who thought so. But they were critics of a temperament which did not note that with Phillips agitation was a principle and a deliberately chosen method to definite ends. There were still vast questions springing from the same root of selfishness and injustice as the question of slavery. They must force a hearing in the same way. He would not adopt in middle life the career of politics, which he had renounced in youth, however seductive that career might be, whatever its opportunities and rewards, because the purpose had grown with his growth and strengthened with his strength, to form public opinion rather than to represent it, in making or in executing the laws. To form public opinion upon vital public questions by public discussion, but by public discussion absolutely fearless and sincere, and conducted with honest faith in the people to whom the argument was addrest-this was the service which he had long performed, and this he would still perform, and in the familiar way.

His comprehensive philanthropy had made him, even during the anti-slavery contest, the untiring advocate of other great reforms. His powerful presentation of the justice and reason of the political equality of women, at Worcester, in 1857, more than any other single impulse, launched that question upon the sea of popular controversy. In the general statement of principle, nothing has been added to that discourse. In vivid and effective eloquence of advocacy it has never been surpassed. All the arguments for independence echoed John Adams in the Continental Congress; all the pleas for applying the American principle of representation to the wives and mothers of American citizens echo the eloquence of Wendell Phillips at Worcester. His, also, was the voice that summoned the temperance voters of the commonwealth to stand up and be counted; the voice which resolutely and definitely exposed the crime to which the busy American mind and conscience are at last turning-the American crime against the Indians. Through him the sorrow of Crete, the tragedy of Ireland, pleaded with America. In the terrible experience of the early anti-slavery debate, when the church and

refined society seemed to be the rampart of slavery, he had learned profound distrust of that conservatism of prosperity which chills human sympathy and narrows the conscience. So the vast combinations of capital, in these later days, with their immense monopolies and imperial power, seemed to him sure to corrupt the Government and to obstruct and threaten the real welfare of the people. He felt, therefore, that what is called the respectable class is often really, but unconsciously and with a generous purpose, not justly estimating its own tendency, the dangerous class. He was not a party politician; he cared little for party or party leaders. But any political party which in his judgment represented the dangerous tendency was a party to be defeated in the interest of the peace and progress of all the people.

But his judgment, always profoundly sincere, was it not sometimes profoundly mistaken? No nobler friend of freedom and of man than Wendell Phillips ever breathed upon this continent, and no man's service to freedom surpasses his. But before the war he demanded peaceful disunion-yet it was the Union in arms that saved liberty. During the war he would have superseded Lincoln-but it was Lincoln who freed the slaves. He pleaded for Ireland, tortured by centuries of misrule, and while every generous heart followed with sympathy the pathos and the power of his appeal, the just mind recoiled from the sharp arraignment of the truest friends in England that Ireland ever had. I know it all, but I know also, and history will remember, that the slave Union which he denounced is dissolved; that it was the heart and conscience of the nation, exalted by his moral appeal of agitation, as well as by the enthusiasm of patriotic war, which held up the hands of Lincoln, and upon which Lincoln leaned in emancipating the slaves, and that only by indignant and aggressive appeals like his, has the heart of England ever opened to Irish wrong.

No man, I say, can take a preeminent and effective part in contentions that shake nations, or in the discussion of great national politics, of foreign relations, of domestic

