Autobiography of Seventy Years Part 66

"The speech of Mr. h.o.a.r, though an address to his own countrymen, is a message of hope to the whole world which sank with despondency at the sight of Republican America behaving like a cruel, tyrannical and rapacious Empire in the Philippines and particularly to the broken-hearted people of Asia who are beginning to lose all confidence in the humanity of the white races. Or is it that they have lost it already? Hence all papers in Asia should reprint his speech, translate it, and distribute it broadcast. Let it be brought home to the Asiatic people so that they may work and wors.h.i.+p their champion and his forefathers.

Thanks to the awakening in America, thanks to the forces that are at work to chase out the degenerating, demoralizing pa.s.sion for territorial aggrandizement from the n.o.ble American mind and save it for itself and the world at large from the cancer of Imperialism."

I am afraid I am committing an offence against good taste in repeating such laudations. But it must be remembered that a public man who has to encounter so much bitter reviling and objurgation, is fairly ent.i.tled to have a little extravagance on the other side that the balance may be even. I would rather have the grat.i.tude of the poor people of the Philippine Islands, amid their sorrow, and have it true that what I may say or do has brought a ray of hope into the gloomy caverns in which the oppressed peoples of Asia dwell, than to receive a Ducal Coronet from every Monarch in Europe, or command the applause of listening Senators and read my history in a Nation's eyes.

At first there can seem nothing more absurd than the suggestion of my Asiatic friend that the people of Asia should wors.h.i.+p their champion and his ancestors. But on second thought, it is fair to say that while no human being can be ent.i.tled to be wors.h.i.+pped by any other, yet that we got our love of Liberty from our ancestors, or at any rate that is where I got mine, and that they are ent.i.tled to all the credit.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV APPOINTMENTS TO OFFICE

Among the great satisfactions in the life of public men is that of sometimes being instrumental in the advancement to places of public honor of worthy men, and of being able to have a great and salutary influence upon their lives. I have always held to the doctrine of what is called Civil Service Reform, and have maintained to the best of my ability the doctrine of the absolute independence of the Executive in such matters, as his right to disregard the wishes and opinions of members of either House of Congress, and to make his appointments, executive and judicial, without advice, or on such advice as he shall think best. But, at the same time, there can be no doubt that the Executive must depend on some advice other than his own, to learn the quality of men in different parts of this vast Republic, and to learn what will be agreeable to public opinion and to the party which is administering the Government and is responsible for its administration.

He will, ordinarily, find no better source of such information than in the men whom the people have shown their own confidence by entrusting them with the important function of Senator or Representative. He will soon learn to know his men, and how far he can safely take such advice. He must be careful to see to it that he is not induced to build up a faction in his party, or to fill up the public offices with the partisans of ambitious but unscrupulous politicians. When I entered the House of Representatives, before the Civil Service Reform had made any progress, I addressed and had put on file with the Secretary of the Treasury a letter in which I said that I desired him to understand when I made a recommendation to him of any person for public office, it was to be taken merely as my opinion of the merit of the candidate, and not as an expression of a personal request; and that if he found any other person who would in his judgment be better for the public service, I hoped he would make the selection without regard to my recommendation.

I have never undertaken to use public office as personal patronage, or to claim the right to dictate to the President of the United States, or that the executive was not entirely free, upon such advice as he saw fit, or without advice, if he thought fit, in making his selection for public office.

It has been my good fortune to have influenced, or I think I may fairly say, procured the appointment to public office of many gentlemen who would not have been appointed without my active efforts. I have no reason to be ashamed of one of the list. I believe that the following gentlemen, beside others less distinguished, who have been very satisfactory, able and faithful public servants, owe their appointment to my original suggestion, or would not have been appointed without my earnest efforts.

Charles Devens, Attorney-General; Alanson W. Beard, Collector of the Port of Boston; Horace Gray, first to the office of Reporter of the Supreme Court of Ma.s.sachusetts, and later to that of a.s.sociate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; J. Evarts Greene, Postmaster of Worcester; Thomas L. Nelson, Judge of the District Court of Ma.s.sachusetts; Francis C. Lowell, Judge of the District Court of Ma.s.sachusetts; Howell E. Jackson, a.s.sociate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; John D. Washburn, Minister to Switzerland.

