Modern Eloquence Volume Ii Part 34

[Applause.]

Gentlemen, I have told you about our high prerogatives; but just look at what we have done! see what it is that we are compelled to know or supposed to know--but I am very sorry to say we don't know at all.

[Laughter.] We are supposed to take judicial cognizance of all questions of international law, of treaties, of prize laws, and of the law of nations generally. We take notice of it without its being specially pleaded. We take notice of the laws and statutes of every State of these thirty-eight States of the Union. They are not to be proved in our courts; they are not brought in issue, but the judge of the Federal courts, from the lowest one to the highest, is supposed to take judicial cognizance of all the statute laws, and to know them, of the whole thirty-eight States of the Union, and of the eight Territories besides.

In addition to that, we are supposed to take notice of the common law of the country. We take notice of the equity principles, and we apply them now in separate courts, notwithstanding you have combined them in your processes in the State courts. We are supposed to understand the civil law on which Texas and Louisiana have framed their system of laws; and we are supposed to understand all the other laws, as I said, of the States, divergent and varied as they are. We do the best we can to understand them; but, gentlemen, permit me to say that, but for the bar which practices before us; but for the lawyers who come up from New York and Pennsylvania, and from the States of the West and of the South, to tell us what the law is; but for the instruction and aid which they afford to us, our duties would be but poorly fulfilled.

I take pleasure in saying, gentlemen, and it is the last thing that I shall trouble you with, that a bar or set of men superior in information, in the desire to impart that information to the court, a set of gentlemen in the legal profession more instructive in their arguments, could hardly be found in any country in the world.

[Applause.] I doubt whether their equals are found, when you consider the variety of the knowledge which they must present to us, the topics which they discuss, the sources from which they derive the matter which they lay before us. I say that it is with pleasure that the court relies upon the lawyers of the country to enable it to perform its high functions.

JOHN MORLEY

LITERATURE AND POLITICS

[Speech of John Morley at the banquet of the Royal Academy, London, May 3, 1890. Sir Frederic Leighton, President of the Academy, said in introducing Mr. Morley: "With Literature I a.s.sociate, not for the first time, the name of a master of strong and sober English, a man in whose writings the clear vision of a seeker after truth controls the generous fervor of an idealist, and of whom every appreciator of a fine literary temper must earnestly hope that the paths upon which he has so long trod with growing honor may never become wholly strangers to his feet--I mean Mr. John Morley."]

MR. PRESIDENT, YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS, MY LORDS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--I feel that I am more unworthy now than I was eight years ago to figure as the representative of literature before this brilliant gathering of all the most important intellectual and social interests of our time. I have not yet been able like the Prime Minister, to go round this exhibition and see the works of art that glorify your walls; but I am led by him to expect that I shall see the pictures of Liberal leaders, including M. Rochefort. [Laughter.] I am not sure whether M. Rochefort will figure as a man of letters or as a Liberal leader, but I can understand that his portrait would attract the Prime Minister because M. Rochefort is a politician who was once a Liberal leader, and who has now seen occasion to lose his faith in Parliamentary government. [Laughter and cheers.] Nor have I seen the picture of "The Flowing Tide," but I shall expect to find in that picture when I do see it a number of bathing-machines in which, not the younger generation, but the elder generation are incarcerated. [Laughter.] The younger generation, as I understand, are waiting confidently--for the arrival of the "Flowing Tide," and when it arrives, the elderly gentlemen who are incarcerated in those machines [laughter] will be only too anxious for a man and a horse to come and deliver them from their imminent peril.

[Laughter and cheers.]

I thought that I detected in the last words of your speech, in proposing this toast, Mr. President, an accent of gentle reproach that any one should desert the high and pleasant ways of literature for the turmoil and the everlasting contention of public life. I do not suppose that there has ever been a time in which there was less of divorce between literature and public life than the present time. ["Hear! Hear!"] There have been in the reign of the Queen two eminent statesmen who have thrice had the distinction of being Prime Minister, and oddly enough, one of those statesmen [Lord Derby] has left behind him a most spirited version of Homer, while the other eminent statesman [William E.

