No man can carefully read Mr. Chandler's public utterances without detecting a brevity and terseness, a simplicity and plainness, an accuracy and vigor, and often a rhetorical beauty, which shew care in preparation. These qualities are not the offspring of indolence. Years of drill lie back of the exact and daring touches with which the artist makes the canvas speak and the marble breathe; and the extempore speech of the eloquent orator tells of long, hard discipline that has taught him how to think and how to talk; it may have taken him fifty years to learn how to hold and sway an audience at will for fifty minutes. The ease and grace of true oratory are the signs of previous exertion; of that systematic exercise of the intellect that has suggested for our training schools the name, gymnasia. The laws of brain and of brawn do not differ much in this respect. Men are not born athletes, either in mind or muscle; and to all who have a true desire to succeed, in any sphere of life, the one voice that, with the growing emphasis of the successive centuries, speaks to us, is, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." Your sword may be short; "add a step to it!" it may be dull; add force to the blow or the thrust. There is no encouragement from history, more universally to be appropriated by us, than the testimony she furnishes to the power and value of honest endeavor. To will and to work is to win. The highest endowments assure no achievements; all success is the crown of patient toil!
While thus speaking a word in favor of hard work, one word of caution and of qualification may not be out of place. I think God means that the sudden decease of public men when in life's prime, shall not be without warning. No thoughtful man fails to feel the force of this fact that somehow the average duration of human life, especially on these shores and among men of mark, is shortening; and that apoplexy, paralysis, angina pectoris, cerebral hemorrhage, and softening of the brain are amazingly common among brain-workers. The fatality among journalists is especially startling.
We are a fast-living and a fast-dying people. Our habits are bad. We work hard half the time and worry the other half. We eat and sleep irregularly; we tax our powers unduly, keeping the bow bent until the string snaps simply from constant tension, lack of relaxation. We turn night into day, without restoring the balance by turning day into night. We live in an atmosphere of excitement, and push on to the verge of death before we know our peril or realize our risk. We are tempted to put stimulus in the place of strength, that we may do, under unnatural pressure, what we cannot do by nature's healthy powers. Instead of repairing the engine, we crowd fuel into the boiler and get up more steam; and, by and by, something breaks, or bursts, and the machinery is a wreck.
I believe it is not hard work that kills us, so much as work under wrong conditions. To do, with the aid of even mild stimulants, like tea and coffee, not to say tobacco, opium, quinine, etc., what we cannot do by the natural strength, is the worst kind of overwork; and yet our public men are subject, to such strain, that they are almost driven to such resorts. Where they ought to stop, and sleep and rest, they "key up" with a kind of artificial strength, and get the habit of unnatural wakefulness; and then wonder why they are victims of insomnia.
Professor Tyndall, one of the most tireless men of brain in our day, says to the students of University College, London: "Take care of your health! Imagine Hercules, as oarsman in a rotten boat; what can he do there but, by the very force of his stroke, expedite the ruin of his craft! Take care of the timbers of your boat!" And Dr. Beard adds: "To work hard without overworking, to work without worrying, to do just enough without doing too much—these are the great problems of our future. Our earlier Franklin taught us to combine industry with economy; our 'later Franklin' taught us to combine industry with temperance; our future Franklin—if one should arise—must teach us how to combine industry with the art of taking it easy."
The qualities that fitted Mr. Chandler for the conduct of affairs were, however, not purely intellectual; they belonged in part to another and a higher order, viz.: the emotions and affections.
He had great intensity of nature. Even his political opponents could not doubt the positiveness of his conviction and the profoundness of his sincerity; and here, as Carlyle justly says, must be found the base blocks in the structure of all heroic character. It is no small thing to be able to command even from an antagonist the concession and confession of one's sincerity. Candor atones for a host of faults. Men will, at the last, forgive anything else in a man who tries to be true to his own convictions and to their interests. The utterances of impulse and even of passion, stinging sarcasm and biting ridicule, unjust charges and assaults, all are easy to pardon in one whose sincerity and intensity of conviction betray him into too great heat; men would rather be scorched or singed a little in the burning flame of a passionate earnestness than freeze in the atmosphere of a human iceberg—beneath whose rhetorical brilliance, they feel the chill of a cold, calculating insincerity and hypocrisy that upsets their faith in human honesty.
He was also peculiarly independent and intrepid. The determination to be loyal, both to his convictions and to his country, inspired him to a bold, brave utterance and invested him with a courage and confidence that were almost contagious. We cannot but admire the political fidelity expressed by Burke, in his famous defense before the electors of Bristol, when he said: "I obeyed the instructions of nature and reason and conscience; I maintained your interests, as against your convictions." Few men have ever dared to say and do what Mr. Chandler has, in the face of such political risks and even such personal peril. One brief address delivered by him in the Senate, soon after he resumed his seat, will stand among the classics of our language, and, if I may so say, among the "heroics" of our history.
He was also a man of great political integrity. In the long career of a public life spanning more than a quarter of a century, no suspicion of dishonesty or disloyalty has ever stained his character or reputation. Michigan may safely challenge any Senatorial record of twenty years to surpass his, either in the quantity or quality of public service.
Those who knew him best affirm that he was, politically and personally, an incorruptible man. The position of a legislator is one of proverbial peril. From the days of Pericles and Augustus till now, the men who make laws and guide national affairs are peculiarly in danger of defiling their consciences by "fear or favor." Bribery sits in the vestibule of every law-making assembly. Greed holds out golden opportunity for getting enormous profits from unlawful or questionable schemes and investments. Ambition lifts her shining crown, and offers a throne of commanding influence if you will bow down and worship, or even make some slight concession in favor of, the devil. Only a little elasticity of conscience, a little blunting of the moral sense; a little falsehood, or perjury, or treachery, under polite names; a lending of one's name to doubtful schemes; and there is a rich reward in gains to the purse and gratifications to the pride, which more than pay for the trifling loss of self-respect. And so not a few who go to Congress with unsullied reputation, come back smutched with their participation in "Credit Mobilier" and "Pacific Railroad" schemes, or any one of the thousand forms of fraud.