He was a statesman as well as a leader of men and an orator. As a statesman he was devoted to his work and was prepared to make every sacrifice for which his position called. As a statesman he was ready to give to every call that conscientious response which duty required. As a statesman he was pecuniarily honest. There is nothing in the life of Mr. Vance that I prize more than the fact that with all his ability, with all his knowledge, with all his influence, no person can say that he ever sold his influence, his ability, or his support for money. No person can say that on any occasion he ever surrendered the interests of the people, as he understood those interests, for hope of gain.
Sometimes people speak sneeringly of legislators. Sometimes they speak as if there were no such thing as honesty among them. Some people talk as if every man has his price, as if all that is necessary is to offer enough money, and the influence of any man who is serving in official position can be purchased. I do not believe that the worst enemy that Mr. Vance ever had would say of him that any amount of money, however great, could have purchased his vote, his voice or his influence. And that a man with his commanding ability, whose official life began at the very dawn of manhood, and continued through all the conspicuous positions within the gift of his countrymen, should successfully resist all pecuniary temptation and die poor, is, I think, one of the proudest of his achievements.
Mr. Speaker, there are things in this life more valuable than money. The wise man said three thousand years ago, "A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor than silver and gold." We struggle, we sacrifice, and we toil in order to leave to our children a fortune; but I believe that Senator Vance has left to his widow, and to his children a greater, a more valuable heritage than could possibly have been left had he given to them all the money which one man ever accumulated in this world. When he left to them a name untarnished, when he left to them a reputation such as he earned and bore, he left to them that which no wealth can purchase. I am not skilled in the use of obituary adjectives, and did not rise to give a review of his life, but I beg to place on record my tribute of profound respect for a public servant who at the close of his career was able to say to the people for whom he toiled, "I have lived in your presence for a lifetime; I have received all my honors at your hands; I stand before you without fear that any one can charge against me an official wrong." I say, to such a man I pay my tribute of respect.
THOMAS RUFFIN.
[THOMAS RUFFIN.]
BY WM. A. GRAHAM.
The patriotic people of the county of Rockingham, in a public assemblage at their first Superior Court after the death of Chief Justice Ruffin, in which they were joined with cordial sympathy by the gentlemen of the bar at that court, resolved to manifest their appreciation of his talents, virtues and public usefulness, by causing to be pronounced a memorial on his life and character. Such an offering was deemed by them a fitting tribute from a people among whom his family first settled, upon their arrival in North Carolina, and with whom he had been associated as a planter and cultivator of the soil from his early manhood till his decease. The Agricultural Society of the State, of which for many years he had been a distinguished president, subsequently determined on a like offering to his memory at their annual fair. The invitation to prepare such a discourse has been by both bodies extended to the same individual. The task is undertaken with diffidence and a sense of apprehension that amid the multiplicity of other engagements its fulfillment may fail in doing justice to the subject of this memoir.