Gladstone]--happily still among us, still examines the legends and the significance of Homer. [Cheers.] Then when we come to a period nearer to ourselves, and look at those gentlemen who have in the last six years filled the office of Minister for Ireland, we find that no fewer than three [George Otto Trevelyan, John Morley, and Arthur Balfour] were authors of books before they engaged in the very ticklish business of the government of men. ["Hear! Hear!"] And one of these three Ministers for Ireland embarked upon his literary career--which promised ample distinction--under the editorial auspices of another of the three. We possess in one branch of the Legislature the author of the most fascinating literary biography in our language. We possess also another writer whose range of knowledge and of intellectual interest is so great that he has written the most important book upon the Holy Roman Empire and the most important book upon the American Commonwealth [James Bryce]. [Cheers.]

The first canon in literature was announced one hundred years ago by an eminent Frenchman who said that in literature it is your business to have preferences but no exclusions. In politics it appears to be our business to have very stiff and unchangeable preferences, and exclusion is one of the systematic objects of our life. [Laughter and cheers.] In literature, according to another canon, you must have a free and open mind and it has been said: "Never be the prisoner of your own opinions."

In politics you are very lucky if you do not have the still harder fate--(and I think that the gentlemen on the President's right hand will a.s.sent to that as readily as the gentlemen who sit on his left) of being the prisoner of other people's opinions. [Laughter.] Of course no one can doubt for a moment that the great achievements of literature--those permanent and vital works which we will never let die--require a devotion as unceasing, as patient, as inexhaustible, as the devotion that is required for the works that adorn your walls; and we have luckily in our age--though it may not be a literary age--masters of prose and masters of verse. No prose more winning has ever been written than that of Cardinal Newman; no verse finer, more polished, more melodious has ever been written than that of Lord Tennyson and Mr.

Swinburne. [Cheers.]

It seems to me that one of the greatest functions of literature at this moment is not merely to produce great works, but also to protect the English language--that n.o.ble, that most glorious instrument--against those hosts of invaders which I observe have in these days sprung up. I suppose that every one here has noticed the extraordinary list of names suggested lately in order to designate motion by electricity [laughter]; that list of names only revealed what many of us had been observing for a long time--namely, the appalling forces that are ready at a moment's notice to deface and deform our English tongue. [Laughter.] These strange, fantastic, grotesque, and weird t.i.tles open up to my prophetic vision a most unwelcome prospect. I tremble to see the day approach--and I am not sure that it is not approaching--when the humorists of the headlines of American journalism shall pa.s.s current as models of conciseness, energy, and color of style. [Cheers and laughter.]

Even in our social speech this invasion seems to be taking place in an alarming degree and I wonder what the Pilgrim Fathers of the seventeenth century would say if they could hear their pilgrim children of the nineteenth century who come over here, on various missions, and among others, "On the make." [Laughter.] This is only one of the thousand such like expressions which are invading the Puritan simplicity of our tongue. I will only say that I should like, for my own part, to see in every library and in every newspaper office that admirable pa.s.sage in which Milton, who knew so well how to handle both the great instrument of prose and the n.o.bler instrument of verse--declared that next to the man who furnished courage and intrepid counsels against an enemy he placed the man who should enlist small bands of good authors to resist that barbarism which invades the minds and the speech of men in methods and habits of speaking and writing.

I thank you for having allowed me the honor of saying a word as to the happiest of all callings and the most imperishable of all arts. [Loud cheers.]

JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY

THE POETS' CORNER

[Speech of John Lothrop Motley, United States Minister to England at the eighty-fourth annual banquet of the Royal Literary Fund, London, May 28, 1873. The Right-Hon. William E. Gladstone, First Minister of the Crown, was chairman. The Bishop of Derry proposed the toast, "The Literature of the United States, and Mr. Motley," which was loudly cheered.]

