TRUE FREEDOM IS TO SHARE ΙΟΙ excellent to run wind-mills: but zeal for everybody is not nearly as important as fidelity to some one. For a world is a sum of individuals. All of us are 'debtors both to the wise and to the foolish' to transmit with increment the benefits of that vast intellectual and spiritual endowment of which, by no supreme merits of our own, but by the providence of God, we are the beneficiaries in an unreckonable sum. Hail then to every plan and every task that affirms and maintains the altitude and outlook of such a stewardship of truth. All good and growth to the endeavors of this people's university whose new year of enlarged service is tonight begun; for, "Is true freedom but to break Pale and poor are all these words of mine: but great and lustrous is the text. Gladly I would disappear behind a theme so large and so alluring. Truth held as a sacred trust this is the life and light of men. This is the calling and election of scholarship of whatever degree. This is the 'liberal education' offered us by the Giver of all good. Under this banner may you wage and win your new battle of Long Island! Ethics in Politics SPEECH AT THE CXXVII BANQUET OF THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK NEW YORK CITY, NOVEMBER 19, 1895 Mr. President, Gentlemen, of the Chamber of Commerce, and all good Friends-It is with an unfeigned diffidence, not to say anxiety, that I find myself confronted by this company and occasion. This house of representatives stands for so much, and its attention demands so much, that any such post-prandial tyro as myself must sympathize with the agued BELSHAZZAR, as he attempts to meet its critical exactions. And yet I am as sure of your generous forbearance, as I am grateful for your confiding hospitality. A witty parson, whom I knew, once said to a company of theologs "Young men, you will have observed that all the great preachers have great congregations- the way then to be a great preacher is to have a great congregation!" I would, for your sakes,that the humorous sophism were true. [Laughter.] I heard of a man who rose to speak in the chapel of Auburn prison. There were about 1,700 auditors, in compact rows, all modestly and appropriately attired, and in his embarrassment, the minister began-"Ahem, I'm glad to see so many of you here today!" In like confusion, I can only say, "Me too." [Laughter.] For you are so well wonted to competent and cogent speech, that it is a pity to make this time an exception to the adage that "to him that hath shall be given," or as it was condensed by a shrewd feminine and rural tongue, "Them that has, gits." [Laughter.] The president of almost anything, is a man expected to keep A DEMAND FOR AGILITY 103 ideas on tap, with a spigot for every call. A college president, even if a small president of a large college, is supposed to have an artesian supply of talk. A barrel of addresses and a barrel of sermons, and always ready to fire with both barrels. I confide to you that I have but a small keg and without compartments. It goes on a swivel, like a churn, and is labeled "Sermon" on one end and "Talk" on the other. An address is but a sermon upside down, and a sermon is an address other end up. It does require a certain briskness, like that of the deacon, who, when asked to "lead," replied, "I was goin' to make some remarks, but I suppose I can put them in the form of a prayer," or, like that of the Yankee, who, taking a boatload of shoe pegs to New Orleans, and finding the market "long," invented a machine, sharpened the other ends, and sold them for oats. A sermon differs from an address, as a pie differs from a tart, merely in the form of the crust. [Laughter.] Of a sermon or of a speech often the best is the text. General PORTER, who is the other man to blame for my being here, evidently had in mind his fable of the New-Englanders who "crossed their bees with lightning bugs, so they could work o'nights," when he gave me twenty minutes and all the dictionary. His liberality of permitted topic reminded me of an old BARNUM poster, which ran, "This is the most gigantic, outlandish and unreasonable performance in the world!" "Anything I'd like." It suggests that small girl, who, when her fond father took her to see the new cradleful of twins, meditated a moment and then queried, "Did any of 'em get away ?" [Laughter.] What not to say has been my quandary. A man was run over by a heavy wagon, and stepping from the crowd a young mistress of simple surgery, sure of her attainments, whipped out splints and rolled linen, and deftly proceeded to bandage the broken leg of the sufferer. As soon as possible he was taken to a surgeon. "Who, (said the expert,) applied this bandage?" The maiden modestly confessed her handiwork. "It is well done, (said the surgeon,) but it is on the wrong leg!" [Laughter.] Gentlemen, please remember, that it is dangerous to sleep when the gas is turned on unlighted. I'm much afraid that you will say as did the farmer's wife upon viewing the hippopotamus, "My, ain't he plain!" or be ready to write with the stone-cutter down in Maine, who, having to chisel, for a lamented and scrawny wife, "Lord, she was thine," found no room for the final letter of the last word. ETHICS have place in politics, because they have place in everything. All human questions are at last ethical. Politics is not the art of office-getting, but is concerned with every policy and program, every interest and exigency, that affects the people. The insisting that this or that tremendous issue must be "taken out of politics" would be amusing, were it not so fatuous. Men sometimes rise to urge that a given matter must be eliminated from "sentiment" and from theories of right and wrong, that it may be considered "practically." Impotence! Sentiment-moral sentiment, is the one thing with which all politics must at last reckon. Duty and feeling are omnipresent, and will be found omni-prevalent, because, under God, they are omnipotent. That alone is "practical" which is ethical. All government is ethical, being either good government or misgovernment. Men tried once to take slavery out of politics, as now they attempt to transfer to some other realm, some no-man's-land, the question of that power which fills with its vomit our cities and our capitols. This land, believe it, cannot endure, halfsober and half-drunken. Whatever debauches labor and wrongs it of the 52 days of rest, ordained in that code whose mercy is written in the very nerves of mankind, is a question that may be avoided and postponed, but must at last be met, LOCOMOTOR ATAXIA 105 and weighted by all arrears of delay. It is cowardly to shuffle it. No. Politics is not a game, it is a task. It rests in those principles, without which parties suppurate. Great LINCOLN, with his sane and seer-like sense of the ultimate might of morals, laid his eye, as if to the sights of a long rifle, and said, "Nothing is ever settled until it is settled right." [Applause.] Last year, so shows your record, you were as happy here as a group of boys with a new-milch cocoanut. This year you are wiping your lips on the husks. live in the Empire State) were Now, there is on this Island a demand for Pond's extract, which not even Mr. ROOSEVELT can supply. All of our hats (for I, too, suddenly too small for us! You were, then, as pleased as a woman who once told me of a local revival of an earlier writer, saying: "We had a great mess o' converts!" You thought the manna might keep over. It soured. You did not remember to reckon that with the venal and lupine power which you opposed, one summer only makes a swallow. Suddenly the new moral vigor of this great City was seized with locomotor ataxia, which your lexicon defines for you as "a disease of the spinal chord, characterized by peculiar disturbances of gait and difficulty of coordinating voluntary movements." It is to be hoped that it may not become "progressive." Let my poor voice be the phonograph to recall a period from a letter, which, a year ago, you heard with vigorous applause; "Any tricky manipulator or political expert, of whatever complexion, who undertakes, at this date, to train victory upon political lines, to limit it by political ambitions, and to prostitute it to political ends, is an execrable traitor to our municipal interests, and ought to receive from us all, regardless of distinctions of faith or party, that contempt always due to an attempt to emasculate great opportunities by fingering them meanly and pettifoggingly." There spoke your SAVONAROLA! I find that MICAIAH and MALACHI, and JOHN BAPTIST and PETER and KNOX, and LATI |