We might find an argument against the “dead line” in such facts as the
following:
We make a great mistake in America when we lay our older men on
the shelf, while they are still in their prime as counselors.
Benjamin Franklin was sent to France as a minister when he was
seventy years old, and the best work he did for his country,
he did between his seventy-first and seventy-eighth years.
The State of New York had an absurd statute which removed
Chancellor Kent from the bench because he was sixty-five. After
that time he wrote and published his “Commentaries,” a book
recognized as one of the most important books in the study of
our jurisprudence. So much good did the country gain from one of
the frequent absurdities of New York legislation. In England,
Lord Palmerston and Mr. Gladstone are recent instances, well
remembered, of the force which statesmen gain, almost by the law
of geometrical progression, from their memory of the experiments
which fail, from what I call organic connection with the
national life of the last two generations.--EDWARD EVERETT
HALE, _The Chautauquan_.
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