STATES HONORABLY

L.

HONORING THEIR MEN OF CULTURE.

HON. W. D. KELLEY, OF PENNSYLVANIA.

AMERICAN history proves that the State which honors its distinguished sons strengthens itself; and, on the other hand, that the State which depreciates and discards its acknowledged intellect weakens itself. Let us illustrate. Massachusetts took John Adams from private life at an early age, and the country adopted him into its service from his appointment as commissioner to the Court of Versailles in 1777 down to his retirement from the Presidency in 1801. His distinguished son, John Quincy Adams, began his career as American Minister to Holland in 1794, and remained abroad in the diplomatic service until 1801. Massachusetts made him a Senator in Congress from 1803 to 1808. Then the nation called him into its service in 1809 as Minister to Russia, and as Minister to England in 1815. Secretary of State under Monroe from 1817 to 1825, President of the United States from 1825 to 1829, when Massachusetts took him back, and sent him as her representative to Congress from 1841 until his death, in 1848.

The same great State elected Daniel Webster to the Lower House of Congress in 1812, and re-elected him. In 1822, after a distinguished interval at the bar and in other public positions, he was again returned to the House, where he remained until 1827, when he was chosen to the Senate of the United States, serving in that high body with memorable distinction until he was called into the Cabinet of President Harrison in 1841. Re-elected to the Senate in 1845, he remained there until 1850, when he was again appointed Secretary of State by President Fillmore.

Charles Sumner was elected Senator in 1851, and remained there until his death, on the 12th day of March, 1874.

Kentucky early saw and seized the opportunity to utilize the wonderful talents of Henry Clay. In 1803, when in his twenty-sixth year, he was elected to the Legislature. In 1806 he was appointed to fill out the term of General Adair in the Senate of the United States. In 1807 he was again elected to the Legislature and chosen Speaker. In 1809 he was elected to the United States Senate for the unexpired term of Mr. Thurston. In 1811 he was sent to the Lower House of Congress, chosen Speaker on the first day of his appearance in that body, and five times re-elected to that high position; Secretary of State under John Quincy Adams, which post he filled four years. He returned to Kentucky in 1829, and in 1831 was chosen United States Senator, where he remained until 1842, when he resigned; but was called back to the Senate in 1849, and remained there till his death, September 6, 1852.

Thomas H. Benton was elected Senator in Congress from Missouri in 1821, and served thirty years in that body. South Carolina sent her favorite son, John C. Calhoun, to Washington, and kept him there nearly all his life. In the period dating from his election to the Legislature, in 1808, down to his death, in Washington city, March 31, 1850, he served as Secretary of War under Monroe, Vice-President with General Jackson, Senator in Congress, Secretary of State under Tyler, and again United States Senator.

I could extend the list with sketches of Lewis Cass, Martin Van Buren, William Allen, Sam Houston, John M. Clayton, Stephen A. Douglas, Silas Wright, George Poindexter, John Forsyth, John J. Crittenden, Samuel L. Southard, William L. Dayton, Daniel S. Dickinson, George Evans, James Buchanan, Robert Toombs, R. M. T. Hunter, and William R. King, all of whom were preferred for their great talents, and retained in the public service for many years. Any one of these men, utilizing in private life his great gifts, inherent and acquired, would have died richer, but comparatively unknown.

Their public career, filled with sacrifices, left them in the end, with few exceptions, poor men. General Cass was enriched by the enhanced value of the real estate he had bought about Detroit. The Adamses were men of reasonable fortune. But, in looking over the whole list, there are few or none that may be called really wealthy; while the large majority, as I have said, died poor. This was notably so of Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Douglas, Clayton, Crittenden, George Evans, Tom Corwin, and Silas Wright. They had to be content with fame, and this was a heritage reflecting honor upon their posterity and upon their country. They served their constituents like faithful servants. There could be no money compensation for such services. Without exception, not one of these was ever connected with a doubtful transaction. Obtaining their positions alone through their great talents, they held them to the end without reproach.

In discussing this subject, I am reminded of a statesman now in the House of Representatives at Washington, who may be taken as a fair illustration of the policy of electing capable men to Congress, and keeping them there. I mean the Hon. William D. Kelley, of Pennsylvania. Judge Kelley has outlived opposition and envy, in the sense that now, when he is approaching his sixty-seventh year, nobody questions his rare and varied capacities. He was first elected to Congress in 1860, and has served continuously through seven consecutive Congresses; his district has profited more by his persevering and unusual service than if its people had paid him a fortune every year to stand by their interests and their honor. This may be called high praise, but I believe it to be deserved.

Judge Kelley was born in Philadelphia in 1814. Commencing life as a reader in a printing-office, he was seven years an apprentice in a jewelry establishment; removed to Boston, and followed his trade there for four years; returned to Philadel phia; studied law; was admitted to the bar in 1841, and for

some years held the office of Judge of the Court of Common Pleas of that city. Up to 1848, or thereabouts, he was a Democrat and a free-trader; but doubtless his Boston experience and his association with the liberal thinkers of Massachusetts led him to a careful study of the slavery question, while his intimacy with the old-fashioned statesmen of Pennsylvania, and his knowledge of the peculiar resources and needs of his native State, induced him to accept the protection of American industry as the best policy for a new and growing country. He is singularly equipped for responsible leadership. It is not often that you find a combination of high oratorical powers and innate capacity for investigation and study. The declaimer is too frequently a mere rhetorician; but in the case of Judge Kelley you realize unusual speaking capacity, admirable manners, a rich melodious voice, an imposing presence, and an aptitude for statistics and for details, with an insatiate desire to trace every proposition to its sources. One of his friends-the venerable Henry C. Carey-says of Judge Kelley," Put him in a balloon, sail away with him for a thousand miles, and then drop him down on a strange country, he will at once proceed to ascertain the name of the region, and to master the habits of the people and the productions of the soil." I remember well, after the war, at an informal meeting in my rooms on Capitol Hill, Washington, composed of Northern and Southern men, assembled to aid in the commercial reconstruction of the South, how Judge Kelley amazed the whole company-having accidentally dropped in while we were conversing-by his accurate and intimate knowledge of the resources of the old and new States, many of which he had never visited. Such a man is a treasure to any constituency. Like Benton in Missouri; like Stevens in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania; like Webster and Sumner in Massachusetts; like Tom Corwin in Ohio; like Douglas in Illinois-Judge Kelley sometimes gives offence to the politicians; but the people are true to him because they

are proud of him, because he serves them honestly, and because the best years of his life have been given to their cause. His efforts in favor of American industry alone entitle him to their lasting gratitude. The great district he represents the centre of so many enterprises; the trophy, so to speak, of American manufactures; the seat of a superb and increasing civilization around the Centennial grounds (which are but a short distance from his residence in West Philadelphia), four years ago the seat of the finest exhibition of human inventions and skill in the world's history—this great district ought never to be indifferent to the man who has done so much by his individual example, by his assiduity, tenacity, and energy, to prove that that country is most prosperous where labor secures the highest reward. It is to the credit of Judge Kelley that, extreme and exacting Abolitionist and Radical as he has been and is, no man has gone further to promote the practical reconciliation of the sections. His efforts in this behalf have not been displayed in party speeches and appeals, but in the collection and publication of a mass of convincing statistics to show that the proper way to develop a patriotic spirit in the South is to develop the material resources of the South. No character that I have attempted to describe in these sketches of public men deserves, on the whole, a more careful study at the hands of my youthful readers than William D. Kelley, of Pennsylvania. Feeble in health, he is still an active and powerful leader, and I could wish no better fortune to his constituents than that he may live many years to honor and to serve them in the Congress of his country.