economy and finance, without keen reproach and fierce misconception. "But death, says Bacon, "bringeth good fame." Then, if formal integrity remain unsoiled, the purpose pure, blameless the life, and patriotism as shining as the sun, conflicting views and differing counsels disappear, and, firmly fixt upon character and actual achievement, good fame rests secure. Eighty years ago, in this city, how unsparing was the denunciation of John Adams for betraying and ruining his party, for his dogmatism, his vanity, and ambition, for his exasperating impracticability -he, the Colossus of the Revolution! And Thomas Jefferson? I may truly say what the historian says of the Saracen mothers and Richard Cœur de Lion, that the mothers of Boston hushed their children with fear of the political devil incarnate of Virginia. But, when the drapery of mourning shrouded the columns and overhung the arches of Faneuil Hall, Daniel Webster did not remember that sometimes John Adams was imprudent, and Thomas Jefferson sometimes unwise. He remembered only that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were two of the greatest American patriots-and their fellow citizens of every party bowed their heads and said, Amen. I am not here to declare that the judgment of Wendell Phillips was always sound, nor his estimate of men always just, nor his policy always approved by the event. He would have scorned such praise. I am not here to eulogize the mortal, but the immortal. He, too, was a great American patriot; and no American life—no, not one-offers to future generations of his countrymen a more priceless example of inflexible fidelity to conscience and to public duty; and no American more truly than he purged the nationa! name of its shame, and made the American flag the flag of hope for mankind. Among her noblest children his native city will cherish him, and gratefully recall the unbending Puritan soul that dwelt in a form so gracious and urbane. The plain house in which he lived-severely plain, because the welfare of the suffering and the slave were preferred to books and pictures, and every fair device of art; the house to which the North Star led the trembling fugitive, and which the

unfortunate and the friendless knew; the radiant figure passing swiftly through these streets, plain as the house from which it came, regal with a royalty of kings; the ceaseless charity untold; the strong sustaining heart of private friendship; the sacred domestic affections that must not here be named; the eloquence which, like the song of Orpheus, will fade from living memory into a doubtful tale, that great scene of his youth in Faneuil Hall; the surrender of ambition; the mighty agitation and the mighty triumph with which his name is forever blended; the consecration of life hidden with God in sympathy with manthese, all these, will live among your immortal traditions, heroic even in your heroic story. But not yours alone! As years go by, and only the large outlines of lofty American characters and careers remain, the wide Republic will confess the benediction of a life like this, and gladly own that if with perfect faith and hope assured, America would still stand and "bid the distant generations hail,' "the inspiration of her national life must be the sublime moral courage, the all-embracing humanity, the spotless integrity, the absolutely unselfish devotion of great powers to great public ends, which were the glory of Wendell Phillips.

ON THE DEATH OF DANIEL WEBSTER

BY RUFUS CHOATE

MAY IT PLEASE YOUR HONORS:-I have been requested by the members of the Bar of this Court to add a few words to the resolutions just read, in which they have embodied, as they were able, their sorrow for the death of their beloved and illustrious member and countryman, Mr. Webster; their estimation of his character, life, and genius; their sense of the bereavement-to the country as to his friends-incapable of repair; the pride, the fondness-the filial and the patriotic pride and fondness-with which they

cherish, and would consign to history to cherish, the memory of a great and good man.

And yet I could earnestly have desired to be excused from this duty. He must have known Mr. Webster less, and loved him less, than your honors, or than I have known and loved him, who can quite yet-quite yet-before we can comprehend that we have lost him forever-before the first paleness with which the news of his death overspread our cheeks has passed away-before we have been down to lay him in the Pilgrim soil he loved so well, till the heavens be no more he must have known and loved him less than we have done, who can come here quite yet, to recount the series of his services, to display with psychological exactness the traits of his nature and mind, to ponder and speculate on the secrets-on the marvelous secrets-and source of that vast power, which we shall see no more in action, nor aught in any degree resembling it, among men. These first moments should be given to grief. It may employ, it may promote a calmer mood, to construct a more elaborate and less unworthy memorial!

The year

For the purposes of this moment and place, indeed, no more is needed. What is there for this Court or for this Bar to learn from me, here and now, of him? and the day of his birth; that birthplace on the frontier, yet bleak and waste; the well, of which his childhood drank, dug by that father of whom he has said, "That through the fire and blood of seven years of Revolutionary War he shrank from no danger, no toil, no sacrifice, to serve his country; and to raise his children to a condition better than his own;" the elm-tree that father planted, fallen now, as father and son have fallen; that training of the giant infancy on catechism and Bible, and Watts' version of the Psalms, and the traditions of Plymouth, and Fort William Henry, and the Revolution, and the age of Washington and Franklin, on the banks of the Merrimac, flowing sometimes in flood and anger, from its secret springs in the crystal hills; the two district schoolmasters, Chase and Tappan; the village library; the dawning of the love and ambition of letters; the few months at Exeter and Boscawen; the