XXIX. THE A. P. A. CONTROVERSY
One very unreasonable, yet very natural excitement has stirred deeply the American people on several occasions in our history. It came to us by lawful inheritance from our English and Puritan ancestors. That is the bitter and almost superstitious dread of the Catholics, which has resulted more than once in riots and crimes, and more than once in the attempt to exclude them from political power in the country. This has sometimes taken the form of a crusade against all foreigners. But religious prejudice against the Catholics has been its chief inspiration.
I just said that this feeling, though absolutely unjustifiable, was yet quite natural, and that it came to us by lawful inheritance. I have always resisted it and denounced it to the utmost of my power. My father was a Unitarian. I was bred in that most liberal of all liberal faiths. But I have believed that the way to encounter bigotry is by liberality. If any man try to deprive you of your absolute right, begin to defend yourself by giving him his own. Human nature, certainly American human nature, will never, in my opinion, long hold out against that method of dealing.
Our people, so far as they are of English descent, learned from their fathers the stories of Catholic persecution and of the fires of Smithfield. Fox's "Book of Martyrs," one of the few books in the Puritan libraries, was, even down to the time of my youth, reverently preserved and read in the New England farmhouses.
So it was believed that it was only the want of power that prevented the Catholics from renewing the fires of Smithfield and the terrors of the Inquisition. It was believed that the infallibility and supremacy of the Pope bound the Catholic citizen to yield unquestioning obedience to the Catholic clergy in matters civil and political, as well as spiritual. There was a natural and very strong dread of the Confessional.
This feeling was intensified by the fact of which it was partly the cause, that when the Irish-Catholics first came over they voted in solid body, led often by their clergy, for the Democratic Party, which was in the minority in the New England States, especially in Massachusetts. England down to a very recent time disqualified the Catholics from civil office.
Our people forgot that the religious persecution, of which they cherished the bitter memory, was the result of the spirit of the age, and not of one form of religious faith. They forgot that the English Protestants not only retaliated on the Catholics when they got into power, but that the Bishops from whose fury, as John Milton said, our own Pilgrim Fathers fled, were Protestant Bishops and not Catholic. They forgot the eight hundred years during which Ireland had been under the heel of England, and the terrible history so well told by that most English of Englishmen, and Protestant of Protestants, Lord Macaulay.
"The Irish Roman Catholics were permitted to live, to be fruitful, to replenish the earth; but they were doomed to be what the Helots were in Sparta, what the Greeks were under the Ottoman, what the blacks now are at New York. Every man of the subject caste was strictly excluded from any public trust. Take what path he might in life, he was crossed at every step by some vexatious restriction. It was only by being obscure and inactive, that he could, on his native soil, be safe. If he aspired to be powerful and honoured, he might gain a cross or perhaps a Marshal's staff in the armies of France or Austria. If his vocation was to politics, he might distinguish himself in the diplomacy of Italy or Spain. But at home he was a mere Gibeonite, a hewer of wood and a drawer of water. The statute book of Ireland was filled with enactments which furnish to the Roman Catholics but too good a ground for recriminating on us when we talk of the barbarities of Bonner and Gardiner; and the harshness of those odious laws was aggravated by a more odious administration. For, bad as the legislators were, the magistrates were worse still. In those evil times originated that most unhappy hostility between landlord and tenant, which is one of the peculiar curses of Ireland. Oppression and turbulence reciprocally generated each other. The combination of rustic tyrants was resisted by gangs of rustic banditii. Courts of law and juries existed only for the benefit of the dominant sect. Those priests who were revered by millions as their natural advisers and guardians, as the only authorised dispensers of the Christian sacraments, were treated by the squires and squireens of the ruling faction as no good-natured man would treat the vilest beggar."
When I came into political life shortly after 1848, I found this anti-Catholic feeling most intense. The Catholics in Massachusetts were, in general, in a very humble class. The immigration, which had well begun before the great Irish Famine, was increased very much by that terrible calamity. The Irishmen were glad to build our railroads at sixty cents a day, dwelling in wretched shanties, and living on very coarse fare. They had brought with them the habit of drinking whiskey, comparatively harmless in their native climate--though bad enough there-- but destructive in New England. So they contributed very largely to the statistics of crime and disorder.
Even then they gave an example--from which all mankind might take a lesson--of many admirable qualities. They had a most pathetic and touching affection for the Old Country. They exhibited an incomparable generosity toward the kindred they had left behind. From their scanty earnings, Edward Everett, a high authority, estimates that there were sent twenty millions of dollars in four years to their parents and kindred.
There was some jealousy on the part of our working people, especially the men and women employed in large manufacturing establishments, lest the Irish, by working at cheaper wages, would drive them out of employment. But the Irishman soon learned to demand all the wages he could get. The accession of the Irish laborer increased largely the productive forces of the State. So there was more wealth created, of which the better educated and shrewder Yankee got the larger share. By the bringing in of a lower class of labor he was elevated to a higher place, but never driven out of work. The prejudice of which I have spoken showed itself in some terrible Protestant riots in New Orleans and in Baltimore, and in the burning of the Catholic Convent at Charlestown.
There was also a strong feeling that the compact body of Catholics, always voting for one political party was a danger to the public security. Of course this feeling manifested itself in the Whig Party, for whose adversary the solid Irish- Catholic vote was cast. As early as 1844, after the defeat of Mr. Clay, Mr. Webster made a suggestion--I do know where it is recorded now, but I was informed of it on good authority at about the time he made it--that there must be some public combination with a view to resist the influence of our foreign element in our politics.
But there was no political movement on any considerable scale until 1854. In that year there was a very dangerous crusade which came very near National success, and which got control of several States.
In the fall of 1857 the Republican Party elected its first Governor. The slavery question was still very prominent, and the people were deeply stirred by the attempt to repeal the Missouri Compromise. So in that year, under the leadership of Nathaniel P. Banks, Gardner, the Know-Nothing Governor, was defeated, and from that time the strength of Know-Nothingism was at an end. I was elected to the Senate in the fall of 1856 as the Republican candidate from the county of Worcester over the Know-Nothing and Democratic candidates.
It is a remarkable fact that of the men known to join the Know-Nothing Party, no man, unless he were exceedingly young and obscure when he did it, ever maintained or regained the public confidence afterward, with the exception of Henry Wilson, Anson Burlingame and Nathaniel P. Banks. These men all left it after the first year. Wilson and Burlingame denounced it with all the vigor at their command, and Banks led the forces of the Republican Party to its overthrow.
I ought to say, however, of this movement and of the A. P. A. movement, as it is called, of which I am now to speak, that I do not think the leaders in general shared the bitter and proscriptive feeling to which they appealed. The secret organization, founded on religious prejudice, or on race prejudice, is a good instrument to advance the political fortunes of men who could not gain advancement in an established political organization. So a great many men are active and busy in such organizations, who would be equally active and busy in movements founded on precisely the opposite doctrines, if they could as well find their advancement in them. Yet, as I have said, the prejudice which lay at the bottom of this movement was very powerful, very sincere, and not unnatural.
Secret societies were formed all over the country. It seemed not unlikely that the surprise of 1854 would be repeated, and that the great Republican party, which had done so much for civil liberty, would either be broken to pieces or would be brought to take an attitude totally inconsistent with religious liberty.
The organization, calling itself the American Protective Association, but known popularly as the A. P. A., had its branches all over the North. Its members met in secret, selected their candidates in secret--generally excluding all men who were not known to sympathize with them--and then attended the Republican caucuses to support candidates in whose selection members of that political party who were not in their secret councils had no share. Ambitious candidates for office did not like to encounter such a powerful enmity. They in many cases temporized or coquetted with the A. P. A. if they did not profess to approve its doctrine. So far as I know, no prominent Republican in any part of the country put himself publicly on record as attacking this vicious brotherhood. Many men who did not agree with it were, doubtless, so strong in the public esteem that they were not attacked.
That was the condition of things when, in the early summer of 1895, I delivered an address at the opening of the Summer School of Clark University in which I spoke briefly, but in very strong terms, in condemnation of the secrecy and of the proscriptive principles of this political organization. I declared: "I have no patience or tolerance with the spirit which would excite religious strife. It is as much out of place as the witchcraft delusion or the fires of Smithfield." I added: "This Nation is a composite. It is made up of many streams, of the twisting and winding of many bands. The quality, hope and destiny of our land is expressed in the phrase of our Fathers, 'E Pluribus Unum'--of many, one--of many States, one Nation--of many races, one people--of many creeds, one faith--of many bended knees, one family of God." A little later I went with the Massachusetts Club, of which I was a member, to an outing at Newport. There, briefly but still more emphatically, I called upon the people not to revive the bitter memories of ancient, social and religious strife.
These two speeches excited the indignation of the leaders of this organization. A gentleman named Evans, I believe born in England, took up the cudgels. He was supported by many worthy clergymen and a good many newspapers which had been established to support the doctrine of the A. P. A. organization. Mr. Evans, if I am right in my memory, claimed that he was not a member of the organization. But he stood up for it stanchly in two letters to me, in which he very severely denounced what I had said, and pointed out the wicked behavior of some Catholic priests to whom he referred. He said he had looked up to me as he formerly did to Charles Sumner and William H. Seward; that my course would tend as absolutely to the breaking up of the Republican Party as Daniel Webster's speech did to the breaking up of the old Whig Party, and that I had rung my own death knell; that the one mistake Wesley made when he called slavery "the sum of all villainies" was that he did not except the Roman Catholic Church. He added that there were at least three million members of these patriotic orders, constituting at least three fifths of the Republican Party, and that their membership was being added to daily. Mr. Evans also said, what was absolutely without foundation, that I had said, "We need a Father Confessor."
That gave me my opportunity. I answered with the following letter in which I stated my own doctrine as vigorously and clearly as I knew how.
WORCESTER, Aug. 5, 1895. T. C. EVANS, ESQ.:
My Dear Sir--One of the great evils, though by no means the greatest evil of secret political societies, is that foolish and extravagant statements about men who don't agree with them get circulated without opportunity for contradiction or explanation. You seem to be a well-meaning and intelligent man; yet I am amazed that any well-meaning and intelligent man should believe such stuff as you repeat in your letter of August 3. I never said, thought or dreamed what you impute to me. I don't believe there ever was any report in the Worcester Telegram to that effect. Certainly there is none in the report of what I said in the summer school at Clark University the morning after, and there is no such statement in any of the other Worcester newspapers. I never anywhere expressed the idea that there should be a confessional or that there was any need of a Father Confessor, or that I wanted to see something in our Protestant churches like the Father Confessor in the Catholic. The whole thing is a miserable lie and invention made out of whole cloth. The language, which you quote, about an attempt to recall on one side, "the cruelties of the Catholic Church and frighten our women and children with horrid hobgoblins," is not my language. That does appear in the Telegram. But it is the reporter's statement of what he understood my idea to be in his own language. What I said was: "We are confronted with a public danger which comes from an attempt to rouse the old feelings of the dark ages, and which ought to have ended with them, between men who have different forms of faith. It is an attempt to recall on one side the cruelties of the Catholic Church and to frighten old women of both sexes, and, on the other side, to band the men of the Catholic Church together for political action. Both these attempts will fail."
There is no more zealous believer in the principles of the New England Puritans, and no more zealous advocate of them, than I am. There is not a man in Massachusetts who has more at heart the welfare and perpetuity of our system of free common schools than I have. I was the first person, so far as I know, who called public attention to the fact that they were in danger, in any formal way. I drew and had put in the platform of the Republican State Convention the following resolution: "The Republican Party ever has maintained and ever will maintain and defend, the common schools of Massachusetts as the very citadel of happiness. They shall be kept open to all the children and free from all partisan and sectarian control."
This doctrine I stand by. And I stand by the further doctrine, as I stated at length in my address at Clark University, that the whole resources of the Commonwealth are pledged to their support, and that that is the bottom mortgage on every dollar of our property, and that no person can escape or be allowed to escape that responsibility. The difference between you and me is a difference of method. I want to get the 700,000 Catholics in Massachusetts on our side. I want them to send their children to the public schools, to pay their share of the cost, and when their young men and women are suitable, are intelligent, liberal persons, attached to the school system, I want some of them to be employed as teachers. I don't wish to exclude them from my political support when they are Republicans and agree with me in other matters, because of their religious faith. Nor do I wish to exclude them from being public school teachers, if they will keep their particular religious tenets out of their instruction, because of their religious faith, any more than I would have excluded Phil Sheridan from his office in the army, or would have refused to support him for any public office, if he had been nominated for it. Further, I want to state and advocate my opinions in the face of day, and you may be sure that I shall do this without flinching before anybody's threats or anybody's displeasure or indignation. You, on the other hand, I understand, want to go into a cellar to declare your principles. You want to join an association whose members are ashamed to confess they belong to it; many of whom, without apparently forfeiting the respect of their fellows, lie about their membership in it when they are asked about it. You want to mass together the whole Catholic population of Massachusetts to the support of their extreme and wrong- headed priests, if any such can be found.
The difference between us is a difference of methods in accomplishing the same result. I think your method would overthrow the common school system, would overthrow the Republican Party, and would end by massing together all the Catholic voters, as proscription always does mass men together, to increase and strengthen that political power which you profess so much to dread.
When O'Neill, the young Catholic soldier of Worcester, lay dying, he said: "Write to my dear mother and tell her I die for my country. I wish I had two lives to give. Let the Union flag be wrapped around me and a fold of it laid under my head." I feel proud that God gave me such a man to be my countryman and townsman. I have very little respect for the Americanism that is not moved and stirred by such a story. If O'Neill had left a daughter who had her father's spirit, I would be willing to trust my child or grandchild to her instruction in secular education in the public school, even if the father had kissed with his last breath the cross on which the Saviour died, or even if the parting soul had received comfort from the lips of Thomas Conaty or John Power or John Ireland or Archbishop Williams.
When John Boyle O'Reilly, the Catholic poet, sang the praises of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, in that noblest of odes, when he quoted in his preface from William Bradford and John Robinson and Robert Cushman, I was glad to hear what he said, especially when he quoted from the lips of the clergyman Robinson: "I charge you before God that you follow me no further than you have seen me follow the Lord Jesus Christ. If God reveal anything to you by any other instrument of His, be as ready to receive it as ever you were to receive any truth by my ministry, for I am verily persuaded, I am very confident, the Lord hath more truths yet to break forth out of His Holy Word." I liked what he said. If I understand your former letter correctly, you didn't. That is where we differ. When John Boyle O'Reilly said, declaring the very spirit of New England Puritanism, and speaking of religious faith, "the one sacred revolution is change of mind," when he spoke these noble lines:
So held they firm, the Fathers aye to be, From Home to Holland, Holland to the sea-- Pilgrims for manhood, in their little ship, Hope in each heart, and prayer on every lip. Apart from all--unique, unworldly, true, Selected grain to sow the earth anew; A winnowed part--a saving remnant they; Dreamers who work; adventurers who pray! We know them by the exile that was theirs; Their justice, faith and fortitude attest.
When he further said:
On the wintry main God flings their lives as farmers scatter grain, His breath propels the winged seed afloat; His tempests swerve to spare the fragile boat; Here on this rock and on this sterile soil, Began the kingdom, not of kings, but men; Began the making of the world again, Their primal code of liberty, their rules Of civil right; their churches, courts and schools; Their freedom's very secret here laid down-- The spring of government is the little town! On their strong lines, we base our social health-- The man--the home--the town--the Commonwealth; Their saintly Robinson was left behind To teach by gentle memory; to shame The bigot spirit and the word of flame; To write dear mercy in the Pilgrim's law; To lead to that wide faith his soul foresaw--
I liked what he said. If I understand your former letter, you didn't. You don't want a man who differs from you saying or thinking such things. I want the whole 700,000 Catholics of Massachusetts to believe what John Boyle O'Reilly believed, and to love and reverence the Puritan founders of Massachusetts as he did, and I think my way is the way to make them do it. You don't, if I understand you. You think the way to make good citizens and good men of them and to attract them to Protestantism, is to exclude them, their sons and daughters, from all public employment and to go yourself into a dark cellar and curse at them through the gratings of the windows.
I stated my religious faith and my ideas of the relation of our religious denominations to each other, in an address I delivered at Saratoga last year, of which I send you a copy, and which I hope, as you have kindly volunteered to send me so much of your opinion, you may perhaps be willing to read. It doesn't become me to say anything about it myself. I am deeply sensible of its imperfections. It fails to do justice to what is in my own heart. But perhaps I may be permitted to say that within a few weeks after it was delivered, an eminent Catholic clergyman sent me a message expressing his delight in it. The most famous Episcopalian Bishop in the country said to a friend of mine that he had read it with great pleasure and that it sounded to him like the old times. A Baptist minister, bearing one of the most distinguished names in the country, wrote me a letter, in which he said, as he read it, "At every sentence, I said to myself, Amen, Amen." An eminent Orthodox minister, Doctor of Divinity, read it aloud to his parish, in full, instead of his Sunday's sermon. And a very excellent and able Methodist minister wrote to me and said, "If that is Unitarianism, I am afraid I am a Unitarian." I think the time has come to throw down the walls between Christians and not to build new ones. I think the time has come to inculcate harmony and good will between all American citizens, especially between all citizens of the old Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
You quote some expressions which you attribute to Catholic clergymen. If you don't get any nearer right in quoting them than you do in quoting me, I don't believe that they ever said any such thing. If they have, they never will persuade any considerable number of Catholic laity in this country, in this nineteenth century, to follow them. You may perhaps induce the Catholic young men and women of Massachusetts to believe there is something in what those clergymen say. They never will succeed in doing it themselves.
I don't think you will succeed in getting any considerable number of the people of this country, who are able to read and write, or to count ten on their fingers, to believe that, as I am entering my seventieth year, I am actuated by any personal ambition, in the counsel which I give my fellow citizens. I don't think you will get them to believe that, if I were so actuated, I should begin by saying anything which would estrange a considerable number of the Protestant Republican citizens of Massachusetts. I don't think you will convince them that I am indifferent to the good will of so large a portion of the American people as are said to be enlisted in the ranks of the secret society to which you refer. If you know as little of your Catholic fellow citizens as you know of me, you have a good deal as yet to learn of the subject of which you are speaking.
On the other hand, you may be quite sure I should be unwilling to do injustice to any of my fellow citizens. They will hardly need be assured that I would not lightly or unnecessarily incur their disapprobation. But you may perhaps think it pardonable that I should not be thoroughly informed as to the principles, motives or conduct of a secret society. As you have undertaken the duty of giving me information, will you kindly answer for me the following questions:
1st. Is the organization to which you refer a secret organization? Are its discussions in the face of day? Do the persons whose political errors they especially oppose have an opportunity to know their purposes and to be convinced by their arguments? If the organization be in any respect secret, why is it deemed necessary to maintain such secrecy in the United States of America and at the close of the nineteenth century?
2d. Is it the custom of many persons who belong to it to deny, when inquired of, that they are members of such an association? And if this be true, does such a falsehood cost them the respect and friendship of their associates or diminish their influence in the order?
3d. Do members of the association, after joining it, retain their membership in other political parties? Do they agree together upon candidates for office or delegates to conventions to nominate officers and then go into their party caucuses to support such delegates agreed upon in secret, without consultation with their political brethren? If that be true, does it seem to you that that course is honest?
4th. Do you understand that any considerable number of Catholic laymen, in this country, accept the interpretation which you put upon the fifteen articles which you quote as principles of the Roman Catholic Church? Is it not true that the interpretation is absolutely rejected by the Catholic laity in general, and that they affirm for themselves as absolute independence of the Pope or of the clergy in all secular matters as you or I claim for ourselves in regard to Protestant clergymen?
5th. Are not Italy and France, two Catholic countries, to- day as absolutely free from any temporal power or influence of the Pope or the Catholic clergy as is Massachusetts?
6th. I have had sent me a little leaflet, purporting to be the principles of the American Protective Association, which you doubtless have seen. When you say, in your third article, that the American Protective Association is "opposed to the holding of offices in the National, State or municipal Government, by any subject or supporter of such ecclesiastical power," and in your fifth article, that you "protest against the employment of the subjects of any un-American ecclesiastical power as officers or teachers of our public schools," do you mean, or no, that no Catholic shall hold such National or State or municipal office, and that no Catholic shall be a teacher in a public school? You don't answer this question by quoting the language of church officials in by-gone days or the intemperate language of some priests in recent times. It is a practical question. Do you or don't you mean to exclude from such office and from such employment as teachers the bulk of the Catholic population of Massachusetts?
7th. Is it you opinion that General Philip H. Sheridan, were he living, would be unfit to hold civil or military office in this country? Or that his daughter, if she entertained the religious belief of her father, should be disqualified from being a teacher in a public school?
