that was the end of Mr. Covert's bill-the vote being seven against to six in favor of it. Had the bill prevailed the entire line of duties on iron and steel and other manufactures would have been seriously endangered."

A word on another question of political economy to close this chapter appropriately, remembering the national work this year, is found in General Garfield's speech urging the importance of the last census:

"The developments of statistics are causing history to be re-written. Till recently the historian studied nature in the aggregate, and gave us only the story of princes, dynasties, sieges and battles. Of the people themselves-the great social body, with life, growth, forces, elements, etc.—he told us nothing. Now, statistical inquiry leads him into the hovels, homes, workshops, mines, fields, prisons, hospitals, and all places where human nature displays its weakness and strength. In these explorations he discovers the seed of national growth and decay, and thus becomes the prophet of his generation.

"Statistical science is indispensable to modern statesmanship. In legislation, as in physical science, it is beginning to be understood that we can control terrestrial forces only by obeying their laws. The legislator must formulate in his statistics not only the national will, but also those great laws of social life revealed by statistics. He must study society rather than black-letter learning. He must learn the truth that 'society usually prepares the crime, and the criminal is only the instrument that completes it;' that statesmanship consists rather in removing causes than in punishing or evading results."

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CHAPTER XXII

G

ARRAIGNING HIS ENEMIES.

ENERAL GARFIELD has ever dealt his enemies in Congress sledge-hammer blows, and yet not with any malignity or from the sly hand of revenge. His tongue has only been moved by what he considered the necessities of the situation. The inheritance of tradition from his district would, if no other cause had prompted, have allied him with the North when the Rebellion became a question for each and every one. His vigorous, clear mind needed no words to shape its course. Whenever the Union was concerned he answered every call with electric readiness.

One of his early speeches in Congress gave him high oratorical rank. Alexander Long, of Ohio, delivered in 1864 an exceedingly ultra PeaceDernocratic speech-proposing that Congress should recognize the Southern Confederacy. The speech attracted marked attention, and by common consent it was left to the young member, so fresh from the battle-fields of his country, to reply. The moment Long took his seat, Garfield rose. His opening sentence thrilled his listeners. In a moment he was surrounded by a crowd of mem

bers from the remoter seats, and in the midst of great excitement and wild applause from his side. he poured forth an invective rarely surpassed in that body for power and elegance:

"MR. CHAIRMAN: I am reminded by the ocurrences of this afternoon of two characters in the War of the Revolution, as compared with two others in the war of to-day.

"The first was Lord Fairfax, who dwelt near the Potomac, a few miles from us. When the great contest was opened between the mother country and the colonies, Lord Fairfax, after a protracted struggle with his own heart, decided that he must go with the mother country. He gathered his mantle about him and went over grandly and solemnly.

"There was another man, who cast in his lot with the struggling colonists and continued with them till the war was well-nigh ended. In an hour of darkness that just preceded the glory of morning, he hatched the treason to surrender forever all that had been gained by the enemies of his country. Benedict Arnold was that man.

"Fairfax and Arnold find their parallel in the struggle of to-day.

"When this war was begun many good men stood hesitating and doubting what they ought to do. Robert E. Lee sat in his house across the river here, doubting and delaying, and going off at last almost tearfully to join the army of his State. He reminds one in some respects, of Lord Fairfax, the stately royalist of the Revolution.

"But now, when tens of thousands of brave souls have gone up to God under the shadow of the flag; when thousands more, maimed and shattered in the contest, are sadly awaiting the deliverance of death; now, when three years of terrific warfare have raged over us, when our armies have pushed the rebellion back over mountains and rivers, and crowded it into narrow limits until a wall of fire girds it; now, when the up

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lifted hand of a majestic people is about to hurl the bolts of its conquering power upon the rebellion, now in the quiet of this hall, hatched in the lowest depths of a similar dark treason, there rises a Benedict Arnold and proposes to surrender all up, body and spirit, the nation and the flag, its genius and its honor, now and forever to the accursed traitors to our country. And that proposition comes-God forgive and pity my beloved State-it comes from a citizen of the time-honored and loyal commonwealth of Ohio.

"I implore you, brethren, in this House, to believe that not many births ever gave pangs to my mother State, such as she suffered when that traitor was born! I beg you not to believe that on the soil of that State such another growth has ever deformed the face of nature, and darkened the light of God's day!"

The speech continued in the same strain, polished and powerful. Its delivery upon the spur of the moment, in immediate reply to an elaborate effort, which had taken him as well as the rest of the House by surprise, won him a crowning credit.

Four years ago he handles the same question, as it reappears, in another and less objectionable form. In the course of a speech, "Can the Democratic Party be Safely Intrusted with the Administration of the Government," in answer to Mr. Lamar, the Great Republican said:

"I share all that gentleman's aspirations for peace, for good government at the South-and I believe I can safely assure him that the great majority of the nation shares the same aspirations. But he will allow me to say that he has not fully stated the elements of the great problem to be solved by the

statesmanship of to-day. The actual field is much broader than the view he has taken. And before we can agree that the remedy he proposes is an adequate one, we must take in the whole field, comprehend all the conditions of the problem, and then see if his remedy is sufficient. The change he proposes is not like the ordinary change of a ministry in England, when the Government is defeated on a tax bill or some routine measure of legislation. He proposes to turn over the custody and management of the Government to a party which has persistently, and with the greatest bitterness, resisted all the great changes of the last fifteen years-changes which were the necessary results of a vast revolution—a revolution in national policy, in social and political ideas; a revolution whose causes were not the work of a day nor a year, but of generations and centuries.

"The scope and character of that mighty revolution must form the basis of our judgment when we inquire whether such a change as he proposes is safe and wise. But that is not all of the situation. On the other hand, we see the North, after leaving its three hundred and fifty thousand dead upon the field of battle and bringing home its five hundred thousand maimed and wounded to be cared for, crippled in its industries, staggering under the tremendous burden of public and private debt, and both North and South weighted with unparalleled burdens and losses-the whole nation suffering from that loosening of the bonds of social order which always follows a great war, and from the resulting corruption both in the public and the private life of the people. These, Mr. Chairman, constitute the vast field which we must survey in order to find the path which will soonest lead our beloved country to the highway of peace, of liberty and prosperity. Peace from the shock of battle, the higher peace. of our streets, of our homes, of our equal rights, we must make secure by making the conquering ideas of the war everywhere dominant and permanent. But such a result can be reached only by comprehending the whole meaning of