George Frisbie Hoar

“ Certainly there is nothing like England, and there never has been anything like England in the world. Her wonderful history, her wonderful literature, the beauty of her architecture, the historic and poetic associations which cluster about every street and river and mountain and valley, her vigorous life, the sweetness and beauty of her women, the superb manhood of her men, her navy, her gracious hospitality, her courage and her lofty pride—although some single race of people may have excelled here in a single particular—make up a combination never equalled in the world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I only say that it has been my supreme good fortune to be the son of a Commonwealth among whose noble and high-minded people a better and more fastidious habit has prevailed.
The lesson which I have learned in life, which is impressed on me daily, and more deeply as I grow old, is the lesson of Good Will and Good Hope. I believe that to-day is better than yesterday, and that to-morrow will be better than to- day. I believe that in spite of so many errors and wrongs and even crimes, my countrymen of all classes desire what is good, and not what is evil. ”

“ CHAPTER IV BOYHOOD IN CONCORD I have never got over being a boy. It does not seem likely that I ever shall. I have to-day, at the age of three score and sixteen, less sense of my own dignity than I had when at sixteen I walked for the first time into the College Chapel at Harvard, clad as the statute required, in a "black or black- mixed coat, with buttons of the same color," and the admiring world, with its eyes on the venerable freshman, seemed to me to be saying to itself, "Ecce caudam!" Behold the tail!
Most men are apt to exaggerate the merits of their birthplace. ”

“ The American people are fond of eloquent speech. They make their admiration known to the speaker in a way that is quite likely to turn his head. In Plato's day the bee Hymettus mingled with the discourse as it came forth. To-day the bee lights in his ear and fills his fancy with delightful dreams of a hive by the Potomac, thatched with flowers and redolent with the incense of flattery.
I do not doubt that if Salmon P. Chase had been elected President of the United States he would have administered that lofty office honorably and to the advantage of the country. ”

“ I do not concede for myself that truth is necessarily determined by majorities. I have a high respect for the people, but they do not change men's characters by their votes. But, be it so, let bygones be bygones. Let us concede that the career of our present governor as citizen and soldier and statesman furnishes a lofty example of every virtue under heaven. Let us admit that it was love of liberty that advocated the Fugitive Slave Law in the old Democratic days; that it was fidelity that was sent to Charleston, to vote for Douglas, and voted fifty-seven times for Jefferson Davis ”

“ Above all, the beautiful National Library building, unequalled among buildings of its class in the world, was in a large measure the result of his persistent effort and powerful influence, and stands as an enduring monument to his fame. There can be no more beautiful and enviable memorial to any man than a portrait upon the walls of a great college in the gallery where the figures and faces of its benefactors are collected. Mr. Morrill deserves this expression of honor and gratitude at the hands of at least one great institution of learning in every American State. ”

“ He pointed out the National strength, the power of our great Republic stands at the dawn of a new century, with every man under its flag a freeman and ready to defend it. He called upon his countrymen to stand by the Monroe Doctrine, to be ready to defend it, if need be, in arms. He then specially appealed to the people to foster the inventive genius of the country, and repeated Mr. Jefferson's lofty prophecy that in some future day—
"The farthest star in the heavens will bear the name of Washington, and the city he founded be the Capital of the universal Republic." ”

“ When Justin Morrill died, not only a great figure left the Senate Chamber—the image of the ancient virtue of New England— but an era in our national history came to an end. He knew in his youth the veterans of the Revolution and the generation who declared independence and framed the Constitution, as the young men who are coming to manhood to-day know the veterans who won our victories and the statesmen who conducted our policy in the Civil War. ”

“ The people of Massachusetts felt the most profound interest in the great conflict between slavery and freedom for the possession of the vast territory between the Mississippi and the Pacific. But almost every man in Massachusetts felt the Fugitive Slave Law as a personal dishonor. I think no great public calamity, not the death of Webster, not the death of Sumner, not the loss of great battles during the War, brought such a sense of gloom over the whole State as the surrender of Anthony Burns and of Sims. ”

