in its tone, but speaking also with a personal and individual voice

"England expects every man to do his duty."

At the sight of Nelson's immortal signal, duty-loving England and glory-loving France met as they have met on many an historic battlefield before and since, and the lover of duty proved the stronger. The England that expected every man to do his duty was as real a being to the humblest sailor in Nelson's fleet as the mother that bore him.

It is this personal quality in States and nations, as individual, moral beings-objects of love, and fear, and approbation, and condemnation having a personal, moral quality, separate purposes, separate interests, different public objects, separate fashions of behavior and of public conduct-which justifies the arrangement in the Constitution of the United States for an equal representation of States in the upper legislative chamber, and explains its admirable success.

The separate entity and the absolute freedom (except for the necessary restraints of the Constitution) of our different States is the cause alike of the greatness and the security of the country.

It is one of the most wonderful things in our history that the separate States, having so much in common, have preserved so completely, even to the present time, their original and individual characteristics.

Rhode Island, held in the hollow of the hand of Massachusetts; Connecticut, so placed that one would think it would become a province of New York; Delaware, whose chief city is but 25 miles from Philadelphia, yet preserve their distinctive characteristics, as if they were States of the continent of Europe, whose people speak a different language.

This shows how perfectly State rights and State freedom are preserved in spite of our national union; how little the power at the center interferes with the important things that affect the character of the people.

Why is it that little Delaware remains Delaware in spite of Pennsylvania, and little Rhode Island remains Rhode Island notwithstanding her neighbor, Massachusetts?

"What makes the meadow flower its bloom unfold?

Because the lovely little flower is free

Down to its roots, and in that freedom bold.

And so the grandeur of the forest tree

Comes not from casting in a formal mold,

But from its own divine vitality."

H. Doc. 291-3

And so it is that little Delaware or little Rhode Island is as much the political equal of giant New York or Pennsylvania as little Wendell Holmes was the political equal of Daniel Lambert or Daniel Webster.

Now, I have made this preface of mine a good deal longer than the body of the discourse. There are certain political actions of the individual or citizen which do not in the least affect the action of his country as a moral being. There are other actions which have no moral quality or significance of their own, except as they enter into and affect the moral conduct or the character of the country or State. Now, as it seems to me, the question of the propriety of independent action is to be resolved by this test and touchstone.

Take the matter of supporting candidates for office. I hold it to be a good thing to narrow and not to widen the field of controversy between different political parties, and that their controversies should, so far as possible, be confined to the principles about which they differ. There is a large class of officers whose duties are purely executive, which require only honesty, fidelity, and executive capacity for their performance. The political opinion of the official has nothing more to do with the discharge of his duties than his religious opinion or the color of his eyes or hair.

I hold that it is desirable to remove these offices from the domain of party conflict, and that a man, in recommending a person or supporting a person for such office, is not bound to surrender his own judgment as to the superior fitness of the candidate to the political party with whose principles he agrees. I think, further, that the making of political opinion a condition of holding such office is of evil effect, as tending to inspire political activity by the hope of such rewards, and so as bribing the people with the offices created to serve them

Next, I do not see how an honest and patriotic citizen ca support measures, or ought to support measures, which h thinks of evil influence, merely because the political part with which he generally acts declares itself in favor of then Of course, in matter of detail, matter of seasonableness as t time, there is room for compromise, and there is room for suc a deference. But for it a political party, organized and ass ciated for the purpose of causing certain principles to tai effect in legislation, never could accomplish its purposes, ar a majority would be without value or power. So that I ho

to the largest independence of the individual conscience and judgment in the matter of those measures of legislation or executive action which are to affect the interests of the people, and still more as to those which are to determine the moral quality and character of the State or nation.

We must also all agree that no party obligation can compel a man to do, or to help to do, an action which he deems unjust, or to refrain from doing an action, or helping to do an action, which is required by justice. But, in regard to the executive officers of whom I have just spoken, I do not see why an independent citizen is not justified in doing what he can to place in those offices the men whom, after the best reflection and investigation, he thinks the best fitted for them, having only that reasonable deference to the opinion of his party which is due from all of us to the opinion of other men whom we respect. I do not see why he may not, in that way, if he choose, honor so far as he can the men whom he chiefly delighteth to honor.

But there is a class of public officials, such as Presidents, Governors, Members of either House of Congress, and Members of the State legislature, who are chosen not for what they themselves are, not to honor or decorate, or crown the brows of individual men, but for what the country, or State, as a moral being, is to do through their votes.