I have no pride of opinion. I shall be very glad to revise any opinion of mine and, as you state it, I shall be very glad to "know better in the future," if you will kindly enlighten me.
You and I, as I have said, have the same object at heart. We desire, above all things, the maintenance of the principles of civil and religious liberty; and above all other instrumentalities to that end, the maintenance of our common school system, at the public charge, open to all the children and free from partisan or sectarian control. If you and I differ, it is only as to what is the best means of accomplishing these ends. If you think that they are best accomplished by secret societies, by hiding from the face of day, by men who will not acknowledge what they are doing, and by refusing public employment to men and women who think on these subjects exactly as we do, but whose religious faith differs from ours, then I don't agree with you. I think your method will result in driving and compacting together, in solid mass, persons who will soon number nearly or quite fifty per cent. of the voting population of Massachusetts. Nothing strengthens men, nothing makes them so hard to hear reason, nothing so drives them to extremity in opinion or in action as persecution or proscription.
On the other hand, my method is the method of absolute freedom and of pure reason. The Catholic boy, who has grown up in our common schools, who had formed his youthful friendships with his Protestant classmates, whose daughter or sister, as he grows older, is employed as a teacher, will very soon be attached to our common school system as we are ourselves. He will be required, as he gets property, to pay his share of his support. He cannot ask to be exempt from a tax to which all Protestants cheerfully submit, whether their own children be in the schools or not, and he will not easily be made to give his consent to paying twice. The American Spirit, the Spirit of the age, the Spirit of Liberty, the Spirit of Equality, especially what Roger Williams called "Soul Liberty" is able to maintain herself in a fair field and in a free contest against all comers. Do not compel her to fight in a cellar. Do not compel her to breathe the damp, malarial atmosphere of dark places. Especially let no member of the Republican Party, the last child of freedom, lend his aid to such an effort. The atmosphere of the Republic is the air of the mountain top and the sunlight and the open field. Her emblem is the eagle and not the bat.
I am faithfully yours, GEORGE F. HOAR.
After the publication of the foregoing letter, I received one from Theodore Roosevelt, who was holding a high office in New York City, then at the beginning of his illustrious political career. He expressed his hearty sympathy and approval, and offered to lay aside everything else and come to my aid, if I so desired. I need not say I took special pleasure in this letter, which disclosed so unmistakably the honest and brave heart of the man, who was then in his difficult office fighting wild beasts at Ephesus. But I did not need to accept his offer.
I was angrily denounced. But the leading Republican papers soon came to my support. The Republican political leaders generally, though quietly, approved what I had said and done. The generous and just heart of the American people was stirred, and the result was that the movement, inspired by bigotry and intolerance, lost its force, languished for a year or two, and was little heard of afterward.
I dare say that the same causes which excited it may provoke a similar movement more than once hereafter. But I believe it will fail as that failed.
I know how prone men are, especially old men, in telling the story of their lives, to over-estimate the value and the consequence of the things in which they have taken a part. But I think I am not extravagant in claiming that the overthrow of this dangerous delusion was of great value not only to the Republican Party, but to the cause of religious liberty in this country, and that the success of the A. P. A. would have been the destruction of both.
XXX. THE ENGLISH MISSION
I may as well put on record here a matter which I suppose has never been made public. When in President Hayes's time Mr. Welsh resigned the English Mission, Mr. Lowell, then in Spain, was strongly recommended for the place. Mr. Evarts, Secretary of State, was quite unwilling to have Mr. Lowell appointed. I fancied that Mr. Evarts might have been influenced somewhat by his reluctance to appoint a Harvard man. He was an exceedingly pleasant-natured man, with no bitterness in him. But he entered with a good deal of zeal into the not unhealthy rivalry between the two famous Universities, Harvard and Yale. Of course I did not like that notion. President Hayes had an exceedingly friendly feeling for Harvard. He had studied at the Harvard Law School, and later had the degree of Doctor of Laws there. Mr. Lowell hesitated about accepting the duty. I said to the President: "In the matter of the English Mission, if Mr. Lowell declines, I have a suggestion to make which Mr. Evarts, I am afraid, won't like very well. But I wish to ask you to consider it, Evarts or no Evarts." My relations with both of them made this familiar and half- boyish style of dealing with so important a matter not unbecoming. "I think President Eliot would be an excellent person for such a service. It is understood that he is somewhat out of health. I think if he should go to England for a year or two, and take a vacation from his duties at the College, it would reflect great credit on your Administration and on the country, and he would return to his duties at Harvard with renewed health and added reputation and capacity for usefulness." Mr. Hayes did not quite commit himself. But he expressed his very emphatic approval of the idea, and said he guessed it might be brought to pass. But I had, at his request, sent a cable to Mr. Lowell who was then in Spain, urging him to take the place. He was then hesitating, but finally, as is well known, consented.
I was on the friendliest terms with President Hayes. As I have already said he was good enough to offer me the office of Attorney-General, when the appointment of Devens to the Circuit Court was under consideration.
I had already, before that time, received from Mr. Evarts, Secretary of State, the offer of the English Mission, as I have said in another place, when Mr. Welsh resigned.
I may as well state here, although it belongs to a later time, that the offer was made to me again, by President McKinley. I give the correspondence with President McKinley when he made me that offer:
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C. September 13, 1898. HON. GEORGE F. HOAR (Confidential), WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS.
It would give me much satisfaction to appoint you Ambassador to London. Will it be agreeable to you?
WILLIAM MCKINLEY.
September 14, 1898. TO THE PRESIDENT, WASHINGTON, D. C.
I am highly honored by your confidence, for which I am grateful. But I believe I can better serve my country, and better support your Administration by continuing to discharge the legislative duties to which I have been accustomed for thirty years, than by undertaking new responsibilities at my age, now past seventy- two. If it were otherwise, I cannot afford to maintain the scale of living which the social customs of London make almost indispensable to an Ambassador, and I have no right to impose upon my wife, in her present state of health, the burden which would fall upon her. Be assured of my warm personal regard and of my desire to stand by you in the difficult and trying period which is before you.
GEO. F. HOAR
XXXI. PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT AND THE SYRIAN CHILDREN
A very touching incident, characteristic of the kind heart of President Roosevelt, ought to be put on record in connection with his visit to Worcester.
During the Christmas holidays of 1901 a very well known Syrian, a man of high standing and character, came into my son's office and told him this story:
A neighbor and countryman of his had a few years before emigrated to the United States and established himself in Worcester. Soon afterward, he formally declared his intention of becoming an American citizen. After a while, he amassed a little money and sent to his wife, whom he had left in Syria, the necessary funds to convey her and their little girl and boy to Worcester. She sold her furniture and whatever other belongings she had, and went across Europe to France, where they sailed from one of the northern ports on a German steamer for New York.
Upon their arrival at New York, it appeared that the children had contracted a disease of the eyelids, which the doctors of the Immigration Bureau declared to be trachoma, which is contagious, and in adults incurable. It was ordered that the mother might land, but that the children must be sent back in the ship upon which they arrived, on the following Thursday. This would have resulted in sending them back as paupers, as the steamship company, compelled to take them as passengers free of charge, would have given them only such food as was left by the sailors, and would have dumped them out in France to starve, or get back as beggars to Syria.
The suggestion that the mother might land was only a cruel mockery. Joseph J. George, a worthy citizen of Worcester, brought the facts of the case to the attention of my son, who in turn brought them to my attention. My son had meantime advised that a bond be offered to the Immigration authorities to save them harmless from any trouble on account of the children.
I certified these facts to the authorities and received a statement in reply that the law was peremptory, and that it required that the children be sent home; that trouble had come from making like exceptions theretofore; that the Government hospitals were full of similar cases, and the authorities must enforce the law strictly in the future. Thereupon I addressed a telegram to the Immigration Bureau at Washington, but received an answer that nothing could be done for the children.
Then I telegraphed the facts to Senator Lodge, who went in person to the Treasury Department, but could get no more favorable reply. Senator Lodge's telegram announcing their refusal was received in Worcester Tuesday evening, and repeated to me in Boston just as I was about to deliver an address before the Catholic College there. It was too late to do anything that night. Early Wednesday morning, the day before the children were to sail, when they were already on the ship, I sent the following dispatch to President Roosevelt:
TO THE PRESIDENT, WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D. C.
I appeal to your clear understanding and kind and brave heart to interpose your authority to prevent an outrage which will dishonor the country and create a foul blot on the American flag. A neighbor of mine in Worcester, Mass., a Syrian by birth, made some time ago his public declaration for citizenship. He is an honest, hard-working and in every way respectable man. His wife with two small children have reached New York.
He sent out the money to pay their passage. The children contracted a disorder of the eyes on the ship. The Treasury authorities say that the mother may land but the children cannot, and they are to be sent back Thursday. Ample bond has been offered and will be furnished to save the Government and everybody from injury or loss. I do not think such a thing ought to happen under your Administration, unless you personally decide that the case is without remedy. I am told the authorities say they have been too easy heretofore, and must draw the line now. That shows they admit the power to make exceptions in proper cases. Surely, an exception should be made in the case of little children of a man lawfully here, and who has duly and in good faith declared his intention to become a citizen. The immigration law was never intended to repeal any part of the naturalization laws which provide that the minor children get all the rights of the father as to citizenship. My son knows the friends of this man personally and that they are highly respectable and well off. If our laws require this cruelty, it is time for a revolution, and you are just the man to head it.
GEORGE F. HOAR.
Half an hour from the receipt of that dispatch at the White House Wednesday forenoon, Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States, sent a peremptory order to New York to let the children come in. They have entirely recovered from the disorder of the eyes, which turned out not to be contagious, but only caused by the glare of the water, or the hardships of the voyage. The children are fair-haired, with blue eyes, and of great personal beauty, and would be exhibited with pride by any American mother.
When the President came to Worcester he expressed a desire to see the children. They came to meet him at my house, dressed up in their best and glorious to behold. The President was very much interested in them, and said when what he had done was repeated in his presence, that he was just beginning to get angry.
The result of this incident was that I had a good many similar applications for relief in behalf of immigrants coming in with contagious diseases. Some of them were meritorious, and others untrustworthy. In the December session of 1902 I procured the following amendment to be inserted in the immigration law.
"Whenever an alien shall have taken up his permanent residence in this country and shall have filed his preliminary declaration to become a citizen and thereafter shall send for his wife or minor children to join him, if said wife or either of said children shall be found to be affected with any contagious disorder, and it seems that said disorder was contracted on board the ship in which they came, such wife or children shall be held under such regulations as the Secretary of the Treasury shall prescribe until it shall be determined whether the disorder will be easily curable or whether they can be permitted to land without danger to other persons; and they shall not be deported until such facts have been ascertained."
XXXII. NATIONAL BANKRUPTCY
I have, since I have been in the Senate, taken great interest in the passage of a bill for a system of National Bankruptcy. The Constitution gives Congress power to establish a uniform system of Bankruptcy. The people of Massachusetts, a commercial and manufacturing State from the beginning, have always desired a Bankrupt law. They were large dealers with other States and with other countries. Insolvent debtors in Massachusetts could not get discharge from their debts contracted in such dealings. The Massachusetts creditors having debts against insolvents in other States found that their debtors under the laws of those States either got preferences or made fraudulent assignments which they could not detect or prevent.
On the other hand, the bankruptcy laws have always been unpopular in many parts of the country. The Democrat who strictly construed the Constitution did not like to see this power of Congress vigorously exercised. The National Courts, who must administer such laws, were always the object of jealousy and suspicion in the South and West. The people did not like to be summoned to attend the settlement of an estate in bankruptcy, hundreds and hundreds of miles, to the place where the United States Court was sitting, in States like Texas or Missouri. The sympathy of many communities is apt to be with the debtor, and not with the creditors, who were represented as harpies or vultures preying on the flesh of their unfortunate victims. A good example of this prejudice will be found in an extract from the speech of Senator Ingalls, of Kansas. He said in defending what was known as the equity scheme:
"The opposition arose first, from the great wholesale merchants in the chief distributing centres of the country. They have their agents and attorneys in the vicinity of every debtor, obtaining early information of approaching disaster, and ready to avail themselves of the local machinery of State courts by attachment or by preferences, through which they can secure full payment of their claims, to the exclusion of less powerful or less vigilant but equally meritorious creditors. Naturally they want no Bankrupt law of any description.
"Second. From the disabled veterans of the old army registers; from the professional assignees and wreckers of estates, who, by exorbitant fees and collusive sales of assets to convenient favorites, plundered debtor and creditor alike and made the system an engine of larceny and confiscation.
"Third. From those who desire, instead of a system for the discharge of honest but unfortunate debtors upon the surrender of their estates, a criminal code and a thumb-screw machine for the collection of doubtful and desperate debts. They covet a return to the primitive practices which prevailed in Rome, when the debtor was sold into slavery or had his body cut into pieces and distributed pro rata among his creditors.
"Fourth. From those timid and cautious conservatives who believe that nothing is valuable that is not venerable.
"Like the statesman described by Macaulay, they prefer to perish by precedent rather than be saved by innovation. They adhere to ancient failures rather than incur the risk of success through venture and experiment.
"Fifth. From Boards of Trade, Chambers of Commerce and other ornamental organizations who, being entirely uninformed on the subject, permit themselves to become the conduits through which the misrepresentation and animosity of avaricious creditors and rapacious attorneys are discharged upon Congress and the country."
I had moved in the Senate, in 1882, a bill favored by the merchants and manufacturers of Massachusetts, which was largely the work of Judge John Lowell, of the United States Circuit Court, one of the most accomplished lawyers of his day, as an amendment to a bill which Mr. Edmunds, Mr. Davis and Mr. Ingalls had reported as a Subcommittee to the Senate Judiciary Committee, and which had been reported from that Committee to the Senate.
The Lowell Bill was on my motion substituted for the report of the Judiciary Committee, by a majority of three. This bill was extensively discussed in June and December. But I was unable to secure its passage. It passed the Senate, but it did not get through the House.
I have had the Parliamentary charge of all Bankruptcy measures in the Senate from that time. After the failure of the Lowell Bill, the Boards of Trade and Chambers of Commerce, and other like associations throughout the country, took up the matter very zealously by employing an able lawyer, the Hon. Jay L. Torrey of Missouri, to present the matter in the two Houses of Congress. He was thoroughly acquainted with the principles and history of Bankruptcy laws in this country and England. But he had no compromise in him. He insisted on the Bill which he drew, which was a modification of the Lowell Bill, without being willing to make any concession to objection or difference of opinion in Congress, or out of it. He said he would have a perfect law, or none at all. The measure as he drew it was apparently very austere and harsh to the debtor. It enumerated a large number of offences for which the debtor was to be punished by fine and imprisonment, and by a denial of his discharge. Mr. Torrey's provisions were not very unreasonable. But they made it seem as if the Bill were a penal code for the punishment of fraudulent debtors. A simple provision that any debtor who wilfully should make false answer to any question lawfully put to him by the Court, or who wilfully concealed or attempted to conceal any property from his assignee should lose his discharge and be punished with a proper and moderate punishment, would have answered the whole purpose. I take some blame to myself for not insisting more strenuously upon modifying Mr. Torrey's measure. But he constantly visited different Senators and Representatives and came back to me with glowing accounts of the prospects of the Bill, and of their promises to support the Bill. He was also the agent of the business organizations of the country who had passed resolutions in favor of the measure as he had drawn it. It seemed to me therefore that if I should get the Bill amended and then it got lost, I should incur the great reproach of having obstinately set up my judgment against that of this large number of the ablest men in the country, who were so deeply interested in the matter. So the Bill, though brought up and pressed Congress after Congress, failed until Mr. Torrey enlisted in the Spanish War.
I then introduced a Bill in a softened and modified form. It was attacked in that form by Senator Nelson of Minnesota, a very excellent lawyer and gentleman of great influence, in the Senate. He succeeded in having the Bill modified and softened still more. The Bill then passed and went to the House which, under the leadership of the Judiciary Committee, substituted the original Bill.
Mr. Nelson and I, with Mr. Lindsay of Kentucky, were put on the Conference Committee in the Senate, with Mr. Henderson, afterward Speaker, Mr. Ray of New York, now Judge of the U. S. District Court, and Mr. Terry of Missouri, on the part of the House. We struggled nearly the whole winter. Mr. Nelson and Mr. Ray took the burden of the contest upon their shoulders. Their attempts at compromise reminded their brethren of the old scientific problem--"What will happen when an irresistible force encounters an immovable obstacle." But both gentlemen, each exceedingly firm in his own opinion when he thought he was in the right, were wise and reasonable and conscientious men. So at last they agreed upon the present Bankruptcy Bill, which became a law July 1, 1898. It was on the whole satisfactory to the country, except for one clause in it, which was interpreted by the United States Supreme Court in a manner contrary to the understanding and expectation of the framers of the Bill.
A law was passed February 7, 1903, correcting this and some minor defects. It is hoped, though we cannot be sure in such a matter, that a permanent system of Bankruptcy, so essential to all commercial, indeed to all civilized nations, is now established, and will be maintained in the United States.
XXXIII. THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS
It has been my singular ill fortune that I have been compelled to differ from the Republican Party, and from a good many of my political associates, upon many important matters.
It has been my singular good fortune that, so far, they have all come to my way of thinking, as have the majority of the American people, in regard to every one, with perhaps one exception. That is the dealing of the American people with the people of the Philippine Islands, by the Treaty with Spain. The war that followed it crushed the Republic that the Philippine people had set up for themselves, deprived them of their independence, and established there, by American power, a Government in which the people have no part, against their will. No man, I think, will seriously question that that action was contrary to the Declaration of Independence, the fundamental principles declared in many State constitutions, the principles avowed by the founders of the Republic and by our statesmen of all parties down to a time long after the death of Lincoln.
If the question were, whether I am myself right, or whether my friends and companions in the Republican Party be right, I should submit to their better judgment. But I feel quite confident, though of that no man can be certain, that if the judgment of the American people, even in this generation, could be taken on that question alone, I should find myself in the majority. If it be not so, the issue is between the opinion of the American people for more than a century, and the opinion that the American people has expressed for one or two Presidential terms.
Surely I do not need to argue the question; at any rate, I will not here undertake to argue the question, that our dealing with the Philippine people is a violation of the principles to which our people adhered from 1776 to 1893. If the maintenance of slavery were inconsistent with them, it was admitted that in that particular we were violating them, or were unable from circumstances to carry them into effect. Mr. Jefferson thought so himself.
But the accomplishment by this Republic of its purpose to subjugate the Philippine people to its will, under the claim that it, and not they, had the right to judge of their fitness for self-government, is a rejection of the old American doctrine as applicable to any race we may judge to be our inferior.
This doctrine will be applied hereafter, unless it be abandoned, to the Negro at home. Senator Tillman of South Carolina well said, and no gentleman in the Senate contradicted him: "Republican leaders do not longer dare to call into question the justice or the necessity of limiting Negro suffrage in the South." The same gentleman said at another time: "I want to call your attention to the remarkable change that has come over the spirit of the dream of the Republicans. Your slogans of the past--brotherhood of man and fatherhood of God--have gone glimmering down through the ages. The brotherhood of man exists no longer." These statements of Mr. Tillman have never been challenged, and never can be.
I do not mean here to renew the almost interminable debate. I will only make a very brief statement of my position:
The discussion began with the acquisition of Hawaii. Ever since I came to the Senate I had carefully studied the matter of the acquisition of Hawaii. I had become thoroughly satisfied that it would be a great advantage to the people of the United States, as well as for the people of Hawaii.
Hawaii is 2,100 miles from our Pacific coast. Yet if a line be drawn from the point of our territory nearest Asia to the Southern boundary of California, that line being the chord of which our Pacific coast is the bow, Hawaii will fall this side of it. Held by a great Nation with whom we were at war, it would be a most formidable and valuable base of supplies. We had sustained a peculiar relation to it. American missionaries had redeemed the people from barbarism and Paganism. Many of them, and their descendants, had remained in the Islands. The native Hawaiians were a perishing race. They had gone down from 300,000 to 30,000 within one hundred years.
The Japanese wanted it. The Portugese wanted it. Other nations wanted it. But the Hawaiians seemed neither to know nor care whether they wanted it or no. They were a perishing people. Their only hope and desire and expectation was that in the Providence of God they might lead a quiet, undisturbed life, fishing, bathing, supplied with tropical fruits, and be let alone.
We had always insisted that our relation to them was peculiar; that they could not be permitted to fall under the dominion of another power, even by their own consent. That had been declared by our Department of State under Administrations of all parties, including Mr. Webster, Mr. Seward, and Mr. Bayard. They were utterly helpless. As their Queen has lately declared: "The best thing for them that could have happened was to belong to the United States."
