They came to the polls armed, and divided into classes, and voted, not by heads, but by centuries.

In the Grecian republics all the voters were brought together in a great city, and decided the contest in one great struggle. In such assemblages, both the inducement to violence, and the means of committing it, were prepared by the government itself. In the United States all this is different. The voters are assembled in small bodies, at innumerable voting places, distributed over a vast extent of country. They come to the polls without arms, without odious instructions, without any temptation to violence, and with every inducement to harmony.

If heated during the day of election, they cool off upon returning to their homes, and resuming their ordinary occupations.

produced so many wonderful changes in tries, or in the manner of voting, which America, have accomplished the work of makes one an example for the other. The many centuries upon the intelligence of Romans voted in a mass, at a single voting its inhabitants. Within that period, schools, place, even when the qualified voters colleges, and universities have multiplied amounted to millions of persons. to an amazing extent. The means of diffusing intelligence have been wonderfully augmented by the establishment of six hundred newspapers, and upwards of five thousand post-offices. The whole course of an American's life, civil, social, and religious, has become one continued scene of intellectual and of moral improvement. Once in every week, more than eleven thousand men, eminent for learning and for piety, perform the double duty of amending the hearts, and enlightening the understandings, of more than eleven thousand congregations of people. Under the benign influence of a free government, both our public institutions and private pursuits, our juries, elections, courts of justice, the liberal professions, and the mechanical arts, have each become a school of political science and of mental improvement. The federal legislature, in the annual message of the President, in reports of heads of departments, and committees of Congress, and speeches of members, pours forth a flood of intelligence which carries its waves to the remotest confines of the republic. In the different States, twenty-four State executives and State legislatures, are annually repeating the same process within a more limited sphere. The habit of universal travelling, and the practice of universal interchange of thought, are continually circulating the intelligence of the country, and augmenting its mass The face of our country itself, its vast extent, its grand and varied features, contribute to expand the human intellect and magnify its power. Less than half a century of the enjoyment of liberty has given practical evidence of the great moral truth, that under a free government, the power of the intellect is the only power which rules the affairs of men; and virtue and intelligence the only durable passports to honor and preferment. The conviction of this great truth has created an universal taste for learning and for reading, and has convinced every parent that the endowments of the mind and the virtues of the heart, are the only imperishable, the only inestimable riches which he can leave to his posterity.

This objection (the danger of tumults and violence at the elections) is taken from the history of the ancient republics; and the tumultuary elections of Rome and Greece. But the justness of the example is denied. There is nothing in the laws of physiology which admits a parallel between the sanguinary Roman, the volatile Greek, and the phlegmatic American. There is nothing in the state of the respective coun

But let us admit the truth of the objection. Let us admit that the American people would be as tumultuary at this presidential election as were the citizens of the ancient republics at the election of their chief magistrates. What then? Are we thence to infer the inferiority of the officers thus elected, and the consequent degradation of the countries over which they presided? I answer no. So far from it, that I assert the superiority of these officers over all others ever obtained for the same countries, either by hereditary succession, or the most select mode of election. I affirm those periods of history to be the most glorious in arms, the most renowned in arts, the most celebrated in letters, the most useful in practice, and the most happy in the condition of the people, in which the whole body of the citizens voted direct for the chief officer of their country. Take the history of that commonwealth which yet shines as the leading star in the firmanent of nations. Of the twenty-five centuries that the Roman state has existed, to what period do we look for the generals and statesmen, the poets and orators, the philosophers and historians, the sculptors, painters and architects, whose immortal works have fixed upon their country the admiring eyes of all succeeding ages? Is it to the reign of the seven first kings?-to the reigns of the emperors, proclaimed by the prætorian bands?-to the reigns of the Sovereign Pontiffs, chosen by a select body of electors in a conclave of most holy cardinals? No.-We look to none of these, but to that short interval of four centuries and a half which lies between the expulsion of the Tarquins, and the re-establishment of monarchy in the

