FOOTNOTES:
[A] Prof. Wm. Mathews, LL.D., in Bay State Monthly, November, 1885.
HON. EDMUND HATCH BENNETT.
From among the hills of Vermont and New Hampshire have sprung many renowned citizens, whose talents, industry, moral worth, and practical wisdom have been by no means unimportant factors in the prosperity and progress of the nation, and in the due discharge of its legislative, administrative, and judicial functions. The subject of this brief sketch, Hon. Edmund Hatch Bennett, was born in Manchester, Vt., April 6, 1824. He was educated in his native State,—first in the Manchester and Burlington academies, and then in the University of Vermont, at Burlington, where he graduated in the class of 1843. In 1873 his alma mater bestowed upon him the well-merited degree of Doctor of Laws. The profession of the law, in which, by his industry, capacity, and character, he has been so successful, was not adopted without mature consideration. For some short time after graduation he taught a private school in Virginia; but, probably finding, subsequently, that his tastes, quite as much as his talents, might have fuller and fitter scope for their gratification and development in legal than in academical pursuits, he ultimately decided to enter upon a course of legal studies with a view to preparing himself for the discharge of forensic and judicial duties. His first practical knowledge of the law was acquired in the office of his father at Burlington, Vt., his father being at the time, and for many years previous, an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Vermont. He became a member of the Vermont bar in 1847; but early in 1848 he removed to Taunton, where he resided until 1884; and to whose social, educational, and religious advancement he has contributed in no small degree. In June, 1853, he married Sally, the second daughter of Hon. Samuel Crocker, of Taunton.
When the city was incorporated, in 1865, his fellow-citizens showed their high appreciation of his personal character and public spirit in a very pronounced manner by unanimously electing him the first chief magistrate of the newly incorporated community. To this honorable and influential post he was twice elected subsequently, viz., in 1866 and 1867.
Judge Bennett has put much hard and honest work into his profession; in this he is an example to younger men, which it would not be amiss for them to imitate. His first law connection in Taunton was with the late Nathaniel Morton, a brother of the present Chief-Justice of Massachusetts. Subsequently he formed a partnership with Hon. Henry Williams, and afterwards with Henry J. Fuller, Esq., of Taunton.
At the bar of his own county he took almost from the first a prominent place, and he has been able to turn the accumulated and well-digested results of his study and practice to good account in the instruction of others. During the years of 1870, 1871, and 1872 he occupied the position of lecturer at the Dane Law School of Harvard University, Cambridge. With the Law School of Boston University he has stood connected from its commencement in 1872, receiving at that time the honor of being selected as its Dean. He was not at the time able to serve in that capacity, but was a regular lecturer, and in 1876, on being again elected to the position, he accepted it. This relation to the school he sustains at present, having, during the decade which has passed since his assumption of the office, contributed in no small measure to the present efficient organization and very gratifying prosperity of the school. In May, 1858, he was appointed Judge of Probate and Insolvency for Bristol county, holding the office twenty-five years, and resigning in 1883.
In other directions, and by other methods than that of communicating oral instruction, Judge Bennett has exerted himself to develop the science and advance the practice of his profession. His legal works—written and edited alone, or in company with others—number more than a hundred volumes, the chief of which are: "English Law and Equity Reports;" an edition of Mr. Justice Story's works; "Leading Criminal Cases;" "Fire Insurance Cases;" "Digest of Massachusetts Reports;" American editions of the recent English works of "Goddard on Easements;" "Benjamin on Sales;" "Indermann on the Common Law;" and many others. For some considerable time he has been editorially connected with the American Law Register of Philadelphia. His lecture on "Farm Law," delivered at Hingham in December, 1878, before the State Board of Agriculture, attracted very general attention at the time, and was republished in agricultural journals all over New England, as well as in the West.
