short intervals, to the present time, I have been engaged in the public
councils, at home or abroad. Of the services rendered during that long
and arduous period of my life it does not become me to speak; history,
if she deign to notice me, and posterity, if the recollection of my
humble actions shall be transmitted to posterity, are the best, the
truest, and the most impartial judges.
I have not escaped the fate of other public men, nor failed to incur
censure and detraction of the bitterest, most unrelenting, and most
malignant character. But I have not meanwhile been unsustained.
Everywhere throughout the extent of this great continent I have had
cordial, warmhearted, faithful, and devoted friends, who have known me,
loved me, and appreciated my motives.
In the course of a long and arduous public service, especially during
the last eleven years in which I have held a seat in the Senate, from
the same ardor and enthusiasm of character, I have no doubt, in the
heat of debate, and in an honest endeavor to maintain my opinions
against adverse opinions alike honestly entertained, as to the best
course to be adopted for the public welfare, I may have often
inadvertently and unintentionally, in moments of excited debate, made
use of language that has been offensive, and susceptible of injurious
interpretation towards my brother Senators. If there be any here who
retain wounded feelings of injury or dissatisfaction produced on such
occasions, I beg to assure them that I now offer the most ample apology
for any departure on my part from the established rules of
parliamentary decorum and courtesy. On the other hand, I assure
Senators, one and all, without exception and without reserve, that I
retire from this chamber without carrying with me a single feeling of
resentment or dissatisfaction toward the Senate or any one of its
members.
In retiring, as I am about to do, forever, from the Senate, suffer me
to express my heartfelt wishes that all the great and patriotic objects
of the wise framers of our Constitution may be fulfilled; that the high
destiny designed for it may be fully answered; and that its
deliberations, now and hereafter, may eventuate in securing the
prosperity of our beloved country, in maintaining its rights and honor
abroad, and upholding its interests at home. I retire, I know, at a
period of infinite distress and embarrassment. I wish I could take my
leave of you under more favorable auspices; but, without meaning at
this time to say whether on any or on whom reproaches for the sad
condition of the country should fall, I appeal to the Senate and to the
world to bear testimony to my earnest and continued exertions to avert
it, and to the truth that no blame can justly attach to me.
May the most precious blessings of heaven rest upon the whole Senate
and each member of it, and may the labors of every one redound to the
benefit of the nation and the advancement of his own fame and renown.
And when you shall retire to the bosom of your constituents, may you
receive that most cheering and gratifying of all human rewards--their
cordial greeting of "Well done, good and faithful servant."
And now, Mr. President, and Senators, I bid you all a long, a lasting,
and a friendly farewell.
THE DEATH OF GARFIELD
From an address before both houses of Congress, February, 1882
BY JAMES G. BLAINE
Surely, if happiness can ever come from the honors or triumphs of this
world, on that quiet July morning James A. Garfield may well have been
a happy man. No foreboding of evil haunted him, no slightest
premonition of danger clouded his sky. His terrible fate was upon him
in an instant. One moment he stood erect, strong, confident in the
years stretching peacefully out before him. The next he lay wounded,
bleeding, helpless, doomed to weary weeks of torture, to silence and
the grave.
Great in life, he was surpassingly great in death. For no cause, in the
very frenzy of wantonness and wickedness, by the red hand of Murder he
was thrust from the full tide of this world's interest, from its hopes,
its aspirations, its victories, into the visible presence of death. And
he did not quail. Not alone for the one short moment in which, stunned
and dazed, he could give up life, hardly aware of its relinquishment,
but through days of deadly languor, through weeks of agony that was not
less agony because silently borne, with clear sight and calm courage he
looked into his open grave. What blight and ruin met his anguished eyes
whose lips may tell--what brilliant broken plans, what baffled high
ambitions, what sundering of strong, warm, manhood's friendships, what
bitter rending of sweet household ties! Behind him a proud, expectant
nation; a great host of sustaining friends; a cherished and happy
mother wearing the full, rich honors of her early toil and tears; the
wife of his youth, whose whole life lay in his; the little boys not yet
emerged from childhood's day of frolic; the fair young daughter; the
sturdy sons just springing into closest companionship, claiming every
day, and every day rewarding, a father's love and care; and in his
heart the eager, rejoicing power to meet all demand. Before him
desolation and great darkness! And his soul was not shaken. His
countrymen were thrilled with instant, profound, and universal
sympathy. Masterful in his mortal weakness, he became the center of a
nation's love, enshrined in the prayers of a world. But all the love
and all the sympathy could not share with him his suffering. He trod
the winepress alone. With unfaltering front he faced death. With
unfailing tenderness he took leave of life. Above the demoniac hiss of
the assassin's bullet he heard the voice of God. With simple
resignation he bowed to the divine decree.
