Richard Henry Dana, jr. ... speeches in stirring times, and letters to a son

Prefatory Note

Those who have followed Mr. Dana as a sailor in his *' Two Years Before the Mast " may have a special interest in following him as a lawyer, publicist, statesman, and father in the Speeches and Letters.

In the Introductory Sketch and the Notes, I have freely stated what I thought, without reserve. I believe the facts will warrant all the statements; but I have not held back from saying what was in my mind or heart for fear of any bias I may have in writing of a much beloved father.

Let the reader, now that he is forewarned, forearm himself with as many grains of chloride of sodium as he desires.

R. H. D.

Contents

I. Introductory Sketch 1

II. Journal Entries of Conversations with "Uncle Edmund"; Pitt, Fox and Sheridan in Parliament. Washington's Laughter 64

III. The Bible in Schools 69

II Journal Entries Of Conversations With "uncle Edmund"

Edmund Trowbridge Dana. Born, 1779. Died, 1859. Harvard, 1799.

" He is the last of those who connected my youth with Europe and art, and the great men and great events of fifty years ago." (Journal of R. H. Dana, Jr., 1859.)

Called at Uncle Edmund's last evening [Dec. 6, 1851]. He was very entertaining. Talked about his friend Arthur Maynard Walter and their good times together in London. He said he hardly knew which Walter preferred, the Theatre or the House of Commons. He enjoyed a front seat in the gallery as much as in the pit, and rubbed his hands when the house filled as much as when the curtain rose. He described a debate he heard on the bill for a levy en masse, when Bonaparte was at Boulogne. Pitt, Fox, Sheridan, Canning, and Windham spoke. Fox, he said, had a long back, was corpulent, with a narrow upper part and wide lower part to his head, heavy -looking, but with fine eyes. His manner was entirely without graces, and his utterance very rapid, but he was full of illustration and very interesting. Pitt, he says, had a less original mind than Fox, and less variety, but his manner was very impressive, his voice full and melodious, his utterance slow and emphatic, with a certainty and copiousness of speech which made

CONVERSATIONS WITH UNCLE EDMUND 65

you perfectly certain that he would not fail or become embarrassed or confused. His arrangement was methodical, and he made every subject clear. His moral character gave him great weight, and he was considered independent and disinterested. Sheridan looked and acted like a theatrical manager, full of flourish and graces. He was particularly severe on the late administration (Pitt's, for Addington was then premier), and Pitt replied. Sheridan had not spoken for a long time, and Pitt congratulated him on his recovery of his speech, and said he had been bottled up so long that he came out with a bounce. The next day there was a caricature, entitled "Uncorking Sherry," representing Pitt in a wine vault, each bottle being a likeness of a member, and Pitt with a towel and a bottle under his arm, drawing the cork, the bottle being Sheridan.

Sir William Pulteney, who was then a very old man and the largest landholder in England except the Duke of Bedford, attacked Pitt's administration, and said he had wasted the public money, that the war was wrong, and our allies had taken our money and deserted us. Pitt replied: "I may have spent the public money unfortunately, possibly unwisely, but not corruptly or selfishly. The men who sustained that war did it for the public good, not for personal profit." And pointing his long finger at Sir William, said, "I — never — elbowed — a — tenth — Scotch — cousin into office," etc., etc. Sir William arose in a rage and made a furious, incoherent reply.

Canning had lately been married, and spoke in a white waistcoat and new buckskin gloves. Uncle E. said he saw the dust fly from them as Canning struck his hands together as he arose and before he began.

Uncle E. was in the gallery when the famous interlude occurred that over-set the gravity of all but the solemn Speaker. There was a long interval of silence, with nothing whatever to do, while the House was awaiting some report. It became tedious and rather embarrassing. At last, a man called out from the gallery, "Mr. Speaker! give us a song!" No one could fully appreciate this who did not know the preternatural gravity of Abbott and the intense dignity of the Speaker in those days. The whole house and galleries broke out with laughter, but the Speaker rapped and sent up the officers to arrest the delinquent. Uncle saw the man who did it, and when the officers came into the gallery, this man pointed towards a respectable, middle-aged Quaker, and the officers took the poor innocent out, neck and heels, and carried [him] before the grand assembly. He protested his innocence, and the mistake was so ludicrously apparent, that the House got into another fit of laughter, and the whole thing was dropped.