By the Constitution of Hawaii, the Government had been authorized to make a treaty of annexation with this country. It was said that that Constitution was the result of usurpation which would not have come to pass but for American aid, and the presence of one of our men-of-war. But that Government had been maintained for six or seven years. Four of them were while Mr. Cleveland was President, who it was well known would be in full sympathy with an attempt to restore the old Government. So if the people had been against it, the Government under that Constitution could not have lasted an hour.
President Harrison had negotiated a treaty of annexation, against which no considerable remonstrance or opposition was uttered. My approval of it was then, I suppose, well known. Certainly no friend of mine, and nobody in Massachusetts, so far as I know, in the least objected or remonstrated against it. The treaty was withdrawn from the consideration of the Senate by President Cleveland.
Another was negotiated soon after President McKinley came in. Meantime, however, the controversy with Spain had assumed formidable proportions, and the craze for an extension of our Empire had begun its course. Many Republican leaders were advocating the acquisition of the Hawaiian Islands, not for the reasons I have just stated, but on the avowed ground that it was necessary we should own them as a point of vantage for acquiring dominion in the East. It was said that China was about to be divided among the great Western powers, and that we must have our share. I saw when the time approached for action of the McKinley Treaty that the question could not be separated, at least in debate, from the question of entering upon a career of conquest of Empire in the Far East.
Under these circumstances the question of duty came to me: Will you adhere to the purpose long formed, and vote for the acquisition of Hawaii solely on its own merit? Or, will you vote against it, for fear that the bad and mischievous reasons that are given for it is so many quarters, will have a pernicious tendency only to be counteracted by the defeat of the treaty itself?
I hesitated long. President McKinley sent for me to come to the White House, as was his not infrequent habit. He said he wanted to consult me upon the question whether it would be wise for him to have a personal interview with Senator Morrill of Vermont. He had been told that Mr. Morrill was opposed to the Treaty. The President said: "I do not quite like to try to influence the action of an old gentleman like Mr. Morrill, so excellent, and of such great experience. It seems to me that it might be thought presumptuous, if I were to do so. But it is very important to us to have his vote, if we can." The President added something implying that he understood that I was in favor of the Treaty.
I said, "I ought to say, Mr. President, in all candor, that I feel very doubtful whether I can support it myself." President McKinley said: "Well, I don't know what I shall do. We cannot let those Islands go to Japan. Japan has her eye on them. Her people are crowding in there. I am satisfied they do not go there voluntarily, as ordinary immigrants, but that Japan is pressing them in there, in order to get possession before anybody can interfere. If something be not done, there will be before long another Revolution, and Japan will get control. Some little time ago the Hawaiian Government observed that when the immigrants from a large steamer went ashore they marched with a military step, indicating that they were a body of trained soldiers. Thereupon Hawaii prohibited the further coming in of Japanese. Japan claimed that was in violation of their treaty, and sent a ship of war to Hawaii. I was obliged to notify Japan that no compulsory measures upon Hawaii, in behalf of the Japan Government, would be tolerated by this country. So she desisted. But the matters are still in a very dangerous position, and Japan is doubtless awaiting her opportunity."
I told President McKinley that I favored then, as I always had, the acquisition of Hawaii. But I did not like the spirit with which it was being advocated both in the Senate and out of it. I instanced several very distinguished gentlemen indeed, one a man of very high authority in the Senate in matters relating to foreign affairs, who were urging publicly and privately the Hawaiian Treaty on the ground that we must have Hawaii in order to help us get our share of China. President McKinley disclaimed any such purpose. He expressed his earnest and emphatic dissent from the opinions imputed to several leading Republicans, whom he named.
I never, at any time during the discussion of the Philippine question, expressed a more emphatic disapproval of the acquisition of dependencies or Oriental Empire by military strength, than he expressed on that occasion. I am justified in putting this on record, not only because I am confirmed by several gentlemen in public life, who had interviews with him, but because he made in substance the same declaration in public.
He declared, speaking of this very matter of acquiring sovereignty over Spanish territory by conquest:
"Forcible annexation, according to our American code of morals, would be criminal aggression."
He said at another time:
"Human rights and constitutional privileges must not be forgotten in the race for wealth and commercial supremacy. The Government of the people must be by the people and not by a few of the people. It must rest upon the free consent of the governed and all of the governed. Power, it must be remembered, which is secured by oppression or usurpation or by any form of injustice is soon dethroned. We have no right in law or morals to usurp that which belongs to another, whether it is property or power."
I suppose he was then speaking of our duty as to any people whom we might liberate from Spain, as the results of the Spanish War. He unquestionably meant that we had no right, in law or morals, to usurp the right of self-government which belonged to the Cubans, or to the Philippine people.
Yet I have no doubt whatever that in the attitude that he took later he was actuated by a serious and lofty purpose to do right. I think he was led on from one step to another by what he deemed the necessity of the present occasion. I dare say that he was influenced, as any other man who was not more than human would have been influenced, by the apparently earnest desire of the American people, as he understood it, as it was conveyed to him on his Western journey. But I believe every step he took he thought necessary at the time. I further believe, although I may not be able to convince other men, and no man will know until the secret history of that time shall be made known, that if he had lived, before his Administration was over, he would have placed the Republic again on the principles from which it seems to me we departed--the great doctrine of Jefferson, the great doctrine of the Declaration of Independence, that there can be no just Government by one people over another without its consent, and that the International law declared by the Republic is that all Governments must depend for their just powers upon the consent of the governed. This was insisted on by our Fathers as the doctrine of International law, to be acted upon by the infant Republic for itself. In this I am confirmed by the testimony of Mr. Secretary Long, who was in President McKinley's most intimate counsels.
The Treaty negotiated by President McKinley with Hawaii was not acted upon. It was concluded to substitute a joint resolution, for which there was a precedent in the case of the acquisition of Texas. I voted for the joint resolution, as did Senator Hale of Maine, and several Democratic Senators, who were earnestly opposed to what is known as the policy of Imperialism.
I left the President, after the conversation above related, without giving him any assurance as to my action. But I determined on full reflection, to support the acquisition of Hawaii, in accordance with my long-settled purpose, and at the same time to make a clear and emphatic statement of my unalterable opposition to acquiring dependencies in the East, if we did not expect, when the proper time came, to admit them to the Union as States. This I did to the best of my power. I was invited to give an address before a college in Pennsylvania, where I took occasion to make an emphatic declaration of the doctrine on which I meant to act.
Afterward, July 5, 1898, I made a speech in the Senate, on the joint resolution for the acquisition of Hawaii, in which I said that I had entertained grave doubts in regard to that measure; that I had approached the subject with greater hesitation and anxiety than I had ever felt in regard to any other matter during the whole of my public life.
I went on to say:
"The trouble I have found with the Hawaiian business is this: Not in the character of the population of the Sandwich Island, not in their distance from our shores, not in the doubt that we have an honest right to deal with the existing government there in such a matter. I have found my trouble in the nature and character of the argument by which, in the beginning and ever since, a great many friends of annexation have sought to support it . . . .
"If this be the first step in the acquisition of dominion over barbarous archipelagoes in distant seas; if we are to enter into competition with the great powers of Europe in the plundering of China, in the division of Africa; if we are to quit our own to stand on foreign lands; if our commerce is hereafter to be forced upon unwilling peoples at the cannon's mouth; if we are ourselves to be governed in part by peoples to whom the Declaration of Independence is a stranger; or, worse still, if we are to govern subjects and vassal States, trampling as we do it on our own great Charter which recognizes alike the liberty and the dignity of individual manhood, then let us resist this thing in the beginning, and let us resist it to the death.
"I do not agree with those gentlemen who think we would wrest the Philippine Islands from Spain and take charge of them ourselves. I do not think we should acquire Cuba, as the result of the existing war, to be annexed to the United States."
I reinforced this protest as well I could. But I went on to state the reasons which had actuated me in favoring the measure, and that my unconquerable repugnance to the acquisition of territory to be held in dependency did not apply to that case.
I cited the Teller resolution, and declared that it bound the American people in honor, and that its principle applied to all Spanish territory. I maintained that there was nothing in the acquisition of Hawaii inconsistent with this doctrine. I think so still.
I was bitterly reproached by some worthy persons, who I suppose will always find matter for bitter reproach in everything said or done on public matters. They charged me with speaking one way and voting another. But I am content to leave the case on its merits, and on the record.
The war went on. The feeling of the country was deeply excited. President McKinley made his famous Western journey. He was greeted by enthusiastic throngs. The feeling in that part of the country in favor of a permanent dominion over the Philippine Islands was uttered by excited crowds, whom he addressed from the platform and the railroad cars as he passed thorough the country. But the sober, conservative feeling, which seldom finds utterance in such assemblies, did not make itself heard.
The President returned to Washington, undoubtedly in the honest belief that the country demanded that he acquire the Philippine Islands, and that Congress should govern them.
I have never attributed publicly, or in my own heart, to President McKinley any but the most conscientious desire to do his duty in what, as the case seems to me, was an entire change of purpose. Many military and naval officers, from whose reports he had to get his facts almost wholly, insisted that the Philippine people were unfit for self-government. After the unhappy conflict of arms the solution of the problem seemed to be to compel the Philippine people to unconditional submission. It would not be just or fair that I should undertake to state the reasons which controlled the President in adopting the conclusions to which I did not myself agree. I am merely telling my own part in the transaction.
When I got back to Washington, at the beginning of the session in December, 1898, I had occasion to see the President almost immediately. His purpose was to make a Treaty by which, without the assent of their inhabitants, we should acquire the Philippine Islands. We were to hold and govern in subjection the people of the Philippine Islands. That was pretty well understood.
The national power of Spain was destroyed. It was clear that she must submit to whatever terms we should impose. The President had chosen, as Commissioners to negotiate the Treaty, five gentlemen, three of whom, Senators Cushman K. Davis, and William P. Frye and Whitelaw Reid, the accomplished editor of the New York Tribune, former Minister to France, were well known to be zealous for acquiring territory in the East. Mr. Frye was said to have declared in a speech not long before he went abroad that he was in favor of keeping everything we could lay our hands on. I suppose that was, however, intended as a bit of jocose extravagance, which that most excellent gentleman did not mean to have taken too seriously.
Mr. Day, the Secretary of State, and Senator Gray of Delaware, were understood to be utterly opposed to the policy of expansion or Imperialism.
I do not know about Mr. Day. But it appeared, when three years afterward the correspondence between the Commissioners and the Department of State became public, that Mr. Day expressed no objection to the acquisition of Luzon, but objected to a peremptory demand for the whole Philippine Island group, thereby--to use his language--"leaving us open to the imputation of following agreement to negotiate with demand for whole subject matter of discussion ourselves."
The public impression as to Senator Gray is confirmed by the following remonstrance, which appears in the same correspondence:
PEACE COMMISSIONERS TO MR. HAY [Telegram]
PARIS, October 25, 1898.
The undersigned cannot agree that it is wise to take Philippine Islands in whole or in part. To do so would be to reverse accepted continental policy of the country, declared and acted upon throughout our history. Propinquity governs the case of Cuba and Porto Rico. Policy proposed introduces us into European politics and the entangling alliances against which Washington and all American statemen have protested. It will make necessary a navy equal to largest of powers; a greatly increased military establishment; immense sums for fortifications and harbors; multiply occasions for dangerous complications with foreign nations, and increase burdens of taxation. Will receive in compensation no outlet for American labor in labor market already overcrowded and cheap; no area for homes for American citizens; climate and social conditions demoralizing to character of American youth; new and disturbing questions introduced into our politics; church question menacing. On whole, instead of indemnity--injury.
The undersigned cannot agree that any obligation incurred to insurgents is paramount to our own manifest interests. Attacked Manila as part of legitimate war against Spain. If we had captured Cadiz and Carlists had helped us, would not owe duty to stay by them at the conclusion of war. On the contrary, interests and duty would require us to abandon both Manila and Cadiz. No place for colonial administration or government of subject people in American system. So much from standpoint of interest; but even conceding all benefits claimed for annexation, we thereby abandon the infinitely greater benefit to accrue from acting the part of a great, powerful, and Christian nation; we exchange the moral grandeur and strength to be gained by keeping our word to nations of the world and by exhibiting a magnanimity and moderation in the hour of victory that becomes the advanced civilization we claim, for doubtful material advantages and shameful stepping down from high moral position boastfully assumed. We should set example in these respects, not follow in the selfish and vulgar greed for territory which Europe has inherited from mediaeval times. Our declaration of war upon Spain was accompanied by a solemn and deliberate definition of our purpose. Now that we have achieved all and more than our object, let us simply keep our word. Third article of the protocol leaves everything concerning the control of the Philippine Islands to negotiation between the parties.
It is absurd now to say that we will not negotiate but will appropriate the whole subject-matter of negotiation. At the very least let us adhere to the President' instructions and if conditions require the keeping of Luzon forego the material advantages claimed in annexing other islands. Above all let us not make a mockery of the injunction contained in those instructions, where, after stating that we took up arms only in obedience to the dictates of humanity and in the fulfillment of high public and moral obligations, and that we had no design of aggrandizement and no ambition of conquest, the President among other things eloquently says:
"It is my earnest wish that the United States in making peace should follow the same high rule of conduct which guided it in facing war. It should be as scrupulous and magnanimous in the concluding settlement as it was just and humane in its original action."
This and more, of which I earnestly ask a reperusal, binds my conscience and governs my action.
GEORGE GRAY. WEDNESDAY, 12.30, night.
Senator Gray afterward signed the Treaty, defended it in debate, and voted for its ratification. He vigorously defended his vote on the floor of the Senate, chiefly by the argument that when he learned that it was the purpose of the United States to expel Spain from the Philippine Islands, he concluded it was our duty to remain there for the protection of the people against foreign rapacity and against domestic anarchy. He claimed that he had been influenced in coming to this conclusion very considerably by the fact that I was reported to have said that under no circumstances would we give back the Philippine people to Spain. That was true. I believed then, and believe now, that it was our duty to deliver them from Spain, to protect them against her, or against the cupidity of any other nation until her people could have tried fully the experiment of self- government, in which I have little doubt they would have succeeded.
When I saw President McKinley early in December, 1898, he was, I suppose, committed to the policy to which he adhered. He greeted me with the delightful and affectionate cordiality which I always found in him. He took me by the hand, and said: "How are you feeling this winter, Mr. Senator?" I was determined there should be no misunderstanding. I replied at once: "Pretty pugnacious, I confess, Mr. President." The tears came into his eyes, and he said, grasping my hand again: "I shall always love you, whatever you do."
I found we differed widely on this great subject. I denounced with all the vigor of which I was capable the Treaty, and the conduct of the war in the Philippine Islands, in the Senate, on the platform, in many public letters, and in articles in magazines and newspapers. But President McKinley never abated one jot of his cordiality toward me. I did not, of course, undertake to press upon him my advice in matters affecting the Philippine Islands, about which we differed so much. But he continued to seek it, and to take it in all other matters as constantly as ever before.
In order that it may not be supposed that I deceived myself in regard to President McKinley's kindly regard, I may perhaps be pardoned for saying that his close friend, Senator Hanna, has more than once assured me that McKinley's love for me was never abated, and for citing a sentence from an article by Charles Emory Smith, his trusted counsellor and able and accomplished Postmaster-General, in this Cabinet. Mr. Smith says:
"Senator Hoar was the earnest foe and critic of President McKinley's policy. But President McKinley had the warmest regard and consideration for him. Nothing, indeed, in public life was sweeter than the sentiment of these different and differing men toward each other. President McKinley was anxious to commission Senator Hoar as Minister to England, and proffered him the place. It was without any desire to remove him from the arena of contention--apprehension of such a reflection restrained the proffer for a time--though the contention had not then been fully developed."
After President McKinley's death I expressed the public sorrow and my own in an address to a vast audience of the people of my own city of Worcester, in Mechanics' Hall; and again, at the request of the Republican State Committee, at the Republican State Convention shortly afterward.
I have reason to know that both the addresses gave pleasure to many of the lamented President's closest and warmest friends throughout the country. I was afterward invited by the City Government of Worcester to deliver a historical eulogy on President McKinley before them. That office, it seemed to me, I ought to decline. It was not because I was behind any other man in admiration or personal affection for that lofty and beautiful character. But I thought that address, which was not only to utter the voice of public sorrow, but to give a careful and discriminating sketch of the public life of its subject, ought to be delivered by some person who agreed with him in regard to the most important action of his life. I could not well pass over the Philippine question. I could not well speak of it without stating my own opinion. I could not undertake to state President McKinley's opinion, conduct or policy, without expressing my disapproval of it, and if I did not do that, I could not state it without being thought by those who heartily approved it, not to have stated it justly and fairly.
I had repeatedly declared, during the preceding two years, both before and since his death, my highest admiration for the intellectual and moral qualities of my beloved friend, and my belief that he would have a very high place in history among the best and ablest men of the country.
But I thought the story of the important part of his life should be told from his point of view, and not from mine; that the reasons which governed him should be stated by a person sure to appreciate them fully. If a great Catholic Prelate were to die, his eulogy should not be pronounced by a Protestant. When Dr. Channing died, we did not select a Calvinist minister to pronounce his funeral sermon. When Charles Sumner died Mr. Schurz and Mr. Curtis, not some old Whig, and not some earnest supporter of General Grant, pronounced the eulogy. I suppose nobody would have dreamed of asking a Free Trader to pronounce the eulogy on President McKinley if he had died soon after the beginning of his first term. So I declined the office. The City did not ask anybody else to fill my place, or perform the task.
I will not now renew the debate about our treatment of the people of the Philippine Islands. My opinion has not at all changed. I think that under the lead of Mabini and Aguinaldo and their associates, but for our interference, a Republic would have been established in Luzon, which would have compared well with the best of the Republican Governments between the United States and Cape Horn. For years and for generations, and perhaps for centuries, there would have been turbulence, disorder and revolution. But in her own way Destiny would have evolved for them a force of civic rule best adapted to their need. If we had treated them as we did Cuba, we should have been saved the public shame of violating not only our own pledges, but the rule of conduct which we had declared to be self-evident truth in the beginning of our history. We should have been saved the humiliation of witnessing the subjection by Great Britain of the Boers in South Africa, without a murmur of disapproval, and without an expression of one word of sympathy for the heroic victims.
My term as Senator expired on the fourth of March, 1901. The election of Senator for the following term came in January of that year. I differed sharply from my colleague, Mr. Lodge, in this whole matter. But the people of Massachusetts, with the generous and liberal temper which ever distinguished that noble Commonwealth, desired that their Senators should act upon their own judgment, without any constraint.
A resolution was introduced at the session of the Legislature of 1899 by Mr. Mellen, Democratic member from Worcester, thanking me for my speech in opposition to the Spanish Treaty, endorsing the doctrine of that speech, and condemning the subjugation of the Philippine people by force of arms.
Charles G. Washburn, Republican member from Worcester, introduced a resolution commending my speech, and declaring it to be "A speech of the loftiest patriotism and eloquent interpretation of the high conception of human freedom which the fathers sought to preserve for all time in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution of the United States."
These resolution, if adopted, would, by implication, condemn the well-known opinion and action of my colleague. They were encountered by several others, none of which referred to either Senator, but expressed approval of the Spanish Treaty. One of them, however, presented in the House by Mr. Mills of Newburyport, declared that the Treaty ought to be ratified, and then the United States should fulfil to Porto Rico and the Philippine Islands the pledge of self-government and independence made to Cuba. Very wisely all these resolutions were referred to the Committee on Federal Relations, who reported this as a compromise:
RESOLUTION REPORTED BY THE COMMITTEE ON FEDERAL RELATIONS, OF THE LEGISLATURE, MARCH 29, 1899
Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in General Court assembled, that Massachusetts, ever loyal in sympathy and support of the General Government, continues her unabated confidence in her Senators, and with a just pride in the eloquent and memorable words they have uttered, leaves them untrammeled in the exercise of an independent and patriotic judgment upon the momentous questions presented for their consideration.
The whole matter was then dropped. But the Legislature, and the generous people of Massachusetts whom they represented, acted upon the spirit of the Committee's Resolution. I was reelected without opposition. I had every Republican vote, and many Democratic votes, of the Legislature. My affectionate and cordial relations with my brilliant and accomplished colleague have never suffered an instant's interruption.
I think I am entitled to record, however, that this result was not accomplished by any abatement of my opposition to the policy of the Administration as to the Philippine Islands. I made a great many speeches within a few weeks of the Presidential election in 1900. The members of the Senate and House, of the Massachusetts Legislature, who were to choose a Senator, were to be chosen at the same time. I expressed my unchanged and earnest opposition of disapproval to the whole business at length.
In speaking of the habit of appealing to the love of the flag in behalf of this policy of conquest, I said that there was but one symbol more sacred than the American flag. That was the bread and wine which represented the body and blood of the Saviour of mankind; adding, that a man who would use an appeal to the flag in aid of the subjugation of an unwilling people, would be capable of using the sacramental wine for a debauch.
