_Mr. Graves, and My Hosts_:
Surely it must be almost unnecessary for me to say not alone how I
have enjoyed to-day, but how deeply touched and moved I have been
at your reception of me, at Georgia’s reception of its descendant.
I told the Governor I had a kind of ancestral reversionary right to
his chair; because the first revolutionary President of Georgia was
my great-great-grandfather, Archibald Bulloch, after whom one of my
boys is named. No man could meet with such a reception as you have
given me to-day, no man could see your city, could see your people,
could address such an audience as I have addressed, and not be a
better citizen afterward. It means a great deal to me to meet all of
you personally, with all that you gentlemen typify in the world of
politics, the world of business, and that world of ethical effort which
can alone render either business or politics noble.
Now, I am going to very illy repay the courtesy with which I have been
greeted, by causing for a minute or two acute discomfort to a man of
whom I am very fond—Uncle Remus. Presidents may come and Presidents may
go; but Uncle Remus “stays put.” Georgia has done a great many things
for the Union; but she has never done more than when she gave Mr. Joel
Chandler Harris to American literature. I suppose he is one of those
literary people who insist that art should have nothing to do with
morals, and will condemn me as a Philistine for not agreeing with them;
but I want to say that one of the great reasons why I like what he has
written is because after reading it I rise up with the purpose of being
a better man, a man who is bound to strive to do what is in him for
the cause of decency and for the cause of righteousness. Gentlemen,
I feel too strongly to indulge in any language of mere compliment, of
mere flattery. Where Mr. Harris seems to me to have done one of his
greatest services is that he has written what exalts the South in the
mind of every man who reads it, and yet what has not even a flavor of
bitterness toward any other part of the Union. There is not an American
anywhere who can read Mr. Harris’s stories—I am not speaking at the
moment of his wonderful folk tales, but of his stories—who does not
rise up a better citizen for having read them, who does not rise up
with a more earnest desire to do his part in solving American problems
aright. I can not too strongly express the obligations I am under to
Mr. Harris; and one of those obligations is to feel as a principle that
it is my duty (which if I have transgressed, I have not transgressed
knowingly) never as an American to say anything that could be construed
into an attack upon any portion of our common country.
Let me say one word on something entirely different, suggested by our
talk here to-day. In speaking over with several of the gentlemen round
about me their experiences in the Georgia Legislature and some of my
experiences in the New York Legislature, the thing that struck me the
most was the truth of Abraham Lincoln’s saying that “there is a deal
of human nature in mankind.” The enemies we have to fight, the friends
upon whom we have to rely, are substantially the same, in whatever
part of the Union we live. We have to war against the same evil
tendencies in our own souls; we have to strive to give expression to
the same aspirations toward righteousness, toward honor. In doing this
there are two things that are necessary above all others. In the first
place, the fearless condemnation of what is wrong; the standing up for
what is decent, for what is straight; the refusing to palter with the
eternal principles of truth; refusing to pardon any man who for any
reason lapses from the law that teaches that the man who is to be of
service must obey the great rule of truth, of courage, and of honor. In
the second place, to remember that second only in iniquity, second only
in the injury done to the Republic, to the wrong of the man who acts
corruptly, comes the wrong of the man who wantonly accuses the honest
man of corruption. Thief is an ugly name, because it denotes an ugly
thing; liar is as ugly a name as thief and as little to be desired by
any right-thinking man; and either to steal or to lie marks the man as
unfit for association with decent men and an enemy of all that is best
and most upright in our political life. Too often we have seen public
sentiment condoning the acts both of the thief and the liar (I am using
ugly words, gentlemen, and I am using them because I wish to denote
in the sharpest and in the most ugly fashion ugly attributes), when
these acts are shifted a little so that they can be hidden under other
names. The man who in political life, the man who in business life,
by chicanery or by corruption in any shape or form, does or achieves
what could not be done or achieved save by or through chicanery or
corruption, stands on the same level with the man who in court is
convicted of theft. The man who on no grounds, or on insufficient
grounds, attacks the honest and upright man, whether in public or
private life, as corrupt; who seeks to persuade men to believe that
he is corrupt; who accuses him of corruption; this man stands on the
same evil eminence of infamy with the corruptionist himself; and he
is himself the greatest ally of the corruptionist he professes to
denounce. The Republic will go down, our democratic institutions will
be a failure, if the moral sense of the people grows so blunted that
they will accept anything else, whether brilliancy or loyalty of party
service, or any other deed or quality, as an offset to corruption. The
minute that there arises a question of corruption in public life, if
we have any sense of loyalty to the Union and its institutions, all
political lines vanish at once. We can afford to consider in a public
servant nothing but the question of his honesty or dishonesty when once
that question is raised.
The surest way of blunting the public conscience in dealing with
corruption is to confuse the public mind as to who is corrupt and who
is not. There are plenty of men with whom we differ radically, plenty
of men of whom we radically disapprove, as to whom it is right and
necessary that we should express that disapprobation; but beware of
expressing it in terms that imply moral reprobation. When we express
moral reprobation let us be sure that we know the facts and then that
we say only exactly what is true. To accuse an honest man of being a
thief is to gladden the heart of every thief in the Nation. In our
legislative bodies, in our National Congress, if you find that any man
is corrupt, you are not to be excused if you do not hunt him out of
public life, whether he is of one party or whether he is of another.
But if you accuse, either specifically or in loose general declamation,
all men of being corruptionists, you by just so much weaken your own
strength when it becomes necessary to assail the genuine corruptionist.
So far from asking that you be lenient in your judgment of any public
man, I hold that you are recreant to duty if you are thus lenient. Do
not be lenient, but do be just. If you dislike a man’s policy, say so.
If you think he is acting in a way so misguided that he will bring ruin
to the State or Nation, say so. But do not accuse him of corruption
unless you know that he is corrupt; and if you know that he is corrupt,
if you have good reason to believe that he is corrupt, then refuse
under any plea of party expediency, under any consideration, to refrain
from smiting him with the sword of the Lord and of Gideon.