As the end drew near, his early craving for the sea returned. The
stately mansion of power had been to him the wearisome hospital of
pain, and he begged to be taken from its prison walls, from its
oppressive, stifling air, from its homelessness and its hopelessness.
Gently, silently, the love of a great people bore the pale sufferer to
the longed-for healing of the sea, to live or to die, as God should
will, within sight of its heaving billows, within sound of its manifold
voices. With wan, fevered face tenderly lifted to the cooling breeze he
looked out wistfully upon the ocean's changing wonders--on its far
sails whitening in the morning light; on its restless waves rolling
shoreward to break and die beneath the noonday sun; on the red clouds
of evening arching low to the horizon; on the serene and shining
pathway of the stars. Let us think that his dying eyes read a mystic
meaning which only the rapt and parting soul may know. Let us believe
that in the silence of the receding world he heard the great waves
breaking on a farther shore, and felt already upon his wasted brow the
breath of the eternal morning.
THE SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS
Delivered from the steps of the Capitol at Washington, 1865.
BY ABRAHAM LINCOLN
FELLOW COUNTRYMEN,--At this second appearing to take the oath of the
Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than
there was at first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course
to be pursued seemed very fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of
four years, during which public declarations have been constantly
called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still
absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little
that is new could be presented.
The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as
well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably
satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no
prediction in regard to it is ventured.
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were
anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all
sought to avoid it. While the inaugural address was being delivered
from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war,
insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it with war--
seeking to dissolve the Union and divide the effects by negotiation.
Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than
let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let
it perish, and the war came. One eighth of the whole population were
colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized
in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and
powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of
the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the
object for which the insurgents would rend the Union by war, while the
Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial
enlargement of it.
Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which
it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the
conflict might cease when, or even before, the conflict itself should
cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental
and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God, and
each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any
men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread
from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be
not judged. The prayer of both could not be answered. That of neither
has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. Woe unto
the world because of offenses, for it must needs be that offenses come,
but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh. If we shall suppose
that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence
of God, must needs come, but which having continued through His
appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North
and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense
came, shall we discern there any departure from those divine attributes
which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we
hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may
speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the
wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of
unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with
the lash shall be repaid by another drawn with the sword, as was said
three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, that the judgments
of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the
right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are
in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have
borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans, to do all which
may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and
with all nations.
THE DEATH OF PRINCE ALBERT
From an address in the House of Commons, February, 1862
BY BENJAMIN DISRAELI
No person can be insensible to the fact that the House meets to-night
under circumstances very much changed from those which have attended
our assembling for many years. Of late years--indeed, for more than
twenty years past--whatever may have been our personal rivalries, and
whatever our party strife, there was at least one sentiment in which we
all coincided, and that was a sentiment of admiring gratitude to that
Throne whose wisdom and whose goodness had so often softened the
acerbities of our free public life, and had at all times so
majestically represented the matured intelligence of an enlightened
people.
Sir, all that is changed. He is gone who was "the comfort and support"
of that Throne. It has been said that there is nothing which England so
much appreciates as the fulfillment of duty. The Prince whom we have
lost not only was eminent for the fulfillment of duty, but it was the
fulfillment of the highest duty under the most difficult circumstances.
Prince Albert was the Consort of his Sovereign--he was the father of
one who might be his Sovereign--he was the Prime Councillor of a realm,
the political constitution of which did not even recognize his
political existence.
