Volume Ii Part 7 (1/2)
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
MEN OF LETTERS
[Speech of James A. Froude at the banquet of the Royal Academy, London, April 29, 1876. The President, Sir Francis Grant, in introducing Mr.
Froude, said: ”The next toast is 'The Interests of Literature and Science.' This toast is always so welcome and so highly appreciated that it needs no exordium from the chair. I cannot a.s.sociate with the interests of literature a name more worthy than that of Mr. Froude, the scholar and distinguished historian.”]
SIR FRANCIS GRANT, YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESSES, MY LORDS, AND GENTLEMEN:--While I feel most keenly the honor which you confer upon me in connecting my name with the interests of literature, I am embarra.s.sed, in responding, by the nature of my subject. What is literature, and who are men of letters? From one point of view we are the most unprofitable of mankind--engaged mostly in blowing soap-bubbles. [Laughter.] From another point of view we are the most practical and energetic portion of the community. [Cheers.] If literature be the art of employing words skillfully in representing facts, or thoughts, or emotions, you may see excellent specimens of it every day in the advertis.e.m.e.nts in our newspapers. Every man who uses a pen to convey his meaning to others--the man of science, the man of business, the member of a learned profession--belongs to the community of letters. Nay, he need not use his pen at all. The speeches of great orators are among the most treasured features of any national literature. The orations of Mr. Grattan are the text-books in the schools of rhetoric in the United States. Mr. Bright, under this aspect of him, holds a foremost place among the men of letters of England.
[Cheers.]
Again, sir, every eminent man, be he what he will, be he as unbookish as he pleases, so he is only eminent enough, so he holds a conspicuous place in the eyes of his countrymen, potentially belongs to us, and if not in life, then after he is gone, will be enrolled among us. The public insist on being admitted to his history, and their curiosity will not go unsatisfied. [Cheers.] His letters are hunted up, his journals are sifted; his sayings in conversation, the doggerel which he writes to his brothers and sisters are collected, and stereotyped in print.
[Laughter.] His fate overtakes him. He cannot escape from it. We cry out, but it does not appear that men sincerely resist the liberty which is taken with them. We never hear of them instructing their executors to burn their papers. [Laughter.] They have enjoyed so much the exhibition that has been made of their contemporaries that they consent to be sacrificed themselves.
Again, sir, when we look for those who have been most distinguished as men of letters, in the usual sense of the word; where do we find them?
The famous lawyer is found in his chambers, the famous artist is found in his studio. Our foremost representatives we do not find always in their libraries; we find them, in the first place, in the service of their country. [”Hear! Hear!”] Owen Meredith is Viceroy of India, and all England has applauded the judgment that selected and sent him there.
[Cheers.] The right honorable gentleman [Mr. Gladstone] who three years ago was conducting the administration of this country with such brilliant success was first generally known to his countrymen as a remarkable writer. During forty years of arduous service he never wholly deserted his original calling. [”Hear! Hear!”] He is employing an interval of temporary retirement to become the interpreter of Homer to the English race [cheers], or to break a lance with the most renowned theologians in defence of spiritual liberty. [Cheers.]
A great author, whose life we have been all lately reading with delight, contemplates the year 3000 as a period at which his works may still be studied. If any man might be led reasonably to form such an antic.i.p.ation for himself by the admiration of his contemporaries, Lord Macaulay may be acquitted of vanity. The year 3000 is far away, much will happen between now and then; all that we can say with certainty of the year 3000 is that it will be something extremely different from what any one expects. I will not predict that men will then be reading Lord Macaulay's ”History of England.” I will not predict that they will then be reading ”Lothair.” [Laughter.] But this I will say, that if any statesman of the age of Augustus or the Antonines had left us a picture of patrician society at Rome, drawn with the same skill, and with the same delicate irony with which Mr. Disraeli has described a part of English society in ”Lothair,” no relic of antiquity would now be devoured with more avidity and interest. [Loud cheers.] Thus, sir, we are an anomalous body, with very ill-defined limits. But, such as we are, we are heartily obliged to you for wis.h.i.+ng us well, and I give you our most sincere thanks. [Cheers.]
MELVILLE WESTON FULLER
THE SUPREME COURT
[Speech of Melville W. Fuller at the fifth annual dinner of the New England Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, December 22, 1888. The President, Heman L. Wayland, D.D., said in introducing Justice Fuller:--”The reverence of New England for law and her readiness to make law (a readiness, perhaps our enemies will say, to make them for other people) naturally suggests the topic which is first on the programme--'New England in the Supreme Court.' I shall not enlarge upon the sentiment, lest I should only mar the canvas which will shortly be illumined by the hand of a master. The case of New England versus The World has long been in court; the evidence is in; the learned counsel have been heard; and now, before the case is finally given to the intelligent jury of the human race, it remains only that we hear a charge from his honor, the Chief Justice of the United States.”]
MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY:--I thank you sincerely for the courtesy which has afforded me the opportunity of being with you this evening, and am deeply sensible of the compliment paid in the request to respond to the sentiment just given.