I think I may also fairly claim that the election of William B. Washburn as Governor of Ma.s.sachusetts was due not only to the fact that I originally proposed him as a candidate, but to my active efforts in the campaign which preceded the Convention which nominated him.

There is no man in this list of greater ability or of higher quality of manhood than Evarts Greene. Mr. Greene was compelled by the illness of his wife to remain fast-bound in one spot, instead of going to some large city where his great talent would have commanded a very high place indeed in his profession as editor. When he edited the Worcester _Spy,_ it was one of the most influential Republican newspapers in the country.

The _Spy_ got into pecuniary difficulties. Mr. Greene, with some reluctance, accepted the office of Postmaster, an office which, according to usage in such cases, was in my gift.

Just before Postmaster-General Wanamaker, whose executive ability no man will question, went out of office, he requested Mr. Greene to send to the Department an account of the improvements he had made and proposed in the post-office service. This was sent in a circular all over the country to other like post-offices.

Just before Mr. Greene died, President Roosevelt visited Worcester. In pa.s.sing the post-office, where the persons employed in the service were collected, he stopped and said he was glad to see "what we have been accustomed to consider the record post-office." This, as may well be believed, gave Mr. Greene great satisfaction.

CHAPTER x.x.xV ORATORY AND SOME ORATORS I HAVE HEARD

The longer I live, the more highly I have come to value the gift of eloquence. Indeed, I am not sure that it is not the single gift most to be coveted by man. It is hard, perhaps impossible, to define, as poetry is impossible to define.

To be a perfect and consummate orator is to possess the highest faculty given to man. He must be a great artist, and more.

He must be a great actor, and more. He must be a master of the great things that interest mankind. What he says ought to have as permanent a place in literature as the highest poetry. He must be able to play at will on the mighty organ, his audience, of which human souls are the keys. He must have knowledge, wit, wisdom, fancy, imagination, courage, n.o.bleness, sincerity, grace, a heart of fire. He must himself respond to every emotion as an AEolian harp to the breeze.

He must have

An eye that tears can on a sudden fill And lips that smile before the tears are gone.

He must have a n.o.ble personal presence. He must have, in perfection, the eye and the voice which are the only and natural avenues by which one human soul can enter into and subdue another. His speech must be filled with music, and possess its miraculous charm and spell,

Which the posting winds recall, And suspend the river's fall.

He must have the quality which Burke manifested when Warren Hastings said, "I felt, as I listened to him, as if I were the most culpable being on earth"; and which made Philip say of Demosthenes, "Had I been there he would have persuaded me to take up arms against myself."

He has a present, practical purpose to accomplish. If he fail in that he fails utterly and altogether. His object is to convince the understanding, to persuade the will, to set aflame the heart of his audience or those who read what he says. He speaks for a present occasion. Eloquence is the feather that tips his arrow. If he miss the mark he is a failure, although his sentences may survive everything else in the permanent literature of the language in which he speaks.

What he says must not only accomplish the purpose of the hour, but should be fit to be preserved for all time, or he can have no place in literature, and a small and ephemeral place in human memory.

The orator must know how so to utter his thought that it will stay. The poet and the orator have this in common.

Each must so express and clothe his thought that it shall penetrate and take possession of the soul, and, having penetrated, must abide and stay. How this is done, who can tell? Carlyle defines poetry as a "sort of lilt." Cicero finds the secret of eloquence in a

Lepos quidem celeritasque et brevitas.

One writer lately dead, who has a masterly gift of n.o.ble and stirring eloquence, finds it in "a certain collocation of consonants." Why it is that a change of a single word, or even of a single syllable, for any other which is an absolute synonym in sense, would ruin the best line in Lycidas, or injure terribly the n.o.blest sentence of Webster, n.o.body knows.

Curtis asks how Wendell Phillips did it, and answers his own question by asking you how Mozart did it.

When I say that I am not sure that this is not the single gift most to be coveted by man, I may seem to have left out the moral quality in my conception of what is excellent. But such is the nature of man that the loftiest moral emotions are still the overmastering emotions. The orator that does not persuade men that righteousness is on his side will seldom persuade them to think or act as he desires; and if he fail in that he fails in his object; and the orator who has not in fact righteousness on his side will in general fail so to persuade them. And even if in rare cases he do persuade his audience, he does not gain a permanent place in literature.