Sir, it is sometimes deplored by those who admired and loved him that
he was thwarted occasionally in his undertakings, and that he was not
duly appreciated. But these are not circumstances for regret, but for
congratulation. They prove the leading and original mind which has so
long and so advantageously labored for this country. Had he not
encountered these obstacles, had he not been subject to this occasional
distrust and misconception, it would only have shown that he was a man
of ordinary mold and temper. Those who improve must change, those who
change must necessarily disturb and alarm men's prejudices. What he had
to encounter was only a demonstration that he was a man superior to his
age, and therefore admirably adapted for the work of progress. There is
one other point, and one only, on which I will presume for a moment to
dwell, and it is not for the sake of you, Sir, or those who now hear
me, or of the generation to which we belong, but it is that those who
come after us may not misunderstand the nature of this illustrious man.
Prince Albert was not a mere patron; he was not one of those who by
their gold or by their smiles reward excellence or stimulate exertion.
His contributions to the cause of State were far more powerful and far
more precious. He gave to it his thought, his time, his toil; he gave
to it his life. On both sides and in all parts of the House I see many
gentlemen who occasionally have acted with the Prince at those council
boards where they conferred and consulted upon the great undertakings
with which he was connected. I ask them, without fear of a denial,
whether he was not the leading spirit, whether his was not the mind
which foresaw the difficulty, his not the resources that supplied the
remedy; whether his was not the courage which sustained them under
apparently overpowering difficulties; whether every one who worked with
him did not feel that he was the real originator of those plans of
improvement which they assisted in carrying into effect?
But what avail these words? This House to-night has been asked to
condole with the Crown upon this great calamity. No easy office. To
condole, in general, is the office of those who, without the pale of
sorrow, still feel for the sorrowing. But in this instance the country
is as heart-stricken as its Queen. Yet in the mutual sensibility of a
Sovereign and a people there is something ennobling--something which
elevates the spirit beyond the level of mere earthly sorrow. The
counties, the cities, the corporations of the realm--those illustrious
associations of learning and science and art and skill, of which he was
the brightest ornament and the inspiring spirit, have bowed before the
Throne. It does not become the Parliament of the country to be silent.
The expression of our feelings may be late, but even in that lateness
may be observed some propriety. To-night the two Houses sanction the
expression of the public sorrow, and ratify, as it were, the record of
a nation's woe.
AN APPRECIATION OF MR. GLADSTONE
From an address in the House of Commons
BY ARTHUR J. BALFOUR
I feel myself unequal even to dealing with what is, perhaps, more
strictly germane to this address--I mean, Mr. Gladstone as a
politician, as a Minister, as a leader of public thought, as an eminent
servant of the Queen; and if I venture to say anything, it is rather of
Mr. Gladstone, the greatest member of the greatest deliberative
assembly, which, so far, the world has seen.
Sir, I think it is the language of sober and unexaggerated truth to say
that there is no gift which would enable a man to move, to influence,
to adorn an assembly like this that Mr. Gladstone did not possess in a
supereminent degree. Debaters as ready there may have been, orators as
finished. It may have been given to others to sway as skillfully this
assembly, or to appeal with as much directness and force to the simpler
instincts of the great masses in the country; but, sir, it has been
given to no man to combine all these great gifts as they were combined
in the person of Mr. Gladstone. From the conversational discussion
appropriate to our work in committees, to the most sustained eloquence
befitting some great argument, and some great historic occasion, every
weapon of Parliamentary warfare was wielded by him with the success and
ease of a perfect, absolute, and complete mastery. I would not venture
myself to pronounce an opinion as to whether he was most excellent in
the exposition of a somewhat complicated budget of finance or
legislation, or whether he showed it most in the heat of extemporary
debate. At least this we may say, that from the humbler arts of
ridicule or invective to the subtlest dialectic, the most persuasive
eloquence, the most cogent appeals to everything that was highest and
best in the audience that he was addressing, every instrument which
could find place in the armory of a member of this House, he had at his
command without premeditation, without forethought, at the moment and
in the form which appeared best suited to carry out his purpose.
It may, perhaps, be asked whether I have nothing to say about Mr.
Gladstone's place in history, about the judgment we ought to pass upon
the great part which he has played in the history of his country and
the history of the world during the many years in which he held a
foremost place in this assembly. These questions are legitimate
questions. But they are not to be discussed by me to-day. Nor, indeed,
do I think that the final answer can be given to them--the final
judgment pronounced--in the course of this generation. But one service
he did--in my opinion incalculable--which is altogether apart from the
judgment which we may be disposed to pass on the particular opinions,
the particular views, or the particular lines of policy which Mr.
