SPEECHES HENRY CABOT LODGE Class £-(oi:>0 Book kiz Cop}-lightM___C:^::^ COF^OUGHT DEPOStn 2- SPEECHES BY HENRY CABOT LODGE ^^^^S ^H ^^^^^^o ^^^^1 MWta^^ 7^0 )< BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY ^ Copyright, 1892, By henry CABOT LODGK All rights reserved. The River fide Press, Cambridge, Mass., U, S. A. Electrotyped aiid Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Ca From many words which passed with the hour of speech, I save these few, because I am glad to have spoken them, and because there are friends of mine who are kind enough to wish to keep them. For myself, I take the pleasure of inscribing them to my friend Theodore Roose- velt, in token of personal affection, and of ad- miration for his work as a historian and for his services as a public rnan. CONTENTS. PASB The Independent Spirit of the Puritans 1 December 22, 1884. The Uses and Responsibilities of Leisure 11 March 23, 1886. The Blue and the Gray 25 June 17, 1887. The Puritans 31 December 22, 1887. Harvard College in Politics 37 November 22, 1888. The Day we Celebrate 41 December 21, 1888. International Copyright 49 May 2, 1890. The Civilization op the Public School. A Reply . . 57 January 13, 1890. Massachusetts 66 October 23, 1891. THE INDEPENDENT SPIRIT OF THE PURITANS. m ANSWER TO A TOAST AT THE DINNER OP THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY OF NEW YORK, DECEMBER 22, 1884. THE INDEPENDENT SPIRIT OF THE PURITANS. It is no slight trial for a Massachusetts man, especially for one of the younger generation, to be called upon to speak in this presence, where Choate and Webster spoke in bygone days and where the melodious echoes of their eloquence ever seem to linger. The shy and retiring dis- position so characteristic of the sons of New England, and which so often hinders their worldly success, becomes at such a moment really oppressive. I can only escape from it by reflecting that this is one of the rare occasions when it is fair that we should all throw aside the native modesty of our race and utter boldly the favorable opin- ions which we really entertain in regard to the Puritans and their descendants. For more than three quarters of a century your so- ciety has gathered here in the metropolis of the nation to commemorate the founding of that little group of common- wealths known as New England. The best thing we can say of that event is that it is one of the great facts in himian progress which really deserves to be freshly remem- bered. We are honestly and frankly proud to be the de- scendants of men who placed upon the roadside of history such a milestone as Plymouth Rock. Yet behind this pride there is a gentler but even stronger feeling, gentler 4 THE INDEPENDENT SPIRIT OF THE PURITANS. because it springs from love of home, stronger because its roots are entwined among our heart-strings. -^ The lands to which Nature has been most prodigal are by no means those which are dearest to their children. New England has a harsh climate, a barren soil, a rough and stormy coast, and yet we love it, even with a love passing that of dwellers in more favored regions. Na- ture, niggard in material gifts, has yet been gracious there in all that appeals to the eye or touches the heart, and we love the Pui'itan land for moimtain and river, for hillside and valley, for rugged cliffs and high sand-dunes, with the measureless sea ever murmuring beneath. Be- yond all and above all, we love New England for what is there enshrined : the graves of her honored dead ; the hallowed spots where great deeds were wi-ought ; the mem- ories of the men who gave their labors and their lives to the service of their country and mankind. The independent spirit of New England ! That was a chief quality of the Puritans, and the day we cele- brate marks the opening of the long struggle of our people for independence of foreign control and foreign influence. The beginning was made in a period of intense religious ferment, and bore the scars of the time. Pilgi'im and Puritan alike sought freedom to worship God, but it was freedom for themselves that they might worship God in their own fashion, in this new world, and not at all freedom of worship for any one who chanced that way with different opinions as to creeds and tenets. Indepen- dence, unfortunately, is not always sjoionymous with a generous breadth and just liberality of opinion ; at least it was not in the seventeenth century. The Puritan set up his independent church, and then made every one come into it on pain of death or banishment, — punishments THE INDEPENDENT SPIRIT OF THE PURITANS. 5 which he inflicted upon all recalcitrants with characteristic vigor and promptness. Yet whatever we may think of his methods, he achieved his religious independence, and his church was his own, and not that of some one else across the water. That same Puritan spirit of hostility to foreign control and foreiofu influence has traveled far and fast since then. Its path has lain across the battlefields of the Revolution and over the bloody decks of fighting frigates in the war of 1812, but its mission and its work have ever been the same. The last vestiges of foreign influence upon our habits of thought seemed to vanish in the battle smoke of the civil war, which destroyed our previous morbid sensi- bility to foreign opinion, and left us " Self-school'd, self-scanu'd, self-honored, self-secure." Yet although much was then accomplished, all was not done. The imitative colonial propensity of mind still dwells with us. There is still work for the Puritan spirit which would go its own way and think its own thoughts. It is not altogether our own church, even now in the world of ideas ; in art, and literature, and among certain elements of our society. Who, for instance, has not heard the profound saying that in this country nature does not lend itseK to art ? Have we not, then, the glories of morning and of evening, the mists of dawn, the radiance of midday, "the lightning of the noontide ocean," the infinite beauties of sea and sky, of river and mountain ? When nature does not lend itself to art it is because there is no art able to borrow. Let the right men come in the right spirit and they will have no trouble with nature. Thanks to the ever-increasing number of goodly work- ers, the spirit of dependence on foreign ideas is fast dis- 6 THE INDEPENDENT SPIRIT OF THE PURITANS. appearing from our literature. Yet I took up an Anglo- American or " International " volume the other day, and the burden of the first few pages seemed to be that one could not sketch Fifty-third Street. That is, indeed, a most appalling thought. But, after all, who wants to sketch Fifty-third Street ? We know it is not as pic- turesque as the Grand Canal of Venice, and we also know that these things are but trappings in literature. The conditions of French or English life are not oui'S, and are false for us. Our literature must accept, and is accepting in the right spirit, our own conditions, and it will find, as indeed it has found, the best inspiration at the true source, ever old and ever new, — the wellspring of human passion and human emotion, as full of life here to-day as when Homer sang of Helen's beauty and Achil- les' wrath. Most of all, however, do we need the Puritan spirit in certain elements of our society. The number of men to whom inherited fortune brings education and command of time without effort on their part is ever increasing. Do they avail themselves fully of their opportunities, or are they too apt to pass their days in a vain search for distrac- tions and a mournful regret that this country is not some other country ? I am happy to believe that this is the very worst comitry in the world for an idler. But to the man with health, wealth, education, and unlimited command of time, — in other words, to the man who owes most to his coimtry, — here are better opportunities and higher duties than anywhere else. I am not going to make the familiar plea that young men of education and wealth ought to perform their obvious duties as citizens. There has been plenty of sound argument and good advice offered on that score, and the proposition is well understood. THE INDEPENDENT SPIRIT OF THE PURITANS. 7 But this is not all. In this question lie deeper mean- ings. There is a veiy real danger that the growth of wealth here may end by producing a class grounded on mere money, 'and thence class feeling, a thing noxious, deadly, and utterly wrong in this country. It lies with the men of whom I have spoken to strangle this serpent at its birth. They cannot do this, however, unless they are in full sympathy with the American people and with American ideas ; and to this sympathy they can never come by living in Europe, by mimicking foreign habits, by haunting well-appointed clubs, or by studying our pub- lic affairs in the columns of a Saturday Review, home- made or imported. They must go to work. Philanthropy and public affairs need such men, because they can give what others cannot spare — time and money. There is a great field in politics. Before they enter in, let them take to themselves not only the high and seK-respecting spirit of the Puritan, but also his fighting qualities, his dogged persistence, and another attribute for which he was not so conspicuous, — plenty of good nature. They will need all these weapons, for it is no primrose path. They must be prepared to meet not only the usual abuse, but also much and serious prejudice. They must not mind defeats and hard work. If their conception of duty differs from that of their accustomed friends and allies, they must not be surprised if some of those very friends mete out to them the harshest measure and deal them the sharpest blows. Yet if they hold fast to two principles, — I care not under what party banner they serve, — if they will fear- lessly do what in their otvti eyes and before their own con- science is right and brave and honorable, if, like the Puri- tans, they will do the work which comes to their hands 8 THE INDEPENDENT SPIRIT OF THE PURITANS. with all their might, they will win the best success. They will win the regard and confidence of large bodies of