARIES
When I was in the House the salaries of the Judges of the Supreme Court of the United States were raised to ten thousand dollars a year, and a provision for a retiring pension, to be continued for life to such of them as became seventy years old, and had served ten years on the Bench, was enacted.
But it is always very difficult indeed to get salaries raised, especially the salaries of Judges. That it was accomplished them was due largely to the sagacity and skill of Mr. Armstrong of Pennsylvania. He was a very sensible and excellent Representative. His service, like that of many of the best men from Pennsylvania, was too short for the public good. I had very little to do with it myself, except that I talked the matter over a good deal with Mr. Armstrong, who was a friend of mine, and heartily supported it.
After I entered the Senate, however, I undertook to get through a bill for raising the salaries of the Judges of the United States District Courts. The District Judges were expected to be learned lawyers of high reputation and character, and large experience. Very important matters indeed are within the jurisdiction of the District Courts. They would have to deal with prize cases, if a war were to break out. In that case the reputation of the tribunals of the United States throughout the world would depend largely on them. They have also had to do a large part of the work of the Circuit Courts, especially since the establishment of the Circuit Courts of Appeals, as much of the time of the Circuit Judges is required in attendance there.
I had great difficulty in getting the measure through. But at last I was successful in getting the salaries, which had ranged from $1,500 to $4,000 in different districts of the country, made uniform and raised to $5,000 a year.
Later I made an attempt to have the salaries of the Judges of the Supreme Court of the United States increased. My desire was to have the salary of the Associate Judges fixed at $15,000, being an increase of fifty per cent., that of the Chief Justice to be $500 more. I met with great difficulty, but at last, in the winter of 1903, I succeeded in getting through a measure, which I had previously reported, which increased the salary of the Associate Judges to $12,500, and that of the Chief Justice to $13,000. The same measure increased the salaries of the District Judges from $5,000 to $6,000, and that of the Circuit Judges from $6,000 to $7,000 a year.
The salary of Senators and Representatives is shamefully small. This is a great injustice, not only to members of the two Houses, but it is a great public injury, because the country cannot command the service of able men in the prime of life, unless they have already acquired large fortunes. It cannot be expected that a lawyer making from $25,000 to $50,000 a year, or a man engaged in business, whose annual income perhaps far exceeds that amount, will leave it for $5,000 a year. In that way he is compelled not only to live frugally himself, but what is more disagreeable still, to subject his household to the live in the humblest style in a costly and fashionable city, into which wealthy persons are coming from all parts of the country.
The members of Congress have a great many demands upon them, which they cannot resist. So a Senator or Representative with $5,000 a year, living in Washington a part of the year and at home the other part, cannot maintain his family as well as an ordinary mechanic or salaried man who gets $2,500 or $3,000 a year, and spends all his time in one place.
The English aristocracy understand this pretty well. They give no salary at all to the members of their House of Commons. The result is that the poor people, the working people and people in ordinary life, cannot get persons to represent them, from their own class. That will soon be true in this country, if we do not make a change. I suppose nearly every member of either House of Congress will tell you in private that he thinks the salary ought to be raised. But the poor men will not vote for it, because they think the example will be unpopular, and the rich men do not care about it.
XXVI. PROPRIETY IN DEBATE
The race of demagogues we have always with us. They have existed in every government from Cleon and the Sausage-maker. They command votes and seem to delight popular and legislative assemblies. But they rarely get very far in public favor. The men to whom the American people gives its respect, and whom it is willing to trust in the great places of power, are intelligent men of property, dignity and sobriety.
We often witness and perhaps are tempted to envy the applause which many public speakers get by buffoonery, by rough wit, by coarse personality, by appeal to the vulgar passions. We are apt to think that grave and serious reasonings are lost on the audiences that receive them, half asleep, as if listening to a tedious sermon, and who come to life again when the stump speaker takes the platform. But it will be a great mistake to think that the American people do not estimate such things at their true value. When they come to take serious action, they prefer to get their inspiration from the church or the college and not from the circus. Uncle Sam likes to be amused. But Uncle Sam is a gentleman. In the spring of 1869, when I first took my seat in Congress, General Butler was in the House. He was perhaps as widely known to the country as any man in it except President Grant. He used to get up some scene of quarrel or buffoonery nearly every morning session. His name was found every day in the head-lines of the newspapers. I said to General Banks one day after the adjournment: "Don't you think it is quite likely that he will be the next President of the United States?" "Never," said General Banks, in his somewhat grandiloquent fashion. "Why," said I, "don't you see that the papers all over the country all full of him every morning? People seem to be reading about nobody else. Wherever he goes, the crowds throng after him. Nobody else gets such applause, not even Grant himself."