In a call on Uncle Edmund [Jan., 1854], he told me another anecdote of Washington, which he had from Grandfather. During the visit at Valley Forge, ^ at the time when the cider was produced, a New England gentleman at the table told a story which took the fancy of Washington mightily. He lay back in his chair, completely overcome with laughter, and spread his handkerchief over his face. In a few moments, he withdrew his kerchief, and appeared the

Hon. Francis Dana, grandfather of R. H. Dana, Jr., visited Washington at Valley Forge in 1779, having been appointed by the Continental Congress chairman of the committee on the conduct of the war, with instructions to proceed to Valley Forge and to report.

CONVERSATIONS WITH UNCLE EDMUND 67

grave man again; but in half an hour afterwards, this story suddenly came over him and he fell back in his chair again, fairly convulsed with laughter, and it was some time before he recovered his composure.

This is to be remembered, because it is wrongly said that Washington never laughed.

He also said that when he was in Virginia, in the Randolph family, he heard an anecdote of Marshall's visit to Mount Vernon. M. was an absent and rather negligent man. He was riding out to Mount Vernon with a party of gentlemen, on horseback, in the fashion of that day, with saddle-bags. When within a mile of the house, they alighted and opened their bags and made some change in their dress. Marshall, it seems, at the last tavern, had, in absence of mind, put over his horse's back the pair of saddle-bags that happened to be nearest to him, and had thus exchanged his for those of a plain farmer going to market; and when the other gentlemen took from their bags, coats, vests, and cravats, Marshall drew out two long squashes, a pumpkin, and some ears of corn. This threw the whole company into a fit of laughter. Just at this moment, Washington drove up, and saluted them, and inquired into the cause of the sport, and when they told him in broken language interrupted with bursts of laughter, pointing to Marshall and his bags, Washington got off his horse and leaned up against him, hardly able to stand for laughter.

Note. Substantially the latter story is told in the Life of Judge Jeremiah Smith, and repeated by Mr. Owen Wister in his "Seven Ages of Washington" (p. 94). There are some differences in detail. In the Life of Judge Smith, it is stated that it was a portmanteau instead of saddle-bags, that it belonged to a peddler instead of a farmer, and that Washington "rolled on the ground in his laughter" instead of leaned up against his horse. The story as it appears in Judge Smith's Life was told by the Hon. Joseph Lewis, for thirty years a member of Congress, and who was called by Jefferson "residuary legatee of federalism in Virginia," to Mr. Mason. Mr. Mason told it to Judge Smith, who told it to a lady, who in turn wrote it down the evening after, and years later gave this written account to Mr. Morrison, Judge Smith's biographer.

That the stories dififer in detail is good proof of substantial accuracy. Too much agreement in detail from different witnesses savors of "cooked-up" if not manufactured evidence, or at least as coming pretty directly from one common source. Note, for example, the differences in the accounts of the same incidents in the Gospels. The main point in these two accounts of this incident of Washington's life is that Washington laughed, and laughed uproariously, at Marshall's plight.

Ill

THE BIBLE IN SCHOOLS

[Mr. Dana's argument was in defense of a school committee of a Maine town, that had refused a child permission to attend the local public schools, on the ground that the child refused to be present when the English version of the Bible was being read. The father, a Roman Catholic, was a citizen of the town and a taxpayer, and he brought suit against the committee.

The defense was that members of a school committee were public officers, that the law and constitution of the State of Maine gave these officers discretion as to what should be read and studied in the schools under them, that the law was clear that "a public officer, exercising a discretion, judicial in its character, cast upon him by law, is not liable to private action for damages unless he acts in bad faith or from malice." Mr, Dana then maintained that, as the Bible had always been read in the public schools of Maine, as the teachers omitted those passages in the Bible in which the translation was contested by the Roman Catholics, and as there was no evidence of special bad faith or malice, the members of the school committee were not liable in damages to the father.

