Mr. Chandler was not a college graduate. His early training was got in the New England common school and academy. Yet he was in a true sense an educated man: for education is "not a dead mass of accumulations," but self-development, "power to work with the brain," to use the hand in cunning and curious industries, to use the tongue in attractive and effective speech, to use the pen in wise, witty or weighty paragraphs. Somehow he had learned to hold, with a master hand, the reins of his own mind, and make his imagination and reason and memory and powers of speech obey his behests. That is no common acquirement: it is something beyond all mere acquirement; it is the infallible sign and seal of culture. His addresses, even on critical occasions, were unwritten, and, in some cases, could not have been elaborated, even in the mind; yet in vigor of thought, logical continuity and consistency, accuracy of diction, and even rhetorical grace, few public speakers equal them.
The power to command the popular ear is a rare power, whether it be a gift of nature or a grace of culture. With Mr. Chandler it was held and wielded as a native sceptre. He had the secret of rhetorical adaptation; he could at once go down to the level of the people and yet lift them to his level. They understood what he said and knew what he meant. He threw himself into their modes of thought and habits of speech; he culled his illustrations mainly from common life. If he sacrificed anything, it was rhetorical elegance, never force; his one aim was to compel conviction.
The simplicity of his diction was a prime element and secret of his power. He did not speak as one who had to say something, but as one who had something to say, and whose whole aim was to say it well; with clearness, plainness, force and effect. If he could not have both weight and lustre, he would have weight.
Walter Scott has exposed the absurdity of "writing down" to children, and shown that it is really writing up, to make oneself so simple as to be plain even to the child-mind. Simplicity is the highest art. To have thought faintly gloom and glimmer through obscure language, like stars through a haze or mist, may serve to impress the ignorant with a supposed profundity in the speaker; but it is no more a sign of such profundity than muddy water signifies depth in a stream; it may suggest depth because you can see no bottom, but it means shallowness! It is a lesson that all of us may learn through the life of our departed Senator, that the first element of good speaking is thought; and the second a form of words fitting the thought, which, like true dress, shall not call attention to itself but to the idea or conception which it clothes. Any man who is long to hold the ear of the people must give them facts and thoughts worth knowing and thinking of, in words which it will not take a walking dictionary or living encyclopædia to interpret, or a philosopher to untangle from the skein of their confusion.
Mr. Chandler was such a man, a man for the people. Free from all stately airs and stilted dignities, he took hold of every political and national question with ungloved hands. He understood and used the language of home life, which is the "universal dialect" of power. His speeches were packed with vigorous Saxon. He thought more of the short sword, with its sharp edge and keen point and close thrust, than of the scholar's labored latinity, with its longer blade, even though it might also have a diamond-decked hilt; and in this, as in not a few other conspicuous traits, he was master of the best secrets that gave the great Irish agitator, O'Connell, his strange power of moving the multitude. His last speech, even when read, and without the magnetism of his personal presence, may well stand as the last of his utterances.
The simplicity of Mr. Chandler's style of oratory amounted to ruggedness, in the sense in which we apply that word to the naked naturalness of a landscape, whose features have not been too much modified by art. There is in oratory an excessive polish, which suggests coldness and deadness. Some speakers sharpen the blade until there is no blade left, the mistaken carefulness of their culture brings everything to one dead level of faultlessness; there is nothing to offend, and nothing to rouse and move. Demosthenes said that kinésis—not "action," but motion, or rather that which moves—is the first, second, third requisite of true oratory. He is no true speaker who simply pleases you: he must stir you to new thought, new choice, new action.
We must beware of the polish that is a loss of power, and, like a lapidary, not grind off points, but grind into points. Demosthenes was more rugged than Cicero; but he pricked men more with the point of his oratorical goad. Men heard the silver-tongued Roman and said, "How pleasantly he speaks!" They heard the bold Athenian and shouted, "Let us go and fight Philip!"
Carlyle says, "He is God's anointed king whose simple word can melt a million wills into his!" That melting wills into his own is the test of eloquence in the orator; and a rugged simplicity has held men in the very fire of the orator's ardor and fervor, till they were at white heat, and could he shaped at will; while the most scholarly display of culture often leaves them unmoved, to gape and stare with wonder, as before the splendors of the Aurora Borealis, and feel as little real warmth. Emerson is right: "There is no true eloquence unless there is a man behind the speech," and men care not what the speech is if the man be not behind it, or, on the other hand, what the speech is, if the man be behind it! And so it is that Richard Cobden compelled even Robert Peel, who loved truth and candor, to become a convert to his free-trade opinions; and so it was that John Bright, another model of a simple utterance with a sincere man behind it, swayed such a mighty sceptre over the people of Britain. The mere declaimer or demagogue may win a temporary hearing; but the man who leaves a lasting impress on the mind of the people must have in himself some real worth.
To Mr. Chandler's executive ability reference has been made. It was never better illustrated than in his vigorous and faithful administration as Secretary of the Interior. It was Hercules in the Augean stables again—purging the department of incompetency and dishonesty. He sent a flood through the Patent Office, that swept all the clerks out of one room; and another through the Indian Bureau, that cleaned out its abuses and exposed its frauds. It is said that the reconstruction of that department saved millions annually to the treasury of the nation. Mr. Schurz, in becoming his successor, paid a very handsome tribute to the retiring Secretary, acknowledging the great debt of the country to Mr. Chandler's energy and fidelity, and modestly declaring that he could hope for no higher success than to keep and leave the department where he found it.
If there be any one thing for which the Senator from Michigan stood above most men it was in this practical business ability. He had, in rare union, "talent" and "tact." His good sense, clear views, ready and retentive memory, prompt decision, patience and perseverance, quick discernment and instinctive perception of the fitness of ways to ends, qualified him for energetic and successful administration anywhere. Webster said, "There is always room at the top." Even the pyramid waits for the capstone, which must be, itself, a little pyramid. And he who has inborn or inbred fitness for the top place will find his way there; no other will long stay there, even if some accident lifts him to the nominal occupancy of such a position.