"Mr. Hoar," replied General Banks, "when I came down to the House this morning, there was a fight between two monkeys on Pennsylvania Avenue. There was an enormous crowd, shouting and laughing and cheering. They would have paid very little attention to you or me. But when they come to elect a President of the United States, they won't take either monkey."
The men who possess the capacity for coarse wit and rough repartee, and who indulge it, seldom get very far in public favor. No President of the United States has had it. No Judge of the Supreme Court has had it, no Speaker of the House of Representatives, and, with scarcely an exception, no eminent Senator.
XXVII. THE FISH-BALL LETTER
In August, 1890, the Pittsburg Post, a Democratic paper, made a savage attack on me. He attributed to me some very foolish remark and declared that I lived on terrapin and champagne; that I had been an inveterate office-seeker all my life; and that I had never done a stroke of useful work. Commonly it is wise to let such attacks go without notice. To notice them seriously generally does more harm than good to the party attacked. But I was a good deal annoyed by the attack, and thought I would make a good-natured and sportive reply to it, instead of taking it seriously. So I sent the editor the following letter, which was copied quite extensively throughout the country, North and South; and I believe put an end, for the rest of my life, to the particular charges he had made:
UNITED STATES SENATE, WASHINGTON, D. C., Aug. 10, 1890.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE PITTSBURG POST;
My Dear Man: Somebody has sent me a copy of your paper containing an article of which you do me the honor to make me the subject. What can have put such an extravagant yarn into the head of so amiable and good-natured a fellow? I never said the thing which you attribute to me in any interview, caucus or anywhere else. I never inherited any wealth or had any. My father was a lawyer in very large practice for his day, but he was a very generous and liberal man and never put much value upon money. My share of his estate was about $10,500. All the income-producing property I have in the world, or ever had, yields a little less than $1,800 a year; $800 of that is from a life estate and the other thousand comes from stock in a corporation which has only paid dividends for the last two or three years, and which I am very much afraid will pay no dividend, or much smaller ones, after two or three years to come. With that exception the house where I live, with its contents, with about four acres of land, constitute my whole worldly possessions, except two or three vacant lots, which would not bring me $5,000 all told. I could not sell them now for enough to pay my debts. I have been in my day an extravagant collector of books, and have a library which you would like to see and which I would like to show you. Now, as to office-holding and working. I think there are few men on this continent who have put so much hard work into life as I have. I went one winter to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, when I was twenty-five years old, and one winter to the Massachusetts Senate, when I was thirty years old. The pay was two dollars a day at that time. I was nominated on both occasions, much to my surprise, and on both occasion declined a renomination. I afterward twice refused a nomination for Mayor of my city, have twice refused a seat on the Supreme Bench of Massachusetts, and refused for years to go to Congress when the opportunity was in my power. I was at last broken down with overwork, and went to Europe for my health. During my absence the arrangements were made for my nomination to Congress, from which, when I got home, I could not well escape. The result is I have been here twenty years as Representative and Senator, the whole time getting a little poorer year by year. If you think I have not made a good one, you have my full authority for saying anywhere that I entirely agree with you. During all this time I have never been able to hire a house in Washington. My wife and I have experienced the varying fortune of Washington boarding houses, sometimes very comfortable, and a good deal of the time living in a fashion to which no mechanic earning two dollars a day would subject his household. Your "terrapin" is all in my eye, very little in my mouth. The chief carnal luxury of my life is in breakfasting every Sunday morning with an orthodox friend, a lady who has a rare gift for making fish-balls and coffee. You unfortunate and benighted Pennsylvanians can never know the exquisite flavor of the codfish, salted, made into balls and eaten on a Sunday morning by a person whose theology is sound, and who believes in all the five points of Calvinism. I am myself but an unworthy heretic, but I am of Puritan stock, of the seventh generation, and there is vouchsafed to me, also, some share of that ecstasy and a dim glimpse of that beatific vision. Be assured, my benighted Pennsylvania friend, that in that hour when the week begins, all the terrapin of Philadelphia or Baltimore and all the soft-shelled crabs of the Atlantic shore might pull at my trousers legs and thrust themselves on my notice in vain.
I am faithfully, GEO. F. HOAR
XXVIII. THE BIRD PETITION
Before the year 1897 I had become very much alarmed at the prospect of the total extinction of our song-birds. The Bobolink seemed to be disappearing from the field in Massachusetts, the beautiful Summer Red Bird had become extinct, and the Oriole and the Scarlet Tanager had almost disappeared. Many varieties of songbirds which were familiar to my own boyhood were unknown to my children. The same thing seems to be going on in other countries. The famous Italian novelist, Ouida, contributed an article in the North American Review a few years ago in which she described the extermination of the Nightingale in Italy. The Director of the Central Park, in one of his Reports, stated that within fifteen or twenty years the song-birds of the State of New York had diminished forty- five per cent.