Gladstone may from time to time have adopted. Sir, he added a dignity
and he added a weight to the deliberations of this House by his genius
which I think it is impossible adequately to express.
It is not enough, in my opinion, to keep up simply a level, though it
be a high level, of probity and of patriotism. The mere virtue of civic
honesty is not sufficient to preserve this assembly from the fate which
has overcome so many other assemblies, the products of democratic
forces. More than this is required, more than this was given to us by
Mr. Gladstone. Those who seek to raise in the public estimation the
level of our proceedings will be the most ready to admit the infinite
value of those services, and realize how much the public prosperity is
involved in the maintenance of the work of public life. Sir, that is a
view which, it seems to me, places the services of Mr. Gladstone to
this assembly, which he loved so well, and of which he was so great a
member, in as clear a light and on as firm a basis as it is possible to
place them.
WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE
From an address in the House of Lords, May, 1898
BY LORD ROSEBERY
My Lords, this is, as has been pointed out, an unique occasion. Mr.
Gladstone always expressed a hope that there might be an interval left
to him between the end of his political and of his natural life. That
period was given to him, for it is more than four years since he
quitted the sphere of politics. Those four years have been with him a
special preparation for his death, but have they not also been a
preparation for his death with the nation at large? Had he died in the
plenitude of his power as Prime Minister, would it have been possible
for a vigorous and convinced Opposition to allow to pass to him,
without a word of dissent, the honors which are now universally
conceded? Hushed for the moment are the voices of criticism; hushed are
the controversies in which he took part; hushed for the moment is the
very sound of party conflict. I venture to think that this is a notable
fact in our history. It was not so with the elder Pitt. It was not so
with the younger Pitt. It was not so with the elder Pitt--in spite of
his tragic end, of his unrivaled services, and of his enfeebled old
age. It was not so with the younger Pitt--in spite of his long control
of the country and his absolute and absorbed devotion to the State. I
think that we should remember this as creditable not merely to the man,
but to the nation.
My Lords, there is one deeply melancholy feature of Mr. Gladstone's
death--by far the most melancholy--to which I think none of my noble
friends have referred. I think that all our thoughts must be turned,
now that Mr. Gladstone is gone, to that solitary and pathetic figure
who, for sixty years, shared all the sorrows and all the joys of Mr.
Gladstone's life; who received his every confidence and every
aspiration; who shared his triumphs with and cheered him under his
defeats; who, by her tender vigilance, I firmly believe, sustained and
prolonged his years. I think that the occasion ought not to pass
without letting Mrs. Gladstone know that she is in all our thoughts to-
day. And yet, my Lords--putting that one figure aside--to me, at any
rate, this is not an occasion for absolute and entire and unreserved
lamentation. Were it, indeed, possible so to protract the inexorable
limits of human life that we might have hoped that future years, and
even future generations, might see Mr. Gladstone's face and hear his
matchless voice, and receive the lessons of his unrivaled experience--
we might, perhaps, grieve to-day as those who have no hope. But that is
not the case. He had long exceeded the span of mortal life; and his
latter months had been months of unspeakable pain and distress. He is
now in that rest for which he sought and prayed, and which was to give
him relief from an existence which had become a burden to him. Surely
this should not be an occasion entirely for grief; when a life
prolonged to such a limit, so full of honor, so crowned with glory, had
come to its termination. The nation lives that produced him. The nation
that produced him may yet produce others like him; and, in the
meantime, it is rich in his memory, rich in his life, and rich, above
all, in his animating and inspiring example. Nor do I think that we
should regard this heritage as limited to our own country or to our own
race. It seems to me that, if we may judge from the papers of to-day,
that it is shared by, that it is the possession of, all civilized
mankind, and that generations still to come, through many long years,
will look for encouragement in labor, for fortitude in adversity, for
the example of a sublime Christianity, with constant hope and constant
encouragement, to the pure, the splendid, the dauntless figure of
William Ewart Gladstone.
THE SOLDIER'S CREED
From a centennial address at the United States Military Academy at West
Point, with the author's permission.
BY HORACE PORTER
As we stand here to-day a hundred years of history pass in review
before us. The present permanent Academy was founded in 1802. The class
that year contained two cadets. During the ten years following the
average number was twenty. We might say of the cadets of those days
what Curran said of the books in his library--"not numerous, but
select."