MR. CHAIRMAN, MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN:--I can scarcely find fitting words to express my grat.i.tude for the warm and genial manner in which the toast of "American Literature" has been received by this distinguished a.s.sembly. I wish that the honor of responding to it had been placed in worthier hands. Two at least of our most eminent men of letters I thought were in England, or near it--one, that most original, subtle, poetical and graceful of thinkers and essayists, Mr. Emerson [cheers]; the other, one of our most distinguished poets and prose-writers, second to none in the highest spheres of imagination and humor: Mr. Lowell. [Cheers.] I had hoped to meet them both, but I look in vain for their friendly and familiar faces. In their absence, I venture to return thanks most sincerely, but briefly, for the eloquent and sympathetic words with which the distinguished prelate has spoken of our literature. I do so in behalf of the eminent poets and prose-writers in every department of literature and science, many of whose names tremble on my lips, but the long roll-call of which I will not enumerate, who are the living ill.u.s.trators of our literature, and who it is a gratification to know are almost as familiar and highly appreciated in the old land of our forefathers as they are at home [cheers]; but I for one like to consider them all as fellow-citizens in the great English-speaking Republic of letters--where all are brothers, not strangers to each other. And as an ill.u.s.tration of this, I believe that it is not long since one of our famous poets whose exquisite works are familiar in every palace and every cottage all over the world where the English language is spoken--Mr. Longfellow--was recently requested to preside at one of your meetings. [Cheers.]

I can produce nothing new on that great subject, which seems the inevitable one for an American on such an occasion as this, the international bond of a common language, a common literature, and centuries of common history and tradition, which connects those two great nations, the United Empire and the United Republic. May the shadows of both never grow less and may that international bond strengthen its links every year! [Cheers.] What is the first hallowed spot in the Transatlantic pilgrimage of every true American? What is the true Mecca of his heart? Not the h.o.a.ry tombs of the Pharaohs, and the one hundred gated cities of the Nile. Not the Acropolis and the Parthenon, the plains of Marathon, the Pa.s.s of Thermopylae, thrilling as they are with heroic and patriotic emotion; not the Forum and the Coliseum and the triumphal arches of Rome. No; the pious pilgrim from the Far West seeks a sequestered, old-fas.h.i.+oned little town, in the heart of the most delicious rural scenery that even old England can boast; he walks up a quiet, drowsy, almost noiseless street, with quaint old houses, half brick, half timber, hardly changed of aspect since they looked out on the Wars of the Roses. He comes to an ancient, ivy-mantled tower hard by a placid, silvery stream on which a swan is ever sailing; he pa.s.ses through a pleached alley under a Gothic gateway of the little church, and bends in reverence before a solitary tomb, for in that tomb repose the ashes of Shakespeare. [Cheers.] We claim our share in every atom of that consecrated dust. Our forefathers, who first planted the seeds of a n.o.ble civilization in New England and Virginia, were contemporaries and countrymen of the Swan of Avon. So long as we all have an undivided birthright in that sublimest of human intellects, and can enjoy, as none others can, those unrivalled masterpieces, Americans and Englishmen can never be quite foreigners to each other though seas between as broad have rolled since the day when that precious dust wore human clothing. [Cheers.]

And what is the next resting-place in our pilgrim's progress--the pilgrim of Outre-Mer? Surely that stately and beautiful pile which we have all seen in our dreams long before we looked upon it with the eyes of flesh, time-honored Westminster Abbey. I can imagine no purer intellectual pleasure for an American than when he first wanders through those storied aisles, especially if he have the privilege which many of our countrymen have enjoyed, of being guided there by the hand of one whose exquisite urbanity and kindliness are fit companions to his learning and his intellect, the successor of the ancient Abbot, the historian of the Abbey, the present distinguished Dean of Westminster [Dean Stanley], to whom we have listened with such pleasure to-night.

[Cheers.] And it will be in the Poets' Corner that we shall ever linger the longest. Those statues, busts and mural inscriptions are prouder trophies than all the banners from the most ensanguined battle-fields that the valor of England has ever won, and with what a wealth of intellect is that nation endowed which after the centuries of immortal names already enshrined there has had the proud although most melancholy honor of adding in one decade--scarcely more than ten years--the names of Macaulay, Grote, d.i.c.kens, Thackeray, and Lytton? [Cheers.] They are our contemporaries, not our countrymen; but we cannot afford to resign our claim to some portion of their glory as ill.u.s.trators of our common language. And I would fain believe that you take a fraternal interest in the fame of those whom we too have lost, and who were our especial garland--Was.h.i.+ngton Irving, Fenimore Cooper, Everett, Hawthorne, and Prescott.