person of Octavius Cæsar. It is to this termediate electors. They are the peculiar short period, during which the consuls, and favorite institution of aristocratic retribunes, and prætors, were annually publics, and elective monarchies. I refer elected by a direct vote of the people, to the Senate to the late republics of Venice which we look ourselves, and to which we and Genoa; of France, and her litter; to direct the infant minds of our children, the Kingdom of Poland; the empire of for all the works and monuments of Roman Germany, and the Pontificate of Rome. greatness; for roads, bridges, and acque- On the contrary, a direct vote by the peoducts, constructed; for victories gained, ple is the peculiar and favorite institution nations vanquished, commerce extended, of democratic republics; as we have just treasure imported, libraries founded, learn- seen in the governments of Rome, Athens, ing encouraged, the arts flourishing, the Thebes, and Sparta; to which may be city embellished, and the kings of the earth added the principal cities of the Amphychumbly suing to be admitted into the tionic and Achaian leagues, and the refriendship, and taken under the protection nowned republic of Carthage when the of the Roman people. It was of this mag-rival of Rome. nificent period that Cicero spoke, when he proclaimed the people of Rome to be the masters of kings, and the conquerors and commanders of all the nations of the earth. And, what is wonderful, during this whole period, in a succession of four hundred and fifty annual elections, the people never once prepared a citizen to the consulship who did not carry the prosperity and glory of the Republic to a point beyond that at which he had found it.

I have now answered the objections which were brought forward in the year '78. I ask for no judgment upon their validity of that day, but I affirm them to be without force or reason in the year 1824.

TIME and EXPERIENCE have so decided. Yes, time and experience, the only infallible tests of good or bad institutions, have now shown that the continuance of the electoral system will be both useless and dangerous to the liberties of the people, and It is the same with the Grecian Repub- that the only effectual mode of preserving lics. Thirty centuries have elapsed since our government from the corruptions they were founded; yet it is to an ephem- which have undermined the liberties of so eral period of one hundred and fifty years many nations, is, to confide the election of only the period of popular elections which our chief magistrates to those who are intervened between the dispersing of a farthest removed from the influence of his cloud of petty tyrants, and the coming of a patronage; that is to say, to the whole great one in the person of Philip, King of body of American citizens." Macedon, that we are to look for that galaxy of names which shed so much lustre upon their country, and in which we are to find the first cause of that intense sympathy which now burns in our bosoms at the name of Greece.

The electors are not independent; they have no superior intelligence; they are not left to their own judgment in the choice of a President; they are not above the control of the people; on the contrary, every elector is pledged, before he is chosen, to These short and brilliant periods exhib-give his vote according to the will of those it the great triumph of popular elections; who choose him. often tumultuary, often stained with blood, but always ending gloriously for the country.

Then the right of suffrage was enjoyed; the sovereignty of the people was no fiction. Then a sublime spectacle was seen, when the Roman citizen advanced to the polls and proclaimed: "I vote for Cato to be consul;" the Athenian, "I vote for Aristides to be Archon," the Hebran, "I vote for Pelopidas to be Baotrach;" the Lacedemonian, “I vote for Leonidas to be first of the Ephori," and why not an American citizen the same? Why may he not go up to the poll and proclaim, "I vote for Thomas Jefferson to be President of the United States?" Why is he compelled to put his vote in the hands of another, and to incur all the hazards of an irresponsible agency, when he himself could immediately give his own vote for his own chosen candidate, without the slightest assistance om agents or managers?

But I have other objections to these in

He is nothing but an agent, tied down to the execution of a precise trust. Every reason which induced the convention to institute electors has failed. They are no longer of any use, and may be dangerous to the liberties of the people. They are not useful, because they have no power over their own vote, and because the people can vote for a President as easily as they can vote for an elector. They are dangerous to the liberties of the people, because, in the first place, they introduce extraneous considerations into the election of President; and in the second place, they may sell the vote which is intrusted to their keeping. They introduce extraneous considerations, by bringing their own character and their own exertions into the presidential canvass. Every one sees this. Candidates for electors are now selected, not for the reasons mentioned in the Federalist, but for their devotion to a particular party, for their manners, and their talent at electioneering. The elector may

betray the liberties of the people, by selling his vote. The operation is easy, because he votes by ballot; detection is impossible, Hon. James G. Blaine's Oration on Presibecause he does not sign his vote; the restraint is nothing but his own conscience, for there is no legal punishment for this breach of trust. If a swindler defrauds you out of a few dollars of property or money, he is whipped and pilloried, and rendered infamous in the eye of the law; but, if an elector should defraud 40,000 people of their vote, there is no remedy but to abuse him in newspapers, where the best men in the country may be abused, as Benedict Arnold or Judas Iscariot.