In religious sympathy and work Judge Bennett is allied with the Protestant Episcopal Church. For some years he acted either in the capacity of warden or vestry-man of St. Thomas parish, Taunton, and several times as delegate represented the parish in the Diocesan Convention. In 1874, 1877, 1880, and 1883 he was appointed delegate from his diocese to the General Triennial Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in this country. He is now senior warden of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, of Boston.
THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF DANIEL WEBSTER.
BY HON. EDWARD S. TOBEY.
I might well shrink from writing on a topic which has already engaged the pen and thought of the most able of Mr. Webster's contemporaries and biographers, were it not that, by opportunities wholly unsought, so much of reliable testimony, not previously published, has come to me tending to correct false opinions and impressions as to his private character, that a sense of justice which I could not conscientiously resist, led me on the occasion of the centennial anniversary of Mr. Webster's birthday, which was observed in this city (Boston) in 1882, under the auspices of the Alumni of Dartmouth College, to present, substantially, the facts and views which are now by request repeated. I may add, that I realized more fully an obligation and an interest to give currency to them from the fact of my former connection with Mr. Webster's Alma Mater, as one of its Board of Trustees, and also from having made the first contribution to the Webster professorship in that institution, which, through the liberality of others, has since been fully endowed.
While I would not enlarge on the subject of Mr. Webster's public services and extraordinary statesmanship already so well known throughout this and other countries, I may briefly refer to one especially eloquent speech of the many made by him to which it was my privilege to listen. After the death of President Harrison, and the accession to office of Vice-President John Tyler, all the members of the Cabinet, except Mr. Webster, resigned. He remained as Secretary of State, for the purpose of bringing to a successful conclusion a perplexing controversy between Great Britain and the United States as to the trial and release of Alexander McLeod, a British subject, then held as a prisoner in the State of New York for participating in an attack on the steamer "Caroline" within the waters of the United States. The British Government avowed the act as authorized, and imperatively demanded McLeod's release. It tasked to the utmost the extraordinary ability of Mr. Webster, as a mutual friend informed me, to find sufficient ground on which to comply with England's demand, and yet maintain the dignity of the Government of the United States, consistently with the relations between the Federal Government and that of the State of New York. The question seemed at one time to threaten the peaceful relations between England and America, of which the public were not aware. Under Mr. Webster's construction of the duty and obligations of our Government, McLeod was surrendered, and soon after Mr. Webster resigned. Having been unjustly criticised by certain political leaders, and his motives impugned for remaining so long in the Cabinet, he at once sought vindication in a speech delivered in Faneuil Hall, defining his position, in which he poured out a torrent of eloquence seldom equalled, and in which he clearly indicated the chagrin that even a great man may feel when he is made the subject of unjust suspicion and criticism.
While I have no claim whatever to be regarded as one of the great statesman's associates, I was favored with a very limited and casual acquaintance in the latter part of his life, and an opportunity to know something of his private life and his religious character, through his particular friends, of whom a few were also my personal friends. I may perhaps, therefore, properly speak of unquestionable facts which have, by force of circumstances, come to my knowledge at different times through a period of about forty years, tending to disprove the base rumor and slanders which have found an astonishing currency.
To these I never thought it proper to refer publicly, until the pages of one of our most respectable periodicals[B] reproduced the rumors, which were subsequently publicly refuted in the Boston Herald, by Mr. Webster's able biographer, George Ticknor Curtis. The friends of Mr. Webster would have been false to his memory and their own moral obligation had they failed to put forward the evidence in their possession to disprove the charges on which such rumors were fabricated, and which, until a few years ago, had not found a place, so far as I know, in any respectable publication.