The week before the election of Senator came on a bill for the reorganization of the Army was before the Senate. That contained a provision for increasing the Army to a hundred thousand men, allowing the President, however, to reduce it to seventy thousand, and to raise it again if necessary, so it would in his discretion be elastic, within those limitations.
Mr. Bacon, of Georgia, who seemed to be the leader of the Democrats on that measure, inquired of the Republicans who were managing the bill, how many men they needed and what time would be required to put down the insurrection in the Philippine Islands. Senator Bacon said that they would give them the hundred thousand men, or any force they might demand for one or two or three or five years, or for any required time. But they were unwilling to give the President the power of expanding and contracting the army in time of peace. This was in full Senate.
I followed with a statement that I had no objection to giving the President this discretion, and did not disapprove the bill on that account. I thought the size of the Army in time of peace should be left largely to the opinion of the experts, especially General Miles, the famous soldier at the head of our Army, who thought the regular Army should consist of one hundred for every thousand of our population. That would be about eighty thousand then, and before long would require a hundred thousand men. But I said I was opposed to raising soldiers to carry on the war in the Philippine Islands. The only way to stop it that I knew was to refuse to vote for the Army Bill. I voted against it solely on that account.
I meant that if the Legislature of Massachusetts were to reelect me, no man should ever have it to say that I had bought my reelection by silence on this question, or concealed my opinion, however extreme it might be, until after election.
After my election I delivered an address before the two Houses of the Legislature, at their request, and was received with a most cordial enthusiasm.
Yet I think that if any leading Republican who had differed from me on this question, especially Governor Long, of whose brilliant administration of the Navy the people of the Commonwealth were so proud, had pressed his candidacy for the office in opposition to me, as has been the custom in like cases in other States, it is not unlikely that he would have been elected.
I have no doubt I should have found Governor Roger Wolcott a formidable competitor, if he had lived and been willing. Governor Wolcott had made a statement in public, quietly and briefly, as was his wont, expressing his sympathy with me when the question of the Treaty was under debate. Somewhat later he made a statement in the same way, expressing his opinion that the Administration should be supported. Both these declarations were in general terms. They were not inconsistent with each other. But death arrested the honorable and useful career of Roger Wolcott when he was still in the prime of life, in the strength of his noble manhood, a strength which seemed rapidly enlarging and growing as if in early youth.
I have not doubt that the subjugation of the Philippine Islands, the acquisition of a dependency to be held in subjection by the United States, the overthrow of the great doctrine that Governments rest on the consent of the governed; that all the painful consequences which have attended the war for the subjugation of that distant people, would have been avoided if the Democratic opposition had been hearty and sincere. The same spirit that defeated the Election bill in spite of the majority in its favor, would have easily accomplished that result. The Democratic Party, as a party, never meant business in this matter. I do not deny that many Democrats-- I dare say a majority of the Democrats--were as earnestly and seriously opposed to the acquisition of the Philippine Islands as I was myself. But they never wielded their party strength in opposition to it. I said to one eminent Democratic leader early in the year 1900: "There is one way in which you can put an end to this whole business. If you can elect a Democratic House it will have power under the Constitution to determine the use to which the Army shall be put. In that way you compelled President Hayes to refrain from further support by military force of the Republican State Governments in the South." He answered: "Mr. Hoar, we shall never do anything as radical as that."
When Senator Bacon made the offer to the majority of the Senate to agree to give them all the military power they desired for the suppression of the resistance in the Philippines for as long a time as they should think it necessary, the entire Democratic Party in the Senate was in their seats, and there was no expression of dissent.
I think the Democratic Party feared the fate of the Federalists who opposed the War of 1812, and of the Democrats who opposed the War for the Union in 1861. This of course in the nature of things is but conjecture.
Seventeen of the followers of Mr. Bryan voted for the Treaty. The Treaty would have been defeated, not only lacking the needful two thirds, but by a majority of the Senate but for the votes of Democrats and Populists.
Senators Morgan and Pettus of Alabama, Senator McLaurin of South Carolina, Senator McEnery of Louisiana, were avowed supporters of the Treaty from the beginning.
Mr. Bryan in the height of the contest came to Washington for the express purpose of urging upon his followers that it was best to support the Treaty, end the War, and let the question of what should be done with our conquest be settled in the coming campaign. He urged upon them, as I was told by several Democrats at the time who did not take his advice, that the Democratic Party could not hope to win a victory on the financial questions at stake after they had been beaten on them in a time of adversity; and that they must have this issue for the coming campaign. He was besought by his wiser political associates to go away and leave the Senate to settle the matter. But he remained.
After that it became impossible, not only to defeat the Treaty, but to defeat the policy which had inspired it. The Treaty pledged that the Philippine Islands should be governed by Congress. It undertook obligations which require for their fulfillment, at least ten years' control of the Islands. It put the people of the Philippine Islands in the attitude of abandoning the Republic they had formed, and of acknowledging not only our supremacy but that they were neither entitled or fit to govern themselves or to carry on the war which had unfortunately broken out. I do not mean to imply that, as I have said, a large number of the Democratic Party both in public life and out of it, were not sincere and zealous in their opposition to this wretched business. But next to a very few men who controlled the policy of the Republican Party in this matter, Mr. Bryan and his followers who voted in the Senate for the Treaty are responsible for the results.
I have been blamed, as I have said already, because, with my opinions, I did not join the Democratic Party and help to elect Mr. Bryan. I disagreed with him and his party as to every other issue then pending before the American people. So differing from him, I found nothing in his attitude or that of his party, to induce me to support him, or even to inspire my confidence in their settlement of the question of Imperialism or expansion.
In my opinion, if he had been elected, he would have accepted the result, have put the blame for it on his predecessor in office, and matters would have gone on very much as they have under Republican control.
I have been told by many Senators who voted for the Treaty, that they regretted that vote more than any other act of their lives. Enough Senators have said this to me in person, not only to have defeated the Treaty, but if they had so voted, to have defeated it by a majority. A very eminent Republican Senator told me that more than twenty Senators, who voted for the Treaty, had given the same assurance to him. But they are very unwilling to make the declaration public. Several gentlemen, however, have publicly expressed their regret for their vote, as is well known, enough to have changed the result.
When I think of my party, whose glory and whose service to Liberty are the pride of my life, crushing out this people in their effort to establish a Republic, and hear people talk about giving them good Government, and that they are better off than they ever were under Spain, I feel very much as if I had learned that my father, or some other honored ancestor, had been a slave-trader in his time, and had boasted that he had introduced a new and easier kind of hand-cuffs or fetters to be worn by the slaves during the horrors of the middle passage.
I do not believe that there is a respectable or intelligent Filipino to-day, unless possibly some Macabebe scout, who would not get rid of the Government of the United States at once, if he could. Buencamino is said to be one of the ablest of their public men. He has been quoted as friendly to us, and is so. There is no doubt that he has so expressed himself. He has been appointed a member of the Taft Government, and has had committed to him the responsible and important duty of deciding the appointments to the offices which are to be filled by the native Filipinos, under the existing establishment. It is said by both sides that he is crafty and selfish and ambitious, and that he likes to be on the side that is the strongest. How that may be, I do not know. But he will not even pretend to accept the rule of the United States willingly. He appeared as a witness before a Committee of the House of Representatives, when in this country in 1902. He was asked whether his people approved the policy of the Democratic Party. He answered emphatically: "No. They do not wish to have the United States abandon them to the ambition or cupidity of foreign Governments." But he added: "Every Filipino is in favor of the policy advocated by Senator Hoar." "What!" said his inquirer, with great surprise, "Do you mean to say that every Filipino agrees with Senator Hoar in his views?" "Yes," replied the man, with great emphasis; "every Filipino agrees with Senator Hoar."
I mentioned this one day in conversation with President Roosevelt. He told me that Buencamino had said exactly the same thing to him.
General Miles told me on his return from his journey round the world that he saw many leaders of the Philippine people; that they spoke of me with great regard and attachment.
June 17, 1902, an eminent Hindoo scholar, published a long article in the Japan Times, in which he said:
"The speech of Mr. Hoar, though an address to his own countrymen, is a message of hope to the whole world which sank with despondency at the sight of Republican America behaving like a cruel, tyrannical and rapacious Empire in the Philippines and particularly to the broken-hearted people of Asia who are beginning to lose all confidence in the humanity of the white races. Or is it that they have lost it already? Hence all papers in Asia should reprint his speech, translate it, and distribute it broadcast. Let it be brought home to the Asiatic people so that they may work and worship their champion and his forefathers. Thanks to the awakening in America, thanks to the forces that are at work to chase out the degenerating, demoralizing passion for territorial aggrandizement from the noble American mind and save it for itself and the world at large from the cancer of Imperialism."
I am afraid I am committing an offence against good taste in repeating such laudations. But it must be remembered that a public man who has to encounter so much bitter reviling and objurgation, is fairly entitled to have a little extravagance on the other side that the balance may be even. I would rather have the gratitude of the poor people of the Philippine Islands, amid their sorrow, and have it true that what I may say or do has brought a ray of hope into the gloomy caverns in which the oppressed peoples of Asia dwell, than to receive a Ducal Coronet from every Monarch in Europe, or command the applause of listening Senators and read my history in a Nation's eyes.
At first there can seem nothing more absurd than the suggestion of my Asiatic friend that the people of Asia should worship their champion and his ancestors. But on second thought, it is fair to say that while no human being can be entitled to be worshipped by any other, yet that we got our love of Liberty from our ancestors, or at any rate that is where I got mine, and that they are entitled to all the credit.
XXXIV. APPOINTMENTS TO OFFICE
Among the great satisfactions in the life of public men is that of sometimes being instrumental in the advancement to places of public honor of worthy men, and of being able to have a great and salutary influence upon their lives. I have always held to the doctrine of what is called Civil Service Reform, and have maintained to the best of my ability the doctrine of the absolute independence of the Executive in such matters, as his right to disregard the wishes and opinions of members of either House of Congress, and to make his appointments, executive and judicial, without advice, or on such advice as he shall think best. But, at the same time, there can be no doubt that the Executive must depend on some advice other than his own, to learn the quality of men in different parts of this vast Republic, and to learn what will be agreeable to public opinion and to the party which is administering the Government and is responsible for its administration. He will, ordinarily, find no better source of such information than in the men whom the people have shown their own confidence by entrusting them with the important function of Senator or Representative. He will soon learn to know his men, and how far he can safely take such advice. He must be careful to see to it that he is not induced to build up a faction in his party, or to fill up the public offices with the partisans of ambitious but unscrupulous politicians. When I entered the House of Representatives, before the Civil Service Reform had made any progress, I addressed and had put on file with the Secretary of the Treasury a letter in which I said that I desired him to understand when I made a recommendation to him of any person for public office, it was to be taken merely as my opinion of the merit of the candidate, and not as an expression of a personal request; and that if he found any other person who would in his judgment be better for the public service, I hoped he would make the selection without regard to my recommendation.
I have never undertaken to use public office as personal patronage, or to claim the right to dictate to the President of the United States, or that the executive was not entirely free, upon such advice as he saw fit, or without advice, if he thought fit, in making his selection for public office.
It has been my good fortune to have influenced, or I think I may fairly say, procured the appointment to public office of many gentlemen who would not have been appointed without my active efforts. I have no reason to be ashamed of one of the list. I believe that the following gentlemen, beside others less distinguished, who have been very satisfactory, able and faithful public servants, owe their appointment to my original suggestion, or would not have been appointed without my earnest efforts.
Charles Devens, Attorney-General; Alanson W. Beard, Collector of the Port of Boston; Horace Gray, first to the office of Reporter of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, and later to that of Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; J. Evarts Greene, Postmaster of Worcester; Thomas L. Nelson, Judge of the District Court of Massachusetts; Francis C. Lowell, Judge of the District Court of Massachusetts; Howell E. Jackson, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; John D. Washburn, Minister to Switzerland.
I think I may also fairly claim that the election of William B. Washburn as Governor of Massachusetts was due not only to the fact that I originally proposed him as a candidate, but to my active efforts in the campaign which preceded the Convention which nominated him.
There is no man in this list of greater ability or of higher quality of manhood than Evarts Greene. Mr. Greene was compelled by the illness of his wife to remain fast-bound in one spot, instead of going to some large city where his great talent would have commanded a very high place indeed in his profession as editor. When he edited the Worcester Spy, it was one of the most influential Republican newspapers in the country. The Spy got into pecuniary difficulties. Mr. Greene, with some reluctance, accepted the office of Postmaster, an office which, according to usage in such cases, was in my gift.
Just before Postmaster-General Wanamaker, whose executive ability no man will question, went out of office, he requested Mr. Greene to send to the Department an account of the improvements he had made and proposed in the post-office service. This was sent in a circular all over the country to other like post-offices.
Just before Mr. Greene died, President Roosevelt visited Worcester. In passing the post-office, where the persons employed in the service were collected, he stopped and said he was glad to see "what we have been accustomed to consider the record post-office." This, as may well be believed, gave Mr. Greene great satisfaction.
XXXV. ORATORY AND SOME ORATORS I HAVE HEARD
The longer I live, the more highly I have come to value the gift of eloquence. Indeed, I am not sure that it is not the single gift most to be coveted by man. It is hard, perhaps impossible, to define, as poetry is impossible to define. To be a perfect and consummate orator is to possess the highest faculty given to man. He must be a great artist, and more. He must be a great actor, and more. He must be a master of the great things that interest mankind. What he says ought to have as permanent a place in literature as the highest poetry. He must be able to play at will on the mighty organ, his audience, of which human souls are the keys. He must have knowledge, wit, wisdom, fancy, imagination, courage, nobleness, sincerity, grace, a heart of fire. He must himself respond to every emotion as an AEolian harp to the breeze. He must have
An eye that tears can on a sudden fill And lips that smile before the tears are gone.
He must have a noble personal presence. He must have, in perfection, the eye and the voice which are the only and natural avenues by which one human soul can enter into and subdue another. His speech must be filled with music, and possess its miraculous charm and spell,
Which the posting winds recall, And suspend the river's fall.
He must have the quality which Burke manifested when Warren Hastings said, "I felt, as I listened to him, as if I were the most culpable being on earth"; and which made Philip say of Demosthenes, "Had I been there he would have persuaded me to take up arms against myself."
He has a present, practical purpose to accomplish. If he fail in that he fails utterly and altogether. His object is to convince the understanding, to persuade the will, to set aflame the heart of his audience or those who read what he says. He speaks for a present occasion. Eloquence is the feather that tips his arrow. If he miss the mark he is a failure, although his sentences may survive everything else in the permanent literature of the language in which he speaks. What he says must not only accomplish the purpose of the hour, but should be fit to be preserved for all time, or he can have no place in literature, and a small and ephemeral place in human memory.
The orator must know how so to utter his thought that it will stay. The poet and the orator have this in common. Each must so express and clothe his thought that it shall penetrate and take possession of the soul, and, having penetrated, must abide and stay. How this is done, who can tell? Carlyle defines poetry as a "sort of lilt." Cicero finds the secret of eloquence in a
Lepos quidem celeritasque et brevitas.
One writer lately dead, who has a masterly gift of noble and stirring eloquence, finds it in "a certain collocation of consonants." Why it is that a change of a single word, or even of a single syllable, for any other which is an absolute synonym in sense, would ruin the best line in Lycidas, or injure terribly the noblest sentence of Webster, nobody knows. Curtis asks how Wendell Phillips did it, and answers his own question by asking you how Mozart did it.
When I say that I am not sure that this is not the single gift most to be coveted by man, I may seem to have left out the moral quality in my conception of what is excellent. But such is the nature of man that the loftiest moral emotions are still the overmastering emotions. The orator that does not persuade men that righteousness is on his side will seldom persuade them to think or act as he desires; and if he fail in that he fails in his object; and the orator who has not in fact righteousness on his side will in general fail so to persuade them. And even if in rare cases he do persuade his audience, he does not gain a permanent place in literature. Bolingbroke's speeches, though so enthusiastically praised by the best judges, have perished by their own worthlessness.
Although the danger of the Republic, and his own, still occupied his thoughts, Cicero found time in his old age to record, at the request of his brother Quintus, his opinion, de omni ratione dicendi. It is not likely that the treatise "de Oratore" or that "de Claris Oratoribus" will ever be matched by any other writer on this fascinating subject, except the brief and masterly fragment of Tacitus.
He begins by inquiring why it is that, when so many persons strive to attain the gift of eloquence, and its rewards of fame and wealth and power are so great, the number of those who succeed as orators is so small in comparison with the number of those who become great generals, or statesmen, or poets. I suppose this fact, which excited the wonder of Cicero, exists in our country and our time. There is a foreign country which is to us as a posterity. If we reckon those Americans only as great orators who are accepted in England as such, or who, belonging to past generations are so accepted now by their own countrymen, the number is very small. A few sentences of Patrick Henry are preserved, as a few sentences of Lord Chatham are preserved. The great thoughts of Webster justify, in the estimation of the reader, the fame he enjoyed with his own generation. The readers of Fisher Ames--alas, too few--can well comprehend the spell which persuaded an angry and reluctant majority to save the treaty to which the nation had pledged its faith, and, perhaps, the life of the nation itself. With these exceptions, the number of American orators who will live in history as orators can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
I have never supposed myself to possess this gift. The instruction which I had in my youth, especially that at Harvard, either in composition or elocution, was, I think, not only of no advantage, but a positive injury. Besides the absence of good training, I had an awkward manner, and a harsh voice. Until quite late in life I never learned to manage so that I could get through a long speech without serious irritation of the throat. But I have had good opportunity to hear the best public speaking of my time. I have heard in England, on a great field day in the House of Commons, Palmerston, Lord John Russell, and John Bright, and, later, Disraeli, Gladstone and Bernal Osborne. I have heard Spurgeon, and Bishop Wilberforce, and Dr. Guthrie in the pulpit.
At home I have heard a good many times Daniel Webster, Edward Everett, Rufus Choate, Robert C. Winthrop, John P. Hale, Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner, Richard H. Dana, Ralph Waldo Emerson, James G. Blaine, Lucius Q. C. Lamar, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, William M. Evarts, Benjamin F. Thomas, Pliny Merrick, Charles Devens, Nathaniel P. Banks, and, above all, Kossuth; and in the pulpit, James Walker, Edwards A. Park, Mark Hopkins, Edward Everett Hale, George Putnam, Starr King, and Henry W. Bellows. So, perhaps, my experience and observation, too late for my own advantage, may be worth something to my younger readers.
I am not familiar with the books which have been lately published which give directions for public speaking. So I dare say that what I have to advise is already well known to young men, and that all I can say has been said much better. But I will give the result of my own experience and observation.
In managing the voice, the speaker when he is engaged in earnest conversation, commonly and naturally falls into the best tone and manner for public speaking. Suppose you are sitting about a table with a dozen friends, and some subject is started in which you are deeply interested. You engage in an earnest and serious dialogue with one of them at the other end of the table. You are perfectly at ease, not caring in the least for your manner or tone of voice, but only for your thought. The tone you adopt then will ordinarily be the best tone for you in public speaking. You can, however, learn from teachers or friendly critics to avoid any harsh or disagreeable fashion of speech that you may have fallen into, and that may be habitual to you in private conversation.
Next. Never strain your vocal organs by attempting to fill spaces which are too large for you. Speak as loudly and distinctly as you can do easily, and let the most distant portions of your audience go. You will find in that way very soon that your voice will increase in compass and power, and you will do better than by a habit of straining the voice beyond its natural capacity. Be careful to avoid falsetto. Shun imitating the tricks of speech of other orators, even of famous and successful orators. These may do for them, but not for you. You will do no better in attempting to imitate the tricks of speech of other men in public speaking than in private speaking.
Never make a gesture for the sake of making one. I believe that most of the successful speakers whom I know would find it hard to tell you whether they themselves make gestures or not, they are so absolutely unconscious in the matter. But with gestures as with the voice, get teachers or friendly critics to point out to you any bad habit you may fall into. I think it would be well if our young public speakers, especially preachers, would have competent instructors and critics among their auditors, after they enter their profession, to give them the benefit of such observations and counsel as may be suggested in that way. If a Harvard professor of elocution would retain his responsibility for his pupils five or ten years after they got into active life he would do a great deal more good than by his instructions to undergraduates.
So far we have been talking about mere manner. The matter and substance of the orator's speech must depend upon the intellectual quality of the man.
The great orator must be a man of absolute sincerity. Never advocate a cause in which you do not believe, or affect an emotion you do not feel. No skill or acting will cover up the want of earnestness. It is like the ointment of the hand which bewrayeth itself.