So much of the argument as regarded the constitution and statutes of Maine at the time (which have since been altered as to the reading of the Bible in the public schools), and the general doctrine maintained by Mr. Dana as to the personal liabihty of public officers, above stated, I have omitted, and include in this collection only the portion relating to the Bible itself. Mr. Dana suggested that the real remedy for the father, and others who agreed with him, was to appeal to the legislature to change the law, and not to the courts to get damages under existing law.

Mr. Dana's argument was pubUshed and widely distributed by religious societies, and attracted much attention in the press of the country at the time.]

It may be said that, in executing the power conferred on us by the statutes, we have gone to an unreasonable length, and so far violated the common rights of the plaintiffs, as to make our course unconstitutional. Not conceding that this question is open to the plaintiffs, I take pleasure in meeting it freely and frankly. This is, of all others, the point on which my clients, supported by a unanimous vote of the late town meeting at Ellsworth, desire to meet their opponents. I take the ground, then, that

[The Bible] has been used in the public schools of Maine since she has been a state, and while a part of Massachusetts, from the beginning. It is not required as an act of religious worship, nor is there any allegation or pretense that doctrinal passages have been selected, or that it has in any way been used as a means of conveying instructions or impressions favorable to the peculiar tenets of any sect or denomination of Christians, and unfavorable to those of others, or that the passages in which the two translations differ have ever been read in the school. The defendants do not put their case upon the ground that they, have a right to compel the reading of the Bible as a means of teaching the principles and facts of a revealed religion, in which many, as Jews, Mohommedans, and skeptics of all shades, do not believe; still less, the reading of this particular version, to which Roman Catholics, and other denominations of Christians, may object. The objection is to the use of the book at all. The Bible is a collection of books, sixty-six in number, the work of different writers, on various subjects, written at very remote

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periods of time, first called The Bible, The Book, by St. John Chrysostom at Constantinople, in the fifth century. In this collection there are portions historical, portions purely narrative, portions poetical and imaginative, portions conveying by precept and parable moral lessons. As to all these portions, there is no contest on the point of translation. Indeed, there are only some half-dozen places in the whole collection in which the Douay Bible makes a dogmatic and doctrinal issue with the common English Bible. And, forsooth, this entire book, the noblest monument of style, of thought, of beauty, of sublimity, of moral teaching, of pathetic narrative, the richest treasury of household words, of familiar phrases, of popular illustrations and associations, that any language has ever possessed, is not to be read in schools, because the parents differ in opinion as to the translation of Merai^oT/crare. The contested passages have never been, so far as appears, read in the school, but the entire book, the whole sixty-six books, narrative, parable, history, moral law, psalms and spiritual songs, prophecy, all are to be banished, because somewhere, in some epistle, in a place never read in school, "repent" is not rendered "do penance"! Need I ask your Honors if our act is unreasonable.'^ Is not the objection far more unreasonable.'*

What can these defendants do.'* They are obliged by law, they have no option, to see to it that the principles of morality and all the virtues shall be taught in the schools. They are to "take diligent care and exert their best endeavors " that these principles be impressed on the minds of the children and youth. The public-school system was intended to provide, as Chief Justice Shaw said, in Sherman v.

72 RICHARD IIKNUV DANA, MX.

(V/(?/7(>7()/r//, "a sysloni of moral Iraiiiiiig as well as soniiuarlos of loariiing." How can, principles of moralily bo taught oxcopt on the basis of religion? A systoiu o( morality, not t'omuled on religion, is not morality, but only an enlightened self-interest. AVhalely says that the maxim "honesty is the best policy" is a true maxim, bnt that he who acts upon that maxim (Hily, is not an honest man. So is it with what is called morality, divorced from religion.

