Give me leave to take the opportunity of this great and respectable audience to let the whole world know all such attempts are vain.
I pass over many anonymous letters I have received. Those in print are public; and some of them have been brought judicially before the court. Whoever the writers are, they take the wrong way. I will do my duty, unawed. What am I to fear? That mendax infamia from the press, which daily coins false facts and false motives? The lies of calumny carry no terror to me. I trust that my temper of mind, and the color and conduct of my life, have given me a suit of armor against these arrows. If, during this king's reign, I have ever supported his government, and assisted his measures, I have done it without any other reward than the consciousness of doing what I thought right. If I have ever opposed, I have done it upon the points themselves, without mixing in party or faction, and without any collateral views. I honor the king, and respect the people; bat many things acquired by force of either, are, in my account, objects not worth ambition. I wish popularity; but it is that popularity which follows, not that which is run after. It is that popularity which, sooner or later, never fails to do justice to the pursuit of noble ends by noble means. I will not do that which my conscience tells me is wrong upon this occasion to gain the huzzas of thousands, or the daily praise of all the papers which come from the press; I will not avoid doing what I think is right, though it should draw on me the whole artillery of libel, all that falsehood and malice can invent or the credulity of a deluded populace can swallow. I can say, with a great magistrate, upon an occasion and under circumstances not unlike, "Ego hoc animo semper fui. ut invidiam virtute partam gloriam, non invidiam putarem."
The threats go further than abuse; personal violence is denounced. I do not believe it; it is not the genius of the worst men of this country in the worst of times. But I have set my mind at rest. The last end that can happen to any man never comes too soon, if he falls in support of the law and liberty of his country (for liberty is synonymous to law and government). Such a shock, too, might be productive of public good: it might awake the better part of the kingdom out of that lethargy which seems to have benumbed them; and bring the mad part back to their senses, as men intoxicated are sometimes stunned into sobriety.—Burrows's Reports No. 4, pp. 2561-3.
Mr. Bayard—Mr. President, in the course of my duty here as a representative of the rights of others, as a chosen and sworn public servant, I feel that I have no right to give my individual wishes, prejudices, interests, undue influence over my public action. To do so would be to commit a breach of trust in the powers confided to me. It is true I was chosen a Senator by a majority only, but not for a majority only. I was chosen by a party, but not for a party. I represent all the good people of the State which has sent me here. In my office as a Senator I recognize no claim upon my action in the name and for the sake of party. The oath I have taken is to support the Constitution of my country's government, not the fiat of any political organization, even could its will be ascertained. In sessions preceding the present I have adverted to the difficulty attending the settlement of this great question, and have urgently besought action in advance at a time when the measure adopted could not serve to predicate its results to either party. My failure then gave me great uneasiness, and filled me with anxiety; and yet I can now comprehend the wisdom concealed in my disappointment, for in the very emergency of this hour, in the shadow of the danger that has drawn so nigh to us, has been begotten in the hearts of American Senators and Representatives and the American people a spirit worthy of the occasion—born to meet these difficulties, to cope with them, and, God willing, to conquer them.
Animated by this spirit the partisan is enlarged into the patriot. Before it the lines of party sink into hazy obscurity; and the horizon which bounds our view reaches on every side to the uttermost verge of the great Republic. It is a spirit that exalts humanity, and imbued with it the souls of men soar into the pure air of unselfish devotion to the public welfare. It lighted with a smile the cheek of Curtius as he rode into the gulf; it guided the hand of Aristides as he sadly wrote upon the shell the sentence of his own banishment; it dwelt in the frozen earthworks of Valley Forge; and from time to time it has been an inmate of these halls of legislation. I believe it is here to-day, and that the present measure was born under its influence.
LORD BEACONSFIELD (BENJAMIN DISRAELI) (1804-1881)
When, at the age of thirty-three. Benjamin Disraeli entered the House of Commons, he was flushed with his first literary successes and inclined perhaps to take parliamentary popularity by storm. It was the first year of Victoria's reign (1837) and the fashions of the times allowed great latitude for the display of idiosyncracies in dress. It seems that Disraeli pushed this advantage to the point of license. We hear much of the amount of jewelry he wore and of the gaudiness of his waistcoats. This may or may not have had a deciding influence in determining the character of his reception by the house, but at any rate it was a tempestuous one. He was repeatedly interrupted, and when he attempted to proceed the uproar of cries and laughter finally overpowered him and he abandoned for the time being the attempt to speak—not, however, until he had served on the house due notice of his great future, expressed in the memorable words—thundered, we are told, at the top of his voice, and audible still in English history—"You shall hear me!"
Not ten years later, the young man with the gaudy waistcoats had become the leading Conservative orator of the campaign against the Liberals on their Corn Law policy and so great was the impression produced by his speeches that in 1852, when the Derby ministry was formed, he was made Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The secret of his success is the thorough-going way in which he identified himself with the English aristocracy. Where others had apologized for aristocracy as a method of government, he justified. Instead of excusing and avoiding, he assumed that a government of privilege rather than that based on rights or the assumption of their existence is the best possible government, the only natural one, the only one capable of perpetuating itself without constant and violent changes. Kept on the defensive by the forward movement of the people, as well as by the tendency towards Liberalism or Radicalism shown by the men of highest education among the aristocratic classes themselves, the English Conservatives were delighted to find a man of great ability and striking eloquence, who seemed to have a religious conviction that "Toryism" was the only means of saving society and ensuring progress. It is characteristic of his mind and his methods, that he does not shrink from calling himself a Tory. He is as proud of bearing that reproach as Camilla Desmoulins was of being called a Sansculotte. When a man is thus "for thorough," he becomes representative of all who have his aspirations or share his tendencies without his aggressiveness. No doubt Disraeli's speeches are the best embodiment of Tory principle, the most attractive presentation of aristocratic purposes in government made in the nineteenth century. No member of the English peerage to the "manner born" has approached him in this respect. It is not a question of whether others have equaled or exceeded him in ability or statesmanship. On that point there may be room for difference of opinion, but to read any one of his great speeches is to see at once that he has the infinite advantage of the rest in being the strenuous and faith-inspired champion of aristocracy and government by privilege—not the mere defender and apologist for it.
In the extent of his information, the energy and versatility of his intellect, and the boldness of his methods, he had no equal among the Conservative leaders of the Victorian reign. His audacity was well illustrated when, after the great struggle over the reform measures of 1866 which he opposed, the Conservatives succeeded to power, and he, as their representative, advanced a measure "more sweeping in its nature as a reform bill than that he had successfully opposed" when it was advocated by Gladstone. In foreign affairs, he showed the same boldness, working to check the Liberal advance at home by directing public attention away from domestic grievances to brilliant achievements abroad. This policy which his opponents resented the more bitterly because they saw it to be the only one by which they could be held in check, won him the title of "Jingo," and made him the leading representative of British imperialism abroad as he was of English aristocracy at home.