I shall be asked how I can reconcile this doctrine with the practice of the law. It will be said the advocate must often defend men whom he believes to be guilty, or argue to the court propositions he believes to be unsound. This objection will disappear if we consider what exactly is the function of the advocate in our system of administering justice.
I suppose it is needless to argue to persons of American or English birth that our system of administering justice is safer for the innocent and, on the whole, secures the punishment of guilt and secures private right better than any other that now exists or that ever existed among men. The chief distinction of the system we have inherited from England consists in two things: first, the function of the advocate, and second, that cases are decided not upon belief, but upon proof. It has been found that court or jury are more likely to get at truth if they have the aid of trained officers whose duty it shall be to collect and present all the arguments on each side which ought to be considered before the court or jury reach the decision. The man who seems clearly guilty should not be condemned or punished unless every consideration which may tend to establish innocence or throw doubt upon guilt has been fully weighed. The unassisted tribunal will be quite likely to overlook these considerations. Public sentiment approves the judgment and the punishment in the case of John W. Webster. But certainly he should never have been convicted without giving the fullest weight to his previous character and to the slightness of the temptation to the commission of such a crime, to the fact that the evidence was largely circumstantial, to the doubt of the identity of the body of the victim, and to the fact that the means or instrument of the crime which ordinarily must be alleged and proved in cases of murder could not be made certain, and could not be set forth in the indictment. The question in the American or English court is not whether the accused be guilty. It is whether he be shown to be guilty, by legal proof, of an offence legally set forth. It is the duty of the advocate to perform his office in the mode best calculated to cause all such considerations to make their due impression. It is not his duty or his right to express or convey his individual opinion. On him the responsibility of the decision does not rest. He not only has no right to accompany the statement of his argument with any assertion as to his individual belief, but I think the most experienced observers will agree that such expressions, if habitual, tend to diminish and not to increase the just influence of the lawyer. There was never a weightier advocate before New England juries than Daniel Webster. Yet it is on record that he always carefully abstained from any positiveness of assertion. He introduced his weightiest arguments with such phrases as, "It will be for the jury to consider," "The Court will judge," "It may, perhaps, be worth thinking of, gentlemen," or some equivalent phrase by which he kept scrupulously off the ground which belonged to the tribunal he was addressing. The tricks of advocacy are not only no part of the advocate's duties, but they are more likely to repel than to attract the hearers. The function of the advocate in the court of justice, as thus defined and limited, is tainted by no insincerity or hypocrisy. It is as respectable, as lofty, and as indispensably necessary as that of the judge himself.
In my opinion, the two most important things that a young man can do to make himself a good public speaker are:
First. Constant and careful written translations from Latin or Greek into English.
Second. Practice in a good debating society.
It has been said that all the greatest Parliamentary orators of England are either men whom Lord North saw, or men who saw Lord North--that is, men who were conspicuous as public speakers in Lord North's youth, his contemporaries, and the men who saw him as an old man when they were young themselves. This would include Bolingbroke and would come down only to the year of Lord John Russell's birth. So we should have to add a few names, especially Gladstone, Disraeli, John Bright, and Palmerston. There is no great Parliamentary orator in England since Gladstone died. I once, a good many years ago, studied the biographies of the men who belonged to that period who were famous as great orators in Parliament or in Court, to find, if I could, the secret of their power. With the exception of Lord Erskine and of John Bright, I believe every one of them trained himself by careful and constant translation from Latin or Greek, and frequented a good debating society in his youth.
Brougham trained himself for extemporaneous speaking in the Speculative Society, the great theatre of debate for the University of Edinburgh. He also improved his English style by translations from the Greek, among which is his well-known version of the "Oration on the Crown."
Canning's attention, while at Eton, was strongly turned to extemporaneous speaking. They had a debating society, in which the Marquis of Wellesley and Charles Earl Grey had been trained before him, in which they had all the forms of the House of Commons--Speaker, Treasury benches, and an Opposition. Canning also was disciplined by the habit of translation.
Curran practised declamation daily before a glass, reciting passages from Shakespeare and the best English orators. He frequented the debating societies which then abounded in London. He failed at first, and was ridiculed as "Orator Mum." But at last he surmounted every difficulty. It was said of him by a contemporary: "He turned his shrill and stumbling brogue into a flexible, sustained, and finely modulated voice; his action become free and forcible; he acquired perfect readiness in thinking on his legs; he put down every opponent by the mingled force of his argument and wit; and was at last crowned with the universal applause of the society and invited by the president to an entertainment in their behalf." I am not sure that I have seen, on any good authority, that he was in the habit of writing translations from Latin or Greek, but he studied them with great ardor and undoubtedly adopted, among the methods of perfecting his English style, the custom of students of his day of translation from these languages.
Jeffrey joined the Speculative Society, in Edinburgh, in his youth. His biographer says that it did more for him than any other event in the whole course of his education.
Chatham, the greatest of English orators, if we may judge by the reports of his contemporaries, trained himself for public speaking by constant translations from Latin and Greek. The education of his son, the younger Pitt, is well known. His father compelled him to read Thucydides into English at sight, and to go over it again and again, until he had got the best possible rendering of the Greek into English.
Macaulay belonged to the Cambridge Union, where, as in the society of the same name at Oxford, the great topics of the day were discussed by men, many of whom afterward became famous statesmen and debaters in the Commons.
Young Murray, afterward Lord Mansfield, translated Sallust and Horace with ease; learned great part of them by heart; could converse fluently in Latin; wrote Latin prose correctly and idiomatically, and was specially distinguished at Westminster for his declamations. He translated every oration of Cicero into English and back again into Latin.
Fox can hardly have been supposed to have practised much in debating societies, as he entered the House of Commons when he was nineteen years old. But it is quite probably that he was drilled by translations from Latin and Greek into English; and in the House of Commons he had in early youth the advantage of the best debating society in the world. It is said that he read Latin and Greek as easily as he read English. He himself said that he gained his skill at the expense of the House, for he had sometimes tasked himself during the entire session to speak on every question that came up, whether he was interested in it or not, as a means of exercising and training his faculties. This is what made him, according to Burke, "rise by slow degrees to be the most brilliant and accomplished debater the world ever saw."
Sir Henry Bulwer's "Life of Palmerston" does not tell us whether he was trained by the habit of writing translations or in debating societies. But he was a very eager reader of the classics. There is little doubt, however, considering the habit of his contemporaries at Cambridge, and that he was ambitious for public life, and represented the University of Cambridge in Parliament just after he became twenty-one, that he belonged to a debating society and that he was drilled in English composition by translation from the classics.
Gladstone was a famous debater in the Oxford Union, as is well known, and was undoubtedly in the habit of writing translations from Greek and Latin, of which he was always so passionately fond. He says in his paper on Arthur Hallam that the Eton debating club known as the Society supplied the British Empire with four Prime Ministers in fourscore years.
The value of the practice of translation from Latin or Greek into English, in getting command of good English style, in my judgment, can hardly be stated too strongly. The explanation is not hard to find. You have in these two languages and especially in Latin, the best instrument for the most precise and most perfect expression of thought. The Latin prose of Tacitus and Cicero, the verse of Virgil and Horace, are like a Greek statue, or an Italian cameo--you have not only exquisite beauty, but also exquisite precision. You get the thought into your mind with the accuracy and precision of the words that express numbers in the multiplication table. Ten times one are ten--not ten and one one-millionth. Having got the idea into your mind with the precision, accuracy, and beauty of the Latin expression, you are to get its equivalent in English. Suppose you have knowledge of no language but your own. The thought comes to you in the mysterious way in which thoughts are born, and struggles for expression in apt words. If the phrase that occurs to you does not exactly fit the thought, you are almost certain, especially in speaking or rapid composition, to modify the thought to fit the phrase. Your sentence commands you, not you the sentence. The extemporary speaker never gets, or easily loses, the power of precise and accurate thinking or statement, and rarely attains a literary excellence which gives him immortality. But the conscientious translator has no such refuge. He is confronted by the inexorable original. He cannot evade or shirk. He must try and try and try again until he has got the exact thought expressed in its English equivalent. This is not enough. He must get an English expression if the resources of the language will furnish it, which will equal as near as may be the dignity and beauty of the original. He must not give you pewter for silver, or pinchbeck for gold, or mica for diamond. This practice will soon give him ready command of the great riches of his own noble English tongue. It will give a habitual nobility and beauty to his own style. The best word and phrase will come to him spontaneously when he speaks and thinks. The processes of thought itself will grow easier. The orator will get the affluence and abundance which characterize the great Italian artists of the Middle Ages, who astonish us as much by the amount and variety of their work as by its excellence.
The value of translation is very different from that of original written composition. Cicero says:
"Stilus optimus et praestantissimus dicendi effector ac magister."
Of this I am by no means sure. If you write rapidly you get the habit of careless composition. If you write slowly you get the habit of slow composition. Each of these is an injury to the style of the speaker. He cannot stop to correct or scratch out. Cicero himself in a later passage states his preference for translation. He says that at first he used to take a Latin author, Ennius or Gracchus, and get the meaning into his head, and then write it again. But he soon found that in that way if he used again the very words of his author he got no advantage, and if he used other language of his own, the author had already occupied the ground with the best expression, and he was left with the second best. So he gave up the practice and adopted instead that of translating from the Greek.
But to go back to what makes an orator. As I have said, his object is to excite the emotions which, being excited, will be most likely to impel his audience to think or act as he desires. He must never disgust them, he must never excite their contempt. He can use to great advantage the most varied learning, the profoundest philosophy, the most compelling logic. He must master the subject with which he has to deal, and he must have knowledge adequate to illustrate and adorn it. When every other faculty of the orator is acquired, it sometimes almost seems as if the voice were nine-tenths, and everything else but one-tenth, of the consummate orator. It is impossible to overrate the importance to his purpose of that matchless instrument, the human voice.
The most fastidious critic is by no means the best judge, seldom even a fairly good judge, of the public speaker. He is likely to be a stranger to the emotion which the orator inspires and excites. He is likely to fall into mistakes like that which Goldwin Smith makes about Patrick Henry. Mr. Smith ridicules Henry's speech and action and voice. The emotion which the great Virginian stirred in the breasts of his backwoodsmen seems very absurd to this cultured Englishman. The bowing and changes of countenance and gesticulating of the orator seem to him like the cheapest acting. Yet to us who understand it, it does not seem that Patrick Henry in the old church at Richmond need yield the palm to Chatham in St. Stephen's Chapel, either for the grandeur of his theme or of his stage, or the sublimity of his eloquence.
Matthew Arnold had the best pair of intellectual eyes of our time. But he sometimes made a like mistake as a critic of poetry. He speaks slightingly of Emerson's Fourth of July Ode--
Oh tenderly the haughty day Fills his blue urn with fire; One morn is in the mighty heaven, And one in our desire.
What did the Englishman know of the Fourth of July emotion which stirred all Americans in the days when the country had just escaped destruction, and was entering upon its new career of freedom and of glory? What could he understand of that feeling, full of the morning and of the springtime, which heard the cannon boom and the bells ring, with stirring and quickened pulse, in those exultant days? Surely there never was a loftier stroke than that with which the New England poet interpreted to his countrymen the feeling of that joyous time--the feeling which is to waken again when the Fourth of July comes round on many anniversaries:
Oh tenderly the haughty day Fills his blue urn with fire; One morn is in the mighty heaven, And one in our desire.
It is often said that if a speech read well it is not a good speech. There may be some truth in it. The reader cannot, of course, get the impression which the speaker conveys by look and tone and gesture. He lacks that marvellous influence by which in a great assembly the emotion of every individual soul is multiplied by the emotion of every other. The reader can pause and dwell upon the thought. If there be a fallacy, he is not hurried away to something else before he can detect it. So, also, more careful and deliberate criticism will discover offences of style and taste which pass unheeded in a speech when uttered. But still the great oratoric triumphs of literature and history stand the test of reading in the closet, as well as of hearing in the assembly. Would not Mark Anthony's speech over the dead body of Caesar, had it been uttered, have moved the Roman populace as it moves the spectator when the play is acted, or the solitary reader in his closet? Does not Lord Chatham's "I rejoice that America has resisted" read well? Do not Sheridan's great perorations, and Burke's, in the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, read well? Does not "Liberty and Union, Now and Forever!" read well? Does not "Give me Liberty or Give me Death!" read well? Does not Fisher Ames's speech for the treaty read well? Do not Everett's finest passages read well?
There are examples of men of great original genius who have risen to lofty oratory on some great occasion who had not the advantage of familiarity with any great author. But they are not only few in number, but the occasions are few when they have risen to a great height. In general the orator, whether at the Bar, or in the pulpit, or in public life, who is to meet adequately the many demands upon his resources, must get familiarity with the images and illustrations he wants, and the resources of a fitting diction, by soaking his mind in some great authors which will alike satisfy and stimulate his imagination, and supply him with a lofty expression. Of these I suppose the best are, by common consent, the Bible, Shakespeare, and Milton. It is a maxim that the pupil who wishes to acquire a pure and simple style should give his days and nights to Addison. But there is a lack of strength and vigor in Addison, which perhaps prevents his being the best model for the advocate in the court-house or the champion in a political debate. I should rather, for myself, recommend Robert South to the student. If the speaker, whose thought have weight and vigor in it, can say it as South would have said it, he may be quite sure that his weighty meaning will be expressed alike to the mind of the people and the apprehension of his antagonist.
There is one great difference between the condition of the American orator and that of the orator of antiquity. The speaker, in the old time, addressed an audience about to act instantly upon the emotions or convictions he had himself caused. Or he spoke to a Judge who was to give no reason for his opinion. The sense of public responsibility scarcely existed in either. The speech itself perished with the occasion, unless, as in some few instances, the orator preserved it in manuscript for a curious posterity. Even then the best of them had discovered that not eloquence, but wisdom, is the power by which states grow and flourish.
"Omnia plena consiliorum, inania verborum.
"Quid est tam furiosum quam verborum vel optimorum atque ornatissimorum sonitus inanis nulla subjecta sententia nec scientia?"
Cicero's oratory is to excite his hearers, whether Judge or popular assembly, for the occasion. Not so in general with our orator. The auditor is ashamed of excitement. He takes the argument home with him: He sleeps on it. He reads it again in the newspaper report. He hears and reads the other side. He discusses with friends and antagonists. He feels the responsibility of his vote. He expects to have to justify it himself. Even the juryman hears the sober statement of the Judge, and talks the case over with his associates of the panel in the quiet seclusion of the jury-room. The Judge himself must state the reasons for his opinions, which are to be read by a learned and critical profession and by posterity. The speaker's argument must be sounded, and rung, and tested, and tried again and again, before the auditor acts upon it. Our people hear some great orators as they witness a play. The delight of taste, even intellectual gratification, caused by what is well said, is one thing. Conviction is quite another. The printing-press and the reporter, the consultation in the jury-room, the reflection in the Judge's chamber, the delay of the election to a day long after the speech, are protections against the mischief of mere oratory, which the ancients did not enjoy.
I heard a debate in the House of Commons in 1860, on the paper duties, in which Lord John Russell, Palmerston, Gladstone, and John Bright took part. Gladstone's part was not very prominent. I now remember little that he said. His image, as it then appeared, is effaced by his later appearance on a much greater occasion. Bright spoke admirably, both in manner and matter. He was an Independent, through giving general support to the measures of the Government, in which Palmerston and Lord Russell were the leaders. He complained bitterly of their acquiescence in what he thought the unconstitutional attitude of the House of Lords, in refusing to consent to the abolition of the paper duties, for which the House of Commons had voted. But the Government, though they had tried to abolish the duty, were very glad to hold on to the revenue. Bright had none of the English hesitation, and frequent punctuation of sentences with--"er"--"er"--which has led some one, speaking of English orators, to say that "to err" is human. He reminded me in general, in look, voice, and manner, of the late Richard H. Dana, although he sometimes threw more passion and zeal into his speech than Dana ever indulged. Periods followed each other in easy and rapid flow. He had a fine voice and delivery, easily filling the hall from his place below the gangway.
Palmerston, in his jaunty and off-hand way, rebuked Bright for desiring to make the House of Commons adopt a resolution which would only show its own helplessness. On the whole, he seemed to me to get the better of the debate. Bright could not persuade the House, or the people of England, to make a great constitutional question out of the paper duties, especially after the powerful speech of Lord Lyndhurst, who, then more than ninety years old, argued for the side of the Lords with a power that no other speaker on the subject rivalled.
I heard Gladstone again in 1871, when there was a great struggle between him and Disraeli over the Parliamentary and Municipal Elections Bill. I visited the House with Thomas Hughes, to whom I was indebted for much courtesy while in London, and had a seat on the floor just below the gallery, where a few strangers are, or were then, admitted by special card from the Speaker.
Bernal Osborne, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, Sir Stafford Northcote, Gladstone, and Disraeli took part in the debate. The bill was introduced by Mr. Gladstone's Government. The question that night was on a motion to strike out the provision for the secret ballot; so the opponents of the Government had to close in support of the motion. The report of Hansard purports to be in the first person. But I can testify from memory that it is by no means verbally accurate. I have no doubt the speeches were taken down in short-hand. The phonetic system was then used. But the report seems to be about like those which our good short-hand reporters used to make before that invention. The speeches are well worth studying by a person who wishes to get an idea of the intellectual and literary quality of these champions. There is no great passage in any one of them. But the capacity and quality of power appear distinctly. Osborne was full of a shrewd and delightful wit, without the vitriolic flavor which often appears in the sarcasm of Disraeli. Gladstone showed his power of elevating the discussion to a lofty plane, which his opponent never reached, although Disraeli launched at him many a keen shaft from below. Mr. Hughes sat by me most of the night, and occasionally brought and introduced to me some eminent person whom he thought I would like to know.
The members of our National House of Representatives, however turbulent or disorderly, never would submit to the fashion of treating a speaker whom they do not want to hear which prevails in the House of Commons. When Mr. Gladstone got through, the night was far spent, and the House evidently wanted to hear Disraeli, then vote and go home. Mr. Plunket, a member for the University of Dublin, who seemed an intelligent and sensible man, rose, wishing to correct a statement of Mr. Gladstone's, which he thought had done him an injustice. Disraeli rose about the same time, but bowed and gave way. The House did not like it. Poor Plunket's voice was drowned in the storm of shouts--"Sit down. Sit down. Dizzy, Dizzy," in which my friend, Mr. Hughes, although of Gladstone's party, joined at the top of his lungs. I think the Bedlam lasted five minutes. But Plunket stood his ground and made his correction.
Although Bernal Osborne was a man of great wit and sense, and Sir Stafford Northcote and Sir Michael Hicks-Beach were then, as the latter is now, very eminent characters, yet the only speakers who belonged to the rank of the great orators were Gladstone and Disraeli. I will not undertake to add another description of Gladstone to the many with which every reader of mine is thoroughly familiar. The late Dr. Bellows resembled him very nearly, both in his way of reasoning and his manner of speech. Persons who have heard Dr. Bellows at his best will not deem this comparison unworthy.
Gladstone was terribly in earnest. He began his speech by a compliment to Northcote, his opponent, for whom he had shown his esteem by sending him to the United States as one of the Joint High Commission to make the Alabama Treaty. But when Mr. Gladstone was well under way, Sir Stafford interposed a dissent from something he said by calling out "No, no"-- a very frequent practice in the House. Gladstone turned upon him savagely, with a tone of anger which I might almost call furious: "Can the gentleman tolerate no opinion but his own, that he interjects his audible contradiction into the middle of my sentence?" The House evidently did not like it. Hughes, who agreed with Gladstone, said to me: "What a pity it is that he cannot control his temper; that is his great fault."
There are no passages in this speech of Gladstone that can be cited as among the best examples of the great style of the orator. But there are several that give a good idea of his manner, and show something of the argument in two or three sentences: "I am not at all ashamed of having said, and I will say it again, that this is a choice of evils. I do not say that the proposal for a secret ballot is open to no objections whatever. I admit that open voting has its evils as well as its merits. One of these merits is that it enables a man to discharge a noble duty in the noblest possible manner. But what are its demerits? That by marking his vote you expose the voter to be tempted through his cupidity and through his fears. We propose, by secret voting, to greatly diminish the first of these, and we hope to take away the second. We do not believe that the disposition to bribe can operate with anything like its present force when the means of tracing the action of the man bribed are taken away, because men will not pay for that they do not know they will ever receive."
"I think it is too late for the honorable gentleman to say, 'We are passing through an experiment; wait for more experiment.'" "We have already been debating this subject for forty years; we have plenty of time on our hands; it is a Godsend to have anything to fill up our vacant hours; and therefore let us postpone the subject in order that it may be dealt with in future years."
The great quality of Gladstone, as of Sumner, is his profound seriousness. He makes the impression on his hearers, an impression made, but not so strongly, upon his readers, that the matter he is discussing is that upon which the foundations of heaven and earth rest.