Bnt our opponents may say that they do not object to the Hible, bnt to the translation. AVe cannot read the original in the seluH>ls. This is the common English Bible, which has always been used. It is not a *' Protestant Bible." Great portions of the translations w ere made by men in the bosom of the General Chnrch, before the Befin-mation, by AYicklitVe, Tyndale, Coverdale, and ALatthew. Testimony to its accuracy has been borne by learned men of the Ixoman Church. Leddes calls it "of all versions the most excellent for accuracy, fidelity and the strictest attention to the letter of the Text"; and Selden calls it "the best version in the world." As a well of pure English undefiled, as a fountain of pure idiomatic English, it has not its equal in the world. It was fortunately — may we not, without presumption, saj^ providentially — translated at a time when the English language was in its purest state. It has done more to anchor the English language in the state it then was, than all other books together. The fact that so many millions of each succeeding generation, in all parts of the w orld where the English language is used, rend the same great lessons in the same words, not only keeps the language anchored where it was in its best state, but it preserves its universality, and frees it from all material provincialLsms and j:)crfo^^, so that the same words, phrase.s, and idioms are used in Loudon, Xev, ^'ork, San I'raneiseo, Aiistralia, China, and India. 7'o preserv'e this unity and steadfastness, the Book of Common Prayer has done much, Shakespeare, Milton, and Bunyan have done much, but the English Bible has done tenfold more than they alL

From the common English Bible, too, we derive our household words, our pPirases and ilbistrations, the familiar speech of the ijeofjle. Our associations are with its narratives, its parables, its histories and its biographies. If a man knew the Bible in its original Greek and Hebrew by heart, and did not know the common English version, he would be ignorant of the s-i>eech of the people. In sermons, in public .speeches, from the p»ulpit, the ?jar, and the jjlatform, would come allusions, references, quotations, — that exquisite electrifying by conductors, by which the heart of a whole jjeople is touched by a word, a phrase, in itself nothing, but everj-thing in its power of conducting, — and all this would be to him an unknown world. No greater wrong, intellectually, could be inflicted on the children of a school, ay, even on the Roman Catholic children, than to bring them up in ignorance of the English Bible. As well might a master instruct his pupil in Latin, and send him to .sjjcnd his days annong scholars, and keep him in ignorance of the words of Virgil and Horace and Cicero and Terence and Tacitus. As a preparation for life, an acquaintance with the common English Bible is indispensable.

The Douay Bible, on the other hand, was translated on the Continent, by men of English origin, it is true, but who, banished from England by the Protestant persecutions, were not Englishmen in speech, in literature, in association, or in habit. The English ecclesiastics of the Roman Church, even to this day, in style and speech, as in habit and feeling, are un-English. Their literature, their training, their associations, are Continental. Much more so was it then, when England was closed against them. Their translation suffered accordingly. Where it does not agree with the common Bible, it is comparatively a piece of awkward, unidiomatic English. Even where its style may have been as good originally, the language has settled upon our basis, and not upon theirs. Even among Romanists themselves, it does not furnish the household words, the popular phrases, the illustrations and associations known to the people and cherished by their orators and scholars. One of those who has forsaken the communion of the English Church has expressed himself in deeply touching tones of lamentation over all which, in forsaking our translation, he feels himself to have forgotten and lost. These are his words : —

"Who will not say that the uncommon beauty and marvelous English of the Protestant Bible is not one of the great strongholds of heresy in this country.^ It lives on the ear, like a music that can never be forgotten, like the sound of church bells, which the convert hardly knows how he can forego. Its felicities often seem to be almost things rather than mere words. It is part of the national mind, and the anchor of national seriousness. . . . The memory of the dead passes into it. The potent traditions of childhood are stereotyped in its verses. The power of all the griefs and trials of a man is hidden beneath its

THE BIBLE IN SCHOOLS 75

words. It is the representative of his best moments, and all that there has been about him of soft and gentle, and pure and penitent and good, speaks to him forever out of his English Bible. ... It is his sacred thing, which doubt has never dimmed, and controversy never soiled. In the length and breadth of the land there is not a Protestant with one spark of religiousness about him, whose spiritual biographyis not in his Saxon Bible."