their feUow-citizens, of those men by whose strong hands and active brains the republic is ever being raised higher, and this regard and confidence are the best and most valuable possessions that any American can ever hope to have. Let such men, then, go into politics, because they can give their time and energy to it, because they can do work worth doing, and, above all, because they wiU thus be- come truer and better Americans. I believe, Mr. President, that I am coming very close to what is called "Americanism," but of "Americanism" of the right sort we cannot have too much. Mere vaporing and boasting become a nation as little as a man. But honest, outspoken pride and faith in our country are infinitely better and more to be respected than the cidti- vated reserve which sets it down as ill-bred and in bad taste ever to refer to our country except by way of depre- ciation, criticism, or general negation. The Puritans did great work in the world because they believed most fer- vently in their cause, their coimtry, and themselves. It is the same to-day. Without belief of this sort nothing worth doing is ever done. We have a right to be proud of our vast material suc- cess, our national power and dignity, our advancing civi- lization, carrying freedom and education in its train. Most of all may we be proud of the magnanimity displayed by the American people at the close of the civil war, a noble generosity miparalleled in the history of nations. But to count our wealth and tell our numbers and re- hearse oiu* great deeds simply to boast of them is useless enough. We have a right to do it only when we listen to the solemn undertone which brings the message of great THE INDEPENDENT SPIRIT OF THE PURITANS. 9 responsibilities, — responsibilities far greater than the ordi- nary political and financial issues which are sure to find, sooner or later, a right settlement. Social questions are the questions of the present and the future for the Amer- ican people. The race for wealth has opened a broad gap between rich and poor. There are thousands at your gates toiling from sunrise to sunset to keep body and soul together, and the struggle is a hard and bitter one. The idle, the worthless, and the criminal form but a small element of the community ; but there is a vast body of honest. God-fearing working men and women whose yoke is not easy and whose burden is far from light. The destiny of the republic is in the welfare of its working men and women. We cannot push their troubles and cares into the background, and trust that all will come right in the end. Let us look to it that differences and inequalities of condition do not widen into ruin. It is most true that these differences cannot be rooted out, but they can be modified, and a great deal can be done to secure to every man the share of well-being and happi- ness to which his honesty, thrift, and ability entitle him. Legislation cannot change humanity nor alter the decrees of nature, but it can help the solution of these grave problems. Practical measures are plentiful enough : the hours of labor; emigration from oiu' over-crowded cities to the lands of the West ; economical and energetic municipal governments ; proper building laws ; the rigid prevention of adulteration in the gTeat staples of food ; wise regula- tion of the railroads and other great corporations ; the extir- pation of race and class in politics ; above all, every effort to secure to labor its fair and full share of the profits earned by the combination of labor and capital. Here 10 THE INDEPENDENT SPIRIT OF THE PURITANS. are matters of great pith and moment, more important, more essential, more pressing, than any others. They must be met ; they cannot be shirked or evaded. The past is across the water ; the future is here in oiu* keepino-. We can do all that can be done to solve the social problems and fvJfill the hopes of mankind. Failure would be a disaster unequaled in history. The first step to success is pride of country, simple, honest, frank, and ever present, and this is the Americanism that I would have. If we have this pride and faith we shall appreci- ate our mighty responsibilities. Then if we live up to them we shall keep the words "an American citizen" what they now are, — the noblest title any man can bear. THE USES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF LEISURE. AN ADDRESS TO THE STUDENTS OF HARVARD COLLEGE, MARCH 23, 1886. THE USES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF LEISURE. I REMEMBEE hearing Mr. Lowell say in his most charm- ing way, some years since, of his friend Edmund Quincy, that "early in life Mr. Quincy devoted himself to the arduous profession of gentleman, and certainly in the practice of it he achieved as great success as is possible in a country where we have business in the blood, and where leisure is looked down upon as the larceny of time that belongs to other people." The theory of life in vogue in the United States, and especially in New England, when Mr. Quincy was yoimg, and, indeed, until within a few years, was in some ways a very peculiar one. It was firmly believed that any young man who did not have some regular occupation involving money - getting was doomed to perdition. Literature was barely tolerated ; the learned professions, of course, passed muster ; but busi- ness was much preferred. Any one who did not conform his life to the habits of a trading community was assumed to be totally idle, and in consequence thereof to be draw- ing his amusement from the source pointed out by Dr. Watts. What a fine refutation to this doctrine is the life of Mr. Quincy himself ! A gracefiU writer of some very charming stories with the perfume of the eighteenth century sweet upon them, the author of one of the very best of American biographies, he holds a secure and hon- 14 THE USES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF LEISURE. orable place in oiu- literature. An early Abolitionist, he put his name, his talents, and his character at the ser- vice of a despised cause, and never in the hour of its tri- umph asked or wished reward. By his brilliant corre- spondence in the New York " Tribune," covering many years, and by his witty and effective speech, he helped to fio-ht the anti-slavery battle. No accotmt of our literature is complete without him, and no history of the great movement which resulted in the abolition of slavery can be wi-itten without ample mention of his name and ser- vices. The busy money-getters, the worthy citizens who shrugged their shoulders and disapproved him and his ways, are forgotten, but the gentleman of leisure is re- membered, and holds an honorable place in the literature and the history of his coimtry. It is a noble record of well-doing, one that any man might be content to leave as a heritage to his children. What, then, was the secret ? He used his leisure, that was all. Leisure well employed is of high worth. Leisure imemployed is mere idleness and helpless drifting along the stream of life. The disapprobation of men of leisure which was common in New England in Mr. Quincy's youth erred only be- cause it was narrow, and could not believe that a man was usefully employed unless he worked in a few well- recognized and accepted ways. It is easy enough to show the error of the old doctrine, and yet it would be quite as great an error to condemn it. Like most Puritan theories, it has at bottom a soimd and vital principle, and the danger to-day of forgetting that underlying principle of action is far greater than of our being warped by its too rigid application. A mere idler is a very poor creatiu-e. Leisure is nothing in itself. It is only an opportunity, and, like other oppoi-timities, if wasted or abused, it is harmful and often fatal. THE USES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF LEISURE. 15 The increase of wealth in this country and the multipli- cation of great fortunes has produced a corresponding increase in the number of young men who, fortimately or unfortunately, are in fact or in prospect the heirs of large estates. Money in itself is worthless, and gets value only through its purchasing power. When its real purpose is misunderstood it is a perilous possession, and the stern necessity of earning a living has proved a strong safeguard and help to many men. Given the command of time and of one's own life, and there is nothing so easy as to let the years slip by in indecision and infirmity of purpose until it is too late. The worst outcome, of course, is when a man uses his great opportunity for nothing but selfish and sensual gratification, with no result but evil to him- self and to others. Far better than this cumberer of the ground is the man who, if he does not use his intellec- tual powers, at least employs his physical gifts in some way. A taste, an amusement, a pursuit of any kind, even if only for amusement's sake, is infinitely better than nothing, or than mere sensual enjoyment. It is manly and wholesome to ride boldly and well, to be a good shot, a successfid yachtsman, an intelligent and en- terprising traveler. These things are good in themselves, and it may be fairly said that the bold rider, the good shot, the skillful seaman, if he loves these sports for their own sake, has in him, in all probability, the stuff of which a soldier or sailor may be made in the hour of the country's need. Then, again, there are the men of leisure who devote themselves to some intellectual pursuit, but without any idea of earning money or of any practical result. Such men sometimes do valuable work, but they nevertheless remain amateurs all their lives. They may be credited 16 THE USES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF LEISURE. with an honest effort for something better than idleness or physical amusement, sometimes with fruitful work, but there the commendation ceases. The first thing for a man of leisure to do, who really wishes to count in his day and generation, is to avoid being an amateur. In other words, the first thing necessary is to acquire the habit of real work, and this can be done well only by working to obtain money, reputation, or some other solid value. You can only find out if your work is really worth doing, is in truth current gold, by bringing it to the touchstone of competition and an open market. The essential thing at the start is the habit of thinking and working. The subject of work or thought is not es- sential, for, the habit once obtained, a man will soon find that for which he is best fitted. Even at this very fiji-st step we are likely to be met with objections, and perhaps it is as weU to clear them from the path at once. There is one theory which says that life at best is short and evil ; that we are not responsible for it, and that as at our utmost we can effect so little, the correct course is to get as much pleasure out of existence as possible. Ac- cepting this statement, the next proposition is that work or labor is an evil, and should be dispensed with. There is a conclusive answer to this doctrine, even if we take pleasure only as a test, for there is no man so discontented as the idle man, and unless he is witless, the older he grows the more bitter and unhappy he becomes. The only charm of a holiday comes from working before and after it. Your idle man has no holidays ; nothing but "the set gi-ay life and apathetic end." It is not easy at the outset to labor with no taskmaster except one's own de- termination, but the effort grows steadily and rapidly less, so that in a very short time work becomes a necessity, and THE USES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF LEISURE. 