From "Inauguration of the Freedmen's Memorial Monument to Abraham Lincoln."
In all popular tumults the worst men bear the sway at first. Moderate and good men are often silent for fear of modesty, who in good time may declare themselves. Those who have any property to lose are sufficiently alarmed already at the progress of these public violences and violations to which every man's dwelling, person, and property are hourly exposed. Numbers of such valuable men and good subjects are ready and willing to declare themselves for the support of government in due time, if government does not fling away its own authority.
LORD MANSFIELD.
From "The Right of England to Tax America."
In jurisprudence, which reluctantly admits any new adjunct, and counts in its train a thousand champions ready to rise in defense of its formularies and technical rules, the victory has been brilliant and decisive. The civil and the common law have yielded to the pressure of the times, and have adopted much which philosophy and experience have recommended, altho it stood upon no test of the pandects and claimed no support from the feudal polity. Commercial law, at least so far as England and America are concerned, is the creation of the eighteenth century. It started into life with the genius of Lord Mansfield, and, gathering in its course whatever was valuable in the earlier institutes of foreign countries, had reflected back upon them its own superior lights, so as to become the guide and oracle of the commercial world.
JOSEPH STORY.
From "Characteristics of the Age."
When that history comes to be written you know whose will be the central and prominent figure. You know that Mr. Gladstone will stand out before posterity as the greatest man of his time—remarkable not only for his extraordinary eloquence, for his great ability, for his stedfastness of purpose, for his constructive skill, but more, perhaps, than all these, for his personal character, and for the high tone that he has introduced into our polities and public fife. I sometimes think that great men are like great mountains, and that we do not appreciate their magnitude while we are close to them. You have to go to a distance to see which peak it is that towers above its fellows; and it may be that we shall have to put between us and Mr. Gladstone a space of time before we shall see how much greater he has been than any of his competitors for fame and power.
JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN.
From "On Liberal Aims."