the finances involved in bankruptcy, and the combined powers of Europe menacing the existence of France. Where, said he, are the conquests I made, the victories I achieved, the resources I supplied, and the armies I left for the security of France? But what was the condition of the United States. at that fatal moment, when the evil genius of the President prompted him to assume the fearful responsibility of destroying our system of credit, deranging our system of currency, in open and avowed contempt of the legislative power? What was there in that condition to afford the shadow for the pretext for the usurpation of which we complain? What civil dissensions was it designed to compose; what financial embarrassments and public sufferings was it calculated to relieve?

It is worth while to look back to the inception of this Executive experiment. The people of the United States were in the enjoyment of an unexampled prosperity-literally basking in the sunshine of tranquillity, abundance, and contentment -blessings the more exquisitely realized from their contrast with the troubled scenes which had recently passed away. They had seen a dark and portentous cloud lowering in the horizon, and could almost hear the distant thunder and see the prelusive flashes of the coming storm, which threatened to shake the mighty fabric of this Federal system to its deep foundation. But at this eventful crisis a redeeming power was interposed in the spirit of conciliation; a covenant of peace was ratified here, the storm passed away, and the rainbow circled the arch of the heavens, the cheering harbinger of that happiness and contentment which were the lot of a united people, until the fatal dog-days, when this most pernicious scheme of Executive usurpation was engendered, not to save the country from civil dissensions and restore its disordered finances, but to mar and destroy the brightest vision of happiness that ever blessed the hopes of any people.

And I regret to find that the authors of this fatal experiment are resolved to carry it on in the same reckless spirit in which it was conceived. Nothing has struck me more forcibly than the stubborn perseverance of the Administration in their desperate purposes, hoping against hope, blind to the palpable results of experience, and deaf to the cries of a suffering people. It is a spirit of heartless indifference to popular

suffering, wholly without excuse and almost without example. We have been told by a member of this House (Mr. Beardsley), in the exterminating spirit of that Roman who always concluded his speeches with the motto, "Carthage must be destroyed," that the Bank of the United States must be destroyed by whatever means, and at the hazard of whatever consequences. "Perish commerce, perish credit; give us broken banks and a disordered currency," rather than retrace the step of this Excutive crusade against the bank! And the Chief Magistrate himself declares that "neither the opinion of the Legislature, nor the voice of the people, shall induce him to abandon his purpose, whatever may be the sufferings produced," adding, for the consolation of the enterprising and industrious classes, that if those should fail "who trade upon borrowed capital," they deserve their fate!

Mr. Speaker, we can scarcely give credit to the historian who records the degeneracy and degradation of a great people of antiquity, when he informs us that a Roman emperor amused himself by fiddling while the capital of his empire and the fortunes of the Roman people were involved in one general conflagration. But our own melancholy and woful experience is but too well calculated to remove any historical skepticism, which might induce us to suppose that the extraordinary spectacle to which I have alluded was drawn rather by the pencil of poetry than by the pen of historical truth. For, even at this early period in our national progress, in the very dawn of our republican institution, we are ourselves exhibiting to the world, which we vainly boast of enlightening by our example, a spectacle, in some of its aspects, more unnatural and revolting than its Roman prototype. If my recollection of this interesting chapter in the history of man be not imperfect, Nero was not himself the incendiary who applied the fatal torch by which the temples and the gods, the Senate House and the Forum, the gorgeous palaces, and the humble cottages of the imperial city were consigned to the devouring elements. Can you say as much, sir, I will not say for the President of the United States, but for that irresponsible cabal which is the living emblem of pestilence and famine, by which even his more noble and generous impulses are converted into instruments of mischief? Who is it that has kindled up that con

flagration which is now sweeping over the land like a prairie fire of the West, bearing destruction in its bosom, laying a scene of desolation in its rear, and scattering consternation in every direction? Nay, sir, who is it that has sacrilegiously invaded the sanctuary of the Constitution, and lighted at the very fires of the altar that fatal brand which, desperately and vindictively hurled-with whatever aim-has struck upon the great temple of our national prosperity, involving it in "hideous ruin and combustion"? Mr. Speaker, it was no midnight incendiary that silently stole into the temple with his Ephesian torch, concealed by the mantle of darkness. No; it was the high-priest of the Constitution that violated the sanctuary and desecrated the fires of the altar. It was in the broad glare of noonday, from the imperial heights of power, and in open defiance of all the moral and political guaranties of human right, that this consuming brand was cast into the elements of combustion, and which came upon an astounded people, without cause and without notice, like Heaven's avenging bolt from a cloudless sky. And now that the signal bells of alarm and distress are ringing from one extremity of this Union to the other, mingling their disastrous chimes with those cries of distress which come to us from the four quarters of the heavens on every wind that blows, and forming one mighty chorus of indignant complaint that has forced its way into the sealed ears of infatuated power-with what sympathy, with what feelings of commiseration, with what "compunctious visitings" are these proofs of a nation's suffering received by the authors of the calamity and their accomplices?

CARLYLE MCKINLEY

[1847-1904]

WILLIAM ASHMEAD COURTENAY

CARLYLE MCKINLEY was born at Newnan, Coweta County,

Georgia, November 22, 1847, his people having removed to that State from South Carolina during the early part of the last century. He came by his remarkable mental gifts honestly, his father, Judge Charles G. McKinley, having been one of the most distinguished lawyers at the Lexington Bar, and his kinsmen, the Cummingses, Cobbs, and Jacksons, all being men of the highest intellectuality. He did not have a fair chance in his early life because of the disturbed conditions attending the war for Southern independence. At the age of fifteen his studies at the University of Georgia were suspended when he entered the service of the State as a Confederate soldier in the trenches around Atlanta.

After the war he engaged at first in cotton brokerage in Augusta, but after a short time he accepted a position in the United States Marshal's office in Savannah. Realizing his lack of a finished education, he then resumed his academic course at Athens, and subsequently attended the Southern Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Columbia, South Carolina. Here he attained a very high degree of scholarship, and was graduated in 1874. Soon after, he married Miss Elizabeth Bryce, the daughter of a Columbia lawyer and planter. On account of some change in his religious views he refrained, with admirable conscientiousness, from entering the active work of the ministry. "His mind," says Major James C. Hemphill, editor of The News and Courier, "was thoroughly well ordered, and to the consideration of every question presented to him for mental analysis he reached his conclusions by inexorable logic. He reasoned from cause to effect, and applied the exactness of the higher mathematics, to which he was singularly devoted and in which he was wonderfully expert, to the settlement of whatever questions were presented to him for solution. He took nothing for granted; what he could not determine by the rules of evidence he held in abeyance, but always with unprejudiced and open mind. The extra-natural or super-natural things which he could not adjust by reasoning of time and sense he contemplated with clear-eyed faith, and before his final summons came, 'his cares ebbed out with every tide, and peace came upon the flood.'"