17 brings more solid and lasting pleasure and more interest than anything else human ingenuity can devise for our diversion. The next question is as to the particidar work to which a man of leisure can best devote his time and his energies. I have known men who, without any spur from necessity, have addressed themselves to the professions or to busi- ness, and have earned there both money and distinction. It is needless to say that these men deserve the very high- est credit and the entire respect of all who know them. At the same time, while we may not criticise such men, it is impossible to doubt that they might be more effective in other fields than those which are primarily and essen- tially money getting. It is better for the man of leisure in learning to work and think, or when he has acquired that most precious education, to turn to the fields where men are needed who can labor, without pecuniary profit, for the public benefit. This is not only proper abstractly, but it is a duty and an obligation. Every gentleman pays his debts just as he tells the truth and keeps faith. We all owe a debt to our country, and none so large a debt as the man of lei- sure. That those who have gone before him have been enabled to accumulate property and leave it to him in secure enjoyment, is due to the wise laws and solid insti- tutions of his State and country, and to the sound and honest character of the American people. That we have a country at all is due to those who fought for her. To them we owe a debt we can only try to pay by devotion to the country that we enjoy, and which they saved. The modes of working for the public are many. The first which suggests itself is literature, but there, as every- where else, the essential preliminary is to learn to work 18 THE USES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF LEISURE. practically. No man ought to begin by publishing at his own expense. It is far better to try at the doors of the newspapers, the magazines, or the publishers, until you can command a market for your writings, for the only sure way to make a writer that I know is to have him enter the field of competition. When he can hold his own with other men, then it will be time to publish, if he chooses, at his own expense, work of value to the world, but which the world could get in no other way. There is a still larger opportunity in the directions of public education and public charities. In all these there is a vast and growing demand for intelligent work, and for the most part it is only possible to men who can com- mand their own time. A man can win wide reputation in these departments, and render incalculable service to his fellow-men. It only remains now to speak of politics. Let every man give of his leisure, be it more or less, to politics ; for it is simply good citizenship to do so. Discard at the outset the wretched habit which is far too prevalent in this coimtry, and particvdarly, I am sorry to say, among highly educated persons, of regarding aU men who are much in politics with suspicion, and of using the word " politician " as an uncomplimentary epithet, and usually with a sneer. You neither help nor hurt the politician by so doing, but you hurt your covmtry and lower her repu- tation. There is nothing, indeed, which does more to in- jure politics and the public business than to assvmie that a man who enters them is in some way lowered by so doing. The calling ought to be and is an honorable one, and we should aU seek to honor and elevate, not to decry it. Politics is a wide field, but it is a very practical one, and the amateur is not only singularly out of place there, THE USES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF LEISURE. 19 but is especially apt to do harm by mistaken efforts to do good. Take hold of politics as you would of any other business, honorably and respectably, but take hold hard. Go to the polls, for example, and work for the man whom you want to see elected, and get your friends to do the same. If you prefer to reach political questions by voice or pen, do it in these ways, but let me suggest that you fu'st inform yourself about politics and politicians, for poKtics and public questions are exceedingly difficult, and educated men are sometimes as marvelously ignorant upon these subjects as they are ready in judgment and condem- nation concerning them. There is only one other point that I will touch upon as to politics. Work for the highest and best measures always. When the question is between right and wrong, work for what you believe to be right without yielding a jot. In such questions no compromise is possible. For- tunately for us, however, great moral questions like slavery are extremely rare in pohtics. Most public questions, grave and important as many of them are, are not moral questions at aU, and form no part of the everlasting con- flict between good and evil, between right and wrong. Do not faU into the cant of treating public questions as moral questions when they are not so. There is a tempta- tion to a certain class of minds to do this, because, the morality of the question being granted and they being in the right themselves, it is then possible to look down upon their opponents and call their enemies wicked. This is cant of the worst kind. All cant and hypocrisy are mean and noxious, and none more so than the political varieties. Stand for the right, then, against the wrong always, but where there is no moral question involved do not, by 20 THE USES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF LEISURE. insisting on the unattainable, lose everything. Because, for example, the civil service act of 1883 falls far short of perfection and completeness, should we therefore reject it ? That woidd be folly. Let us take it as a fii-st great step toward our goal of removing routine offices from politics. The political history of the English-speaking race is in truth a history of legislative compromises. When compromises have not been made vnih wrong, they have been the stepping stones in the great march of our civilization. They mark the line between the people who are ever moving forward to higher things and those who, insisting on the highest at once, never advance, but stand shrieking with helpless confusion, always in one place. I have touched very cursorily and unsatisfactorily on some of the fields of public usefvdness open to men whose time is wholly at their own disposal, and open in some measure to others as well. In conclusion, I want to say a word on two points which seem to me of great impor- tance, and which apply to all alike. Be in sympathy with your age and coimtry. It is easier to get out of sym- pathy with the movements of the time than you think. What every man must work with and understand are the forces about him. If he does not, his usefidness is crip- pled. To be out of sympathy with your country and with American ideas is a grievous fault, to be shunned at all hazards. If a man fails to respect himseH no one will respect him, and if he does not love and honor his country he will deserve nothing but contempt. The most utterly despicable of all things is the Anglomania which prevails in certain quarters. It should be impossible here, for no men who have been brought up beneath the shad- ows of Memorial Hall, and who have felt the influence that descends from its silent tablets, ought to be anything THE USES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF LEISURE. 