It would be a great mistake to hold Disraeli cheap. He turned the tables upon Osborne, who had gone into several, what Disraeli called, archaeological details, with respect to the antiquity of the ballot, and had cited a proclamation of Charles I. prohibiting the ballot in all corporations, either in the city of London or elsewhere, which Disraeli said "was done with the admirable view of identifying the opinions of those who sit on this side of the House with the political sentiments of that monarch. But there was another assertion of the principle that the ballot should be open that the gentleman has not cited. That occurred in the most memorable Parliament that ever sat in England--the Long Parliament . . . . They wished it therefore to be exercised, not to satisfy the self-complacency of the individual, but with due respect for common-sense and the public opinion of the country, and influenced by all those doctrines and all that discipline of party which they believed to be one of the best securities for public liberty."
Gladstone showed in his speech the profounder reflection on the general subject, the more philosophy, and the intenser earnestness; Disraeli showed quickness of wit, a ready command of his resources, ability for subtle distinctions, and glimpses of his almost Satanic capacity for mocking and jeering. He describes Mr. Gladstone most felicitously as "inspired by a mixture of genius and vexation." He speaks of his majority as a "mechanical majority, a majority the result of heedlessness of thought on the part of members who were so full of other questions that they gave pledges in favor of the ballot without due consideration."
He said: "There is a celebrated river, which has been the subject of political interest of late, and with which we are all acquainted. It rolls its magnificent volume, clear and pellucid, in its course; but it never reaches the ocean; it sinks into mud and morass. And such will be the fate of this mechanical majority. The conscience of the country is against it. It is an old-fashioned political expedient; it is not adapted to the circumstances which we have to encounter in the present, and because it has no real foundation of truth or policy, it will meet with defeat and discomfiture."
Gladstone had, what is quite rare, and what no famous American orator that I now think of, except Choate and Evarts, have had--a tendency to diffuse and somewhat involved speech, and at the same time a gift of compact epigrammatic utterance on occasions. When Mr. Evarts, who was my near relative, and a man with whom I could take a liberty, came into the Senate, I said to him that we should have to amend the rules so that a motion to adjourn would be in order in the middle of a sentence; to which he replied that he knew of nobody in this country, who objected to long sentences, except the criminal classes.
Gladstone was the last of a school of oratory, and the last of our time--I hope not for all time--of a school of statesmen. When he entered upon a discussion in Parliament, or on the hustings, he elevated it to the highest possible plane. The discussion became alike one of the highest moral principles and the profoundest political philosophy. He seemed to be speaking as our statesmen of the Revolutionary time, and the time of framing our Constitution. He used to speak to all generations alike. What he had to say would have been true and apt and fit to be uttered in the earlier days of Athens and Rome, and true and apt and fit to be uttered for thousands of years to come. He had, in a large measure, a failing which all Englishmen have, and always had; the notion that what is good for England is good for humanity at large. Still it was a lofty morality and a lofty ideal statesmanship. It was sincere. What he said, that he believed. It came straight from his heart, and he kindled in the bosoms of his listeners the ardor of his own heart. He was not afraid of his ideals.
I heard Dr. Guthrie in Edinburgh in 1860. It was a hot day. My companion was just getting well from a dangerous attack of bleeding at the lungs. We made our way with difficulty into the crowded church. The people were, almost all of them, standing. We were obliged, by my friend's condition, to get out again before the sermon. I remember, however, the old man's attitude, and his prayer in the racy, broad Scotch, the most tender, pathetic and expressive language on earth for the deeper emotions as well as for humor. I wonder if my readers have ever seen the version of the Psalms--
"Frae Hebrew Intil Scottis," by P. Hately Waddell, LL.D., Minister, Edinburgh, 1891.
If not, and they will get it, a new delight is in store for them, and they will know something of the diction of Dr. Guthrie.
He once began a prayer, "O Lord, it is a braw thing to loe ye. But it is a better (bitter) thing to hate ye."
The beauty of this dialect is that while it is capable alike of such tenderness, and such lofty eloquence, and such exquisite and delicate humor, it is, like our Saxon, incapable of falsetto, or of little pomposities.
I heard Lyman Beecher, then a very old man, before a meeting of the members of the Massachusetts Legislature in 1852, when the measure known as the Maine Liquor Law was pending. He bore unmistakable marks of advanced age. But there were one or two passages that showed the power of the orator, one especially in which he described the beauty and delight of our homes, and intemperance threatening them with its waves like a great sea of fire.
I saw Henry Ward Beecher several times in private, and had pleasant talks with him. But I am sorry to say I never heard him speak, so far as I can now remember, on any occasion when he put forth his power. But if half that is told of his speeches, during the Civil War, some of them to hostile and angry audiences, be true, he was a consummate master. One story is told of him which I suppose is true, and, if it be true, ranks him as one of the greatest masters of his art that ever lived. It is said that he was speaking to a great crowd in Birmingham, or perhaps Liverpool, which constantly goaded him with hostile interruptions, so that he had great difficulty in getting on. At last one fellow provoked the cheers and applause of the audience by crying out--"Why didn't you put down the Rebellion in sixty days as you said you would?" Beecher paused a moment until they became still, in their eagerness to hear his reply, and then hurled back--"We should if they had been Englishmen." The fierce, untamed animal hesitated a moment between anger and admiration, and then the English love of fair play and pluck prevailed, and the crowd cheered him and let him go on.
But any man who reads Beecher's delightful "Letters from the White Mountains," or some of his sermons, and imagines his great frame, and far-sounding voice, will get a conception of his power to play on the feelings or men, of his humor, and pathos, and intense conviction, and rapidity in passing from one emotion to another, and will understand him.
I heard Rufus Choate a great many times. I heard nearly all the speeches given in Brown's Life; and I heard him a great many times at the Bar, both before juries and the full Court. He is the only advocate I ever heard who had the imperial power which would subdue an unwilling and hostile jury. His power over them seemed like the fascination of a bird by a snake. Of course, he couldn't do this with able Judges, although all Judges who listened to him would, I think, agree that he was as persuasive a reasoner as ever lived. But with inferior magistrates and juries, however intelligent, however determined they were in a made-up opinion, however on their guard against the charmer, he was almost irresistible. There are very few important cases recorded that Choate lost. Non supplex, sed magister aut dominus videretur esse judicum.
Choate's method was pure persuasion. He never appealed to base motives, nor tried to awake coarse prejudices or stormy passions. He indulged in no invective. His wit and sarcasm and ridicule amused the victim almost as much as it amused the bystander. He had the suaviloquentia which Cicero attributes to Cornelius. There was never a harsh note in his speech.
Latrantur enim jam quidam oratores, non loquuntur.
When he was confronted with some general rule, or some plain fact, he had a marvellous art of subtle distinction. He showed that his client, or witness, or proposition, belonged to a class of itself. He invested it with a distinct and intense personality. He held up his fact or his principle before the mind of the Court and the jury. He described and pictured it. He brought out in clear relief what distinguished it from any other fact or proposition whatever. If necessary, he would almost have made a jury, before he was through, think the Siamese twins did not look alike, and possibly that they never could have been born of the same parents.
He had a voice without any gruff or any shrill tones. It was like a sweet, yet powerful flute. He never strained it or seemed to exert it to its fullest capacity. I do not know any other public speaker whose style resembled his in the least. Perhaps Jeremy Taylor was his model, if he had any model. The phraseology with which he clothed some commonplace or mean thought or fact, when he was compelled to use commonplace arguments, or to tell some common story, kept his auditors ever alert and expectant. An Irishman, who had killed his wife, threw away the axe with which Choate claimed the deed was done, when he heard somebody coming. This, in Choate's language, was "the sudden and frantic ejaculation of the axe." Indeed his speech was a perpetual surprise. Whether you liked him or disliked him, you gave him your ears, erect and intent. He used manuscript a great deal, even in speaking to juries. When a trial was on, lasting days or weeks, he kept pen, ink, and paper at hand in his bedroom, and would often get up in the middle of the night to write down thoughts that came to him as he lay in bed. He was always careful to keep warm. It was said he prepared for a great jury argument by taking off eight great coats and drinking eight cups of green tea.
When I was a young lawyer in Worcester I had something to do before the Court sitting in the fourth story of the old stone court house in Boston. I finished my business and had just time to catch the train for home. As I came down the stairs I passed the door of the court-room where the United States Court was sitting. The thick wooden door was open, and the opening was closed by a door of thin leather stretched on a wooden frame. I pulled it open enough to look in, and there, within three feet of me, was Choate, addressing a jury in a case of marine insurance, where the defence was the unseaworthiness of the vessel. I had just time to hear this sentence, and shut the door and hurry to my train: "She went down the harbor, painted and perfidious--a coffin, but no ship."
I hear now, as if still in the eager throng, his speech in Faneuil Hall during the Mexican War. He demanded that we should bring back our soldiers to the line we claimed as our rightful boundary, and let Mexico go. He said we had done enough for glory, and that we had humiliated her enough.
"The Mexican maiden, as she sits with her lover among the orange-groves, will sing to her guitar the story of these times--'Ah, woe is me, Alhama,' for a thousand years to come."
Choate, like other good orators, and like some great poets, notably Wordsworth, created the taste which he satisfied. His dramatic action, his marvellous and strange vocabulary, his oriental imagination, his dressing the common and mean things of life with a poetic charm and romance, did not at once strike favorably the taste of his Yankee audiences. Webster and Everett seem to have appreciated him from the first. But he was, till he vindicated his title to be a great lawyer, rather a thorn in the flesh of Chief Justice Shaw, of whose consternation and amazement, caused by the strange figure that appeared in his court-room, many queer stories used to be told. But the young men and the people liked him.
"Non probantur haec senibus--saepe videbam cum invidentem tum etiam irascentem stomachantem Philippum--sed mirantur adulescentes multitudo movetur."
It was a curious sight to see on a jury twelve hard-headed and intelligent countrymen--farmers, town officers, trustees, men chosen by their neighbors to transact their important affairs--after an argument by some clear-headed lawyer for the defence, about some apparently not very doubtful transaction, who had brought them all to his way of thinking, and had warned them against the wiles of the charmer, when Choate rose to reply for the plaintiff--to see their look of confidence and disdain--"You needn't try your wiles upon me." The shoulder turned a little against the speaker--the averted eye--and then the change; first, the changed posture of the body; the slight opening of the mouth; then the look, first, of curiosity, and then of doubt, then of respect; the surrender of the eye to the eye of the great advocate; then the spell, the charm, the great enchantment--till at last, jury and audience were all swept away, and followed the conqueror captive in his triumphal march.
He gesticulated with his whole body. Wendell Phillips most irreverently as well as most unjustly compared him to a monkey in convulsions. His bowings down and straightening himself again were spoken of by another critic, not unfriendly, as opening and shutting like a jack-knife. His curly black hairs seemed each to have a separate life of its own. His eyes shone like coals of fire. There is a passage of Everett's which well describes Choate, and is also one of the very best examples of Everett, who, with all his fertility of original genius, borrowed so much, and so enriched and improved everything that he borrowed. Cicero said of Antonius:
"Omnia veniebant Antonio in mentem; eaque suo quaeque loco, ubi pluimum proficere et valere possent, ut ab imperatore equites pedites levis armatura, sic ab illo in maxume opportunis orationis partibus conlocabantur."
Now see what Everett does with this thought in his eulogy, spoken in Faneuil Hall, the week after Choate's death:
"He is sometimes satisfied, in concise epigrammatic clauses, to skirmish with his light troops, and drive in the enemy's outposts. It is only on fitting occasions, when great principles are to be vindicated, and solemn truths told, when some moral or political Waterloo or Solferino is to be fought, that he puts on the entire panoply of his gorgeous rhetoric. It is then that his majestic sentences swell to the dimensions of his majestic thought; then it is that we hear afar off the awful roar of his rifled ordnance; and when he has stormed the heights, and broken the centre, and trampled the squares, and turned the staggering wings of the adversary, that he sounds his imperial clarion along the whole line of battle, and moves forward with all his hosts, in one overwhelming charge."
One of the most remarkable advocates of my day was Sidney Bartlett. He seldom addressed juries, and almost never public assemblies. He was a partner of Chief Justice Shaw before 1830. He argued cases before the Supreme Court of the United States and before the Supreme Court of Massachusetts after he was ninety. He cared for no other audience. He had a marvellous compactness of speech, and a marvellous sagacity in seeing the turning-point of a great question. He found the place where the roads diverged, got the Court's face set in the right direction, and then stopped. He would argue in ten or fifteen minutes a point where some powerful antagonist like Curtis or Choate would take hours to reply. I once told him that his method of argument was to that of ordinary lawyers like logarithms to ordinary mathematics. He seemed pleased with the compliment, and said, "Yes, I know I argue over their heads. The Chief Justice told me he wished I would talk a little longer." I do not know that Bartlett ought to be reckoned among orators. But he had a great power of convincing, and giving his intellectual delight to minds capable of appreciating his profound and inexorable logic.
Edward Everett seems to me, on the whole, our best example of the orator, pure and simple. Webster was a great statesman, a great lawyer, a great advocate, a great public teacher. To all these his matchless oratory was but an instrument and incident.
Choate was a great winner of cases, and as relaxation he gave, in the brief vacations of an overworked professional life (he once defined a lawyer's vacation as the time after he has put a question to a witness while he is waiting for an answer), a few wonderful literary and historical addresses. He gave a brief period of brilliant but most unwilling service in each House of Congress. He made some powerful political speeches to popular audiences. But his heart was always in the court-house. No gambler ever hankered for the feverish delight of the gaming table as Choate did for that absorbing game, half chance, half skill, where twelve human dice must all turn up together one way, or there be no victory.
But Everett is always the orator. He was a clergyman a little while. He was a Greek professor a little while. He was a College President a little while. He was a Minister to England a little while. He was Representative in Congress and Senator. He was Governor of the Commonwealth. In these places he did good service enough to make a high reputation for any other man. Little of these things is remembered now. He was above all things--I am tempted to say, above all men--the foremost American orator in one class.
There is one function of the orator peculiar to our country, and almost unknown elsewhere. That is the giving utterance to the emotion of the people, whether of joy or sorrow, on the occasions when its soul is deeply stirred--when some great man dies, or there is a great victory or defeat, or some notable anniversary is celebrated. This office was filled by other men, on some few occasions by Daniel Webster himself, but by no man better than by Everett. A Town, or City, or State is very human. In sorrow it must utter its cry of pain; in victory, its note of triumph. As events pass, it must pronounce its judgement. Its constant purpose must be fixed and made more steadfast by expression. It must give voice to its love and its approbation and its condemnation. It must register the high and low water mark of its tide, its rising and its sinking in heat and cold. This office Edward Everett, for nearly fifty years, performed for Massachusetts and for the whole country. In his orations is preserved and recorded everything of the emotion of the great hours of our people's history. The camera of his delicate photography has preserved for future generations what passed in the soul of his own in the times that tried the souls of men.
I do not know where he got his exquisite elocution. He went abroad in his youth, and there were good trainers abroad, then. He must have studied thoroughly the speeches of Cicero and the Greek orators. Many casual phrases in his works, besides many quotations, show his familiarity with Cicero's writing on oratory.
If you would get some faint, far-off conception of him, first look at the best bust or picture of Everett you can find. Imagine the figure with its every movement gentle and graceful. The head and face are suggestive of Greek sculpture. This person sits on the platform with every expression discharged from the face, looking like a plaster image when the artist has just begun his model, before any character or intelligence has been put into it. You think him the only person in the audience who takes no interest whatever in what is going on, and certainly that he expects to have nothing to do with it himself. He is introduced. He comes forward quietly and gracefully. There is a slight smile of recognition of the welcoming applause. The opening sentences are spoken in a soft--I had almost said, a caressing voice, though still a little cold. I suppose it would be called a tenor voice. There was nothing in the least unmanly about Edward Everett. Yet if some woman had spoken in the same tones, you would have not thought them unwomanly.
Illa tamquam cycnea fuit divini hominis vox et oratio.
He has found somewhere in the vast storehouse of his knowledge a transaction exactly like the present, or exactly in contrast with it, or some sentiment of poet or orator which just fits the present occasion. If it be new to his audience, he adds to it a newer delight still by his matchless skill as a narrator-- a skill almost the rarest of all talents among public speakers. If it be commonplace and hackneyed he makes it fresh and pleasant by giving in detail the circumstances when it was first uttered, or describes some occasion when some orator has applied it before; or calls attention to its very triteness as giving it added authority. If he wish to express his agreement with the last speaker and "say ditto to Mr. Burke," he tells you when that was said, what was the occasion, and gives you the name of Mr. Kruger, who stood for the representation of Bristol with Burke.
Mr. Everett's stores were inexhaustible. If any speaker have to get ready in a hurry for a great occasion, let him look through the index of the four volumes of Everett's speeches, and he will find matter enough, not only to stimulate his own thought and set its currents running, but to illustrate and adorn what he will say.
But pretty soon the orator rises into a higher plane. Some lofty sentiment, some stirring incident, some patriotic emotion, some play of fancy or wit comes from the brain or heart of the speaker. The audience is hushed to silence. Perhaps a little mist begins to gather in their eyes. There is now an accent of emotion in the voice, though still soft and gentle. The Greek statue begins to move. There is life in the limbs. There has been a lamp kindled somewhere behind the clear and transparent blue eyes. The flexible muscles of the face have come to life now. Still there is no jar or disorder. The touch upon the nerves of the audience is like that of a gentle nurse. The atmosphere is that of a May morning. There is no perfume but that of roses and lilies. But still, gently at first, the warmer feelings are kindled in the hearts of the speaker and hearers. The frame of the speaker is transfigured. The trembling hands are lifted high in the air. The rich, sweet voice fills the vast audience chamber with its resonant tones. At last, the bugle, the trumpet, the imperial clarion rings out full and clear, and the vast audience is transported as to another world--I had almost said to a seventh heaven. Read the welcome to Lafayette or the close of the matchless eulogy on that illustrious object of the people's love. Read the close of the oration on Washington. Read the contrast of Washington and Marlborough. Read the beautiful passage where, just before the ocean cable was laid, the rich fancy of the speaker describes--
"The thoughts that we think up here on the earth's surface in the cheerful light of day--clothing ourselves with elemental sparks, and shooting with fiery speed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, from hemisphere to hemisphere, far down among the uncouth monsters that wallow in the nether seas, along the wreck-paved floor, thorough the oozy dungeons of the rayless deep; the last intelligence of the crops, whose dancing tassels will in a few months be coquetting with the west wind on those boundless prairies, flashing along the slimy decks of old sunken galleons, which have been rotting for ages; messages of friendship and love, from warm, living bosoms, burn over the cold green bones of men and women, whose hearts, once as fond as ours, burst as the eternal gulfs closed and roared over them, centuries ago."
Read the passage in the eulogy on Choate where he describes him arming himself in the entire panoply of his gorgeous rhetoric--and you will get some far-away conception of the power of this magician.
One thing especially distinguishes our modern orator from the writer in the closet, where he writes solely for his readers, or where he has prepared his speeches beforehand--that is, the influence of the audience upon him. There is nothing like it as a stimulant to every faculty, not only imagination, and fancy, and reason, but especially, as every experienced speaker knows, memory also. Everything needed seems to come out from the secret storehouses of the mind, even the things that have lain there forgotten, rusting and unused. Mr. Everett describes this in a masterly passage in his Life of Webster. Gladstone states it in a few fine sentences:
"The work of the orator, from its very inception," he says, "is inextricably mixed up with practice. It is cast in the mould offered to him by the mind of his hearers. It is an influence principally received from his audience (so to speak) in vapor, which he pours back upon them in a flood. The sympathy and concurrence of his time is, with his own mind, joint parent of his work. He cannot follow nor frame ideals; his choice is to be what his age would have him, what it requires in order to be moved by him, or else not to be at all."
I heard six of Kossuth's very best speeches. He was a marvellous orator. He seemed to have mastered the whole vocabulary of English speech, and to have a rare gift of choosing words that accurately expressed his meaning, and he used so to fashion his sentences that they were melodious and delightful to the ear. That is one great gift or oratory, as it is of poetry, or indeed of a good prose style. Why it is that two words or phrases which mean precisely the same thing to the intellect, have so different an effect on the emotions, no man can tell. To understand it, is to know the secret not only of reaching the heart, but frequently of convincing the understanding of man.
Kossuth made a great many speeches, sometimes five or six in a day. He could have had no preparation but the few minutes which he could snatch while waiting for dinner at some house where he was a guest, or late at night, after a hard day's work. But his speeches were gems. They were beautiful in substance and in manner. He was ready for every occasion. When the speaker who welcomed him at Roxbury told him that Roxbury contained no historic spot that would interest a stranger, Kossuth at once answered, "You forget that it is the birthplace of Warren." When old Josiah Quincy, then past eighty, said at a Legislative banquet that he had come to the time--"when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened, and they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way," Kossuth interrupted him, "Ah! but that was of ordinary men."
