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excellence by which it is impressed. It is so, but in a less degree, of the excellencies of our fellow-men who are commemorated in history, whose forms and lineaments living in marble and painting are presented through successive ages, to animate posterity, to perpetuate virtue by example-by the presentment of the very form and features of the illustrious men who are crowned with national honors, and so to inspire the noble few in every generation to become public benefactors.

To-day, you raise from the grave and give to the light the form, the features of that model of an American Senator, whose patriotism entitled him to all the honors that the Roman Cato merited in the eyes of his countrymen. There never lived a man with more instinctive patriotism than Benton. He was a man of strong, sometimes of unruly passions, but his paramount passion was love of country. Let me open my reminiscences of this strong man of intellect and impulses with a proof of his title to this proud position. I will first touch on an important transaction with which his public life commenced.

After glorious service in the war with Great Britain, in which Benton acted as the aid of General Jackson, a bloody feud arose between them, growing out of a duel in which the brother of the former was wounded by a friend of Jackson, whom he attended as a second. This resulted in hatred, which time made inveterate. With men of such determination, who had refused all explanation at first, who would have no arbitrators but their weapons, no approach to reconciliation seemed possible. The thought of it was not welcome to either until a conjuncture arose which threatened the safety of the country. Both then perceived that their joint efforts were essential to the good of the country, and without a word spoken, without the slightest intimation from either that friendly relations would be welcomed, the Senator began his labors in the service of the President and went to him to know how his co-operation could be made most effective in defense of the Union. Not a word about bygones passed between them. The memory of the quarrel was blotted out by the danger which menaced the country. The old intimacy was revived in their devotion to the public cause. Cordial, unaffected, mutual attachment sprung up, and not a cloud remained of the black storm where rage was once welcomed as promising to end all differences in a common destruction. Patriotism, the ruling passion in both bosoms, exorcised from both every particle of anger, pride, and

the cherished antagonism of years. Benton belonged to the generation of statesmen who followed the founders of the government; when he entered Congress, Monroe was still President, and some few of the framers of the Constitution were Members of the Senate and House. He admired the form of government which these men had assisted in making, and regarded them with a profound veneration which extended to and embraced those. who belonged to the Federal school of politics as well as those who belonged to the Democratic school, to which he himself was attached. Nothing better could exemplify his respect for, his deference to these men than the account he gives in a letter to his wife of the "reproof" administered to him by Mr. Rufus King, of New York. He had made a speech in reply to some Member and had spoken with force and animation. "When it was over," he says in his letter, "Mr. King, of New York, came and sat down beside me, on a chair, and took hold of my hand and said he would speak to me as a father; that I had great powers, and that he felt a sincere pleasure in seeing me advance and rise in the world and that he would take the liberty of warning me against an effect of my temperament when heated by opposition; that under those circumstances I took an authoritative manner and a look and tone of defiance which sat ill even on the older Members; and advised me to moderate my manner." "This," says Benton, "was real friendship, enhanced by kindness. of manner, and it had its effect." Twenty years afterwards, Benton met two sons of Rufus King in Congress, and he relates "that he was glad to let them both see the sincere respect he had for the memory of their father."

He not only admired and believed in our form of government, but he was of that Democratic school which insisted on restraining the government in the exercise of its powers to a strict and literal interpretation of the Constitution, not only because they believed the framers of the government were wise and sagacious men and knew how to employ language to describe the powers which they sought to confer on the government, but they were upon principles opposed to a strong government and sought in every way to limit its powers and to make each of the different branches a check upon the others. They were profoundly convinced that "the world was governed too much," and that the best government was that which least intermeddled with the affairs of the citizens.

These men believed that the world owed but little to its statesmen and rulers who paid themselves so well, who monopolized the glory, the wealth, and the fame, and whose acts, even when they sought to do good, as a general thing, resulted in obstruction to the progress of mankind. It is sad to reflect that those whose position gives them the greatest power and ability to benefit the human race have been those who have done the least for its advancement. Why is this? What is the explanation? It is found in the fact that power almost invariably corrupts those who are clothed with it; and no class of men have been intrusted with authority who have not abused it. How much greater is our debt to the humble ministers of that science which enables us to encounter disease and disarm pestilence! How much more does the world owe to those who have gained for us the knowledge of the forces of nature and brought them under control, and made them minister to the comfort and happiness of man! How infinitely greater should be our gratitude to those whose inventions in machinery have cheapened the articles of indispensable necessity to the poor than that which we owe to the mightiest potentates of the world! In those countries in which freedom is allowed and where the least intermeddling on the part of the government with the private pursuits is permitted, the greatest success has attended moral and intellectual culture and industrial enterprise. The most meritorious legislation is now confessedly that which has undone the errors of past legislation. Whenever the interests of religion even have been protected by legislation it has led to the persecution of those who have dissented from it and the corruption of those who have conformed to the protective system. Where laws have been made to protect against usury, it has invariably increased the usury and produced crime in the evasion of the laws. And so of every species of protective legislation, a system through which, as it has been well said by one of the most philosophical writers of modern times, "the industrious classes were robbed in order that industry might thrive."