21 but ardent Americans. All I would say is, make your Americanism and your patriotism living and active forces in your daily life. The other point which I wish to make is in regard to a danger which I think is in some measiu'e peculiar to Har- vard. I mean the tendency to be merely negative and critical. This arises, in part at least, from a dread of be- coming ridiculous by over-enthusiasm, and from the feel- ing that it is " in better form "to be exceedingly quiet and reticent. But it will not do to confine one's self in life to the purely critical attitude, for it leads to nothing. It may be able to destroy, it can never create. It frequently makes a man sour, envious, and spiteful ; it never makes him helpful, generous, brave, and the doer of great deeds. Moreover, if a man contents himself with criticism and negation, he is likely to become not only narrow and arro- gant, but ineffective. To be well balanced and efficient we must see the grood as well as the evil in both men and things. It is comparatively easy to stand by and criticise the men who are struggling, for instance, in the stream of politics, but a far better thing is to plunge in yourself and try to do something, and to bring some definite thing to pass. If you attain to nothing more, you will at least be a wiser and better critic, and therefore far more weighty and influential, because more sympathetic and more intelligent. Let me illustrate once more, by an example, what I mean by positiveness and enthusiasm and by disregard of self and of the weak dread of being ridiculous. You have all, no doubt, read the novels and sketches of Mr. Cable. You know that he is one of the most charming of our yoimger writers. Mr. Cable has lately turned aside to enter another field, and to do what in him lies to 22 THE USES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF LEISURE. right what he believed to be a wrong. I suppose that every one who listens to me has read the two essays enti- tled " The Freedman's Case in Equity " and " The Silent South." The modest volvmie which contains them is, I believe, an epoch-making book. Not now, perhaps, but in the days that are yet to be. These essays are written of course admirably, with literary skill and great force. The words, however, are not so much ; the great fact is the man who uttered them. It is the act that will live, and which is destined to mark a stage in our national devel- opment. Mr. Cable is the grandson and son of a slave- holder. He was a soldier in the Confederate army. He is a Southerner through and through, with all the tradi- tions and prejudices of the South. He saw before him a despised race just released from slavery ; he saw that the condition of that race presented a mighty problem, vital to the welfare of a large part of our common country. He believed that this problem was one which legislation could not reach, but which public opinion in the South could alone deal with. He studied the question, and came to the conclusion that the treatment of the negro was neither right nor honest. How easy it was to remain silent ! He had everything to gain and nothing to lose by silence, and he thereupon spoke out. He faced hos- tility, ostracism almost, at the South, and indifference at the North. He was assailed, abused, and sneered at, but he has never been answered, and he never will be an- swered until he obtains from the tribunal to which he ap- pealed, from Southern opinion itself, the inevitable ver- dict that he is right and that the wrong shall be redressed. It was a great and noble act. It was positive and not negative. Mr. Cable will be remembered for those essays while we have a history, and long after the very names of THE USES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF LEISURE. 23 those who stood coldly by and criticised him have been forgotten. It is by such men that the work of the world is done, and every man can do his part, be it great or small, if he rests on the same everlasting principle. The errors, the mistakes, the failures, the ridicule, will be forgotten, but the central, animating thought, manly, robust, and gen- erous, wiU survive. Be in sympathy with your time and your country. Be positive, not negative. Live the life of your time, if you would live at aU. These are generali- ties, I know, but they mean everything to me because they define a mental and moral attitude which is essential to virility and well doing. Let that attitude be right, and the man upon whom fortune has bestowed the gift of leisure will become, as he ought, one of the most useful and one of the busiest of men. If he is this, the rest will care for itself. " In light things Prove thou the arms thou long'st to glorify. Nor fear to work up from the lowest ranks, Whence come great nature's captains. And high deeds Haunt not the fringy edges of the fight, But the pell-mell of men." THE BLUE AND THE GRAY. IN ANSWER TO A TOAST AT THE DINNER TO ROBERT E. LEE CAMP OF CONFEDERATE VETERANS, IN FANEUIL HALL, JUNE 17, 1887. THE BLUE AND THE GRAY. To such a toast, sir, it would seem perhaps most fit- ting that one of those should respond who was a part of the sreat event which it recalls. Yet, after aU, on an occasion like this, it may not be amiss to caU upon one who belongs to a generation to whom the Rebellion is little more than history, and who, however insufficiently, represents the feelings of that and the succeeding genera- tions as to our great civil war. I was a boy ten years old when the ti-oops marched away to defend Washington, and my personal knowledge of that time is confined to a few broken but vivid memories. I saw the troops, month after month, pour through the streets of Boston. I saw Shaw go forth at the head of his black regiment, and Bartlett, shattered in body but dauntless in soul, ride by to carry what was left of him once more to the battle- fields of the republic. I saw Andrew, standing bare- headed on the steps of the State House, bid the men godspeed. I cannot remember the words he said, but I can never forget the fervid eloquence which brought tears to the eyes and fire to the hearts of aU who listened. I tmderstood but dimly the awful meaning of these events. To my boyish mind one thing alone was clear, that the sol- diers as they marched past were all, in that supreme hour, heroes and patriots. Amid many changes that simple belief of boyhood has never altered. The gratitude which 28 THE BLUE AND THE GRAY. I felt then I confess to to-day more strongly than ever. But other feelings have in the progress of time altered much. I have learned, and others of my generation as they came to man's estate have learned, what the war really meant, and they have also learned to know and to do justice to the men who fought the war upon the other side. I do not stand up in this presence to indulge in any mock sentimentality. You brave men who wore the gray would be the first to hold me or any other son of the North in just contempt if I should say that, now it was all over, I thought the North was wrong and the result of the war a mistake, and that I was prepared to suppress my political opinions. I believe most profoundly that the war on oiu* side was eternally right, that our victory was the salvation of the country, and that the results of the war were of infinite benefit to both North and South. But however we differed, or still differ, as to the causes for which we fought then, we accept them as settled, com- mit them to history, and fight over them no more. To the men who fought the battles of the Confederacy we hold out our hands freely, frankly, and gladly. To cour- age and faith wherever shown we bow in homage with uncovered heads. We respect and honor the gallantry and valor of the brave men who fought against us, and who gave their lives and shed their blood in defense of what they believed to be right. We rejoice that the famous general whose name is borne upon your banner was one of the greatest soldiers of modern times, because he, too, was an American. We have no bitter memories to revive, no reproaches to utter. Reconciliation is not to be sought, because it exists already. Differ in politics and in a thousand other ways we must and shall in all THE BLUE AND THE GRAY. 29 good-nature, but let us never differ with each other on sectional or State lines, by race or creed. We welcome you, soldiers of Virginia, as others more eloquent than I have said, to New England. We wel- come you to old Massachusetts. We welcome you to Bos- ton and to Faneuil Hall. In your presence here, and at the soimd of your voices beneath this historic roof, the years roll back and we see the figure and hear again the ring- ing tones of your great orator, Patrick Henry, declaring to the first Continental Congress, "The distinctions be- tween Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American." A distinguished Frenchman, as he stood among the graves at Arlington, said, " Only a great people is capable of a great civil war." Let us add with thank- fid hearts that only a great people is capable of a great reconciliation. Side by side, Virginia and Massachusetts led the colonies into the War for Independence. Side by side they founded the government of the United States. Morgan and Greene, Lee and Knox, Moultrie and Pres- cott, men of the South and men of the North, fought shoidder to shoidder, and wore the same imiform of bu£E and blue, — the imiform of Washington. Your presence here brings back their noble memories, it breathes the spirit of concord, and unites with so many other voices in the irrevocable message of union and good- will. Mere sentiment all this, some may say. But it is sentiment, true sentiment, that has moved the world. Sentiment fought the war, and sentiment has reunited us. When the war closed, it was proposed in the newspapers and elsewhere to give Governor Andrew, who had sacri- ficed health and strength and property in his public du- ties, some immediately lucrative office, like the collector- 30 THE BLUE AND THE GRAY. ship of the port of Boston. A friend asked him if he would take such a place. " No," said he ; "I have stood as high priest between the horns of the altar, and I have poured out upon it the best blood of Massachusetts, and I cannot take money for that." Mere sentiment truly, but the sentiment which ennobles and uplifts mankind. It is sentiment which so hallows a bit of torn, stained bunting, that men go gladly to their deaths to save it. So I say that the sentiment manifested by your presence here, brethren of Virginia, sitting side by side with those who wore the blue, has a far-reaching and gracious in- fluence, of more value than many practical things. It tells us that these two grand old commonwealths, parted in the shock of the Civil War, are once more side by side as in the days of the Revolution, never to part again. It tells us that the sons of Virginia and Massachusetts, if war should break again upon the country, will, as in the olden days, stand once more shoulder to shoulder, with no distinction in the colors that they wear. It is fraught with tidings of peace on earth, and you may read its meaning in the words on yonder picture, " Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable." THE PURITANS. IN ANSWER TO A TOAST AT THE DINNER OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY OF PHILADELPHIA, DECEMBER 22, 1887. THE PUEITANS. This