But I have trespa.s.sed far longer upon your attention than I meant to do when I arose; and I shall therefore only once more thank you for the great kindness with which you have received the toast of the Literature of the United States. [Cheers.]

JOHN PHILIP NEWMAN

COMMERCE

[Speech of Rev. Dr. John P. Newman, at the 115th annual banquet of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, May 8, 1883. The President, George W. Lane, presided, and said: "Gentlemen, I give you the fifth regular toast: 'Commerce--distributing to all regions the productions of each, and, providing for the wants of all, it combines in friendly intercourse the nations of the earth.' To this toast the Rev. Dr. Newman will respond."]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE OF NEW YORK:--This is a beautiful toast--beautiful both in structure and sentiment and would that it were true. [Applause.] It is true in theory but not in history. It may be the voice of prophecy whose fulfilment shall be a sublime fact. It is in the highest degree worthy of this Chamber of Commerce and cannot fail in its peaceful mission among the nations of the earth. [Applause.] But the ages testify that selfishness and greed have marked the commercial history of the world. How splendid have been the achievements of commerce, and how deplorable its failure to realize its legitimate mission--to unify the human race. "Get all you can, and keep all you get," were the selfish maxims that influenced the Dutch merchants in Sumatra, Java, and Ceylon. The renowned merchants of Portugal planted their commercial colonies on the rich coasts of Malabar, took possession of the Persian Gulf and transformed the barren island of Ormus into a paradise of wealth and luxury. But of that far-famed island Milton sung in these truthful and immortal lines:--

"High, on a throne of royal state which far Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind.

Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand, Show'rs on her kings barbaric pearl and gold, Satan exalted sat."

There is no less truth than poetry in that last line, for there the devil sat, and Tom Moore's "Fair Isle of Kisham" has faded from the visions of the world. [Applause.]

The Spanish merchants grasped the wealthy States of South America, and held as captives the affluent Incas of Peru and Bolivia. But Spain has long since retired from her commercial supremacy and the South American Provinces are left poor indeed.

While every Anglo-Saxon is justly proud of England's greatness in art and learning, in statesmans.h.i.+p and martial prowess, yet her commercial history does not always reflect credit upon her foreign trade. Rapacity so characterized her merchants who composed the old East India Company that the British Government felt compelled to revoke the charter of that famous monopoly. Influenced by some of her merchants the guns of her invincible navy opened the treaty ports of China and forced the opium trade upon the Celestials against their earnest protests, and in that protest not a few of the best Englishmen joined.

To-day France and England, Belgium and Holland are contending for commercial supremacy in the "Dark Continent," which an American explorer and traveler opened to the foreign trade of all nations [applause]; but, judging from the past, the sable sons of Africa are yet to learn the selfishness of commerce.

Happily for us, the United States has been more fortunate because more honorable in her commercial intercourse with other lands. [Applause.] By his justice, by his prudence, by his firmness, Commodore Perry [cheers], our great sailor diplomatist, not only opened to us j.a.pan, that "Kingdom of the Rising Sun," but secured for America the friends.h.i.+p and admiration of the j.a.panese. And there is to-day, awaiting the action of our nation, a treaty of amity and commerce, drawn by the wisest of men, the most sagacious of statesmen, the greatest of living soldiers; and when that treaty shall have been ratified, the United States and Mexico will be united in friendly intercourse, sweet and pleasant, like the love of David and Jonathan. [Applause.]

It is a great question whether this country shall repeat the commercial history of the world, or carry to glorious consummation the n.o.ble sentiment of this toast. All the signs of the times seem to indicate that the commercial sceptre of the world, held by the Phoenicians for 1,000 years, held by the Romans through a whole millennium, held by the Venetians during five centuries, held by the Portuguese for three hundred years, and since held by the English--whether that sceptre is not rapidly to pa.s.s into the hands of the American merchant; and when that is an accomplished fact, we shall hear less of the decline of American s.h.i.+pping or that the balance of trade is against us.