Bolingbroke's speeches, though so enthusiastically praised by the best judges, have perished by their own worthlessness.

Although the danger of the Republic, and his own, still occupied his thoughts, Cicero found time in his old age to record, at the request of his brother Quintus, his opinion, _de omni ratione dicendi._ It is not likely that the treatise "de Oratore" or that "de Claris Oratoribus" will ever be matched by any other writer on this fascinating subject, except the brief and masterly fragment of Tacitus.

He begins by inquiring why it is that, when so many persons strive to attain the gift of eloquence, and its rewards of fame and wealth and power are so great, the number of those who succeed as orators is so small in comparison with the number of those who become great generals, or statesmen, or poets. I suppose this fact, which excited the wonder of Cicero, exists in our country and our time. There is a foreign country which is to us as a posterity. If we reckon those Americans only as great orators who are accepted in England as such, or who, belonging to past generations are so accepted now by their own countrymen, the number is very small. A few sentences of Patrick Henry are preserved, as a few sentences of Lord Chatham are preserved. The great thoughts of Webster justify, in the estimation of the reader, the fame he enjoyed with his own generation. The readers of Fisher Ames--alas, too few--can well comprehend the spell which persuaded an angry and reluctant majority to save the treaty to which the nation had pledged its faith, and, perhaps, the life of the nation itself. With these exceptions, the number of American orators who will live in history as orators can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

I have never supposed myself to possess this gift. The instruction which I had in my youth, especially that at Harvard, either in composition or elocution, was, I think, not only of no advantage, but a positive injury. Besides the absence of good training, I had an awkward manner, and a harsh voice.

Until quite late in life I never learned to manage so that I could get through a long speech without serious irritation of the throat. But I have had good opportunity to hear the best public speaking of my time. I have heard in England, on a great field day in the House of Commons, Palmerston, Lord John Russell, and John Bright, and, later, Disraeli, Gladstone and Bernal Osborne. I have heard Spurgeon, and Bishop Wilberforce, and Dr. Guthrie in the pulpit.

At home I have heard a good many times Daniel Webster, Edward Everett, Rufus Choate, Robert C. Winthrop, John P. Hale, Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner, Richard H. Dana, Ralph Waldo Emerson, James G. Blaine, Lucius Q. C. Lamar, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, William M. Evarts, Benjamin F. Thomas, Pliny Merrick, Charles Devens, Nathaniel P. Banks, and, above all, Kossuth; and in the pulpit, James Walker, Edwards A. Park, Mark Hopkins, Edward Everett Hale, George Putnam, Starr King, and Henry W. Bellows. So, perhaps, my experience and observation, too late for my own advantage, may be worth something to my younger readers.

I am not familiar with the books which have been lately published which give directions for public speaking. So I dare say that what I have to advise is already well known to young men, and that all I can say has been said much better. But I will give the result of my own experience and observation.

In managing the voice, the speaker when he is engaged in earnest conversation, commonly and naturally falls into the best tone and manner for public speaking. Suppose you are sitting about a table with a dozen friends, and some subject is started in which you are deeply interested. You engage in an earnest and serious dialogue with one of them at the other end of the table. You are perfectly at ease, not caring in the least for your manner or tone of voice, but only for your thought.

The tone you adopt then will ordinarily be the best tone for you in public speaking. You can, however, learn from teachers or friendly critics to avoid any harsh or disagreeable fas.h.i.+on of speech that you may have fallen into, and that may be habitual to you in private conversation.

Next. Never strain your vocal organs by attempting to fill s.p.a.ces which are too large for you. Speak as loudly and distinctly as you can do easily, and let the most distant portions of your audience go. You will find in that way very soon that your voice will increase in compa.s.s and power, and you will do better than by a habit of straining the voice beyond its natural capacity. Be careful to avoid falsetto.

Shun imitating the tricks of speech of other orators, even of famous and successful orators. These may do for them, but not for you. You will do no better in attempting to imitate the tricks of speech of other men in public speaking than in private speaking.

Never make a gesture for the sake of making one. I believe that most of the successful speakers whom I know would find it hard to tell you whether they themselves make gestures or not, they are so absolutely unconscious in the matter.

But with gestures as with the voice, get teachers or friendly critics to point out to you any bad habit you may fall into.