is the day that New England men everywhere set apart as sacred to the memory of those who foimded the brave old commonwealths where they were born, and which, however far they may have wandered, they never cease to love. In so doing they only obey a most deeply-rooted instinct of human nature. One of the earliest forms of religion to which primitive man turned for consolation and support was ancestor worship. Indeed, it is but the other day that Japan disestablished Shintoism, the official religion of the state, an ancestor worship wliich for ages has maintained itseK in the face of newer faiths and more popular creeds. The religious form of ancestor worship has departed long since from our race, but the sentiment remains. The Chinaman, who reverses all our habits, has his ancestors ennobled when he himself arrives at dis- tinction. The people of the Western world turn their ancestors to better account, by using them as an argu- ment in favor of benefits to be conferred upon themselves. To us in this country, where aU hereditary distinctions have been from the outset wisely abolished, ancestors are chiefly useful as furnishing pleasant opportunities of this kind for mental and moral improvement. To the New Englander they have an especial value, because his retir- ing and modest nature makes him unwilling to assert himself or sing his own praises. His diffidence, there- fore, finds a welcome shelter in doing justice to ancestral 34 THE PURITANS. deeds and virtues, and thus he is able to shine with the mild refidgence of a reflected light. Nothing in this way coidd be more suggestive than the name of the famous old county which you have coupled with mine. In Essex County the Puritan foimded his first town and set up his first church. As the Puritans of Essex were first in order of settlement, so were they always the most extreme representatives of the day in politics or religion. It was the stern old Essex Puritan John Endicott who cut St. George's cross from the Eng- lish flag because it savored of idolatry. It was an Essex clergyman who was cast out of his pidpit because he led his townsmen in a refusal to pay illegal impositions to Andros, as John Hampden had refused ship money to Charles I. It was in Essex that resistance was organized to the domination of the capital ; and it was in Essex, too, that the dark and morbid side of Puritan faith fovmd its last expression in the madness of the witchcraft trials. So when we speak of Essex County the name brings to us all that is most characteristic and most essential in Puritanism. The time has come when we ought to judge the Puritan fairly, and see him as he really was, — not tricked out in virtues which he never would have claimed, nor bedaubed with vices of which he was entirely innocent. There is no lack of opportimity for fit judgment. The Puritan did not creep along the byways of his time. He stands out in history as distinctly as a Greek temple on a hill- top against the brightness of the clear twilight sky. It is a stern figure enough, lacking many of the ordinary graces, but it is a manly figure withal, fuU of strength and force and purpose. He had grave faults, but they were the faults of a strong and not a weak nature, and his THE PURITANS. 36 virtues were those of a robust man of lofty aims. It is true that he drove Roger Williams into exile and persecuted the Antinomians, but he founded successful and God-feai'- ing commonwealths. He hanged Quakers, and in a mad panic put old women to death as witches, but he planted a college in the wilderness and put a schoolhouse in every village. He made a narrow creed the test of citizenship, but he founded the town-meeting, where every man helped to govern and where all men were equal before the law. He banished harmless pleasures and cast a gloom over daily life, but he formed the fii'st union of States in the New England confederacy, and through the mouth of one of the witchcraft judges uttered an eloquent protest against human slavery a century before Garrison was born or Wilberforce began his agitation. He refused liberty of conscience to those who sought it beneath the shadow of his meeting-house, but he kept the torch of learning burning brightly in the New World. In the fullness of time he broke the fetters which he had himself forged for the human mind, as he had formerly broken the shackles of Laud and Charles. He was rigid in his pre- judices, and filled with an intense pride of race and home, but when the storm of war came upon the colonies he gave without measure and without stint to the common cause. Has not New England, the home of the Puritan, learned, too, the lesson of the times as the long proces- sion of the years moved by ? Has she not learned and taken to her heart the lesson of this great commonwealth, which from the beginning stood for a free church in a free state, the doctrine now accepted throughout the length and breadth of the land ? Has she not freed her- self from the narrowing influence of her early creeds, and turned her intellect to broader and nobler works ? 36 THE PURITANS. Call the roll of our poets and you will find New Eng- land's answer in the names of Longfellow and Lowell, of Emerson and Holmes. Call the roll of our historians and you will find her answer again in the names of Pres- cott and Motley, of Bancroft and Parkman. Turn to old Essex, the birthplace and the centre of Puritanism, and she will respond with the greatest name of aU, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and yet again with that beloved name to which we all bowed in reverence but the other day, the name of Whittier. To-day Essex holds as her noblest possession, and the Puritan States cherish above all men, the gracious poet who by pure and noble verse has been a voice and a guide to their people. Yet this poet whom New England so loves and cherishes is a member of that sect which two hundred years ago she persecuted and ex- iled. Is not this in itself a commentary upon the growth of New England above all tributes of praise ? We honor the Puritan, despite all his errors, for his strong, bold nature, his devotion to civic freedom, and his stern, unconquerable will. We would not barter our de- scent from him for the pedigree of kings. May we not now say that we also honor him because his race has shown itself able to break thi-ough its own trammels, and " rise on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things"? HARVARD COLLEGE IN POLITICS. FROM A SPEECH AT THE MEETING OF THE HARVARD REPUBLICAN CLUB, IN TREMONT TEMPLE, NOVEMBER 22, 1888. HARVABD COLLEGE IN POLITICS. We meet here to-night with a definite purpose, and we meet in the name of Harvard. That name is dear, not only to Harvard's children, but to every son of Massa- chusetts. The ground on wliich her temples stand is holy groimd. It is sacred to learning, to patriotism, and to truth. Fair Harvard ! The name is girt with traditions which tell of the dark days of the savage and the wilder- ness, when the lamp of learning was fii'st lighted on these barren shores. They speak to us of the patriotism of 1776 and of 1861. They teU the long story of noble lives imselfishly given to the cause of American scholar- ship. We do not gather here to assert that we are the sole and only representatives of the college. All that we lay claim to is the right, common to all her sons, to serve, honor, and defend her with loyalty and truth. We do not come to give out to the world that Harvard College sup- ports the party to which we belong. Were such the pur- pose of this meeting, I for one would have no part or lot in it. We gather here to protest, in the only way open to us, against the attempt wliich has been made to drag the college into politics, and to use her honored name as a makeweight in party strife. We are not here to declare that the coUege is Republican, but to stamp as utterly false the assertion that our beloved alma mater is bound to the wheels of any man's political chariot. Harvard 40 HARVARD COLLEGE IN POLITICS. belongs to no party and to no sect. Her doors stand open to men of eveiy faith and every creed, and from her pre- cincts they go out into the workl with her blessing upon them to fight the battle of life each in his own way. No man and no set of men have the right to speak for the great university. She is not the property of any one. She speaks for herseK. She is dedicated to Christ and the Church, and the single word upon her broad shield is Truth. She asks no blind subservience to the doctrines of any man. She gives to all who come to her a liberal education, not in the mere technical sense, but in the broad spirit of tolerance and free inquiry. She teaches respect for the pursuits and opinions of others. She frowns upon that narrowness which imputes unworthy motives to those who differ from it. She says to aU: Think for youi-selves, love your country, and foUow truth as you see it, with an open mind and an honest heart. THE DAY WE CELEBRATE. IN ANSWER TO A TOAST AT THE DINNER OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY OF BROOKLYN, DECEMBER 21, 1888. THE DAY WE CELEBRATE. There is one toast, Mr. President, to which no son of New England can ever refuse to respond, one sentiment to which he must always answer. When the President of a New England society looks toward any one and says, "I give you Forefathers' Day," even the most modest among us must rise and speak. Those two simple words have a world of meaning to the children of the Pilgrim and the Pm-itan. Mathematics symbolizes the unknown by a single letter, and expresses infinity by another. So when we meet upon this anniversary our imagination gathers into those two words all that we mean by New England. For us they stop the hurrying tide of daily life, and open the leaves of memory's book. In them we hear again the solemn music of the wind among New England's pines. When those magic words are uttered, the murmur of the rivers and the roar of the mountain torrents, the crash of the surf upon the ledges and the gentle lapping of the summer sea upon the shingle, sound once more in our ears. Again we see the meadows green and shining with the touch of spring, and