YALE'S RELATION TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE COUNTRY*

Mr. President, Brethren of Yale, Ladies and Gentle

men:

The subject assigned to me, "Yale in its Relation to the Development of the Country," is too large for adequate consideration in a brief address. I shall omit all allusion to the moral and industrial development, and confine my remarks to a very brief consideration of Yale's relation to the political development of the country, and a somewhat more extended review of Yale's relation to the educational development.

While Yale men have gone largely into politics and have done manly service in the ranks, and while many of them have attained to distinguished positions to which they have done honor and in which they have been influential, it is not easy to say to what extent the political policy of our country has been influenced directly by Yale. The college had four graduates in the convention which framed our National Constitution, William Samuel Johnson, William Livingston, Jared Ingersoll, and Abraham Baldwin, all of them good and able men. It has

*Delivered at the Yale Bicentennial Celebration, New Haven, Connecticut, October 22nd, 1901.

to-day three members of the Supreme Court of the United States: David Josiah Brewer, Henry Billings Brown, both of the class of 1856, and George Shiras, of the class of 1853. These men, all eminently worthy to hold the high position which they occupy, have been called upon to decide questions of the greatest importance, and their decisions have probably affected the policy of the country more positively and permanently than has any other distinctive Yale influence.

The great work of pacifying the Philippine Islands and bringing them under beneficial civil government and, let us hope, preparing them for selfgovernment under conditions most favorable to liberty, has very wisely been assigned to a distinguished graduate of Yale, Hon. William H. Taft, of the class of 1878. Judge Taft has done so well whatever he has undertaken to do, and has already so far succeeded in bringing order out of chaos in the Philippines, as to inspire the utmost confidence in his ultimate complete success, and to awaken a consciousness in the nation that he may, at some time, be called to fill a higher position than he has yet attained.

No graduate of Yale has ever been elected to the office of president of the United States, but the Yalensians will not complain so long as the country can have for its president a patriot and scholar like Theodore Roosevelt.

A very respectable number of Yale graduates have been senators and representatives in Congress. The representatives are too numerous to mention. Of the senators, it will be sufficient to name John Caldwell Calhoun, of South Carolina; Truman Smith, Roger S. Baldwin, and Jabez W. Huntington, of Con

necticut; John Davis, Julius Rockwell, and Henry L. Dawes, of Massachusetts; John M. Clayton and Anthony Higgins, of Delaware; William M. Evarts and Chauncey M. Depew, of New York; George E. Badger, of North Carolina; Randall L. Gibson, of Louisiana; William Morris Stewart, of Nevada, and Frederick T. Dubois, of Idaho. All of these have exerted a positive influence on either the politics or the legislation of the country. Most of them have been men of commanding influence in the Senate, and I am glad to say in the language of another, "All of them have been honest and sincere, and in no instance have they betrayed the trust reposed in them."

Yale has furnished the country with a number of distinguished diplomats, of whom Eugene Schuyler, of the class of 1859, though not the most prominent or distinguished, was, I think, the most distinctly representative. Edwards Pierrepont, of the class of 1837, and Wayne MacVeagh and Andrew D. White, both of the class of 1853, are among the most distinguished of Yale representatives at foreign courts.

But the real history of a country is not the record of its great men either in war or in peace. It is rather an account of the development and progress of the people; and especially so in this country, where the people's will can govern and ultimately does govern, and where the wisest leaders, before they speak, listen for the voice of the people. The hope of the country is not in the astuteness and ability of its great men, but in the virtue, intelligence, and good sense of the great body of the people. An institution of learning whose influence, educational and ethical, has permeated the great mass of the people in all parts of the country, affecting alike