Throwing dogmatic theology out of the question, can any one doubt that the real question here is, not whether each child shall choose its version, but whether the Bible shall be read at alLf^ There are various translations. The Romanist thinks ixerapoeo} wrongly translated. The Unitarian thinks there are mistranslations and interpolations favoring the doctrine of the Trinity. The Baptist thinks that ^aTrrt^co should be translated iiiwieise. And all of these have their translations. But all have heretofore agreed that the common English Bible should be read in the schools. If one is to insist on his version, another will on his. Confusion and scandal will be introduced, and few school committees or teachers will trouble themselves to enforce such a motley system as that. Besides, if there is a conscience against reading a dangerous book, will there not be equally a conscience against hearing it read.^^ But if there is a conscience in the Papists against hearing ixerapoeco called "repent," will there not be a conscience in the Protestant against hearing it called "do penance".^ No, may it please your Honors, until a uniform translation can be agreed upon, carefully avoiding controverted passages, as we have done, the Bible will not be read in the schools at all. And I feel that I am pleading here, to-day, for the Bible in the schools, and not on any question of option or choice in translations. If the Bible is not read, where so well can *'the principles of morality and all the virtues" be taught?

"How infinitely superior," says Maurice, "is a gospel of facts to a gospel of notions!" How infinitely superior to abstract ethics are the teachings of the narratives and parables of the Bible ! What has ever taken such hold on the human heart, and so influenced human action! The story of Jacob and Esau, the unequaled narrative of Joseph and his brethren, Abraham and Isaac, the pathetic and romantic story of Saul, the death of Absalom, Naaman the Syrian, the old prophet, the wild, dramatic, poetical histories of Elijah and Elisha, the captivities of the Jews, the episode of Ruth, unsurpassed for simple beauty and pathos, and time would fail me to tell of Daniel, Isaiah, Samuel, Eli, and the glorious company of the apostles, the goodly fellowship of the prophets, and the noble army of martyrs! Where can a lesson of fraternity and equality be struck so deeply into the heart of a child as by the parable of Lazarus and Dives? How can the true nature and distinction of charity be better expounded than by the parables of the widow who cast her mite into the treasury, and the woman with the alabaster box of precious ointment? Can the prodigal son, the unjust steward, the lost sheep, ever be forgotten? Has not the narrative of the humble birth, the painful life, the ignominious death of Our Lord, wrought an effect on the world greater than any and all lives ever wrought before? — even on those who doubt the miracles, and do not believe in the Mystery of the Holy Incarnation, and the Glorious Resurrection and Ascension!

THE BIBLE IN SCHOOLS 77

Remember, too, we entreat you, that it is at the school alone, that many of these children can read or hear these noble teachings. If the Book is closed to them there, it is open to them nowhere else.

Nor would I omit to refer to the reading of the Bible as apart of the education of the fancy and imagination. Whatever slight may be thrown upon these faculties by men calling themselves practical men, they are powerful agents in the human system, which no man can neglect or abuse with impunity. Preoccupy, preoccupy the minds of the young with the tender, the beautiful, the rhythmical, the magnificent, the sublime, which God in his bounty, and wisdom too, has poured out so profusely into the minds of his evangelists and prophets! Nowhere can be found such varieties of the beautiful and sublime, the magnificent and simple, the tender and terrific. And all this is brought to our doors, and offered to our daily eye. If the mind of the youth, girl and boy, is not preoccupied by what is moral, virtuous, and religious, the world is ready to attack the fancy and imagination with all the splendors and seductions of sense and sin. Their minds will have food for the imagination and fancy, and if they are not led to the Psalms, and Isaiah, and Job, and the Apocalypse, and the narratives and parables, they will find it in Shelley, Byron, Rousseau, and George Sand, and the feebler and more debased novels of the modern press of France.