the rocky hillsides brilliant with the goldenrod or glowing in the purple flush of autumn. All the scenes that we knew in childhood, and that in manhood we do not forget, rise up before us. It is but a little corner of the great land which we call our own, and yet we love it. 44 THE DAY WE CELEBRATE. We repeat the words and turn again the pages of mem- ory ; the landscape fades and the figures of the past are before us. We pass out of the eager, bustling present and are once more in touch with the strong race which clung to the rocky coast until they made it their own, and whose children and whose children's children have forced their way across the continent, carrying with them the principles and the beliefs of the forefathers. The Pilgrim and the Puritan whom we honor to-night were men who did a great work in the world. They had their faults and shortcomings, but they were not slothful in business and they were most fervent in spirit. They founded prosperous commonwealths, and built up govern- ments of laws and not of men. They carried the light of learning imdimmed through the early years of settlement. They planted a schoolhouse in every village, and fought always a good fight for ordered liberty and for human rights. Their memories shall not perish, for " the actions of the just Smell sweet and blossom in the dust." I have read, sir, that the Pilgrims and the Puritans among their other virtues did not number that of toler- ance. Hostile critics have indeed insinuated that there was somethiug not unlike persecution for opinion's sake in early New England. But, however it may have been at that time, in these latter days it has been the characteris- tic of New England to cherish freedom of speech, and no- where is a greater latitude found than at these very New England dinners. No one, so far as my observation goes, ever seems to feel restricted by the sentiment to which he is asked to answer, even when it is as novel as the one you have kindly assigned to me, and I am going to avail myself of this liberality. THE DAY WE CELEBRATE. 46 There is a wide field opened here before each one of us among subjects of present interest. Among other events there has been an election. I should like of course to point out its lessons. Pointing out the lessons of an elec- tion, however, although pleasant, is one-sided, for I have noticed that it is an exercise in which the winners are prone to indulge without much aid from the vanquished. I should like to preach to you on this text, for we New Eno'landers have too much of the old Puritan blood not to like to preach, especially to somebody else, but I will put the temptation aside and spare your patience. There is, however, one phase of the election which I think reaches far beyond party, if we take the trouble to go a little beneath the surface. I refer to the strong American feeling, that was developed during the canvass, not in noise and shouts, but in regard to many vital ques- tions. This feeling I think is going to last. The War for the Union and the issues springing from it have been set- tled. While they lasted they overshadowed everything else. But all the time other questions have been growing up with the gi'owth of the nation, and are now coming to the front for decision. It is our duty to settle them, not only in the right way, but in a thoroughly American fash- ion. By Americanism I do not mean that which had a brief poHtical existence more than thirty years ago. That movement was based on race and sect, and was therefore thoroughly un-American, and failed, as all un-American movements have failed in this country. True American- ism is opposed utterly to any political divisions resting on race and religion. To the race or to the sect which as such attempts to take possession of the politics or the public education of the country, true Americanism says, Hands off ! The American idea is a free church in a 46 THE DAY WE CELEBRATE. free state, and a free and unsectarian public school in every ward and in every village, with its doors wide open to the children of aU races and of every creed. It goes still further, and frowns upon the constant attempt to divide our people according to origin or extraction. Let every man honor and love the land of his birth and the race from which he springs and keep their memory gi-een. It is a pious and honorable duty. But let us have done with British- Americans and Irish- Americans and German- Americans, and so on, and all be Americans, — nothing more and nothing less. If a man is going to be an American at all let him be so without any qualifying adjectives ; and if he is going to be something else, let him drop the word American from his personal de- scription. As there are sentiments and beliefs like these to be cherished, so there are policies which must be purely and wholly American and to " the manner born " if we would have them right and successful. True Americanism recognizes the enormous gravity of the social and labor problems which confront us. It believes that the safety of the republic depends upon weU-paid labor and the highest possible average of individual well-being. It be- lieves that the right solution of this problem shoidd be sought without rest and without stay, and that no device, public or private, of legislation or of individual eflfort, which can tend to benefit and elevate the condition of the great wage-earning masses of this country, should be left untried. It sets its face rigidly against the doctrine of the Anarchist and the Communist, who seek to solve the social problems, not by patient endeavor, but by brutal de- stixietion. " That way madness lies," — and such attempts and such teachings, barbarous and im- American as they THE DAY WE CELEBRATE. 47 are, must and will be put down with a strong and un- flinchino- hand, in the name of the home and the church and the school, and of all that makes up civilization and the possibility of hiunan progress. In the great public lands of the West an American policy sees one of the safeguards of the republic. It op- poses the further use of these lands to invite immigration or to attract speculation. They should be the heritage of the American people, and not a bait to draw a surplus popidation that we do not want. The true American policy goes further, and beheves that immigration should not only not be stimulated, but that it should be restricted. The pauper and the criminal, the diseased and the vicious, the Anarchist, the Communist and the Mormon, should be absolutely shut out, while the general flow of immigration should be wisely and judiciously checked. It is the American policy to admit to the Union the great territories of the "West as fast as they can fulfill the conditions of statehood ; but it is not the American policy to admit an im- American territory with a popula- tion of Mexicans who speak Spanish, or Utah with a population which defies our laws and maintains a barbar- ous and corrupting system of marriage. When these two territories are thorouglily Americanized, they can come in with the rest and take part in our government, but not before. It is the American policy never to meddle in the affairs of other nations, but to see to it that our attitude toward the rest of the world is dignified, and that our flag is re- spected in every corner of the earth, and backed by a navy which shall be an honor to the American name. Last and greatest of all, true Americanism demands that the ballot box everywhere shall be inviolate, even if it 48 THE DAY WE CELEBRATE. takes the whole force of the United States to make it so. The people's confidence in the decision of the ballot box is the only guaranty we have of the safety of our institu- tions, and we do not now guard it as we ought. It is to these things that the American people are looking; and while they have no ignorant contempt for the experience of other nations, they are firm in the faith that they must settle their own problems in their own way, in accordance with their own conditions and in the light of their own ideas and beliefs. In that faith they will meet the prob- lems and the difficulties which they, in common with aU mankind, must face. They will move on with a high and confident spirit ; they will extinguish the last traces of sectional differences, and if they are true to themselves they will yet do the best work that has ever been given to any people on earth to do. INTEKNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, MAY 2, 1890. INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. Mr. Speaker, aU property is the creation of law. " The good old rule, the simple plan, That they should take who have the power, And they should keep who can," has been replaced in the progress of civilization by law. The title deed of the sword has given way to the title deed of the pen. From one kind of possession to another the law has marched on, extending at the same time its protection, first given to the native of the land, to the stranger within its gates. The most recent advance is that which has recognized property in the creations of the mind, in inventions or in books, the latter of which is known as literary property. This formal recognition dates back, with the English- speaking race, to the statute of Anne ; and for two hun- dred and fifty years aU who used " that ample speech, that subtle speech," have maintained the wisdom of the legis- lation. Literary property is recognized also in the Con- stitution of the United States, and the justice of copy- right has never been questioned in this coimtry. The next step, as in the case of other property, is to accord to the stranger and the outsider the same property rio-hts that our laws accord to the native of the country. In all cases of ordinary property this has been fuUy and amply done ; but the last step in this path, that which 62 INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. most conspicuously separates the civilized from the half- civilized or barbarous nation, has not yet been taken by the United States. We do not yet recognize the property right of the for- eigner in the product of his mind, or, in other words, in his book. To