[Applause.] Our vast domain, our immense resources, our unparalleled productive capacity, all seem to prophesy that we are largely to feed and clothe Adam's innumerable family. [Applause.] If so, then any calm and sagacious mind must realize that our present methods of forming commercial treaties should be radically changed. If it has been found necessary to have a Department of Agriculture, a Department of Education, why not a Department of Commerce, connected with the National Government, and from which shall come the suggestions, the facts, and the influence for the formation of commercial treaties, and at the head of which shall be a wise and prudent merchant conversant with the products of all lands and familiar with the best interests of our own country? [Applause.] The science of political economy is so profound, so complicated, so far-reaching as to transcend the capacity of the average statesman. It has become a specialty. Congressional committees on Commerce and on Foreign Relations are hardly adequate to the task. Not a few of the members of such know more about ward elections than tariff laws, and know as little about products and trade of foreign lands as of the geography of other nations. Let us lift the whole subject of commerce from the arena of partisan politics. [Applause.]

This toast looks forward to the friends.h.i.+p of nations. The merchant is the chosen John the Baptist of that better day. The merchant is the true cosmopolitan--the citizen of the world. Farmers with their products of the soil, flocks and herds are local; miners with their metallic mines and mineral mountains are local; manufacturers with their fabrics of skill are local; inventors with their manifold contrivances to lift the burden of toil from the shoulders of humanity, are local; artists, with their canvas that glows and their marble that breathes, are local; authors, with their mighty thoughts of truth and fiction, are local; statesmen with their laws, wise and otherwise [laughter], are local; but the merchant is the cosmopolitan citizen of the world, the friend of all, the enemy of none, a stranger nowhere, at home everywhere; who sails all seas, travels all lands, and to whom all come with their fruit of hand and brain, waiting for a home or a foreign market. [Applause.]

Commerce should ever be the voice of peace. Aided by science, and sanctified by religion, it should be the all-powerful stimulant to universal amity. The honest and honorable merchant is the natural antagonist of the factious politician, the ambitious statesman, the glory-seeking warrior. [Applause.] While the merchant is the most ardent of patriots, commerce is the unifier of nations, whereby is to be fulfilled the dream of poets and the vision of seers in the brotherhood of man, in a congress of nations, and a parliament of the world. The old German Hanseatic League, representing sixty-six maritime cities and forty-four dependencies, seemed to prophesy an international chamber of commerce for the peace of the whole earth. If the high interests of our Christian civilization demand International Congresses of Law, of Geography, of Peace, how much more an International Congress of Commerce, to give direction to the relations of peace and trade between all peoples. This would approach the realization of the dream of a universal republic. [Applause.]

It is eminently proper that from this Christian city should go forth the voice of commercial peace, honesty and honor; give us such Christian merchants as Peter Cooper [cheers], as William E. Dodge [cheers], as Governor Morgan [cheers], dealing fairly and honorably with the weaker States with which we shall trade. [Applause.] For say what you please, Christianity is the religion of industry, of thrift, of wealth demanding the comforts of life and enriching all who follow its divine precepts, and giving to the world that code of higher and better commercial morality whereby wealth is permanent, and riches are a benediction.

[Applause.] Awakened by this unseen power, it is commercial enterprise that has transformed our earth into one vast neighborhood, that has made air and ocean whispering galleries, that has started the iron horse to stride a continent in seven days and launched the majestic steamer which touches two continents between two Sundays. [Applause.]

I confess to you, gentlemen, that I have no fear from the acc.u.mulations of vast mercantile wealth when under the benign constraints of religion.

Wealth is the handmaid of religion. Such wealth has beautified the face of society, has advanced to this consummation those great philanthropic enterprises which have delivered the oppressed and saved the Republic, and which have filled our city with schools of learning, galleries of art, halls of justice, houses of mercy, and temples of piety. [Continued applause.]

CHARLES ELIOT NORTON