Following then the guidance of the statute, and acting in good faith, with no sectarian object alleged or offered to be proved against us, we trust we have made no unreasonable use of authority, in declining to remit the requirement of reading the common Bible.

IV

SPEECH ON THE JUDICIARY; MASSACHU- SETTS CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION OF 1853

[In the Biography of Mr. Dana, Mr. Adams says of the Constitutional Convention: "Among its members were many of the principal Massachusetts public characters of the time, including Charles Sumner, Rufus Choate, Henry L. Dawes, Robert Rantoul, Henry Wilson, Sidney Bartlett, Benjamin F, Butler, and both the Marcus Mortons, the father who had been governor, and the son who was subsequently chief justice. The convention was presided over by N. P. Banks. Though it was Dana's first appearance in a deliberative body, he at once came to the front. Indeed, there was no man in the convention who rose more rapidly or into greater prominence as a debater than did Dana."

This speech is the most celebrated of Mr. Dana's in the convention, and has been reprinted several times when the question of the appointment and tenure of judges has come up in other states. Of this speech, Rufus Choate, who was present and heard it, said, "It has been magnificent. It is philosophical, affecting, brilliant, logical, everything."

As matters stood then in Massachusetts, the judges w^ere appointed by the governor and council for life. The issue, as Mr. Dana puts it in his journal at the time, is as follows: "At the committee. Governor Morton, Chairman, reported it inexpedient to make any change in the appointment or tenure of judges. Wilson moved an amendment to limit the term to ten years, they being all nominated by the governor. Dr. Hooker moved to amend that by making them elective by the people for terms of seven years. On these together came the debate."

In the early days, all the judges of the thirteen states were appointed substantially in the same manner as in Massachusetts; but gradually in the fifties most of the states changed this method, usually with a view of " diminishing executive patronage." As it stands to-day (1910) in Massachusetts, Delaware, Maine, New Hampshire, and for the United States federal courts and the courts of the territories and the District of Columbia, as in England, all the judges are appointed by the chief executive. In Connecticut, Mississippi, and New Jersey, the judges of the highest court are appointed by the governor, — subject to confirmation by the senate in Mississippi and New Jersey, and by the legislature in Connecticut. In Rhode Island, South Carolina, Virginia and Vermont, the judges of the highest court are elected by the two houses of the legislature in joint convention. All other state judges are elected by the people. The terms of office vary from life-tenure in the federal courts, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, through periods varying from twenty-one years in Pennsylvania to two years in Vermont. The usual terms are six years for the highest courts and four years for the lower courts. Therefore, it is only in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and in the federal courts, that the judges are both appointed by the executive and hold oSice for life.^

The attempt to take the patronage out of the hands of the executive has only transferred the patronage to the party machines; so that in New York, for example, the judicial candidates are subject to large assessments for party purposes, usually equivalent to a whole year's salary, by the dominant party of the judicial district. ^ The state bar associations in many states, for example, in New York, have been active in suggesting nominations and courageous in openly opposing bad ones, and this alone has kept the bench as efficient as it is under the elective system.^

^ See Constitutions of the United States, Frederic J. Stimson (1908), book iii, section 654.

^ American Law Review, vol. xxii, p. 766.

' For examples of the subserviency of judges to the ruling powers in politics under an elective judiciary system, see "The Beast and the Jun-

The New York State Bar Association has a standing committee "On the Selection for Judicial Office " with representation from each of the nine judicial districts. In Pennsylvania, on the authority of the Hon. William H. Hornblower, of New York, when addressing the State Bar Association of Massachusetts, no judge can be nominated by the predominant party unless he is approved of by the great railroad of the state. After years of experimenting with other methods in other states, almost every eminent lawyer throughout the country says that the Massachusetts system, for which Mr. Dana spoke, is far the best.

Mr. Dana's speech had the effect of defeating the proposition of electing the judges; but the proposition for appointment by the governor and council for a term of years was adopted by the convention. It was this latter proposition which was the chief cause of attack on the Constitution proposed by the convention, and led to its defeat by a majority of about 6000 in a total popular vote of 125,000.]