my thinking, this is simjile dishonesty, but I do not propose, sir, to argue that point. In the first place it is too plain a proposition to invite discussion, and in the second place national honor does not seem to be the subject of the story with those who speak in oppo- sition to this bill. The opponents of the bill rest their case on widely different groimds, and seem only anxious to show that what is stolen is cheap. There certainly is some foundation for this view if we are short-sighted as to both the moral and the economic effects. I have no doubt that when Rob Roy lifted cattle, cattle were cheaper among the MacGregors than they were immediately after the death of that lamented chieftain. But I do not think that that fact alters the ethics of the question. " In vain we call old notions fudge And bend our conscience to our dealing ; The Ten Commandments will not budge, And stealing will continue stealing." The great argument that is made here in opposition to international copyi-ight is that this bill, if it passes, is going to make literature dear to the American people. Mr. Speaker, it will do nothing of the kind, and the asser- tion that it will do so is the barest assumption ever made. Take France, for example, which has an international copyright and has had for years. They issue there several popidar series, well printed, perfectly readable, at five cents and even two cents a number ; and these series con- tain the best literature of France and of the world, not INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 53 the offscourings of the literary gutters of other countries. The same is true in Germany ; and the effect of the law here will be, not to make literature dear, but in the series of cheap books simply to substitute for the works of for- eigners the works of American authors. In France and Germany the best literature is the cheapest. With us the exact reverse is the ease, and we tempt our people to read what is worst and even assist them to do so by making it cheap. In one word, cheapness is determined by the con- ditions of yoiu* market and by the demands of your read- ing public, and not by copyright laws. The gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Payson) produced the catalogue of the Seaside Library, and declared that nine tenths of it was standard literature. He read the names of some standard authors, of Carlyle and others, as if they and those like them filled the list. Now, see how plain a tale wiU put him down. Of the 1,073 books in the Seaside Library, 92 per cent, are novels, and 97 per cent, are written by foreigners. The same propor- tion holds true in other cases, as any one can see who will read the careful analysis of Mr. Brander Matthews in his admirable essay on " Cheap Books and Good Books." Instead of nine tenths being standard Hterature in such series as these, nine tenths are fiction, of which the greater part is at the best foolish and enervating, and at the worst positively vicious. In this connection, allusion was made to Dickens. No book, let me say in passing, which was written before the passage of this act, is affected by it. But the gentleman says that, if that is true, we must look to the Dickens that is to come. Suppose another Dickens does come, or any man of equal genius writing in the English tongue, would the American people grudge to him who ministered 54 INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. so to their pleasure, vnth whom they have wept and laughed, who has lightened their sorrow and softened their labors, the small royalty that an author receives on his work ? Would they grudge to-day to the creator of all that marvelous fiction, from the " Pickwick Papers " to " Edwin Drood, " a share in the profits which are now reaped exclusively by the publisher ? Mr. Speaker, I do not believe it for one moment. Such meanness wotdd be impossible to the American people, the most generous people in the world. But, sir, in the brief time allowed me I wish to speak chiefly in behalf of the writers of America, in behaK of those who write and make books, of the men who live by the pen, the journalists and essayists, the writers of fic- tion and the writers of history, and of the printers who aid them in the mechanical part of their task. They do not come here and ask you for subventions, or subsidies, bounties, or protection. They do not ask you to take their property as security, and issue to them a large amount of money upon it, or to build them warehouses in every county. They ask you simply for justice ; that you shall not discriminate against them, and make still smaller and harder opportunities and earnings which are never either large or easy. That is all they ask ; nothing else. You now take the foreign author's works and pay him nothing. You save on these the copyright, which on an average is ten per cent, royalty, and by this discrimina- tion you drive the American author out of his own mar- ket. Speaking as one who has followed in a humble way the career of literature, I say to this House that I do not understand how any one in his senses can imagine that the American author would not desire the great circula- INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 55 tion and corresponding profit of cheap editions. That is really aU we ask for, and yet no American publisher can undertake to print an American book, with rare exceptions, in one of these cheap editions, for the simple reason that he must pay the American author a royalty, while he pays the foreign author none. This is a direct and unjust discrimination against the American author. As for the combinations that are talked of, the monop- olies that are used here as bugbears, where are they ? There is one lying dormant now in the cheap reprints, and if this bill is defeated that trust in cheap reprints will spring into life. International copyright is free copy- right, which is equal protection to all, and that is the way to stop that trust. The present partial system is the way to make trusts and combinations possible, and nothing else. There is one other point, more important than any other, which I wish to make to the House, and that is that we give to our reading public, to our girls and boys, our young men and women, at the most impressionable age, when their ideas and habits of thought are forming, the very books that we ought not to give them. We should furnish them with a high order of books, not foreign books, not cheap books, not translations by the myriad of French novels dedicated, as Matthew Arnold said, to the goddess of " Lubricity," not second-class English novels, the novels of the snob and the tuft-hunter, written about dukes and duchesses and lords and ladies from the point of view of a lackey, and which hold up ideals utterly hostile to ours. Not such stuff as this should we encourage and even force our youth to read, but the best books of all ages, and especially wholesome American books, which wlU bring them up to love America, which 56 INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. vsdll fill them with American ideas, with reverence and love for American principles of government, and with re- spect for American society, instead of admiration for sys- tems of government and society wholly alien to their own. Nothing is cheap that is false. Let us be true to ourselves and to the youth of the Repubhc. In their name I ask for a favorable vote on this biU. I ask for it in the name of the printers, forty thousand of whom stand behind this bill, because they see that it will increase the work and the wages of the American workmen. I hold in my hand a telegram from a man who once stood at the case, and who now holds an hon- orable place among you here, in which he says : " Ask for leave to print on the copyright bill. I hope it will pass. Amos J. Cummings." I ask for it in the name of every man who uses a pen, whether on the daily press or in making a book, of the men who minister to your information, to your amusement and to your instruction. Think what we owe to literature ; a debt which never can be paid. " Books," says Dr. John- son, " help us to enjoy life or teach us to endure it." What a service is this. Be just, at least to those who help us to enjoy and teach us to endure. I ask it most of all in the name of the national honor. As an American I deplore the spectacle of the United States alone among the civilized nations taking the highwayman's attitude, robbing the foreign and the native author alike, and injuring their own readers beyond the power of words to describe. In the name of all these, of printers, writers, and readers, and of the good name of the Republic itself, I hope that the bill wiU pass. THE CIVILIZATION OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL. A REPLY. SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF RETRESENTATIVES, JANUARY 13, 1890. THE CIVILIZATION OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL. A REPLY. The House being in Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union and having under consideration the bill (H. R. 12573) making appropriations for the support of the Army for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1892, and for other purposes, — Me. Lodge said : Mr. Chairman : I find by the Record of this morning that while I was absent from the House yesterday after- noon on business connected with the Naval Committee, of which I am a member, I was honored by a personal attack from the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Stone]. The carefully prepared sentences of that effort show much labor, and it was evidently the intention of the gentleman to be severe. He has, however, mistaken abuse for sever- ity; and into a competition of coarse personal abuse I have no intention of entering. In that field I willingly yield to him the supremacy. I have never indulged in personalities in debate. I have always found it possible to discuss public measures Avithout personal allusions to the gentlemen who have dif- fered from myself in opinion. From that habit I do not intend to deviate now or at any time. I am always ready to concede to gentlemen who differ from me the same sincerity of motive and honesty of purpose that I claim for myself. But at the same time I have a large char- 60 CIVILIZATION OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL. ity, Mr. Chairman, for those gentlemen whose mental limitations are such that they can reach notoriety only by indulging in personalities. The head and front of my offending, it appears, is that I am in part responsible for the Federal election bill. That bill was reported from my committee. With my colleague from Illinois [Mr. Howell] and other gentlemen I helped to frame it. With their aid I helped to pass it through the House. Whatever the defects or imperfections of that measure may be, I believe most thoroughly in the principle which it involves. It is the principle of honest elections and of the protection of the ballot box, not in the South, not in the North, but throughout the length and breadth of the land. With that principle I am always ready and always proud to be identified. I believe that the Republican party can make no greater mistake after its past and its pledges than to fail now either here or elsewhere in loyalty to the doctrine of protection to the ballot box. I am quite ready to let my record stand on that question, and it does not disturb me in the least that gentlemen of the other side should assail me on account of it. It only shows that the shaft was well aimed and that it has gone home. Now, Mr. Chairman, the gentleman seems to be annoyed that I had a great-grandfather. George Cabot was a re- spectable, honorable, and not altogether imdistinguished man, and I am very proud of his memory, although he held some views in politics with which I do not personally agree. No attack upon New England, however, would ever be complete without an allusion to the Hartford Con- vention, of which he was president. It has been the un- failing resource of Democratic statesmen, when at a loss to say something disagreeable about New England, for the CIVILIZATION OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL. 61 last seventy-five years, and I suppose it will continue to serve their tui-n for many more years to come, especially as the members of that convention are unable to resent anythiug that may be said of them. The attitude of New England Federalists from 1807 to 1815 is one with which I have little sympathy and have had less and less as I have gone on in life ; but gen- tlemen on the other side seem to forget that the jjosition taken by the Hartford Convention was but a repetition of the position taken by Jefferson and Madison in the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions. It was, whether you call it "nullification " or " mterposition," the doctrine that State rights are capable of overruling the power and the laws of the National Government. To that principle I am opposed, whether it emanated in times past from Vir- ginia or Kentucky or New England. But it ill becomes representatives of the South, even when they are most at a loss for an argument, to rail at New England about a doctrine which first foimd root in their soil and which there and there alone flourished and grew until it blos- somed into the red flower of rebellion. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Missouri also saw fit in the course of his remarks to assail a Senator from my State, who could by no possibility reply to him on this floor. For a speech less violent in language, relating to another Senator, this House saw fit to take very decisive action of censure. I leave it to the House to say whether the time has not come now to repeat that action. The Senator from my State to whom the allusion was made would not wish me, nor would he deem it necessary, that I should enter into any defense of him from such an attack as that made here yesterday. Long after the gen- tleman who made it has passed from this House into that 62 CIVILIZATION OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL. forgetfulness which awaits him and perhaps most of us, the name of the Senator to whom he referred will remain in the history of the United States as that of a ripe scholar and a patriotic, far-seeing statesman, identified with great policies and useful measures, who woidd have been an honor to any State or any country. Still less, Mr. Chair- man, should I deem it necessary on this occasion to de- fend either New England or Massachusetts. The history of Massachusetts is before the world and is known of aU men. As Webster said : " She needs no eidogium ; there she stands ; behold her and judge for yourselves." There, too, is her great record of service to the cause of human rights and human liberty. There are the names of her statesmen and of her soldiers shining ever with a lustre no slanders can dim. There are her lasting services to the advancement of the highest civilization. They are all written in the pages of the history of the United States. They stand there forever for the considerate judg- ment of mankind ; and her people have no fear of the verdict. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman saw fit in what was in- tended, I suppose, to be one of his most wounding pas- sages, to refer to me as the " Oscar Wilde of American statesmanship." It was a perfectly safe attack, for it is quite impossible for me to retort in kind, as I am not aware that the gentleman is the proprietor of any kind of statesmanship whatever. I suppose the allusion was really meant to convey the idea that the statesmanship of Mas- sachusetts and of New England is " effeminate." That is a very easy accusation to make. It is a view which natur- ally is taken of a high civilization by a lower one. It is the view which would naturally be taken of the civilization of the public school by the civilization of the shotgun. CIVILIZATION OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL. 63 But let me say, Mr. Cliairman, that when the two civili- zations came in armed contact there was nothing " effemi- nate " then in the civilization of the public school and of personal liberty. The civilization of the shotgun and of the slave went down before it in bloody ruin, never to be restored. MASSACHUSETTS. FROM CLOSING SPEECH IN DEBATE WITH HON. JOHN E. RUSSELL, TREMONT TEMPLE, OCTOBER 23, 189L MASSACHUSETTS. It is a high honor to be Governor of Massachusetts. To all who dwell within her confines, the old State is very, very dear. She has a right to our love and pride. " Be- hold her and judge for yourselves." Here she is, a Queen among commonwealths, enthroned amidst her hills and streams, with the ocean at her feet. Trade is in her marts and prayer within her temples. Her cities stir with busy life. Her wealth grows, beyond the dreams of ava- rice. Her rivers turn the wheels of industry, and the smoke of countless chimneys tells the story of the inventor's gen- ius and the workman's skill. But the material side is the least of it. We rejoice mightily in her prosperity, but our love and pride are touched by nobler themes. We love the old State. The sand hills of the Cape, with the gulls wheeling over the waste of waters ; the gray ledges and green pastures of Essex, with the seas surging forever on her rocks ; the broad and fruitful valleys of the Con- necticut ; the dark hills and murmuring streams of Berk- shire, have to us a tender charm no other land can give. They breathe to us the soft message that tells of home and country. Still it is something more than the look of hiU and dale, something deeper than habit which stirs our hearts when we think of Massachusetts. Behind the outward form of things lies that which passeth show. It is in the history of Massachusetts, in the lives of her great men, 68 MASSACHUSETTS. in the sacrifices, in the deeds and in the character of her people that we find the true secret of our love and pride. We may not explain it even to ourselves, but it is there in the good old name, and flushes into life at the sight of the white flag. Massachusetts ! Utter but the word and what memories throng upon her children ! Here came the stern, God-fearing men to find a home and foimd a State. Here, almost where we stand, on the edge of the wilderness, was placed the first public school. Yonder, across the river, where the track of the savage stUl lingered and the howl of the wolf was still heard, was planted the first college. Here, through years of peril and privation, with much error and failure, but ever striving and marcliing onward, the Puritans built their State. It was this old town that first resisted England and bared its breast to receive the hostile spears. In the fields of Middlesex the fii-st blood was shed in the Amer- ican Revolution. On the slopes of Bimker Hill the British troops first recoiled under American fire. Mas- sachusetts was the first great Commonwealth to resist the advance of slavery, and in the mighty war for the Union she had again the sad honor to lay the first blood offering on the altar of the nation. This is the State that Win- throp founded. Warren died for her liberties and Web- ster defended her good name. Sunmer bore stripes in behalf of her beliefs, and her sons gave their lives on eveiy battlefield for the one flag she held more sacred than her own. She has fought for liberty. She has done justice between man and man. She has sought to protect the weak, to save the erring, to raise the unfortunate. She has been the fruitful mother of ideas as of men. Her thought has followed the sun and been felt throughout the length of the land. May we not say, as Charles Fox MASSACHUSETTS. 69 said of Switzerland, " Every man shonld desire once in his life to make a pilgrimage to Massachusetts, the land of liberty and peace ? " She has kept her shield im- spotted and her honor pm*e. To us, her loving children, she is a great heritage and a great trust. It is a noble thing to be Governor of such a State. And let it never be forgotten that it is no light matter to hold the place once held by John A. Andrew, when he " stood as high priest between the horns of the altar and poured out upon it the best blood of Massachusetts." LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 013 214 666 4 ^