The late Dr. John Jeffries, who was the physician of Mr. Webster, was also my family physician for twenty years. Not long after the close of the late civil war, an Episcopal clergyman of Charleston, S.C., became my guest. He being in need of medical advice, I introduced him to Dr. Jeffries. After his case had been disposed of he inquired of Dr. Jeffries: "Pray, sir, were the stories which we hear at the South concerning Mr. Webster's private character true?" The doctor replied: "Do you refer to his alleged drinking habits?"—"Yes, sir," said the clergyman. "No, sir," answered Dr. Jeffries; "they were not true." He added: "I was his physician for many years, and made the post-mortem examination. He died from no such cause." To illustrate to what extent Mr. Webster was misunderstood and consequently maligned, the doctor related the following fact: "On a certain occasion when Mr. Webster was engaged to speak in Faneuil Hall, he had been for several days much reduced by medical treatment. Late in the afternoon I suggested that, in his reduced condition, a glass of wine would be useful. He replied: 'No, doctor, I prefer a plate of soup; and when His Honor the Mayor calls for me, perhaps you will accompany me.' I assented, and did accompany him. That evening, before Mr. Webster had closed his speech, a certain political rival left the hall and was met by a friend, who inquired, 'Is the meeting over?' The envious politician answered, 'No; I have come away disgusted. Webster is intoxicated.'" Who was the most reliable witness in this case,—his honest physician, an eye-witness, who spoke from knowledge, or the political rival, who spoke from false inference? This is but one of several similar instances of misapprehension and consequent cruel injustice which I might relate, did the time and occasion permit.
There is now living in this city a gentleman of the highest respectability, personally well-known to me for thirty-five years, who was for about twenty-five years intimately connected with Mr. Webster, at Marshfield, as the manager of his affairs, and consequently with him under all circumstances during his summer residence there. Mr. Webster regarded him with the affection of a father for a son. This gentleman has said to me more than once, with emotion and evident feelings of indignation: "No one has ever seen Mr. Webster at Marshfield unduly under the influence of stimulants." He adds: "I was with him on festive occasions here and in New Hampshire, when others were indulging in the customary habit of drinking; but I have never seen Mr. Webster, on those occasions, use stimulants to excess."
The late Judge Peleg Sprague, whom from family relationship it was my privilege to know intimately until the very last year of his life, a short time before his death, in conversation with me, refuted the charges of Mr. Webster's alleged excessive drinking habits in Washington. Judge Sprague was ten years in Congress, and was associated with Mr. Webster, under various circumstances, in public and social life.
I have thus offered the evidence of three witnesses, whose opportunity of knowledge and whose credibility, it cannot be denied, are to be accepted against rumors so easily put in circulation by reckless as well as by mistaken men, but which have beyond question been believed by very many good men who had not the opportunity, or perhaps the sense of obligation, to investigate the origin of them.
As to Mr. Webster's religious character and habits of mind, I can hardly express the great satisfaction afforded me by the testimony of his intimate friend, the Rev. Dr. Lothrop, who has in eloquent and unqualified language confirmed, and, indeed, more than confirmed, all that others have known of it.[C] Dr. Lothrop repeated his criticism on a prayer once offered by the chaplain of the United States Senate, in which Mr. Webster concurred, expressing at the same time his view of the nature and true object of prayer. This reminds me of the fact that the last sermon which Mr. Webster ever heard was on the subject of prayer, from the lips of the late Rev. Dr. Kirk, preached in the little Methodist church at Duxbury, about four miles from Marshfield. This was about six weeks before Mr. Webster's death. He was accompanied by Sir John Crampton, the British Minister, who at that time was at Marshfield negotiating a treaty on the fishery question, Mr. Webster then being Secretary of State. Through the mutual friendly relations of my esteemed friend and partner, the Hon. Seth Sprague, I had the privilege, with him and the Rev. Dr. Kirk, of dining with Mr. Webster the next day. It afforded an opportunity to listen to his entertaining and instructive anecdotes, of which I will relate one only. He said: "On a certain occasion, when President Kirkland, of Harvard University, was called upon by one of his familiar friends, a clergyman, he inquired as to the state of affairs in his parish; to which the clergyman replied, 'We are troubled by a good deal of controversy.'—'Ah! and pray what may the subject be?' inquired Dr. Kirkland. 'It is the doctrine of the final perseverance of the saints which agitates the minds of my people,' said the clergyman. 'Well,' said President Kirkland, 'I, too, have a controversy among my people; but the topic is of a very different nature. What troubles me and them most is, the final perseverance of sinners.'"
