At Washington I am a healer and at home in my ward I am also a heeler!
What America wants to-day is not so much a larger number of high-browed
men who will get up on their hind feet and call on heaven to paralyze
their right arms before they will do a wrong act, or ask to have their
tongues nailed to the ridge-pole of their mouths rather than utter a
false or dangerous doctrine. That was customary when the country was new
and infested with bears; when men carried their guns to church with them
and drank bay rum as a beverage.
These remarks made good pieces for boys to speak, but they will not do
now. What this country needs is a congress about as equally balanced as
possible politically, so that when one side walks up and smells of an
appropriation the other can growl in a low tone of voice, from December
till dog-days. In this way by a pleasing system of postponements,
previous questions, points of order, reference to committees, laying on
the table, and general oblivion, a great deal may be evaded, and people
at home who do not closely read and remember the Congressional Record
will not know who was to blame.
Judicious inertness and a gentle air of evasion will do much to prevent
party dissension. I have done that way, and I look for the same old
majority that we had at the former election.
I often wonder if Daniel Webster would have the nerve to get up and talk
as freely about things now as he used to when politics had not reached
the present state of perfection. We often hear people ask why we haven't
got any Websters in congress now. I can tell you. They are sat down on
long before they get that far along. They are not encouraged to say
radical things and split up the vote.
I will now close, thanking you for your kind preferment. I will ever
strive, while representing you in congress, to retain my following, and
never, by word or deed, endeavor to win fame and applause there at the
expense of votes at home. I care not to be embalmed in the school
speakers and declaimers of future ages, provided my tombstone shall bear
upon it the simple, poetic refrain:
He got there.