who, through patient years of honest and earnest effort, had made his impress upon the civilization of every clime. He was the defender of the oppressed, and the unswerving advocate of equal rights for all mankind. Gradually his labors ripened, but the fruits were to be gathered through the flame of battle, and he was unskilled in the sword. Another had to come with his brave reapers into the valley of death. He was unknown to fame, and the nation trusted others who wore its stars. But he transformed despair into hope, and defeat into victory. He rose through tribulation and malice, by his invincible courage and matchless command, until the fruition of his rival's teachings had been realized in their own, and their country's grandest achievement. In the race for civil trust, partisan detraction swept mercilessly over both, and two men who had written the proudest records of their age, in their respective spheres of public duty, were assailed as incompetent and unworthy. Both taught peace. One dared more for hastened reconciliation, forgiveness and brotherhood. The other triumphed, and vindicated his rival and himself by calling the insurgent to share the honors of the Republic. Soon after the strife was ended, they met at the gates of the "City of the Silent," and the victor, as chief of the nation, paid the nation's sincere homage to its untitled, but most beloved and lamented citizen. Had the victor been the vanquished, the lustre of his crown would have been undimmed in the judgment of our people or of history. Our rulers are but our agents, chosen in obedience to the convictions which govern the policy of the selection, and mere political success is no enduring constituent of greatThe public servant, and the private citizen, will alike be honored or condemned, as they are faithful or unfaithful to their responsible duties.

ness.

When we search for the agencies of the great epochs in our national progress, we look not to the accidents of

place. Unlike all other governments, ours is guided supremely by intelligent and educated public convictions, and those who are clothed with authority are but the exponents of the popular will. Herein is the source of safety and advancement of our free institutions. On every hand, in the ranks of people, are the tireless teachers of our destiny. Away in the forefront of every struggle are to be found the masters who brave passion and prejudice and interest in the perfection of our nationality. Our free press reaching into almost every hamlet of the land; our colleges now reared in every section; our schools with open doors to all; our churches teaching every faith, with the protection of the law; our citizens endowed with the sacred right of freedom of speech and action; our railroads spanning the continent, climbing our mountains, and stretching into our valleys; our telegraphs making every community the centre of the world's daily records-these are the agencies which are omnipotent in the expression of our national purposes and duties. Thus directed and maintained, our free government has braved foreign and domestic war, and been purified and strengthened in the crucible of conflict. It has grown from a few feeble States east of the Ohio wilderness, to a vast continent of commonwealths, and forty millions of population. It has made freedom as universal as its authority within its vast possessions. The laws of inequality and caste are blotted from its statutes. It reaches the golden slopes of the Pacific with its beneficence, and makes beauty and plenty in the valleys of the mountains on the sunset side of the Father of Waters. From the cool lakes of the north, to the sunny gulfs of the south, and from the eastern seas to the waters that wash the lands of the Pagan, a homogeneous people obey one constitution, and are devoted to one country. Nor have its agencies and influences been limited to our own boundaries. The whole accessible

world has felt its power, and paid tribute to its excellence. Europe has been convulsed from centre to circumference by the resistless throbbings of oppressed peoples for the liberty they cannot know and could not maintain. The proud Briton has imitated his wayward but resolute child, and now rules his own throne. France has sung the Marseillaise, her anthem of freedom, and waded through blood in ill-directed struggles for her disenthrallment. The scattered tribes of the Fatherland now worship at the altar of German unity, with a liberalized Empire. The sad song of the serf is no longer heard from the children of the Czar. Italy, dismembered and tempesttossed through centuries, again ordains her laws in the Eternal City, under a monarch of her choice. The throne of Ferdinand and Isabella has now no kingly ruler, and the inspiration of freedom has unsettled the title of despotism to the Spanish sceptre. The trained lightning flashes the lessons of our civilization to the home of the Pyramids; the land of the Heathen has our teachers in its desolate places, and the God of Day sets not upon the boundless triumphs of our government of the people.

AMERICAN POLITICS.

GENTLEMEN OF THE LITERARY SOCIETIES :

Let us forget the partisan for a season, and remember that we have a country. Mere partisans and mere partisan issues perish with the necessities or fortuitous circumstances which vitalize them; but our great political system has withstood the shocks and mutations of a century, and is to-day the theme most worthy of the forum. Here, before the young men who are to go out as teachers of their fellows, the discussion of American Politics, with intelligent candor, eminently befits the occasion.

Those of you whom I am specially called to address have not witnessed the rise and fall of political organizations, and you have come up toward manhood, through a period of almost unexampled partisan passion. The impressions and the prejudices of youth through which political sentiments are thus acquired are only too often witnessed in dwarfing the grasp and deforming the convictions and actions of maturer years. We are prone to

yield more or less to the political prejudices of youth, and in many instances to follow them with the devotion of the child, whose love clings to the parent even in degradation and death. My first political impressions were formed when the Whigs idolized the name of Clay. I often insensibly turn to that period and mourn the perished age of greatness and its worshipers. Had that organization survived its own unfaithfulness, I should probably still be its partisan apologist, for it was my first-born political

* Delivered before the Literary Societies of the University of Lewisburg, Penna., on June 23, 1874.

affection, and its heroes, and its aims, and its struggles come back to me with ever grateful memories. It died none too soon, and yet lived none too long. Its aristocratic pride of leadership, its stolid conservatism, and its boasted respectability made it unequal to the duties of revolutionary times, and it escaped mingled pity and contempt, by going to its grave when its useful days were numbered. With no less sincere, doubtless with more profound convictions, I have since taken an humble part in political conflicts, but the romance of partisan devotion ended with the organization that created it, and subsequent political attachment has been the offspring of a sober judgment and unbiased convictions of public duty. While man is man, his idols will cling to him, and none are so dear to us as those which in the ardor of youth we have invested with the attributes of perfection. I understand well, therefore, that in presenting to my young hearers on this occasion, American Politics as distinguished from the degenerate partisan duties and achievements of the present day, I shall encounter much of prejudice that is the growth of first political love.

Since the organization of our government, we have had but two great political parties. Scores of party organizations have been created and aspired to national control, but the future historian will tell of but two parties, whose achievements are written on the annals of our country's progress. And both exist to-day. Republicanism and Democracy are the only political organizations which are not a secondary growth, or mere expedients. Both were called into being to advance aggressive ideas, and they have rivaled each other in the grandeur of their monuments. The Democracy of the last half century was the Republicanism conceived and led with such masterly ability and success by Jefferson, and the Republicanism of the last two decades, was the sturdy growth of years, that was quickened by the gradual and ultimately