assured that the more that wealth and prosperity are promoted, the larger will be the share of it accruing to ourselves through the legitimate operation of the principles of trade. But the beneficial influence of free trading intercourse is far wider than this. You stated that a treaty had been made with France, and certainly a treaty with France is even in itself a measure of no small consequence; but that which gives to a measure of the kind its highest value is its tendency to produce beneficial imitations in other quarters; it is the influence which is given to the cause of freedom of trade by the great example held out by the two most powerful nations of Europe; it is the fact that in concluding that treaty we did not give to one a privilege which was withheld from another, and that our treaty with France was, in effect, a treaty with the world. And what are the moral consequences which engagements of this kind carry in their train? I know there is no part of the providential government of the world which tends more deeply to impress the mind with a sense of the profound wisdom and boundless benevolence of the Almighty than when we observe how truly and how universally great effects spring from small causes, and high effects from causes which appear to have been mean. Now, we have said that, with respect to the freedom of commercial intercourse, reduction of tariffs, abolition of duties, and readjustment of commercial laws, that these are things which, in the first instance, touch material interests, and there are some men so widely mistaken as to suppose that they touch material interests alone. There are some men, aye, and high-minded men too, who would bid you beware of such things, lest they should lead simply to the worship of Mammon. Now, the worship of Mammon is dangerous to us all, but, as far as regards the great masses, the more numerous masses of every community, that portion of the human family which at present has not much to spare in respect to the essentials of raiment, of food, and of lodging-that portion of the human family has hardly yet reached the province in which the worship of Mammon is wont to be dreaded; but that is a subject for the private conscience, and a subject of the greatest importance.

There is no doubt that an infinity of moral danger surrounds a state of things in which multitudes of men find themselves rapidly possessed of great fortunes and entirely changing their social position. I do not deny that at the proper time and in the proper place it is a subject for the most solemn consideration; but I don't think it the duty of Parliament to withhold laws which are good from any fear of their leading to the worship of Mammon. That is an argument which, if good in one case, would be urged with equal force against all blessings of Providence; for what is more dangerous to the human soul than those bless

ings of Providence when their great author is forgotten? But, I say, it is marvelous to see how the Almighty makes provision through the satisfaction of our lower wants and appetites for the attainment of higher aims, and the relations of business are doubtless founded upon pecuniary profit, as are also the relations of the tradesmen and customers; yet what is their immediate aim? The customer wants to be supplied wherever those supplies are best and cheapest, while the tradesman seeks to dispose of them wherever they are dearest. What are the relations between the employer and the employed? The master wishes to produce as cheaply as he can, and the workman wishes to get the best wages he can. The landlord obtains the highest rent he can safely ask, and the tenant obtains his farm as cheaply as he can; and such is the rule that runs through all these pecuniary relations of life. Human beings on the two sides of the water are coming to know one another better, and to esteem one another more; they are beginning to be acquainted with one another's common interest and feeling, and to unlearn the prejudices which make us refuse to give to other nations and peoples in distant lands credit for being governed by the same motives and principles as ourselves. We may say that labeled upon all those parcels of goods there is a spark of kindly feeling from one country to the other, and the ship revolving between those lands is like the shuttle upon a loom, weaving the web of concord between the nations of the earth. Therefore I feel that that which may be in its first and in its outer aspect a merely secular work is in point of fact a work full of moral purpose, and those who have given themselves to it, either in times when the system of free trade has become prosperous, or in earlier times before those principles were accepted as they now are, could easily afford to bear the reproach that they were promoting the worship of Mammon, or that they were conversant only with the exterior and inferior interests of men. In all cases it is the quiet, unassuming prosecution of daily duty by which we best fulfil the purpose to which the Almighty has appointed us; and the task, humble as it may appear, of industry and of commerce, contemplating, in the first instance, little more than the necessities and the augmentation of our comforts, has in it nothing that prevents it from being pursued in a spirit of devotion to higher interests; and if it be honestly and well pursued, I believe that it tends, with a power quiet and silent, indeed, like the power of your vast machines, but at the same time manifold and resistless, to the mitigation of the woes and sorrows that afflict humanity, and to the acceleration of better times for the children of our race. Wars, my Lord Provost, are not to be put down by philosophical nor, I believe, even exclusively religious argument. The deepest prejudices of man and

the greatest social evils are only supplanted and undermined by causes of silent operation; and I must say that, for my own part, I am given to dwell upon the thought that the silent and tranquil operations of these causes in connection with the vast industry of this country constitute for us not only a promise of stability and material power, but likewise a mission that has been placed in our hands, that in being benefactors to ourselves we may also hope to be benefactors to the world. And, sir, I trust and I may say I feel well convinced, that the ideas upon which the whole of these movements depend are now well rooted in this country. Such prejudices as may remain adverse to freedom of industry or freedom of trade in any of its developments are, I hope and believe, gradually fading away. It is not easy to part with them, because we must admit, and especially we must admit, so far as the working classes are concerned, that the first reorganization of these principles may involve, or may appear to involve, something of a personal sacrifice; but the whole mind in this community is perfectly, I believe, fixed in the conviction that these principles are the only principles upon which a country can be justly governed; nor need I say that which is so well known, that this, at least, is a country in which the conviction of the people must be the regulator of the State. My Lord Provost, I once more thank you for the honor that you have been pleased to do me. I think that, so far as the prospects of our politics are concerned, the reference that I have made to the name of the distinguished person who has succeeded to the head of the Government is, perhaps, more becoming, and is likewise of a character to carry greater weight, than any mere professions that I could lay down before you of a desire to serve my country. It is an arduous task to which we are called.