It is in precisely the same sense that the Democratic school, of which Benton was such a profound and faithful expositor, desired to restrict the powers of our government within the narrowest limits, believing that to be the best government which gives to the individual the most complete control of his own actions, and that every restraint upon the freedom of thought and

of actions which do not injure others is not only oppressive to the individual but is also an obstruction to progress and an injury to civilization; that national character improves and becomes vigorous and powerful as free scope is given to the masses of the people to think and act for themselves; and that it deteriorates into feebleness and routine in the degree in which the government assumes to act for them.

Deeply imbued with the political philosophy of Jefferson, the founder of the Democratic school of statesmen, Benton was, moreover, the very personification of the rugged energy and genius of the West, where these theories had taken deepest root. He knew better than any one who preceded him or has followed him its wants, its capabilities, and its destiny. He gave himself with his whole strength and with all the ardor of his mind to the duty of supplying these wants, to the development of its capabilities, and to preparing the way for the accomplishment of its destiny. His task was to undo the vicious legislation by which the energy of the giant West had been chained—legislation the result of the jealous rivalry of other sections, and of that ignorance of our true interests which attaches itself like a fungus to every object from which it can draw strength and life. He well understood that the West only needed to be left free to work out its own prosperity; that all sections would share in this prosperity and that it most wanted the reversal of those laws by which its strength and energy were trammeled; by which its. lands were withheld from cultivation to be sold to speculators; by which its mines were leased by the government without gain. to any one; by which the necessaries of life were taxed to pay bounty to some losing trade in another section. All such laws were odious to Benton because repugnant to his democratic convictions; especially odious, because burdensome to the young States of the West; and he resolved to attack and overthrow them. The greatness and prosperity of the West are the fitting monuments of him whose labor, energy, and unflagging zeal, unchained her strength, gave homes to her people, fought to death the hydra-headed monopoly which had made her a spoil, and beckoned her to extend her empire to that remote West which blends with the East.

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THE DEATHBED OF BENTON

(Peroration of the Benton Monument Address)

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HEN Colonel Benton was on his deathbed, my father and mother both hastened from the country to be by his side. When they arrived his articulation was almost lost; but his mind was clear and his features gave it expression. After some motion of his lips, he drew my father's face close to his and said "Kiss me," and spoke of their long and unbroken friendship. He then uttered Clay's name and with repeated efforts gave my father to understand that he wished him to get the last of his compilation of 'The Debates of Congress' which he prepared a few days before, the last effort of his feeble hand. It contained. Mr. Clay's pregnant reply to Senator Barnwell, of South Carolina, who had vindicated Mr. Rhett's secession pronunciamento for the South. Mr. Clay, in the passage preserved by Colonel Benton, proclaimed the course which should be taken against the attempt indicated by Rhett and advocated by Mr. Barnwell, and my father expressed his satisfaction that this was given prominence as the work of his last moments, since there were then strong symptoms of the revolutionary movement which culminated in the last war. Colonel Benton's countenance, as he recognized that the sense of the manuscript was understood, evidenced his gratification. The scene was reported to Mr. Crittenden and other Union men who had power to impress it on the public mind. It had its efficacy. In 1858 at the epoch of Benton's death, the country and its loyal sons were struggling, like Laocoon and his offspring, with the two great serpents crushing them in their fatal coils. Benton, in his dying hour, seemed in his agonies concerned alone for those which he foresaw awaited the country.

The page to which he pointed my father's eye contained Mr. Clay's last appeal intended to arouse the people to support the government against impending convulsions. Colonel Benton adopted his life-long rival's last appeal as his own, and made it speak when he could no longer utter the counsel which had healed the bitter enmity between him and his great political opponent. And he left that fact as a dissuasive command to the ambitious factions that would rend the country into hostile sections and submerge its glorious institutions to subserve views of personal aggrandizement or gratify a vindictive hatred. The last labors of this great man's life exhibited its great moral attributes