I am sure, however, that his own statement of his Confession of Faith, written in 1807, and published in the Boston Courier about twenty-two years since, taken together with his extraordinary plea in the famous Girard case, and his address at Plymouth in 1820, on the subject of its settlement by the Pilgrim fathers will be specially appreciated. The confession is as follows:—
I believe in the existence of Almighty God, who created and governs the whole world. I am taught this by the works of Nature and the word of Revelation.
I believe that God exists in three persons: this I learn from Revelation alone. Nor is it any objection to this belief that I cannot comprehend how one can be three, or three one. I hold it my duty to believe, not what I can comprehend or account for, but what my Maker teaches me.
I believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the will and word of God.
I believe Jesus Christ to be the Son of God. The miracles which He wrought establish in my mind His personal authority, and render it proper for me to believe whatever He asserts; I believe, therefore, all His declarations, as well when He declares Himself the Son of God as when He declares any other proposition. And I believe there is no other way of salvation than through the merits of His atonement.
I believe that things past, present, and to come are all equally present in the mind of the Deity; that with Him there is no succession of time nor of ideas; that, therefore, the relative terms past, present, and future, as used among men, cannot, with strict propriety, be applied to Deity. I believe in the doctrines of foreknowledge and predestination, as thus expounded. I do not believe in those doctrines as imposing any fatality or necessity on men's actions, or any way infringing free agency.
I believe in the utter inability of any human being to work out his own salvation without the constant aids of the Spirit of all grace.
I believe in those great peculiarities of the Christian religion,—a resurrection from the dead and a day of judgment.
I believe in the universal providence of God; and leave to Epicurus, and his more unreasonable followers in modern times, the inconsistency of believing that God made a world which He does not take the trouble of governing.
Although I have great respect for some other forms of worship, I believe the Congregational mode, on the whole, to be preferable to any other.
I believe religion to be a matter not of demonstration, but of faith. God requires us to give credit to the truths which He reveals, not because we can prove them, but because He declares them. When the mind is reasonably convinced that the Bible is the word of God, the only remaining duty is to receive its doctrines with full confidence of their truth, and practise them with a pure heart.
I believe that the Bible is to be understood and received in the plain and obvious meaning of its passages, since I cannot persuade myself that a book intended for the instruction and conversion of the whole world should cover its true meaning in such mystery and doubt that none but critics and philosophers can discover it.
I believe that the experiments and subtleties of human wisdom are more likely to obscure than to enlighten the revealed will of God, and that he is the most accomplished Christian scholar who has been educated at the feet of Jesus and in the College of Fishermen.
I believe that all true religion consists in the heart and the affections, and that therefore all creeds and confessions are fallible and uncertain evidences of Evangelical piety.
These views he held at twenty-five, and in the main retained them in his later years, as is shown by his remarks before the Supreme Court of Massachusetts on the occasion of the death of his intimate associate, Jeremiah Mason, of which the following is an extract:—
But, sir, political eminence and professional fame fade away and die with all things earthly. Nothing of character is really permanent but virtue and personal worth. These remain. Whatever of excellence is wrought into the soul itself belongs to both worlds. Real goodness does not attach itself merely to this life: it points to another world. Political or professional reputation cannot last forever, but a conscience void of offence before God and man is an inheritance for eternity. Religion, therefore, is a necessary and indispensable element in any great human character; there is no living without it. Religion is the tie that connects man with his Creator, and holds him to His throne. If that tie be all sundered, all broken, he floats away,—a worthless atom in the universe; its proper attraction all gone, its destiny thwarted, and its whole future nothing but darkness, desolation, and death. A man with no sense of religious duty is he whom the Scriptures describe in such terse but terrific language, "Without God in the world." Such a man is out of his proper being, out of the circle of all his duties, out of the circle of all his happiness, and away, far, far away, from the purposes of his creation. A mind like Mr. Mason's, active, thoughtful, penetrating, could not but meditate deeply on the condition of man below, and feel its responsibilities. He could not look on this mighty system,—
"This universal frame, thus wondrous fair,"—
without feeling that it was created and upheld by an Intelligence to which all other intelligences must be responsible. I am bound to say, that in the course of my life I never met with an individual, in any profession or condition of life, who always spoke and always thought with such awful reverence of the power and presence of God. No irreverence, no lightness, even no too familiar allusion to God and His attributes, ever escaped his lips. The very motion of a Supreme Being was, with him, made up of awe and solemnity, and filled the whole of his great mind with the strongest emotions. A man like him, with all his proper sentiments and sensibilities alive in him, must in this state of existence have something to believe, and something to hope for; or else, as life is advancing to its close and parting, all is heart-sinking and oppression Depend upon it, whatever may be the mind of an old man, old age is only really happy when, on feeling the enjoyments of this world pass away, it begins to lay a stronger hold on those of another.