In regard to that class of officials, I have never been able to approve or to respect the opinion of the man who classes himself as an independent in politics. I do not approve or respect the notion, as applied to that class of officials, of the man who says he is going to vote for the best man withont regard to party. It seems to me that in so doing he is indulging his preference for an individual at the cost of dishonoring his country.

If in what I said a little while ago there be any truth, and if there be any difference between right and wrong in the conduct of the State-if there be such a thing as the attribute of righteousness, justice, honor, virtue, courage, generosity, heroism, as applied to this being whom we call our country, and for whose good name and honor, if need be, we are ready to die, how is it possible that we are justified in making her unrighteous, unjust, cowardly, mean, and impure, because of something in the personal quality which we like or dislike in the character of the man whom we commission to do it.

Let us take an illustration from current politics. There are

men who believe as I do, that the most valuable, most precious right of property that belongs to an American citizen is his citizenship; that its crowning attribute is the elective franchise; who believe that the worst socialism, the most dangerous radicalism, the most wicked attack on vested rights, is that which deprives a man of his franchise or the fruit of his franchise by fraud or crime, or debauches it by a bribe; who believe that the blended and mingled wickedness of all anarchy, all socialism, all disorder, all disorganization is contained in crimes against the ballot.

The question whether I like or approve the law which has vested these rights in the poorer or less educated classes of our citizens is a question I have nothing more to do with, while they remain vested, than the question whether I like the law of descent or the title to property under which our wealthy men own their real estate. It is the law of the land. Every good citizen is bound to maintain and defend it whether he like it or no.

Am I to put in a place of power the man who approves these things, who sympathizes with them, by whose vote my country is to crush out with its armed heel the rights of citizens, because he is a man more amiable or more faultless in his private life than the man by whose vote the country will do what is righteous and just in the matter? Some of you think, as I do not, that the protective tariff is a policy of gross injustice that it plunders the poor for the rich; that it plunders one part of the country for the benefit of another; that it is organ ized monopoly, robbery, and plunder; and that the country that enacts it is the servant of monopoly, and plunder, and private greed.

Can I ask you to support a man who does not think so, an who is an accomplice himself and makes his country an accon plice in all these things, because he is a man more agreeab or more free from the faults which disgrace, or possesses mor of the virtues which adorn private citizens, than a competit who is sound in this matter? Your vote for governor, or Pre ident, or legislator, national or State, means simply, I desi that my country shall pursue the path of honesty or of dishonest of prosperity or adversity, as I see it.

The question of the individual quality of the person so co missioned is, compared with this, a secondary, subordina and trivial matter.

Let me not be misunderstood. I do not mean that you should vote for a man if you can not trust him; I do not mean that you should vote for a man who is rotten, or corrupt, or base. You can not have honesty in the country with rulers who are venal and corrupt and profligate in their private conduct. You will not often have such men proposed to you by any party in the country for high public offices. When they are, the time has arrived for the independent in politics.

Every man who comes into the national legislative service will, I think, confirm what I say. He meets, perhaps for the first time, men who have been represented by the partisan, or so called independent, press as corrupt and self-seeking schemers, men who disgrace their country and their constituency, seeking public office to gratify selfish ambition, and using it after it is obtained to promote their personal fortunes. He finds them faithful, industrious, seeking the public goodmen with many faults and foibles and, rarely, vices, but men to whom the suggestion of a corrupt motive would be received with as swift indignation as would have been a proposition to George Washington to pick a pocket; but, I believe, if you will reflect, you will find a large majority acting upon these principles, and that they have acted on them in the main from the beginning of our constitutional history. You will find, if you penetrate below the anger, and heat, and excitement of political discussion, and the misrepresentation and misjudg ment which attend political controversies, that an honest desire for the public good and also a wise comprehension of what is for the public good have been the prevalent forces in guiding the great currents of our history.

I suppose you have heard all your lives, and will hear all your lives, constant complaints of the slowness, dullness, fickleness, and inefficiency of representative bodies of Congress, State legislatures, and municipal councils. The press is full of it. Writers of history who agree in nothing else agree in that. It is the burden of common speech everywhere. Nobody ever praises them except the men who belong to them. Yet the legislation of a free people alike determines and records their history. You can not separate the character of the people from the character of the men whom they deliberately, from year to year, and from generation to generation, elect to represent them. Men whose blood would fly to their cheeks at a charge of baseness, or wickedness, or cowardice, made against