His was the morality of a strong, experienced person, who had seen the folly of wise men, the meanness of proud men, the baseness of honorable men, and the littleness of great men, and made liberal allowances for the failures of all men. If the final end to be reached were just, he did not always inquire about the provisional means which led thither. He knew that the right line is the shortest distance between two points, in morals as in mathematics, but yet did not quarrel with such as attained the point by a crooked line. Such is the habit of politicians, diplomatists, statesmen, who look on all men as a commander looks on his soldiers, and does not ask them to join the church or keep their hands clean, but to stand to their guns and win the battle.
Thus, in the legislature of Pennsylvania, Franklin found great difficulty in carrying on the necessary measures for military defence, because a majority of the Assembly were Quakers, who, though friendly to the success of the revolution founded contrary to their principles, refused to vote the supplies of war. So he caused them to vote appropriations to purchase bread, flour, wheat, or other grain. The Government said, "I shall take the money, for I understand very well their meaning,—other grain is gunpowder." He afterwards moved the purchase of a fire-engine, saying to his friend, "Nominate me on the committee, and I will nominate you; we will buy a great gun, which is certainly a fire engine; the Quakers can have no objection to that."
Such was the course of policy that Franklin took, as I think, to excess; but yet I believe that no statesman of that whole century did so much to embody the eternal rules of right in the customs of the people, and to make the constitution of the universe the common law of all mankind; and I cannot bestow higher praise than that, on any man whose name I can recall. He mitigated the ferocities of war. He built new hospitals, and improved old ones. He first introduced this humane principle into the Law of Nations, that in time of war, private property on land shall be unmolested, and peaceful commerce continued, and captive soldiers treated as well as the soldiers of the captors. Generous during his life-time, his dead hand still gathers and distributes blessings to the mechanics of Boston, and their children. True is it that
"Him only pleasure leads and peace attends,
Whose means are pure and spotless as his ends."
But it is a great thing in this stage of the world to find a man whose ends are pure and spotless. Let us thank him for that.
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From "Historic Americans."
=171.= CHARACTER OF THOMAS JEFFERSON.
Of all those who controlled the helm of affairs during the time of the Revolution, and while the Constitution and the forms of our National and State Institutions were carefully organized, there is none who has been more generally popular, more commonly beloved, more usually believed to be necessary to the Legislation and Administration of his country, than Thomas Jefferson. It may not be said of him that of all those famous men he could least have been spared; for in the rare and great qualities for patiently and wisely conducting the vast affairs of State and Nation in pressing emergencies, he seems to have been wanting. But his grand merit was this—that while his powerful opponents favored a strong government, and believed it necessary thereby to repress what they called the lower classes, he, Jefferson, believed in Humanity; believed in a true Democracy. He respected labor and education, and upheld the right to education of all men. These were the Ideas in which he was far in advance of all the considerable men, whether of his State or of his Nation—ideas which he illustrated through long years of his life and conduct. The great debt that the Nation owes to him is this—that he so ably and consistently advocated these needful opinions, that he made himself the head and the hand of the great party that carried these ideas into power, that put an end to all possibility of class-government, made naturalization easy, extended the suffrage and applied it to judicial office, opened a still wider and better education to all, and quietly inaugurated reforms, yet incomplete, of which we have the benefit to this day, and which, but for him, we might not have won against the party of Strong Government, except by a difficult and painful Revolution.
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