I was a member of the Legislature when Kossuth visited Boston. I heard his address to the House and to the Senate, his reply to the Governor's welcome. I heard him again at the Legislative banquet in Faneuil Hall, and twice in Worcester--on the Common in the afternoon, and at the City Hall in the evening. I shook hands with him and perhaps exchanged a word or two, but of that I have no memory. Afterward I visited him with my wife at Turin in 1892, when he was a few months past ninety. He received me with great cordiality. I spent two hours with him and his sister, Madam Ruttkay. They both expressed great pleasure with the visit, and Madam Ruttkay kissed Mrs. Hoar affectionately when we took leave. Kossuth's beautiful English periods were as beautiful as they were forty years before, at the time of his famous pilgrimage through the United States. His whole conversation related to the destiny of his beloved Hungary. He spoke with great dignity of his own share in the public events which affected his country. There was nothing of arrogance or vanity in his claim for himself, yet in speaking of Francis Joseph, he assumed unconsciously the tone of a superior. He maintained that constitutional liberty could never be permanent where two countries with separate legislatures were under one sovereign. He said the sovereign would always be able to use the military and civil power of one to accomplish his designs against the liberty of the other. The opinion of Kossuth on such a question is entitled to the greatest deference. But I incline to the belief that, while undoubtedly there may be great truth in the opinion, the spirit of liberty will overcome that danger. Hungary and Hungary's chief city seem rapidly to be asserting control in their own affairs and an influence in the Austro-Hungary Empire which no monarch will be able to withstand, and which it is quite likely the royal family will not desire to withstand. In these days monarchs are learning the love of liberty, and I believe in most cases to-day the reigning sovereigns of Europe are eager to promote constitutional government, and prefer the title of Liberator to that of Despot.
I have heard Wendell Phillips speak a great many times. I do not include him in this notice, because, if I did, I ought to defend my estimate of him at considerable length, and to justify it by ample quotation. I think him entitled to the very highest rank as an orator. I do not estimate his moral character highly. I think he exerted very little influence on his generation, and that the influence he did exert was in the main pernicious. I have had copied everything he said, from the time he made his first speech, so far as it is found in the newspapers, and have the volumes in which his speeches are collected. I never had occasion to complain of him on my own account. So far as I know and believe, he had the kindliest feeling for me until his death, and esteemed my public service much more highly than it deserved. But he bitterly and unjustly attacked men whom I loved and honored under circumstances which make it impossible for me to believe that his conduct was consistent with common honesty. He seemed never to care for the soundness of his opinion before he uttered it, or for the truth of the fact before he said it, if only he could produce a rhetorical effect. He seemed to like to defame men whom the people loved and honored. Toward the latter part of his life, he seemed to get desperate. If he failed to make an impression by argument, he took to invective. If vinegar would not answer he resorted to cayenne pepper. If that failed, he tried to throw vitriol in the eyes of the men whom he hated. His remedy for slavery was to destroy the country, and to leave the slave to the unchecked will of the South. During Lincoln's great trial, he attacked and vilified him. At the time when nearly every household in the North was mourning for its dead, he tried to persuade the people that Lincoln did not mean to put down the Rebellion. He never gave the people wise counsel, and rarely told them the honest truth. He rarely gave his homage to anybody. When he did, it was to bad men, and not to good men.
There can be no worse influence upon the youth of the Republic than that which shall induce them to approve sentiments, not because they are true, but only because they are eloquently said.
XXXVI. TRUSTS
I have given the best study I could to the grave evil of the accumulation in the country of vast fortunes in single hands, or of vast properties in the hands of great corporations-- popularly spoken of as trusts--whose powers are wielded by one, or a few persons. This is the most important question before the American people demanding solution in the immediate future. A great many remedies have been proposed, some with sincerity and some, I am afraid, merely for partisan ends. The difficulty is increased by the fact that many of the evils caused by trusts, or apprehended from them, can only be cured by the action of the States, but cannot be reached by Congress, which can only deal with international or interstate commerce. As long ago as 1890 the people were becoming alarmed about this matter. But the evil has increased rapidly during the last twelve years. It is said that one man in this country has acquired a fortune of more than a thousand million dollars by getting an advantage over other producers or dealers in a great necessary of life in the rates at which the railroads transport his goods to market.
In 1890 a bill was passed which was called the Sherman Act, for no other reason I can think of except that Mr. Sherman had nothing to do with framing it whatever. He introduced a bill and reported it from the Finance Committee providing that whenever a trust, as it was called, dealt with an article protected by the tariff, the article should be put on the free list. This was a crude, imperfect, and unjust provision. It let in goods made abroad by a foreign trust to compete with the honest domestic manufacturer. If there happened to be an industry employing thousands or hundreds of thousands of workmen, in which thousands of millions of American capital was invested, and a few persons got up a trust--perhaps importers, for the very purpose of breaking down the American manufacturer-- and made the article to a very small extent, all honest manufacturers would be deprived of their protection.
Mr. Sherman's bill found little favor with the Senate. It was referred to the Judiciary Committee of which I was then a member. I drew as an amendment the present bill which I presented to the Committee. There was a good deal of opposition to it in the Committee. Nearly every member had a plan of his own. But at last the Committee came to my view and reported the law of 1890. The House disagreed to our bill and the matter went to a Conference Committee, of which Mr. Edmunds, the Chairman of the Committee, and I, as the member of the Committee who was the author of the bill, were members. The House finally came to our view.
It was expected that the Court, in administering that law, would confine its operation to cases which are contrary to the policy of the law, treating the words "agreements in restraint of trade," as having a technical meaning, such as they are supposed to have in England. The Supreme Court of the United States went in this particular farther than was expected. In one case it held that "the bill comprehended every scheme that might be devised to restrain trade or commerce among the several States or with foreign nations." From this opinion several of the Court, including Mr. Justice Gray, dissented. It has not been carried to its full extent since, and I think will never be held to prohibit the lawful and harmless combinations which have been permitted in this country and in England without complaint, like contracts of partnership which are usually considered harmless. We thought it was best to use this general phrase which, as we thought, had an accepted and well-known meaning in the English law, and then after it had been construed by the Court, and a body of decisions had grown up under the law, Congress would be able to make such further amendments as might be found by experience necessary.
The statute has worked very well indeed, although the Court by one majority and against the very earnest and emphatic dissent of some of its greatest lawyers, declined to give a technical meaning to the phrase, "in restraint of trade." But the operation of the statute has been healthy. The Attorney- General has recently given an account of suits in equity by which he had destroyed a good many vast combinations, including a combination of the six largest meat-packing concerns in the country; a combination of railroads which had been restrained from making any rebate or granting any preference whatever to any shipper; and a pooling arrangement between the Southern railroads which denied the right of the shippers interested in the cotton product in the South to prescribe the route over which their goods should pass. He has also brought a suit in equity to prevent the operation of a proposed merger of sundry transcontinental railroads, thereby breaking up a monopoly which affected the whole freight and passenger traffic of the Northwest.
The public uneasiness, however, still continued. The matter was very much discussed in the campaign for electing members of the House of Representatives in the autumn of 1902.
I made two or three careful speeches on the subject in Massachusetts, in which I pointed out that the existing law, in general, was likely to be sufficient. I claimed, however, further, that Congress had, in my opinion, the power of controlling the whole matter, by reason of its right to prescribe terms on which any corporation, created by State authority or its own, should engage in interstate or international commerce. It might provide as a condition for such traffic by a corporation, that its officers or members should put on file an obligation to be personally liable for the debts of the concern in case the conditions prescribed by Congress were not complied with.
The House of Representatives passed a very stringent bill known as the Littlefield Bill, which was amended by the Judiciary Committee, of which I was the Chairman, by adding the provisions of a bill which I had, myself, previously introduced, based on the suggestions above stated.
But there was a general feeling that the amendments to the existing law proposed by the Administration were all that should be made at present. These consisted in providing severe penalties for granting rebates by railroads to favored shippers; for having suits under the existing law brought forward for prompt decision, and for giving the new Department of Commerce large powers for the examination of the conduct of the business of such corporations, and to compel them to make such returns as should be thought desirable.
I should have preferred to have the bill I reported brought forward and discussed in the Senate, although there was obviously no time, with the pressure of other business, to get it through. But it was thought best by a majority of the Republicans not to take it up. Some of them thought it was likely, if passed, to have a very serious and perhaps disastrous effect on the country. So far as I know, nobody in either House of Congress or in the press has pointed out why such a result would be likely to follow.
On the whole I was very well satisfied. The interests concerned are vast. A rash or unskilful remedy might bring infinite trouble or ruin to lawful business. The work of restraining the trusts is going on very well under the law of 1890. It is a matter which must be discussed and considered by the American people for a great many years to come, and the evils from the trusts at present are rather in anticipation than in reality. So I am very well content, for the present, with what has been accomplished.
XXXVII. RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WORCESTER BAR
The Worcester Bar, when I came to it, was much like a class of boys in college. There was rivalry and sharp practice in some cases, and roughness of speech toward each other and toward witnesses and parties. But in the main, the lawyers stood by one another and were ready to help each other in trouble, and the lawyer's best and most trustworthy friends were his associates. The Judge and the jurymen, and the lawyers from out of town used to come into Worcester and stay at the old Sykes or Thomas Tavern, opposite the court-house, and at another one known as the United States Hotel, further south. The former was kept for a good many years by an old fellow named Sykes. He was a singular-looking person--a large head, stout body, rather protuberant belly, and short curved legs and very long arms. He had large heavy eyebrows, a wide mouth and a curved nose and sallow complexion looking a good deal like the caricatures of the Jewish countenance in the comic newspapers. He had two sons who looked very much like him and seemed about as old as their father. One day the three were standing in front of his tavern when a countryman came along who undertook to stop with his load at the front door of the tavern. Sykes was standing there with his two sons, one on each side of him. He did not like to have the countryman stop his load in that spot and called out to him rather roughly, "Move along." The fellow surveyed the group for a moment with an amused look and complied with the order, but shouted out to the old man: "Wal, this is the fust time I ever saw three Jacks of Spades in one pack."
The Court sat till six o'clock and often far into the evening, and began at half-past eight or nine. So there was no chance for the country lawyers to go home at night. There was great fun at these old taverns in the evening and at meal times. They insisted generally, like Mrs. Battles in whist, on the rigor of the game, and the lawyer had to look sharp after his pleadings or he found himself tripped up. The parties could not be witnesses, nor could any person interested in the result of the trial. So many a good case, and many a good defence failed for want of the legal evidence to make it out. But the whole Bar and the public seemed to take an interest in important trials. People came in from the country round with their covered wagons, simply for the pleasure of attending Court and seeing the champions contend with each other. The lawyers who were not engaged in the case were always ready to help those who were with advice and suggestion. It used to be expected that members of the Bar would be in the court-house hearing the trials even if they were not engaged in them. That was always an excuse for being absent from the office, and their clients sought them at the court-house for consultation. I cannot but think that the listening to the trial and argument of causes by skilful advocates was a better law school than any we have now, and that our young men, especially in the large cities, fail to become good advocates and to learn the art of putting in a case, and of examining and cross-examining witnesses, for want of a constant and faithful attendance on the courts.
In those old times, our old lawyers, if Charles Lamb had known them and should paint them, would make a set of portraits as interesting as his old Benchers of the Inner Temple. Old Calvin Willard, many years sheriff of Worcester, would have delighted Elia. He did not keep the wig or the queue or the small-clothes of our great-grandfathers, but he had their formal and ceremonial manners in perfection. It was like a great State ceremonial to meet him and shake hands with him. He paused for a moment, surveyed you carefully to be sure of the person, took a little time for reflection to be sure there was nothing in the act to compromise his dignity, and then slowly held out his hand. But the grasp was a warm one, and the ceremony and the hand-shake conveyed his cordial respect and warmth of regard. He always reminded me of the Englishman in Crabbe's "Tales" who, I think, may have been his kinsman.
The wish that Roman necks in one were found That he who formed the wish might deal the wound, This man had never heard. But of the kind Is the desire which rises in his mind. He'd have all English hands, for further he Cannot conceive extends our charity, All but his own, in one right hand to grow; And then what hearty shake would he bestow.
Mr. Willard was once counsel before a magistrate in a case in which he took much interest. A rough, coarse country lawyer was on the other side. When Willard stated some legal proposition, his adversary said: "I will bet you five dollars that ain't law." "Sir," said Mr. Willard, drawing himself up to his full height, with the great solemnity of tone of which he was master: "Sir, I do not permit myself to make the laws of my country the subject of a bet."
Another of the old characters who came down to my time from the older generation was Samuel M. Burnside. He was a man of considerable wealth and lived in a generous fashion, dispensing an ample hospitality at his handsome mansion, still standing in Worcester. He was a good black-letter lawyer, though without much gift of influencing juries or arguing questions of law to the Court. He was a good Latin scholar, very fond of Horace and Virgil, and used to be on the committees to examine the students at Harvard, rather disturbing the boys with his somewhat pedantic questioning. He was very nearsighted, and, it is said, once seized the tail of a cow which passed near him in the street and hurried forward, supposing some woman had gone by and said, "Madam, you are dropping your tippet."
One of the most interesting characters among the elders of the Worcester Bar was old Rejoice Newton. He was a man of excellent judgment, wisdom, integrity and law learning enough to make him a safe guide to his clients in their important transactions. He was a most prosaic person, without sentiment, without much knowledge of literature, and absolutely without humor. He was born in Northfield near the banks of the Connecticut River and preserved to the time of his death his love of rural scenes and of farming. He had an excellent farm a mile or two out of town, where he spent all the time he could get from his professional duties. He was associated with Chief Justice Shaw in some important cases, and always thought that it was due to his recommendation that Governor Lincoln appointed the Chief Justice--a suggestion which Governor Lincoln used to repel with great indignation. The Governor was also a good farmer, especially proud of his cattle. Each of them liked to brag of their crops and especially of the produce of their respective dairies. Governor Lincoln was once discoursing to Devens and me, in our office, of a wonderful cow of his which, beside raising an enormous calf, had produced the cream for a great quantity of butter. Mr. Devens said: "Why, that beats Major Newton's cow, that gave for months at a time some fifteen or eighteen quarts at a milking." "If Brother Newton hears of my cow," said Governor Lincoln, "he will at once double the number of quarts." The old Major was quite fond of telling stories, of which the strong points were not apt to suffer in his narration. One Fourth of July, when he had got to be an old man, he came down street and met a brother member of the Bar, who took him up into the room of the Worcester Light Infantry, a Company of which the Major's deceased son had long ago been the Captain. The members of the Company were spending the Fourth with a bowl of punch and other refreshments. The Major was introduced and was received with great cordiality, and my friend left him there. The next day my friend was going down street and met the Captain of the Light Infantry, who said: "That was a very remarkable old gentleman you brought into our room yesterday. He stayed there all the forenoon, drinking punch and telling stories. He distinctly remembered General Washington. He went home to dinner, came back after dinner, drank some more punch, and remembered Christopher Columbus."
The old Major was once addressing the Supreme Court and maintained a doctrine which did not commend itself to Chief Justice Shaw. The Chief Justice interposed: "Brother Newton, what is the use of arguing that? We have held otherwise in such a case (citing it) and again and again since." The Major paused, drew his spectacles slowly off his nose, and said to the Court with great seriousness: "May it please your Honors, I have a great respect for the opinions of this Court, except in some very gross cases."
A man by the name of Lysander Spooner, whose misfortune it was to be a good deal in advance of his age, the author of a very clever pamphlet maintaining the unconstitutionality of slavery, also published some papers attacking the authenticity of Christian miracles. In these days of Bob Ingersoll such views would be met with entire toleration, but they shocked Major Newton exceedingly, as they did most persons of his time. Spooner studied for the Bar and applied to be admitted. He was able to pass an examination. But the Major, as amicus curiae, addressed the Court and insisted that Spooner was not a man of proper character, and affirmed in support of his assertion that he was the author of some blasphemous attacks on Christianity. The result was that Spooner's application was denied. The Court adjourned for dinner. It was the day of the calling of the docket, and just before the Judge came in in the afternoon, the whole Bar of Worcester County were assembled, filling the room. The Major sat in a seat near one of the doors. He had dined pretty heavily, the day was hot and the Major was sleepy. He tipped back a little in his chair, his head fell back between his shoulders and his mouth opened, with his nose pointed toward the zenith. Just then Spooner came in. As he passed by the Major, the temptation was irresistible. He seized the venerable nose of the old patriarch between his thumb and finger, and gave it a vigorous twist. The Major was awakened and sprang to his feet, and in a moment realized what had happened. He was, as may be well supposed, intensely indignant. No Major in the militia could submit to such an insult. He seized his chair and hurled it at the head of the offender, but missed, and the bystanders interposed before he was able to inflict the deserved punishment.
The Major lived to a good old age. His mental faculties became somewhat impaired before he died. He had great respect for his excellent son-in-law, Colonel Wetherell, who was on Governor Andrew's staff during the War, and thought that anything which ought to be accomplished could be accomplished by the influence of the Colonel. Somebody told him during the hardest part of the war that we ought to bend all our energies to the capture of Richmond. If Richmond were to fall the rebellion would be easily put down. "You are quite right, sir," said the Major. "It ought to be done, and I will speak to Colonel Wetherell about it." But everybody who knew the worthy Major, unless it were some offender against justice, or some person against whose wrong-doing he had been the shield and protector to a client, liked the kindly, honest and sturdy old man. He was District Attorney for the district which included Worcester County--an office then and ever since held by admirable lawyers. He prided himself on the fact that he never drew an indictment which was not sustained by the Court, if it were questioned. He liked to recite his old triumphs. He especially plumed himself on his sagacity in dealing with one case which came before him. A complaint was made of a book well known at that time, the memoirs of a dissolute woman, which was full of indecency, but in which there could not be found a single, separate indecent sentence or word. The Major was at a loss for some time what to do in indicting it. If he set forth the whole book, it would give it an immortality on the records of the court which perhaps would be worse for the public morals than the original publication. Finally he averred in the indictment that the defendant had published a book so indecent that it was unfit to be spread on the records of the court. The question went up to the Supreme Court and the indictment was held good. It was difficult for the Court or the jury to find that such a book was fit to be spread on the records of the Court, and the Major secured his victory and convicted his criminal.
One of the bright young lawyers who came to the Bar a few years after I did, was Appleton Dadmun. He died of consumption after a brief but very successful career. He was the very type and embodiment of the Yankee countryman in his excellencies and his defects and in his fashion of speech and behavior. He was a graduate of Amherst College. The only evidence I ever discovered of his classical education was his habit of using the Greek double negative in ordinary English speech. He used to employ me almost always as senior when he had a case to argue to a jury, or an important law argument in Court. He would put off the engagement until just as the case was coming on. He used to intend to try his cases himself. But his heart, at the last moment, would fail him. He was as anxious about his clients' cases as if they were his own. He was exceedingly negligent about his pleadings and negligent in the matter of being prepared with the necessary formal proofs of facts which were really not doubtful but which were put in issue by the pleadings. When I was retained my first duty was to prepare an amendment of the declaration or the answer or plea, or, perhaps, to see whether he had got the attesting witness to prove some signature. But when we had got past all that I used to find that he had prepared his evidence with reference to what was the pinch of the case of what was likely to be finally the doubtful point in the mind of court or jury with infinite sagacity and skill. I have rarely known a better judge of the effect of evidence on the mind of ordinary juries. He took his clients into his affection as if they had been his own brethren or children, and seemed always to hate to be compelled to make any charge for his services, however successful.
He had a pleasant wit. On one occasion a member of the bar named Holbrook, who was not a bad fellow, but had, like the rest of the world, some peccadilloes to repent of, came into the Court-house one morning just as the Court was coming in where the lawyers were gathered. Much excited, he said he was riding into Worcester in a chaise from the neighboring town where he spent his nights in the summer. His horse had run away and tore at a terrible rate down Main Street, swinging the chaise from one side to the other as he ran, and breaking some part of the harness and perhaps one of the shafts. But at last he had contrived to crawl out through the window behind in the chaise top and hold on to the cross-bar. Letting himself down just as the chaise had got to the extremity of its sway from one side to another, he let go and escaped without injury. But, he said, it was a terrible five minutes. Every action of his life seemed to rush through his memory with the swiftness of a torrent. "You ought to have very heavy damages, sir," said Mr. Dadmun.