Mr. Webster then quotes, on the authority of another, the grounds of Mr. Mason's religious faith, thus:—
Mr. Mason was fully aware that his end was near; and in answer to the question, "Can you now rest with firm faith upon the merits of your Divine Redeemer?" he said, "I trust I do. Upon what else can I rest?" At another time, in reply to a similar question, he said, "Of course; I have no other ground of hope."
Mr. Webster adds:—
Such, Mr. Chief-Justice, was the life and such the death of Jeremiah Mason. For one I could pour out my heart like water at the recollection of his virtues and his friendship, and in the feeling of his loss. I would embalm his memory in my best affections.
Again, in the following extract from a letter to his teacher, Mr. James Tappan, about two years before Mr. Webster's death, he writes:—
You have, indeed, lived a checkered life. I hope you have been able to bear prosperity with meekness, and adversity with patience. These things are all ordered for us far better than we could order them for ourselves. We may pray for our daily bread; we may pray for forgiveness of sins; we may pray to be kept from temptation, and that the kingdom of God may come in us, and in all men, and His will everywhere be done. Beyond this we hardly know for what good to supplicate the Divine Mercy. Our Heavenly Father knoweth what we have need of better than we know ourselves, and we are assured that His eye and His loving kindness are upon us and around us every moment.
How entirely in harmony are these religious views of Mr. Webster with similar utterances on several public occasions, to which allusion has already been made; and especially with that extraordinary dramatic scene so vividly described by his biographer, Mr. Harvey, who was an eye-witness and participator in it, when, in the solitary farm-house of John Colby,[D] in New Hampshire, Mr. Webster, at the request of Mr. Colby, led in prayer. Whatever else of unfriendly criticism has been made on the character of Mr. Webster, he has never been charged with hypocrisy, or of parading his religious opinions; least of all in that remote hamlet of John Colby, whither he had gone to visit him for the first time in twenty-five years, because he had heard of Mr. Colby's remarkable conversion late in life. Can there be the remotest suspicion that other than the most pure and noble of all motives could have governed him, as he then sought communion with God in prayer? And, as Mr. Harvey remarked to the writer, "It was indeed a prayer."
About one year before the death of Mr. Webster I casually met Professor Stuart, of Andover, on his return from a visit to Mr. Webster, at Marshfield, when, in the course of conversation relating to his religious habits, the professor remarked, "Mr. Webster has arrived at that period in life when he feels more than ever his moral accountability;" and added, "He has resumed family worship." I inquired, "What evidence have you of this?" He answered, "Clergymen who have recently visited in his family have so informed me." This, of course, implied that family worship had once been his custom, but that it had been temporarily suspended,—perhaps attributable to unusual pressure on his time by reason of his always arduous public duties.
I am glad to have the opportunity, in these columns, of repeating such testimony as I am able to offer, and to which much more might be added, as to the worth and private character of America's greatest statesman, whose record of distinguished public service will adorn the pages of his country's history with unfading lustre long after the unjust aspersions on his character shall have passed into oblivion forever.