at Saratoga, and at Monmouth, and in his own person had battled for the same great cause in the war which preserved the

Union of the States.

pendence. This honorable independence marked the youth of Garfield as it marks the youth of millions of the best blood and brain now training for the future citiLosing his father before he was two zenship and future government of the reyears old, the early life of Garfield was one public. Garfield was born heir to land, to of privation, but its poverty has been made the title of free-holder which has been the indelicately and unjustly prominent. patent and passport of self-respect with Thousands of readers have imagined him the Anglo-Saxon race ever since Hengist as the ragged, starving child, whose reality and Horsa landed on the shores of Engtoo often greets the eye in the squalid sec- land. His adventure on the canal-an tions of our large cities. General Garfield's alternative between that and the deck of a infancy and youth had none of their des- Lake Erie schooner-was a farmer boy's titution, none of their pitiful features ap- device for earning money, just as the New pealing to the tender heart and to the England lad begins a possibly great career open hand of charity He was a poor boy by sailing before the mast on a coasting in the same sense in which Henry Clay vessel or on a merchantman bound to the was a poor boy; in which Andrew Jack-farther India or to the China Seas. son was a poor boy; in which Daniel Web- No manly man feels anything of shame ster was a poor boy; in the sense in which a large majority of the eminent men of America in all generations have been poor boys. Before a great multitude of men, in a public speech, Mr. Webster bore this testimony:

HIS EARLY DAYS.

"It did not happen to me to be born in a log cabin, but my elder brothers and sisters were born in a log cabin raised amid the snow drifts of New Hampshire, at a period so early that when the smoke rose first from its rude chimney and curled over the frozen hills there was no similar evidence of a white man's habitation between it and the settlements on the rivers of Canada. Its remains still exist. I make to it an annual visit. I carry my children to it to teach them the hardships endured by the generations which have gone before them. I love to dwell on the tender recollections, the kindred ties, the early affections and the touching narratives and incidents which mingle with all I know of this primitive family abode."

in looking back to early struggles with adverse circumstances, and no man feels a worthier pride than when he has conquered the obstacles to his progress. But no one of noble mould desires to be looked upon as having occupied a menial position, as having been repressed by a feeling of inferiority, or as having suffered the evils of poverty until relief was found at the hand of charity. General Garfield's youth presented no hardships which family love and family energy did not overcome, subjected him to no privations which he did not cheerfully accept, and left no memories save those which were recalled with delight, and transmitted with profit and with pride.

Garfield's early opportunities for securing an education were extremely limited, and yet were sufficient to develop in him an intense desire to learn. He could read at three years of age, and each winter he had the advantage of the district school. He read all the books to be found within the circle of his acquaintance; some of them he got by heart. While yet in childWith the requisite change of scene the hood he was a constant student of the same words would aptly portray the early Bible, and became familiar with its literdays of Garfield. The poverty of the ature. The dignity and earnestness of his frontier, where all are engaged in a com- speech in his maturer life gave evidence of mon struggle and where a common sym- this early training. At eighteen years of pathy and hearty co-operation lighten the age he was able to teach school, and thenceburdens of each, is a very different pov- forward his ambition was to obtain a colerty, different in kind, different in influ- lege education. To this end he bent all ence and effect from that conscious and his efforts, working in the harvest field, at humiliating indigence which is every day the carpenter's bench, and, in the winter forced to contrast itself with neighboring season, teaching the common schools of wealth on which it feels a sense of grind- the neighborhood. While thus laboriousing dependence. The poverty of the ly occupied he found time to prosecute his frontier is indeed no poverty. It is but studies and was so successful that at twentythe beginning of wealth, and has the two years of age he was able to enter the boundless possibilities of the future always junior class at Williams College, then unopening before it. No man ever grew up der the presidency of the venerable and in the agricultural regions of the West, honored Mark Hopkins, who, in the fullwhere a house-raising, or even a corn-ness of his powers, survives the eminent husking, is a matter of common interest pupil to whom he was of inestimable serand helpfulness, with any other feeling vice. than that of broad-minded, generous inde

The history of Garfield's life to this