One afternoon in the spring of 1897, Governor Claflin called on me at my Committee Room in the Capitol and told me a lady had just visited his daughter at her rooms who had on her head eleven egrets. These egrets are said to come from the female White Heron, a beautiful bird abounding in Florida. They are a sort of bridal ornament, growing out on the head of the female at pairing time and perishing and dropping off after the brood is reared. So the ornament on the horrible woman's head had cost the lives of eleven of these beautiful birds and very likely in every case the lives of a brood of young ones.
When I went home I sat down after dinner and wrote with a pencil the following petition.
_"To the Great and General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts:
"We, the song-birds of Massachusetts and their playfellows, make this our humble petition:_
"We know more about you than you think we do. We know how good you are. We have hopped about the roofs and looked in at the windows of the homes you have built for poor and sick and hungry people and little lame and deaf and blind children. We have built our nests in the tress and sung many a song as we flew about the gardens and parks you have made so beautiful for your own children, especially your poor children, to play in.
"Every year we fly a great way over the country, keeping all the time where the sun is bright and warm; and we know that whenever you do anything, other people all over the great land between the seas and the great lakes find it out, and pretty soon will try to do the same thing. We know; we know. We are Americans just as you are. Some of us, like some of you, came from across the great sea, but most of the birds like us have lived here a long while; and birds like us welcomed your fathers when they came here many years ago. Our fathers and mothers have always done their best to please your fathers and mothers.
"Now we have a sad story to tell you. Thoughtless or bad people are trying to destroy us. They kill us because our feathers are beautiful. Even pretty and sweet girls, who we should think would be our best friends, kill our brothers and children so that they may wear plumage on their hats. Sometimes people kill us from mere wantonness. Cruel boys destroy our nests and steal our eggs and our young ones. People with guns and snares lie in wait to kill us, as if the place for a bird were not in the sky, alive, but in a shop window or under a glass case. If this goes on much longer, all your song-birds will be gone. Already, we are told, in some other countries that used to be full of birds, they are almost gone. Even the nightingales are being all killed in Italy.
"Now we humbly pray that you will stop all this, and will save us from this sad fate. You have already made a law that no one shall kill a harmless song-bird or destroy our nests or our eggs. Will you please to make another that no one shall wear our feathers, so that no one will kill us to get them? We want them all ourselves. Your pretty girls are pretty enough without them. We are told that it is as easy for you to do it as for Blackbird to whistle.
"If you will, we know how to pay you a hundred times over. We will teach your children to keep themselves clean and neat. We will show them how to live together in peace and love and to agree as we do in our nests. We will build pretty houses which you will like to see. We will play about your gardens and flower-beds,--ourselves like flowers on wings,--without any cost to you. We will destroy the wicked insects and worms that spoil your cherries and currants and plums and apples and roses. We will give you our best songs and make the spring more beautiful and the summer sweeter to you. Every June morning when you go out to the field, Oriole and Blackbird and Bobolink will fly after you and make the day more delightful to you; and when you go home tired at sundown, Vesper Sparrow will tell you how grateful we are. When you sit on your porch after dark, Fife Bird and Hermit Thrush and Wood Thrush will sing to you; and even Whip-poor-will will cheer up a little. We know where we are safe. In a little while all the birds will come to live in Massachusetts again, and everybody who loves music will like to make a summer home with you."
I thought it might, perhaps, strike the Legislature of Massachusetts and the public more impressively than a sober argument. The whole thing took only fifteen or twenty minutes. The petition was signed by all the song-birds of Massachusetts, and illustrated by Miss Ellen Day Hale with the portraits of the signers. It was presented to the Massachusetts Senate by the Honorable A. S. Roe, Senator from the Worcester District. The Legislature acted upon it and passed the following Statute:
"Whoever has in his possession the body of feathers of any bird whose taking or killing is prohibited by section four of chapter two hundred and seventy-six of the acts of the year eighteen hundred and eighty-six, or wears such feathers for the purpose of dress or ornament, shall be punished as provided in said section: provided that his act shall not be construed to prohibit persons having the certificate provided for in said sections from taking or killing such birds; and provided, further, that this act shall not apply to Natural History Associations, or to the proprietors of museums, or other collections for scientific purposes.
"Approved June 11, 1897."
The Statute was copied in several other States. I think the petition helped a good deal the healthy reaction which, owing largely to the efforts of humane societies and Natural History Associations and especially of some very accomplished ladies, has arrested the destruction of these beautiful ornaments of our woods and fields and gardens, "our fellow pilgrims on the journey of life," who have so much of humanity in them and who, like us, have their appointed tasks set to them by the great Creator.