DEATH OF WILLIAM B. GILES, OF VIRGINIA.
He also died under the presidency of General Jackson. He was one
of the eminent public men coming upon the stage of action with the
establishment of the new constitution--with the change from a League
to a Union; from the confederation to the unity of the States--and
was one of the most conspicuous in the early annals of our Congress.
He had that kind of speaking talent which is most effective in
legislative bodies, and which is so different from set-speaking.
He was a debater; and was considered by Mr. Randolph to be, in our
House of Representatives, what Charles Fox was admitted to be in
the British House of Commons: the most accomplished debater which
his country had ever seen. But their acquired advantages were very
different, and their schools of practice very opposite. Mr. Fox
perfected himself in the House, speaking on every subject; Mr. Giles
out of the House, talking to every body. Mr. Fox, a ripe scholar,
addicted to literature, and imbued with all the learning of all the
classics in all time; Mr. Giles neither read nor studied, but talked
incessantly with able men, rather debating with them all the while:
and drew from this source of information, and from the ready powers
of his mind, the ample means of speaking on every subject with the
fulness which the occasion required, the quickness which confounds
an adversary, and the effect which a lick in time always produces.
He had the kind of talent which was necessary to complete the
circle of all sorts of ability which sustained the administration
of Mr. Jefferson. Macon was wise, Randolph brilliant, Gallatin and
Madison able in argument; but Giles was the ready champion, always
ripe for the combat--always furnished with the ready change to meet
every bill. He was long a member of the House; then senator, and
governor; and died at an advanced age, like Patrick Henry, without
doing justice to his genius in the transmission of his labors to
posterity; because, like Henry, he had been deficient in education
and in reading. He was the intimate friend of all the eminent men of
his day, which sufficiently bespeaks him a gentleman of manners and
heart, as well as a statesman of head and tongue.