Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker

“ A career is often fixed by the most trivial of occurrences. If any fact, no matter how comparatively unimportant it seemed, could be omitted from the past, the whole history of the world would be changed. If three hundred years ago a young man had not, upon a summer evening, gone out to the garden gate, George Washington would never have been born, and the colonies perhaps would have remained dependencies. If a Dutchman had lost instead of making a profit on a negro slave three hundred years ago there might have been no Battle at Gettysburg. ”

“ In fact, the doctrine of the liberty of the press is an anachronism which has become harmful and the time has come when it ought to be discarded from our constitutions and laws. Like monarchy and priestcraft, it once answered a good purpose. When kings secretly imprisoned and beheaded men who thwarted their purposes it was an agency for the welfare of the people. Those times have gone. The newspaper is now a venture to make a profit and everywhere it shows the results of the temptation to sell those wares that find a market — filth, scandal and crime. ”

“ He was a Quaker who, before going on to the bench by appointment of Governor Hartranft, had been in the war and had built up a large practice. He was the incarnation of good common sense. Nobody could be more helpful. He had a knack of getting the things of life, not for himself alone but for those in whom he was interested. Nobody knew better the effect upon an earnest advocate of the Socratian statement, “Perhaps I was wrong.” He has been deservedly successful in all directions, living a smooth and even life, gathering friends, money and repute and is now the chief justice. ”

“ Rumors are flying all over the state that great pressure is being brought to induce you to call the legislature in extra session. That you will not be led into such a cruel trap I feel most confident. No true friend of yours or of our party will advise, much less urge, you to commit such a crime against yourself or the state you love so well. Men who take shadows for substance, men who place self above their party, their state, and our nation, may for personal reasons want an extra session, but no true friend of Pennsylvania will ask you to commit such a blunder. ”

“ We appeal to him, if he live in Massachusetts, not to mistake for conscience the resentment he may feel for sharp words spoken years ago and which broadminded men have forgotten, and if he live in New York that he see to it that his conscience does not conceal his approval of certain English views upon the subject of political economy. We in Pennsylvania see no reason to strike at so distinguished and able a Republican. We perceive no merit and no wisdom in hurrying into an alliance which necessarily includes the most corrupt element in American politics. ”

“ The most discreditable feature in the administration of justice in Pennsylvania is the reckless abuse of the pardoning power by the Board of Pardons and especially its more or less open assumption to re-try questions of fact and of law after juries and courts have passed upon them in the due and regular course of law. I am more than pleased to have at last a governor who does not feel bound to acquiesce tamely in whatever recommendation that irresponsible board may make, but who examines and decides the cases for himself. ”

“ But there was one among them who, too proud and indifferent to enter into the contest, turned his back upon the sun and fastened his eyes upon the mountain tops of the far West where stood the hut in which he was born, and behold! when the sun rose its earliest rays glinted along these peaks and he was the man of destiny who first caught the light. It is a true story. Men never secure the great rewards of life through eagerness. ”

“ In presenting the impressive memorial to the United States, I said:
Six hundred survivors of the war which ended forty years ago, the commander-in-chief of the National Guard of Pennsylvania and his military staff, the major general commanding that Guard and his three brigadier generals have come a distance of one thousand miles to dedicate a memorial. What is its significance? “What mean ye by these stones?” It is true of nations, as it is of men, that they may rise on stepping stones of their dead selves to higher things. But the pathway is ever attended by indescribable sufferings. ”

“ How is it our independent friends cannot realize, that the average man in public affairs, is the same as the average man outside?
I have been acquainted with every governor of Pennsylvania since 1860. I have had a reasonable intimacy with the political intrigues of their administration, and their achievements, and I say, challenging contradiction, that yours, for its exclusion of politics and for things done, stands out in bold relief compared with them all. May the world come to know you as some of your friends do. ”

“ With all I have upon me just now in fighting the anti-vaccinationists, in trying to impress those in power with the importance and comprehensiveness of the responsibilities that you have placed upon me, and looking after the work of this department that comes in each day, I feel depressed and only arouse from such depression when I get my morning mail and read such comforting congratulations from my friends, and men like yourself, who have an intelligent and comprehensive knowledge of the work I have before me. ”

“ A few years later, as a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania, it was my fortune to aid in selecting him for a professorship in that institution. It was his hope to reach the Supreme Court of the United States, but in the very prime of life, while rugged as an oak, he died of typhoid fever. Since experience only comes with long exercise of the faculties, and since in a dull world time is required to gain an appreciation of merit, the gift of long life is one of the essentials of any real success. ”

“ But one step remains and that is the reductio ad absurdum of making a single person a corporation for profit. Most of such corporations now secure under our laws grants in perpetuity. There ought to be a reasonable time limit in every charter, say one hundred years, at the expiration of which the grant terminates so that some control may be maintained and the future not burdened with consequences which cannot be foreseen. The mountains shall sink into the sea, in time the sun shall disappear from the heavens, and no charter should purport to endure forever. ”

