comptroller, having charge of the State canals, containing answers to circulars sent out to ask the farmers of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois whether, by the improved methods then deemed to be marvellous creations, they could afford to send their produce to the New York markets. Twenty years later we were able to grasp the business that arises in the valley of the Mississippi, and bring vast quantities of cereal and other food products a thousand and many more miles to our city on its way to European markets.

Now, gentlemen, this question of transportation has, in the United States, a magnitude which is possible nowhere else in the world. Take a product of agricultural industry which used to cost an amount equal to its whole value on the farm to bring it to market, and if you reduce the cost of that transportation one half, the effect is precisely equivalent to what it would be if you added one fourth to the fertility of the soil without any additional cost of tillage. Nowhere on the face of the globe has this great problem of transportation had such importance, and nowhere have improvements in the processes of transportation had such results as in this country; and to-day we find ourselves able to bring farm products from the remotest interior of the continent now occupied, to the points of shipment on the Atlantic seaboard, and to sell them there at prices which command the markets of Great Britain. The gentlemen who are engaged in the management of the great machinery of transportation think, no doubt, that they are working for their corporations and for their stockholders (though the stockholders seem sometimes to have great doubt on the latter point); but I, on behalf of the public, assert that in the main they are working for that public. If they have any title to popular recognition, if they have any right to popular consideration,- this is that title, this is that right. In the first place, while we see these men of colossal fortunes, and managers of great associated capital, seeking to all human eyes their own selfish gains, there is a wise and beneficent overruling Providence which directs events so that nearly all they do in lessening the cost of these services

results, not in enlarged profits, but in diminished charges; and thus inures to the benefit of the mass of the people. It is not possible, under competition and other natural laws, that any but a comparatively inconsiderable share of the results of their scheming, their planning, their efforts, their skill, and their sacrifices, shall go anywhere else than to the benefaction of the general public.

In the second place, even as to the comparatively small share which those who do the transportation for human society are able to reserve as profits, so long as the accumulations are invested as active capital for doing necessary and useful services in the work of transportation or otherwise, it is but creating better machinery, better processes, and more competition, all resulting in cheaper service to the public.

In the third place, when we come to the small fraction which the owners or managers of these colossal capitals are able to apply to their personal use, or to lay up for such use, the first thing that strikes one is that they cannot carry even a carpet-bag when they go on their long journey to that bourne from whence no traveller returns. Even personal accumulations, after the owners have left them, sink into the mass which society in the aggregate owns, and undergo a fresh distribution.

I remember, when I was quite a young man, being sent for by one of the ablest men I have ever known, a great statesman and a great thinker, Martin Van Buren, who wanted to consult me about his will. Well, I walked with him all over his farm one afternoon, and I heard what he had to say, with the previous knowledge (not from him), that I was trustee under his will. The next morning, as I stood before his broad and large wood fire, I stated the result of my reflections. I said: "It is not well to be wiser than events; to attempt to control the far future, which no man can foresee; to trust one's grandchildren, whom one does not know, out of distrust, without special cause, of one's children, whom one does know." I came home; and, after a week, I received a letter from him

stating that he had thought much about the suggestion as to attempting to be wiser than events, and had abandoned all the complicated trusts by which he had proposed tying up his property; and he submitted to me a simple form according to the laws of the land and the laws of nature, which was approved and adopted.

I went down to Roehampton last summer to see the beautiful country home of my friend Mr. Morgan, a few miles out of London. He was well pleased to show me about everywhere. No man could help being delighted with what I saw, and he was curious to know what were my impressions. Well, I had, while inspecting with pleasure the appliances of comfort and luxury, been thinking how much, after all, he got for himself out of his great wealth and great business; I had been thinking how much he was able to apply to his own use, what sort of wages he got for managing the great establishment at No. 22 Old Broad Street in London, and said to him: "I don't see but what you are a trustee here; you get only your food, your clothing, your shelter." Of course a man may have some delight in a sense of power, in a sense of consequence; but I rather thought his coachman beat him in that particular. And, on the whole, I thought aloud-I could not help it-I told him he was a trustee with a very handsome salary, doing very well; but I could not see that he got much more than any of the rest of the people about the place. Well, I did hear, when, soon after, I went down to 22 Old Broad Street, that he was rather late to business the next morning; but I will do him the justice to say that he adapted himself to the duties of a trustee, and that he was as diligent and faithful as though he had some personal interest in the great affairs he is managing. Now as to my friend Mr. Morgan — he was a Connecticut boy; he was a Boston young man. I can imagine that, when he was casting his future, he heard a spectral voice say: "Young man, go West." The West opened great opportunities. A man could go there, start with the country, grow up with it, develop with everything around him, and be a very

great character. It was easier to be an important man there than in any older country. But, on the other hand, Mr. Morgan may have heard about the same time the chiming voices of those old Bow Bells which Sir Richard Whittington heard inviting him back to London, telling him he would be Lord Mayor three times. Mr. Morgan chose London; he went to that place, in which it is more difficult to rise, more difficult to get an initiative, more difficult to start a career, than in any place else in the world; and he succeeded. And now, after many years, after a quarter of a century, he returns to his native country for a time, having manifested ability, judgment, integrity, and honor in the capital of England. But during all that time, when he has risen to great eminence and great distinction, he has the large claim on our consideration that he has never ceased to be an American. I trust also that he, as all the rest of these men of colossal fortunes, has discovered that there is something better than money, and that is the merited esteem of their fellows; and that there is something better than the merited esteem of their fellows, which is a consciousness that human society is better because we have existed.

Gentlemen, I propose to you the health of Junius S. Morgan.

LXI.

MR. TILDEN was invited to dine with the Democratic Association of Massachusetts on the anniversary of Washington's birthday, Feb. 22, 1880. General Grant was still a candidate for a third nomination to the Presidency. His partisans were active and determined. The Republicans of New York were counted upon to give him a solid delegation. It was natural that Mr. Tilden's views of third-term candidates for the Presidency should find some expression in his reply to this invitation from a State which had always given its entire electoral vote for Republican candidates. The following letter was addressed to Mr. Henry Walker, chairman of the Executive Committee of the Democratic Association of Massachusetts, Boston.