“ Most of us are Protestants in religion. We are men of native birth. Yet if every Republican were to-day to fall in his place, as William McKinley has fallen, I believe our countrymen of the other party, in spite of what we deem their errors, would take the Republic and bear on the flag to liberty and glory. I believe if every Protestant were to be stricken down by a lightning-stroke, that our brethren of the Catholic faith would still carry on the Republic in the spirit of a true and liberal freedom. ”

“ Our Republic finds itself to- day assailed by a monster as dangerous, unpalpable, soft, horrible but strong—strong as hands of iron. The limbs of this monster of Corruption have seized upon our noble Republic, but at last there is a head coming in sight, and I think the Republicans of Massachusetts are able to bear the knife and strike the blow which will destroy its horrible life so that it shall fall powerless forever! ”

“ But it is as a soldier that his countrymen will remember him, and it is as a soldier that he would wish to be remembered. Whatever may be said by the philosopher, the moralist, or the preacher, the instincts of the greater portion of mankind will lead them to award the highest meed of admiration to the military character. Even when the most selfish of human passions, the love of power or the love of fame, is the stimulant of the soldier's career, he must at least be ready for the supreme sacrifice—the willingness to give his life, if need be, for the object he is pursuing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is as idle to attempt to make an ounce of silver worth as much as an ounce of gold by legislation, as it is to try to make one pound weigh two pounds, or one yard measure two yards. You cannot increase the price of a hat, or a coat, or a farm, by act of Congress. The value of every article, whether gold or silver, whether used as money or as merchandise, must depend upon the inexorable law of demand and supply. But you can, by legislation, compel the use of an article, which use will create a demand for it, and the demand will then increase its price. ”

“ Hope is that attribute of the soul which believes in the final triumph of righteousness. It has no place in a theology which believes in the final perdition of the larger number of mankind. Mighty Jonathan Edwards,—the only genius since Dante akin to Dante,—could you not see that, if your world exist where there is no hope and where there is no love, there can be no faith? Who can trust the promise of a God who has created a Universe and peopled it with fiends? ”

“ I want to call your attention to the remarkable change that has come over the spirit of the dream of the Republicans; to remind you, gentlemen of the North, that your slogans of the past—brotherhood of man and fatherhood of God—have gone glimmering down the ages. The brotherhood of man exists no longer, because you shoot negroes in Illinois, when they come in competition with your labor, and we shoot them in South Carolina, when they come in competition with us in the matter of elections. You do not love them any better than we do. ”

“ The memory of some of us goes back to the time when, all over the great free Northwest, the people seemed to have forgotten to what they owed their own prosperity. The Northwest had been the gift of Freedom to the Republic on her birthday. In each of her million homes dwells Liberty, a perpetual guest. But yet that people in Illinois and Michigan and Indiana and Ohio seemed for a time to have forgotten their own history, and to be unworthy of their fair and mighty heritage. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What royal house, what empire or monarchy, can show a catalogue like that of the men whom in every generation she has called to high places—Bradford, and Winthrop, and Sir Henry Vane, Leverett, and Sam Adams and John Adams and his illustrious son, and Cabot and Dexter, Webster and Everett and Sumner and Andrew. Nothing better can be said in praise of either than that they have been worthy of her, and she has been worthy of them. They have given her always brave and honest service, brave and honest counsel. ”

“ There has probably never been a man in our history upon whom so few people looked with indifference. He was born to be loved or hated. Nobody occupied a middle ground as to him. In addition to the striking qualities which caught the public eye, he was a man of profound knowledge of our political history, of a sure literary taste, and of great capacity as an orator. He studied and worked out for himself very abstruse questions, on which he formed his own opinions, usually with great sagacity. How far he was affected in his position by the desire for public favor I will not undertake to say. ”

“ He found good society enough always, if no other were at hand, in himself. He was many times called upon to espouse unpopular causes and unpopular doctrines. From the time when in his youth he devoted himself to the anti-slavery cause, then odious in the nostrils of his countrymen, to the time when in the last days of his life he raised his brave voice against a policy upon which the majority of his political associates seemed bent, he never yielded the conclusions of his own judgment or the dictates of his own conscience to any majority, to any party dictation, or to any public clamor. ”