“ But I beg you will at least believe me sincere in my profound thanks, and that with the highest appreciation of all your intended kindness, I hope I may submit, without offense, how impossible it is for me to accept the honors which you propose and which you and others so bountifully mean to shower upon me.
I am, dear Governor, I assure you, under a mountain of obligation, and remain,
Most sincerely yours,⁠
Lloyd Mifflin.⁠ The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. ”

“ Wholly apart from the impossibility of being able to give the matter attention on account of lack of time, I seriously doubt the wisdom of a senator of the United States involving himself in responsibilities in respect to legislation in his state. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has all of the machinery of government, and all the brains and experience in the personnel of its government to deal wisely and with technical accuracy with its affairs. ”

“ There are entirely too many technical crimes and too much creation of crime by legislation. Every man who has some ends to serve and has sufficient influence goes to the assembly and gets the failure to do what he wants to have done enacted into a crime. To spit in a street car is an act of nastiness, to put catsup in a branded bottle is perhaps an infringement of right, to assist an ignorant man at the polls to perfect his ballot may affect the result of the election, the failure to pay customs duties to the Government may cause it inconvenience, but none of these constitutes a crime. ”

“ There is much filth and wastage in the world, but nature soon covers it up and conceals it from view. To give it undue prominence is, therefore, to be unnatural and in effect is much like the ostentatious array of pins. Even decent people have at times occasion to make use of a jordan, but they put it under the bed where the drapery hides it from sight. ”

“ I very much doubt the efficacy of the effort to prevent wrongdoing or to elevate the standards of life by punishment. I have scrutinized the faces of men in the dock, observed their conduct and listened to their stories, endeavoring to see whether I could find any line with which to separate them from those outside, and always in vain. Men are as they are born and as the hammering of life leaves them. Most of the misconduct comes from the incapacity to think accurately and properly to foresee consequences. ”

“ Don't dim the lustre of your splendid record, but go on pursuing the splendid good road you have built throughout the length and breadth of our great state, and when your term ends you will feel grateful to yourself and pleased with the real friends like myself who urge you to keep clear of the vicious trap set for you by men who pretend sincerity where only selfishness, greed and hypocrisy lurk. ”

“ Our Vice President, Wilson, once said to me, I think with the tears in his eyes, that since the Tweed scandal no public man in America was sure for ten days that the press of America would not undertake to break down his character forever. Wilson said that since the New York Times won distinction by exposing the Tweed scandals, every newspaper man in America thought he could make himself famous by exposing somebody. He referred at that time to the habit of ascribing the worst possible motive to every act of every public man, which seems to be engrained now in the management of the daily press. ”

“ The crush of the glaciers in their slow march and the roar when a mass of ice falls from the end, the streams of melted water galloping in a mad rush down the mountain sides and the horses standing knee-deep in the ice-cold torrent, because the natives regard it as good for their feet (they don't stand there themselves) , other streams pouring over precipices and disappearing in mist before they reach the ground, the vast masses of rock, stretching toward the skies with the whitened vales between, all held our attention and fixed themselves in our memories. ”

“ The State of Pennsylvania was a great commonwealth of over seven millions of people, twice as many as those presided over by Queen Elizabeth, William of Orange and George Washington. I approached the duties of governor with certain well-defined convictions to be regarded and certain lines of policy to be pursued. The governorship was a climax of a career attained, and not a stepping stone to something beyond. The efforts of men are always weakened when they have some other end in view apart from the object they are called upon to accomplish. ”

“ For the long line of distinguished men New England has produced, Pennsylvania has only to express her sincere appreciation and her emphatic approval. In all her efforts to ameliorate the condition of the human race and to advance the cause of literature and of science, Pennsylvania has had the warm support of the sons of New England. The American Philosophical Society, which was the first of our scientific institutions, has had in that blessed land many successors. ”

“ I became Governor of Pennyslvania because one grandfather earned and gave to me the money with which to read law, and the other grandfather, in obedience to family traditions, took into his home and provided for a helpless child. The deeds of virtue, as well as the sins of the fathers, are visited upon the children even unto the third and fourth generations. Consequently, if we wish to understand a man and his work, it is necessary to know how he came about and what there is back of him.
The people of Pennsylvania are more blended in race than those of any of the other American colonies. ”

“ Christianity, the most important influence in the development of man in the history of the world, is exemplified not by knights in armor and chariots, but by Him who was nailed to the cross, Who regenerated the sons of men, wearing not a helmet but a crown of thorns. When the early impressions of the war have in time become less vivid, a calm judgment will show that the valor of the soldiers on the field of Gettysburg was no more potent factor than the endurance best exhibited in the prison pens of Andersonville. The men who perished here have not died in vain. ”

“ In my practice I had made the common mistake of civil lawyers of not going into that court, not so much because of the feeling that it was unworthy practice as because of the fear that through some lack of skill on my part an innocent man might be deprived of life or liberty. The fear was for the most part unnecessary. Only in those cases affected by public clamor is there much danger of the punishment of innocence. As a general thing, when men begin a career of crime their first offenses are overlooked and forgiven. ”