I do not hesitate to say that the most painful, the most frequently recurring sentiments of public life must, I think, be a sense of the inadequacy of resources, inadequacy of physical strength, inadequacy of mental strength, to meet its innumerable obligations; at the same time that pain is not aggravated by a sense that our shortcomings are severely judged. We serve a sovereign whose confidence has ever been largely given to the counselors who are charged with public responsibility, and we act for a people ever ready to overlook shortcomings, to pardon errors, to construe intentions favorably, and to recognize, with a warmth and generosity beyond measure, any amount of real service that may have been conferred. We ought, therefore, to be cheerful; we ought, above all, to be grateful in the position in which we stand. And these are not mere idle words, but they are what the situation evidently demands and exacts from us all, when we assure you that it is a rich reward to come among great masses of our most cultivated and intelli

gent fellow-citizens, to find ourselves cheered on, in our course, by acknowledgments such as that which you have given me to-day. We have little to complain of; we have much, indeed, to acknowledge with thankfulness; and, most of all, we have to delight in the recollection that the politics of this world are perhaps very slowly, with many hindrances, many checks, many reverses, yet that upon the whole they are-gradually assuming a character which promises to be less and less one of aggression and offense; less and less one of violence and bloodshed; more and more one of general union and friendliness; more and more one connecting the common reciprocal advantages, and the common interests pervading the world, and uniting together the whole of the human family in a manner which befits rational and immortal beings, owing their existence to one Creator, and having but one hope either for this world or the next.

§ 92

THE SCHOLAR IN A REPUBLIC

By Wendell Phillips

(Address at the Centennial Anniversary of the Phi Beta Kappa of Harvard College, June 30, 1881.)

MR. PRESIDENT AND BROTHERS OF THE P. B. K.:-A hundred years ago our society was planted-a slip from the older root in Virginia. The parent seed, tradition says, was French-part of that conspiracy for free speech whose leaders prated democracy in the salons, while they carefully held on to the fleshpots of society by crouching low to kings and their mistresses, and whose final object of assault was Christianity itself. Voltaire gave the watchword:

"Crush the wretch"
"Ecrasez l'infame."

No matter how much or how little truth there may be in the tradition: no matter what was the origin or what was the object of our society, if it had any special one, both are long since forgotten. We stand now simply a representative of free, brave, American scholarship. I emphasize American scholarship.

In one of those glowing, and as yet unequalled pictures which Everett drew for us, here and elsewhere, of Revolutionary scenes, I remember See page 443.

his' saying that the independence we then won, if taken in its literal and narrow' sense, was of no interest and little value; but, construed in the fulness of its real meaning, it bound us to a distinctive American character and purpose, to a keen sense of large responsibility, and to a generous self-devotion. It is under the shadow of such unquestioned authority that I used the term "American scholarship."

Our society was, no doubt, to some extent, a protest against the somber theology of New England, where, a hundred years ago, the atmosphere was black with sermons, and where religious speculation beat uselessly against the narrowest limits.

The first generation of Puritans-though Lowell does let Cromwell call them "a small colony of pinched fanatics"-included some men, indeed not a few, worthy to walk close to Roger Williams and Sir Harry Vane, the two men deepest in thought and bravest in speech of all who spoke English in their day, and equal to any in practical statesmanship. Sir Harry Vane-in my judgment the noblest human being who ever walked the streets of yonder city-I do not forget Franklin or Sam Adams, Washington or Fayette, Garrison or John Brown. But Vane dwells an arrow's flight above them all, and his touch consecrated the continent to measureless toleration of opinion and entire equality of rights. We are told we can find in Plato "all the intellectual life of Europe for two thousand years"; so you can find in Vane the pure gold of two hundred and fifty years of American civilization, with no particle of its dross. Plato would have welcomed him to the Academy, and Fénelon kneeled with him at the altar. He made Somers and John Marshall possible; like Carnot, he organized victory; and Milton pales before him in the stainlessness of his record. He stands among English statesmen preeminently the representative, in practice and in theory, of serene faith in the safety of trusting truth wholly to her own defense. For other men we walk backward, and throw over their memories the mantle of charity and excuse, saying reverently, "Remember the temptation and the age." But Vane's ermine has no stain; no act of his needs explanation or apology; and in thought he stands abreast of our age— like pure intellect, belongs to all time.

Carlyle said, in years when his words were worth heeding, "Young men, close your Byron, and open your Goethe." If my counsel had weight in these halls, I should say, "Young men, close your John Winthrop and Washington, your Jefferson and Webster, and open Sir Harry Vane." The generation that knew Vane gave to our Alma Mater for a seal the simple pledge: Veritas.

But the narrowness and poverty of colonial life soon starved out this element. Harvard was rededicated Christo et Ecclesia; and, up to the