I think it would be well if our young public speakers, especially preachers, would have competent instructors and critics among their auditors, after they enter their profession, to give them the benefit of such observations and counsel as may be suggested in that way. If a Harvard professor of elocution would retain his responsibility for his pupils five or ten years after they got into active life he would do a great deal more good than by his instructions to undergraduates.

So far we have been talking about mere manner. The matter and substance of the orator's speech must depend upon the intellectual quality of the man.

The great orator must be a man of absolute sincerity. Never advocate a cause in which you do not believe, or affect an emotion you do not feel. No skill or acting will cover up the want of earnestness. It is like the ointment of the hand which bewrayeth itself.

I shall be asked how I can reconcile this doctrine with the practice of the law. It will be said the advocate must often defend men whom he believes to be guilty, or argue to the court propositions he believes to be unsound. This objection will disappear if we consider what exactly is the function of the advocate in our system of administering justice.

I suppose it is needless to argue to persons of American or English birth that our system of administering justice is safer for the innocent and, on the whole, secures the punishment of guilt and secures private right better than any other that now exists or that ever existed among men. The chief distinction of the system we have inherited from England consists in two things: first, the function of the advocate, and second, that cases are decided not upon belief, but upon proof. It has been found that court or jury are more likely to get at truth if they have the aid of trained officers whose duty it shall be to collect and present all the arguments on each side which ought to be considered before the court or jury reach the decision. The man who seems clearly guilty should not be condemned or punished unless every consideration which may tend to establish innocence or throw doubt upon guilt has been fully weighed. The una.s.sisted tribunal will be quite likely to overlook these considerations. Public sentiment approves the judgment and the punishment in the case of John W. Webster. But certainly he should never have been convicted without giving the fullest weight to his previous character and to the slightness of the temptation to the commission of such a crime, to the fact that the evidence was largely circ.u.mstantial, to the doubt of the ident.i.ty of the body of the victim, and to the fact that the means or instrument of the crime which ordinarily must be alleged and proved in cases of murder could not be made certain, and could not be set forth in the indictment. The question in the American or English court is not whether the accused be guilty. It is whether he be shown to be guilty, by legal proof, of an offence legally set forth. It is the duty of the advocate to perform his office in the mode best calculated to cause all such considerations to make their due impression. It is not his duty or his right to express or convey his individual opinion. On him the responsibility of the decision does not rest. He not only has no right to accompany the statement of his argument with any a.s.sertion as to his individual belief, but I think the most experienced observers will agree that such expressions, if habitual, tend to diminish and not to increase the just influence of the lawyer. There was never a weightier advocate before New England juries than Daniel Webster. Yet it is on record that he always carefully abstained from any positiveness of a.s.sertion. He introduced his weightiest arguments with such phrases as, "It will be for the jury to consider," "The Court will judge,"

"It may, perhaps, be worth thinking of, gentlemen," or some equivalent phrase by which he kept scrupulously off the ground which belonged to the tribunal he was addressing. The tricks of advocacy are not only no part of the advocate's duties, but they are more likely to repel than to attract the hearers.

The function of the advocate in the court of justice, as thus defined and limited, is tainted by no insincerity or hypocrisy.

It is as respectable, as lofty, and as indispensably necessary as that of the judge himself.

In my opinion, the two most important things that a young man can do to make himself a good public speaker are:

First. Constant and careful written translations from Latin or Greek into English.

Second. Practice in a good debating society.

It has been said that all the greatest Parliamentary orators of England are either men whom Lord North saw, or men who saw Lord North--that is, men who were conspicuous as public speakers in Lord North's youth, his contemporaries, and the men who saw him as an old man when they were young themselves.

This would include Bolingbroke and would come down only to the year of Lord John Russell's birth. So we should have to add a few names, especially Gladstone, Disraeli, John Bright, and Palmerston. There is no great Parliamentary orator in England since Gladstone died. I once, a good many years ago, studied the biographies of the men who belonged to that period who were famous as great orators in Parliament or in Court, to find, if I could, the secret of their power. With the exception of Lord Erskine and of John Bright, I believe every one of them trained himself by careful and constant translation from Latin or Greek, and frequented a good debating society in his youth.

Brougham trained himself for extemporaneous speaking in the Speculative Society, the great theatre of debate for the University of Edinburgh. He also improved his English style by translations from the Greek, among which is his well-known version of the "Oration on the Crown."