Washington's Birthday Part 14

More than any other individual, and as much as to one individual was possible, has he contributed to found this, our wide spreading empire, and to give to the Western World independence and freedom.

CHIEF JUSTICE MARSHALL.

Let him who looks for a monument to Was.h.i.+ngton look around the United States. Your freedom, your independence, your national power, your prosperity, and your prodigious growth are a monument to him.

KOSSUTH.

More than all, and above all, Was.h.i.+ngton was master of himself. If there be one quality more than another in his character which may exercise a useful control over the men of the present hour, it is the total disregard of self when in the most elevated positions for influence and example.

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS.

WAs.h.i.+NGTON'S RELIGIOUS CHARACTER

BY WILLIAM M'KINLEY

_In an Address, February 22, 1898_

Though Was.h.i.+ngton's exalted character and the most striking acts of his brilliant record are too familiar to be recounted here, yet often as the story is retold, it engages our love and admiration and interest. We love to record his n.o.ble unselfishness, his heroic purposes, the power of his magnificent personality, his glorious achievements for mankind, and his stalwart and unflinching devotion to independence, liberty, and union. These cannot be too often told or be too familiarly known.

A slaveholder himself, he yet hated slavery, and provided in his will for the emanc.i.p.ation of his slaves. Not a college graduate, he was always enthusiastically the friend of liberal education....

And how reverent always was this great man, how prompt and generous his recognition of the guiding hand of Divine Providence in establis.h.i.+ng and controlling the destinies of the colonies and the Republic....

Was.h.i.+ngton states the reasons of his belief in language so exalted that it should be graven deep in the mind of every patriot:

No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of man more than the people of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency; and in the important revolution just accomplished in the system of their united government the tranquil deliberations and voluntary consents of so many distinguished communities from which the events resulted cannot be compared with the means by which most governments have been established, without some return of pious grat.i.tude, along with an humble antic.i.p.ation of the future blessings which the same seems to presage. The reflections arising out of the present crisis have forced themselves strongly upon my mind. You will join me, I trust, in thinking that there are none under the influence of which the proceedings of a new and free government are more auspiciously commenced.

In his Farewell Address, Was.h.i.+ngton contends in part:

(1) For the promotion of inst.i.tutions of learning;

(2) for cheris.h.i.+ng the public credit;

(3) for the observance of good faith and justice toward all nations....

At no point in his administration does Was.h.i.+ngton appear in grander proportions than when he enunciates his ideas in regard to the foreign policy of the government:

Observe good faith and justice toward all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all; religion and morality enjoin this conduct.

Can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and, at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence.

WAs.h.i.+NGTON

ANONYMOUS

We are met to testify our regard for him whose name is intimately blended with whatever belongs most essentially to the prosperity, the liberty, the free inst.i.tutions, and the renown of our country. That name was a power to rally a nation in the hour of thick-thronging public disasters and calamities; that name shone amid the storm of war, a beacon light to cheer and guide the country's friends; its flame, too, like a meteor, to repel her foes. That name in the days of peace was a loadstone, attracting to itself a whole people's confidence, a whole people's love, and the whole world's respect; that name, descending with all time, spread over the whole earth, and uttered in all the languages belonging to the tribes and races of men, will forever be p.r.o.nounced with affectionate grat.i.tude by everyone in whose breast there shall arise an aspiration for human rights and human liberty.

Was.h.i.+ngton stands at the commencement of a new era, as well as at the head of the New World. A century from the birth of Was.h.i.+ngton has changed the world. The country of Was.h.i.+ngton has been the theater on which a great part of that change has been wrought, and Was.h.i.+ngton himself a princ.i.p.al agent by which it has been accomplished. His age and his country are equally full of wonders, and of both he is the chief.

It is the spirit of human freedom, the new elevation of individual man, in his moral, social, and political character, leading the whole long train of other improvements, which has most remarkably distinguished the era. Society has a.s.sumed a new character; it has raised itself from beneath governments to a partic.i.p.ation in governments; it has mixed moral and political objects with the daily pursuits of individual men, and, with a freedom and strength before altogether unknown, it has applied to these objects the whole power of the human understanding. It has been the era, in short, when the social principle has triumphed over the feudal principle; when society has maintained its rights against military power, and established on foundations never hereafter to be shaken its competency to govern itself.

VII

WAs.h.i.+NGTON'S PLACE IN HISTORY

THE HIGHEST PEDESTAL

BY WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE

When I first read in detail the life of Was.h.i.+ngton, I was profoundly impressed with the moral elevation and greatness of his character, and I found myself at a loss to name among the statesmen of any age or country many, or possibly any, who could be his rival. In saying this I mean no disparagement to the cla.s.s of politicians, the men of my own craft and cloth, whom in my own land, and my own experience, I have found no less worthy than other men of love and admiration. I could name among them those who seem to me to come near even to him. But I will shut out the last half century from the comparison. I will then say that if, among all the pedestals supplied by history for public characters of extraordinary n.o.bility and purity, I saw one higher than all the rest, and if I were required at a moment's notice to name the fittest occupant for it, I think my choice at any time during the last forty-five years would have lighted, as it would now light, upon Was.h.i.+ngton.

WAs.h.i.+NGTON IN HISTORY

BY CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

No man ever stood for so much to his country and to mankind as George Was.h.i.+ngton. Hamilton, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, and Jay each represented some of the elements which formed the Union. Was.h.i.+ngton embodied them all.

The superiority of Was.h.i.+ngton's character and genius were more conspicuous in the formation of our government and in putting it on indestructible foundations than leading armies to victory and conquering the independence of his country. "The Union in any event" is the central thought of the "Farewell Address," and all the years of his grand life were devoted to its formation and preservation.

Do his countrymen exaggerate his virtues? Listen to Guizot, the historian of civilization: "Was.h.i.+ngton did the two greatest things which in politics it is permitted to man to attempt. He maintained by peace the independence of his country, which he conquered by war. He founded a free government in the name of the principles of order, and by re-establis.h.i.+ng their sway."

Hear Lord Erskine, the most famous of English advocates: "You are the only being for whom I have an awful reverence."

Remember the tribute of Charles James Fox, the greatest parliamentary orator who ever swayed the British House of Commons: "Ill.u.s.trious man, before whom all borrowed greatness sinks into insignificance."

Contemplate the character of Lord Brougham, pre-eminent for two generations in every department of human thought and activity, and then impress upon the memories of your children his deliberate judgment: "Until time shall be no more will a test of the progress which our race has made in wisdom and virtue be derived from the veneration paid to the immortal name of Was.h.i.+ngton."

Blot out from the page of history the names of all the great actors of his time in the drama of nations, and preserve the name of Was.h.i.+ngton, and the century would be renowned.

TO THE SHADE OF WAs.h.i.+NGTON