Another of the brightest of the young lawyers when I came to the Bar was H. He had, however, had rather an unfortunate introduction to life. His father, who was a very wealthy and prosperous manufacturer, sent him to Yale College and supplied him liberally with money, not only for his support, but for the indulgence of every extravagant taste. Beside spending what his father allowed him, he incurred a good many debts, expecting to find no difficulty in their payment. His father failed in business with a great crash about the end of his junior year and died suddenly. He kept on, however, on credit, until he graduated and then came out with a heavy load of debt, and no resources for studying his profession. He got thorough, however, by dint of plausible manners. He was a very honest fellow in other respects, but he got the habit of incurring debts which he could not pay. Then he took to drinking hard, and finally went to New York, and died after a career of dissipation. But everybody liked him. Drunk or sober, he was the best company in the world, full of anecdote flavored with a shrewd and not ill-natured wit. There was a manufacturer in a village near Worcester who had failed in business owing large debts all about. He was a man of enormous bulk, the fattest man in the whole region round-about, weighing considerably over three hundred. He left the State to avoid his creditors, and dwelt in New York, keeping himself out of their reach. At last it was discovered by a creditor that he used to come to Worcester in the train which arrived from New York on the Western Railroad shortly before midnight Saturday, go over to his old home, which was not far off, stay there Sunday, when he was exempt from arrest, and take the cars Sunday night at about the same hour for New York. Accordingly old Jonathan Day, a veteran deputy-sheriff, armed with an execution, lay in wait for him one dark and stormy Saturday night at the little old wooden depot of the Western Railroad, some hundred or two feet from Grafton Street. The train came in, and the debtor got out. The old General laid his hands on him, and told him he was his prisoner. He protested and demurred and begged, making all manner of promises to pay the debt if the officer would not take him to jail. But Day was inexorable. Meantime the train had gone on, and the keeper of the depot had put out the lights and gone off. There was nobody left in the darkness but the officer and the debtor. "Well," said the fellow, "if you are going to take me to jail you must carry me. I won't walk." So he sat himself down on the platform. Day tried to persuade him to walk, and then tugged and tugged at his collar, but without the slightest effect. He might as well have tried to move a mountain. He waited in a good deal of perplexity, and at last he heard the rattle of wheels on Grafton Street, and gave a loud yell for assistance. The owner of the wagon came to the scene. General Day demanded his help as one of the posse comitatus. But it was as hard to the two to move the obstruction as it had been for the old General alone. So the General put the debtor in charge of his new recruit, and went off up street to see what counsel he could get in the matter. All the lights in the lawyers' offices and places of business were out except a solitary gleam which came from the office of my friend H. He was sitting up alone, soaking himself with the contents of a bottle of brandy. General Day found him sitting there and stated his case. My friend heard it through, took it into consideration, and took down and consulted the Revised Statutes and the Digest. At last he shook his head with an air of drunken gravity and said: "I don't find any express provision anywhere for such a case. So I think we must be governed by the rule of law for the case nearest like it we can find. That seems to be the case of the attachment of personal property, such as lumber, which is too bulky to be removed. My advice to you is to put a placard on him saying he is attached, and go off and leave him till Monday morning."
When I was a young man, one summer a few years after my admission to the Bar, I took a journey on foot with Horace Gray through Berkshire County. We started from Greenfield and walked over the Hoosac Mountain to Adams and Williamstown, then over the old road to Pittsfield, then to Stockbridge, Great Barrington, and the summit of Mt. Washington, now better known as Mt. Everett or Taghsomi; thence to Bashpish Falls in New York, and to the Salisbury Lakes in Connecticut. We visited many interesting places and enjoyed what has always seemed to me the most beautiful scenery on earth.
There were one or two quite ludicrous adventures. I went alone to the top of Bald Mountain in Lenox one day. Gray had been there and preferred to visit a neighboring hilltop. As I approached the summit, which was a bare pasture, I came upon a powerful bull with a herd of cattle near him. He began to bellow and paw the ground and move toward me in angry fashion. There was no chance for any place of refuge which I could hope to gain. I looked around for some rock or instrument of defence. It was, I think, the most imminent danger to which I have ever been exposed. I was calculating my capacity for dodging the creature when suddenly a sound like a small clap of thunder was heard. The rest of the herd, which seemed quite wild, seeing the approach of a stranger, had taken alarm and started off down the hillside on a full run, their rushing and trampling causing the earth to reverberate beneath their tread and produce the sound of which I have just spoken. The old bull hearing the sound and seeing his companions departing concluded he would follow their example. He turned tail too, and retreated down the mountain side, much to my relief.
On our walk through Lanesboro we stopped at a plain country tavern to get lunch. There were several codgers such as in those days used to haunt country bar-rooms about eleven o'clock in the morning and four o'clock in the afternoon. Sitting in an old wooden chair tilted back against the wall of the room was one of them curled up with his knees sticking up higher than his head. He looked at Gray's stately proportions and called out: "How tall are you?" Gray, who was always rather careful of his dignity, made some brief answer not intended to encourage familiarity. But the fellow persisted: "I would like to measure with you." Gray concluded it was best to enter into the humor of the occasion. So he stood up against the wall. The other man proceeded to draw himself up out of the chair, and unroll, and unroll, and unroll until at last his gigantic stature reached up almost as high as Gray's. But he fell short a little. I learned, later, that it was a man named Shaw who afterward became famous as a writer and humorist under the pseudonym of Josh Billings. He was the son of Henry Shaw, formerly of Lanesboro; at that time a millionaire dwelling in New York, and known to fame as one of the two Massachusetts Representatives who voted for the Missouri Compromise in 1820. Henry Shaw was, I believe, a native of Lanesboro, and had represented the Berkshire district in Congress.
The person whom the Worcester lawyers of this time like best to remember was Peter C. Bacon. He was the Dominie Sampson of the Worcester Bar. I suppose he was the most learned man we ever had in Worcester, and probably, in Massachusetts. He was simple and guileless as a child; of a most inflexible honesty, devoted to the interest of his clients, and an enthusiastic lover of the science of the law. When, in rare cases, he thoroughly believed in the righteousness of his case, he was irresistible. But in general he was full of doubts and hesitation. He was, until he was compelled to make his arguments more compact by the rules of court limiting the time of arguments, rather tedious. He liked to go out into side-paths and to discourse of matters not material to the issue but suggested to him as he went along. He had a curious fashion of using the ancient nomenclature of the Common law where it had passed out of the knowledge even of most lawyers and the comprehension of common men. He would begin his appeal to the jury in some case where a fraud had been attempted on his client, by saying, "Gentlemen, the law abhorreth covin." He was a lawyer everywhere. His world was the Court-house and his office. I met him in the street, of a Sunday noon, one summer and said to him, "Why, Brother Bacon, you must have had a long sermon to-day."
"Oh," Mr. Bacon said, "I stayed to the Sunday-school. I have a class of young girls. It's very interesting. I've got 'em as far as the Roman Civil Law."
Mr. Bacon could seldom be made angry by any incivility to himself. But he resented any attempt to deprive a client, however much of a n'er-do-well he might be, of all the rights and forms of a legal trial. He was also much disturbed if any lawyer opposed to him misstated a principle of law, who ought, in his judgment, to know better. I was once trying a case against him and his partner, Judge Aldrich, where General Devens was my associate. Devens was summing up the case, and complaining of the conduct of some parties interested in the estate of a deceased person. One of them was a son of a deceased niece. There being no children, under our law, the nephews and nieces inherit, but not the children of deceased nephews or nieces, when there are living nephews or nieces. General Devens, not having in his mind the legal provision at the moment, said to the jury: "The sound of the earth on the coffin of the old lady had scarcely ceased when one of these heirs hurried to the probate office to get administration." Mr. Bacon rose and interrupted him with great emotion. "He is not an heir."
"I said," Mr. Devens repeated, "one of these heirs, Mr. A. F."
Bacon burst into tears and said again, with a broken voice: "He is not an heir, I say, he is not an heir."
I saw the point and whispered to Devens: "An assumed heir."
"Very well," Devens said, "an assumed heir, if my friend likes it better." Bacon replied with a "Humph" of contentment and satisfaction, and the matter subsided. As I was walking home from the court-house with Mr. Bacon afterward I expressed my regret at the occurrence and told him that General Devens had the greatest respect for him. Mr. Bacon replied: "He had no business to say it. Aldrich told me to tell him he had not read the 'Revised Statutes.' But I would not say such a thing as that, sir, about any man."
But Brother Bacon had the kindliest of hearts. It was impossible for him to bear malice or retain resentment against anybody. When I was a youngster I was once in a case where Bacon was on the other side. Charles Allen was my associate. It was a case which excited great public feeling. There were throngs of witnesses. It was tried in the middle of the terrific heats of one of the hottest summers ever known in Worcester. Allen, who had a power of stinging sarcasm which he much delighted to use, kept Bacon nervous and angry through the whole trial. At last, one afternoon, Bacon lost his patience. When the Court adjourned, he stood up on a little flight of steps on the outside of the Court-house and addressed the crowd, who were going out. He said: "Charles Allen has abused me all through this trial. He is always abusing me. He has abused me ever since I came to this Bar. I have said it before and I will say it again--he is a curious kind of a man." This utterance relieved Brother Bacon's wounded feelings and he never probably thought of the matter again.
One of the great events in Bacon's life was his receiving the degree of Doctor of Laws from Brown University, where he was graduated. This gave infinite satisfaction to his brethren of the Bar, who were all very fond of him. It was at once proposed, after the old Yankee fashion in the country when a man got a new hat or a new suit of clothes, that we should all go down to T.'s to "wet" it. T. was the proprietor of a house a few miles from Worcester, famous for cooking game and trout in the season, and not famous for a strict observance of the laws against the sale of liquor. There was a good deal of feeling about that among the temperance people of the town, although it was a most excellent, properly kept house in all other respects. But the prejudice against it of the strict teetotalers had occasioned some entirely unfounded scandal about its management in other matters. Mr. Bacon, when invited by the Bar to go as a guest, accepted the invitation, but stipulated that he should have provided for him a pint bottle of English ale. He said he was opposed, on principle, to drinking intoxicating liquors, but his doctors had ordered that he should drink a pint of ale every day with his dinner. That was provided. The Bar sat down to dinner at an early hour and the fun and frolic were kept up far into the small hours of the night. Brother Bacon was the subject of every speech and of every toast. He seemed to think it was necessary for him to reply to every speaker and toast. So he was kept on his legs a great part of the night. As he sipped his modest tumbler of ale, Brother Dewey, who sat next to him, would replenish it, when Mr. Bacon was not looking, from a bottle of champagne. So at least two quart bottles of champagne were passed into the unsuspecting Brother Bacon through that single pint of beer. When we broke up, the host came to ask us how we had enjoyed ourselves, and Mr. Bacon told him he would like to know where he got his English ale, which he thought was the best he had ever tasted in his life. It is the only instance that I know of in modern times of the repetition of the miracle of the widow's cruse.
Judge Thomas, then holding the Supreme Court at Worcester, wanted very much indeed to go down with the Bar, but he thought it would not quite do. The next morning, Mr. Bacon had to try a libel for adultery between two parties living in the town where the Bar had had their supper. He had had no chance to see his witnesses, who got into town just as the Court opened. So he had to put them on and examine them at a venture. The first one he called was a grave-looking citizen. Mr. Bacon asked him a good many questions, but could get no answer which tended to help his case, and at last he said, with some impatience: "Mr. Witness, can you tell me any single fact which tends to show that his man has committed adultery?"
"Well, all I know about it, Squire Bacon," replied the witness, "is that he's been seen at Charlie T.'s"--the inn where Bacon had had his supper the night before. There was an immense roar of laughter from the Bar, led by Judge Thomas, the ring of whose laugh could have been heard half way across the square.
Brother Bacon, though a modest and most kindly man, used to think he had a monopoly of the abstruser knowledge in regard to real property and real actions. It used sometimes to provoke him when he found a competent antagonist in cases involving such questions. There was a suit in which Bacon was for the demandant where a creditor had undertaken to levy an execution of property standing in a wife's name but claimed to have been conveyed to her in trust for the husband on consideration paid by him. In such cases, under the Massachusetts law, the land may be levied upon as the property of the debtor, notwithstanding the ostensible title is in another. The wife contested the facts. But after the bringing of the suit, the wife died, and the husband by her death became tenant by the courtesy. Of course his title as tenant by the courtesy was unaffected by the previous levy, and his wife's right to contest the demand devolved upon him. The husband and wife had both been made parties defendant to the suit under the Massachusetts practice. It would not do to let the creditor get judgment. Under the advice of Mr. Nelson, afterward Judge, one of the most learned and careful lawyers, the defendant pleaded a special non-tenure, and the case was reported to the full bench of the Supreme Court, where Mr. Bacon was employed for the plaintiff. The report inaccurately said that the defendant filed a disclaimer. Mr. Bacon made a very learned argument to show that upon the facts the disclaimer could not be supported, and was going on swimmingly, under full sail. Mr. Bacon said in his argument: "If he had pleaded non-tenure, I admit, your Honors, he would have been pretty well off." Whereupon Judge Hoar sent for the original papers, and looking at them read the plea, and said: "Isn't that a plea of non-tenure?" Mr. Bacon was obliged to admit that it was. The Chief Justice said: "Well, then, the tenant is in the condition which you describe as being pretty well off, isn't he, Brother Bacon?" Bacon answered with an angry and impatient "Humph." The Chief Justice said: "Are there any other objections to the plea, Brother Bacon?" "More than forty, your Honor," replied Bacon indignantly, "which I should state to you at a proper time." The Chief Justice said that that seemed to be the proper time. But Mr. Bacon sat down in high dudgeon, without further remark.
He was the kindliest of men, both to man and beast. I once was at a country tavern where Bacon and I were to dine. It was about the time of the session of the Supreme Court. I was sitting on the veranda of the hotel waiting for dinner to be ready, in the summer afternoon. Mr. Bacon took a little walk, and as he came along and was passing the porch, a puppy ran after him, came up behind, and seized his pantaloons in his teeth, making quite a rent in them. Bacon looked round and saw the mischief, and shook his finger at the poor dog. I am sure he had no idea that anybody of the human species was within hearing. The animal crouched down in great terror, expecting a beating. Mr. Bacon paused a moment with his uplifted finger, and addressed the cur. "Why do you try to bite me? Why do you tear my pantaloons? Do you think I can go through the Supreme Court without pantaloons?" With that he left the poor dog to the reproaches of his own conscience and took no further notice of the transaction.
I ought perhaps, as I have told this story at Brother Bacon's expense, to tell one at my own where he came out decidedly ahead. We were opposed in a real estate case where the other evidence of the title was pretty strong Bacon's way, but the ancient bounds seemed to agree with my client's theory. I addressed the jury with all the earnestness in my power in favor of the importance of maintaining the ancient landmarks, quoting the curse of the Scripture on him that removed them, and endeavored to make them see how much of the safety and security of property depended on sticking to them in spite of any amount of fallible human testimony. I thought I had made a good impression. When Brother Bacon came to reply, he told the jury about the Roman god Terminus who watched over boundaries, and after quite an eloquent description, he told the jury: "Brother Hoar always seems to me when he makes this argument, which I have heard a good many times before, to think he is the god Terminus, and that the protection of all our modern landmarks is in his exclusive province." The jury were very much amused. I have forgotten how the case was decided. But I should doubtless remember if it had been decided in my favor.
Quite late in life some of Mr. Bacon's clients, seeing that he was out of health, and grateful for his long, faithful and poorly paid service, made an arrangement to send him on a journey to Europe. He was gone a little more than a year, visiting England, France, Italy and Spain, and returning with new vigor for another ten years of hard work. His interest in Europe had come chiefly from the literature which he had read in his younger days. He was not very familiar with much English prose or poetry later than the time of Addison. In one of his first letters in London he announced with great satisfaction, "I have a room not far from the celebrated Westminster Abbey mentioned in the Spectator."
But Brother Bacon ought not to be remembered alone, or chiefly, for his eccentricities. He was a profound, accurate and able jurist. The great interests of clients were safe with him. To him the profession of the lawyer was a sacred office. I never think of him without recalling Cicero's beautiful description in the "De Oratore" of the old age of the great lawyer:
Quit est enim praeclarius quam honoribus et republicae muneribus perfunctum senem posee suo jure dicere id quot apud Enium dicit ille Pythias Apollo, se esse eum, unde sibi, si no populi et reges, at onmnes sui cives consilium expetant;
suarum rerum incerti quos ego ope mea ex incertis certos compotesque consili dimitto ut ne res temere tractent turbidas.
Est enim sine dubio domus jurisconsulti totius oraculum civitatis.
Mr. Bacon lived to celebrate his golden wedding, and ended a stainless and honored life in a ripe old age, mourned by the whole community, of which he had been a pillar and an ornament. His portrait hangs in the Court House where he would have loved best to be remembered.
In my early days at the Worcester Bar there were a good many bright men, young and old, who had their offices in the country towns, but who tried a good many cases before juries. All the courts for the county in those days were held in Worcester. Among these country lawyers was old Nat Wood of Fitchburg, now a fine city; then a thriving country town. Mr. Wood had a great gift of story-telling, and he understood very well the character and ways of country farmers. He used to come down from Fitchburg at the beginning of the week, stop at the old Sykes Tavern where the jurymen and witnesses put up, spend the evening in the bar-room getting acquainted with the jurymen and telling them stories. So when he had a case to try, he was apt to have a very friendly tribunal. His enemies used to say that he always contrived to sleep with one juryman himself, and have his client sleep with another, when he had a case coming on. He was quite irritable and hasty, and would sometimes break out with great indignation at some fancied impropriety of the other side, without fully understanding what was going on. I was once examining a witness who had led rather a roving and vagabond life. I asked him where he had lived and he named seven different towns in each of which he had dwelt within a very short time. I observed: "Seven mighty cities claimed great Homer dead." Wood instantly sprang to his feet with great indignation. "Brother Hoar, I wish you would not put words into the witness's mouth."
Wood was a native of Stirling, a thinly settled country town near the foot of Mount Wachusett. The people of that town were nearly equally divided between the Unitarian and Universalist congregations. Each had its meeting house fronting on the public common or Green, as it was called. In the summer the farmers would come to meeting from distant parts of the town, bringing luncheon with them; have a short intermission after the morning service, and then have a second service in the afternoon. During the recess, in pleasant summer weather, the men of the two congregations would gather together on the Green, discussing the news of the town, and very often getting into theological controversies. In the winter, they gathered in the tavern or post-office in the same way. There was one Universalist champion who told the gathering that he would make any man admit the truth of Universalism in five minutes. He was a well known and doughty champion, and the Unitarians were rather loth to tackle him. But, one Sunday, Lawyer Wood came home to spend the day at his birthplace, and the Unitarians thought it was a good chance to encounter the Universalist champion. So they accepted his challenge and put Wood forward to meet him.
The Universalist theologian began: "You'll admit there is a God?"
"No, I'll be damned if I do," replied Wood.
The fellow was completely non-plussed. He had got to take up his five minutes in compelling Wood to admit the existence of a Creator. So he was obliged to retire from the field discomfited.
Another of our leaders at the Bar was Henry Chapin. He had made his way from a rather humble place in life to be one of the leaders of a very able Bar, Mayor of Worcester, and to hold a place of large influence in the various business, social, charitable and religious activities of the community. He was not specially learned, specially profound or specially eloquent. But he had a rare gift of seizing upon the thought which was uppermost in the minds of excellent and sensible men, country farmers, skilled workmen in the shops, business men, expressing it in a clear and vigorous way, always agreeing with the best sentiment of the people. This, with an unfailing courtesy and pleasant humor and integrity of character and life gave him great popularity. He was exceedingly happy in short speeches at dinners or at political meetings. He had a fund of entertaining anecdote which never seemed to fail. He was very careful not to seem dogmatic, or to assert himself too strongly. He would put forward his opinion with saying, "It strikes my mind," or "It has occurred to me," or "I thought perhaps it was possible," or "It is my impression." I remember once protesting before old Judge Byington against some objection which the counsel on the other side had made to a witness testifying to his impressions. I told the Judge that Brother Chapin never in his life stated anything more strongly. If you asked him if he were married, he would say it was his impression he was. The Judge said: "Well, we have a lawyer in Berkshire County who has the same habit. Only if you ask him if he is married it is his impression he isn't."
It is said that when he went to see the Siamese Twins, he observed to the exhibitor, "Brothers, I suppose." But I believe that story had been told before of one of the Royal Dukes.
Mr. Chapin was nominated by the Republicans for Congress and accepted and would have had a useful and distinguished public life. But he became alarmed by the opposition of the Know- Nothings and withdrew from the canvass much to the dissatisfaction of his political friends. That ended his political aspirations. But he was soon after appointed to the more congenial office of Judge of Probate, which he discharged to great public satisfaction until his lamented death.