We all know--we have heard over and over again--that the ”Day We Celebrate” commemorates an emigration peculiar in its causes. It was not the desire to acquire wealth or power, nor even the spirit of adventure, that sent these colonists forth. They did not go to return, but to abide; and while they sought to make another country theirs, primarily to enjoy religious independence, they were much too sagacious not to know that emanc.i.p.ation from the ecclesiastical thraldom, of which they complained, involved the attainment of political rights and immunities as well. And so this day commemorates not simply the heroism of struggle and endurance in silence and apart, for a great cause, not simply the unfeigned faith which rendered such heroism possible, but the planting of that germ of local self-government which has borne glorious fruit in the reconcilement of individual freedom with a national sway of imperial proportions.
It commemorates the advent of that first written const.i.tution of civil government, that first attempt of a people in that form, by self-imposed fundamental law, to put it out of their own power to work injustice; that agreement, signed upon the sea, ”to enact, const.i.tute and frame such just and equal laws and ordinances, acts, const.i.tutions and offices,” as should be ”thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony,” to which all ”due submission and obedience” was promised. And this was followed a few years later in the sister colony of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay by that ”Body of Liberties” which, it is well said, may challenge comparison with Magna Charta itself or the latest Bill of Rights. Instinct with the spirit of common law, though somewhat ameliorating its rigor, these ”rites, privileges and liberties,” to be ”impartially and inviolably enjoyed and observed throughout our jurisdiction forever,” commence with the preamble that ”the free fruition of such liberties, Immunities and privileges humanitie, Civilitie and Christianitie call for as due to every man in his place and proportion without impeachment and Infringement, hath ever been and ever will be the tranquillitie and Stabilitie of Churches and Commonwealths. And the deniall and deprivall thereof, the disturbance.
If not the ruine of both. We hould it therefore our dutie and saftie, whilst we are about the further establishment of this Government, to collect and expresse all such freedomes as for present we foresee may concern us, and our posteritie after us.”
And so they ordain that no man's life or liberty or property can be taken away, or his honor or good name stained, or his goods or estate in any way damaged under color of law or countenance of authority, unless by due process; that every person, inhabitant or foreign, shall enjoy the same justice and law general to the plantation; that there shall be no monopolies, except for new inventions profitable to the country, and for a short time; no imprisonment without bail except for crimes capital and contempts in open court; freedom of alienation and power to devise; no primogeniture, no escheats on attainder and execution for felony; succor to those fleeing from tyranny; full freedom to advise, vote, give verdict or sentence according to true judgment and conscience; in short, the expression or the indication of those safeguards to liberty, the possession of which enables a people to become and to remain free.
Well may we claim for these doc.u.ments large influence in forerunning the organic laws of the several States, and that matchless instrument which a century ago was framed in this fortunate city, which had been blessed before as the place where the Declaration put on immortality.
And now in the latter half of the third century, since the bearers of the underlying principles of Republican rule placed their feet upon that rock, whose shadow was to become a solace to the weariness of the perpetual toils and encounters of the land, we may well hope that what they sought has been achieved, an enduring Government of laws and not of men; security to freedom and to justice, ”justice, that venerable virtue, without which,” as exclaimed New England's eloquent orator, ”freedom, valor and power are but vulgar things.”
It is delightful to keep these remembrances alive, and while duly recognizing the rightful claims of all our brothers to their share in the foundation of the inst.i.tutions of a common country, to dwell upon what the forefathers were, what they accomplished and what they still accomplish through the works that follow them. And as it is not unnatural that at the same time we should felicitate ourselves upon whatever of eminence or good fortune has attended the efforts of their descendants, the reference, Mr. President, you have made in connection with this toast to the court over which I have the honor to preside enables me with propriety to indulge in an allusion to those from New England who have labored in that field.
On the seventh of April, 1789, a committee was appointed by the Senate ”to bring in a bill for organizing the judiciary of the United States.”
Able as were his colleagues, it has been generally conceded that ”that great act was penned” by the chairman of that committee, Oliver Ellsworth, of Connecticut. On the twenty-fourth of September--the day upon which the Judiciary Act became a law--President Was.h.i.+ngton nominated for the Supreme Court of the United States a chief justice and five a.s.sociates, among the latter William Cus.h.i.+ng, of Ma.s.sachusetts, who, after holding high judicial office under the Crown, but supporting the cause of his country in the Revolution, becoming the first chief justice of the State of Ma.s.sachusetts, pa.s.sed from that distinguished station to the Federal bench, as one of his eminent successors has done in our day, and who was commissioned to, but compelled to decline, the heads.h.i.+p of the court. Then came Ellsworth, whose great services in framing the Federal Const.i.tution in the Connecticut Convention, in the United States Senate, in high diplomatic position, were complemented by those he performed in the discharge of the duties of this exalted office.
And so, following the careers of Marshall and Taney, Chase (fresh from magnificent conduct of the national finances under circ.u.mstances of tremendous difficulty), and Waite, from long and successful practice at the bar, won enduring fame by deserving and obtaining the commendation that a place rendered so ill.u.s.trious by their predecessors had lost nothing in their hands; men of New England birth, thus dividing in number the inc.u.mbency in succession to Ellsworth, while he who has but just entered upon that service, proud of the Prairie State from whence he comes, has never ceased to regard with affection that particular portion of the Fatherland in which he first saw the light.