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authority transfigured into liberty. Henceforth, no other sovereignty than the law for the people, and the conscience for the individual. For each of us, the two aspects of progress separate themselves clearly, and they are these: to exercise one's right; that is to say, to be a man; to perform one's duty; that is to say, to be a citizen.

Such is the signification of that word, the Age of Voltaire; such is the meaning of that august event, the French Revolution.

The two memorable centuries which preceded the Eighteenth, prepared for it; Rabelais warned royalty in Gargantua," and Molière warned the Church in "Tartuffe." Hatred of force and respect for right are visible in those two illustricus spirits.

Whoever says to-day might makes right performs an act of the Middle Ages, and speaks to men three hundred years behind their time.

The Nineteenth century glorifies the Eighteenth century. The Eighteenth proposed, the Nineteenth concludes. And my last word will be the declaration, tranquil, but inflexible, of progress.

The time has come. human federation.

The right has found its formula:

To-day, force is called violence, and begins to be judged; war is arraigned. Civilization, upon the complaint of the human race, orders the trial, and draws up the great criminal indictment of conquerors and captains. This witness, History, is summoned. The reality appears. The factitious brilliancy is dissipated. In many cases, the hero is a species of assassin. The peoples begin to comprehend that increasing the magnitude of a crime cannot be its diminution; that, if to kill is a crime, to kill much cannot be an extenuating circumstance; that, if to steal is a shame, to invade cannot be a glory; that Te Deums do not count for much in this matter; that homicide is homicide; that bloodshed is bloodshed; that it serves nothing to call one's self Cæsar or Napoleon; and that in the eyes of the eternal God, the figure of a murderer is not changed because, instead of a gallows-cap, there is placed upon his head an emperor's crown.

Ah! let us proclaim absolute truths. Let us dishonor war. No; glorious war does not exist. No; it is not

good, and it is not useful, to make corpses. No; it cannot be that life travails for death. No; O mothers who surround me, it cannot be that war, the robber, should continue to take from you your children. No; it cannot be that women should bear children in pain, that men should be born, that people should plow and sow, that the farmer should fertilize the fields, and the workmen enrich the city, that industry should produce marvels, that genius should produce prodigies, that the vast human activity should, in presence of the starry sky, multiply efforts and creations, all to result in that frightful international exposition which is called a field of battle!

The true field of battle, behold it here! It is this rendezvous [at the Exposition, then open] of the masterpieces of human labor which Paris offers the world at this moment. The true victory is the victory of Paris.

Alas! we cannot hide it from ourselves that the present hour, worthy as it is of admiration and respect, has still some mournful aspects; there are still clouds upon the horizon; the tragedy of the peoples is not finished; war, wicked war, is still there, and it has the audacity to lift its head in the midst of this august festival of peace. Princes, for two years past, obstinately adhere to a fatal misunderstanding; their discord forms an obstacle to our concord, and they are ill-inspired to condemn us to the statement of such a contrast.

Let this contrast lead us back to Voltaire. In the presence of menacing possibilities, let us be more pacific than ever. Let us turn toward that great death, toward that great life, toward that great spirit. Let us bend before the venerated sepulcher. Let us take counsel of him whose life, useful to men, was extinguished a hundred years ago, but whose work is immortal. Let us take counsel of the other powerful thinkers, the auxiliaries of this glorious Voltaire-of Jean Jacques, of Diderot, of Montesquieu. Let us give the word to those great voices. Let us stop the shedding of human blood. Enough! enough! despots. Ah! barbarism persists; very well, let civilization be indignant. Let the Eighteenth century come to the help of the Nineteenth. The philosophers, our predecessors, are the apostles of the true; let us in

voke those illustrious shades; let them, before monarchies meditating war, proclaim the right of man to life, the right of conscience to liberty, the sovereignty of reason, the holiness of labor, the blessedness of peace; and since night issues from the thrones, let light come from the tombs.

JOHN JAMES INGALLS

EULOGY ON BENJAMIN HILL

[Address by John J. Ingalls, lawyer, journalist, United States Senator from Kansas (born in Middleton, Mass., December 29, 1833; died in Las Vegas, N. M., August 16, 1900), delivered in the United States Senate, January 23, 1882.]

MR. PRESIDENT:-Ben Hill has gone to the undiscovered country. Whether his journey thither was but one step across an imperceptible frontier, or whether an interminable ocean, black, unfluctuating, and voiceless, stretches between these earthly coasts and those invisible shores-we do not know.

Whether on that August morning after death, he saw a more glorious sun rise with unimaginable splendor above a celestial horizon, or whether his apathetic and unconscious ashes still sleep in cold obstruction and insensible oblivion-we do not know.

Whether his strong and subtle energies found instant exercise in another forum, whether his dextrous and disciplined faculties are now contending in a higher senate than ours for supremacy, or whether his powers were dissipated and dispersed with his parting breath-we do not know.

Whether his passions, ambitions, and affections still sway, attract, and impel, whether he yet remembers us as we remember him-we do not know.

These are the unsolved, the insoluble problems of mortal life and human destiny, which prompted the troubled patriarch to ask that momentous question, for which the centuries have given no answer: "If a man die, shall he live again?" Every man is the center of a circle, whose

fatal circumference he cannot pass. Within its narrow confines he is potential, beyond it, he perishes; and if immortality is a splendid but delusive dream, if the incompleteness of every career, even the longest and most fortunate, be not supplemented and perfected after its termination here, then he who dreads to die should fear to live, for life is a tragedy more desolate and inexplicable than death.

Of all the dead whose obsequies we have paused to solemnize in this Chamber, I recall no one whose untimely fate seems so lamentable, and yet so rich in prophecy, as that of Senator Hill. He had reached the meridian of his years. He stood upon the high plateau of middle life, in that serene atmosphere where temptation no longer assails, where the clamorous passions no more distract, and where the conditions are most favorable for noble and enduring achievement. His upward path had been through stormy adversity and contention, such as infrequently fall to the lot of men. Though not without the tendency to meditation, revery, and introspection which accompanies genius, his temperament was palestric. He was competitive and unpeaceful. He was born a polemic and controversialist, intellectually pugnacious and combative, so that he was impelled to defend any position that might be assailed, or to attack any position that might be intrenched, not because the defense or assault was essential, but because the positions were maintained, and those who held them became, by that fact alone, his adversaries.

This tendency of his nature made his orbit erratic. He was meteoric, rather than planetary, and flashed with irregular splendor, rather than shone with steady and penetrating rays. His advocacy of any cause was fearless to the verge of temerity. He appeared to be indifferent to applause or censure, for their own sake. He accepted intrepidly any conclusions that he reached, without inquiring whether they were politic or expedient.

To such a spirit, partisanship was unavoidable, but with Senator Hill, it did not degenerate into bigotry. He was capable of broad generosity, and extended to his opponents the same unreserved candor which he demanded for himself. His oratory was impetuous, and devoid of arti

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