that I can help you in the work of the Committee which you alone for years have done, but to accept a part of the responsibility which always follows great changes.

You will have the honor, after you are dead, of having made the most beautiful city in the world and, what is more, you will deserve it.

I will stop at Sanderson's on the Hill and any time after 6 P.M. will meet you at the Ebbitt.

Yours truly

SIMON CAMERON

The second, written nearly a year later, reveals Cameron in a new light, as a lover of trees:

MY DEAR SENATOR,

HARRISBURG, Sept. 27, 1875

You are the Chairman of the Committee on Public Grounds, and above all your energies and your good taste have done so much to make the Capitol grounds what they are becoming, worthy of the Capitol and the Nation, that I am unwilling to object to any suggestion you make in regard to them, but I don't like to destroy that beautiful tree that I have admired for more than thirty years that has so often sheltered me - and which I could persuade you to spare if I were on the ground. Mr. Olmsted is wrong in saying "the tree is not likely to survive long." I have looked carefully at it and am certain if let alone it will be erect and beautiful long, long after I leave here and I only wish I could believe you and Mr. Olmsted had as good a chance to live a hundred years, and be as useful to your country as you are now, as it has to be green and bright a century more, if it is let alone.

"Woodman, spare that tree." Your friend

SIMON CAMERON

Morrill noted on the back of the letter: "Woodman, spare that tree!" and "It was saved."

As the letters indicate, the two men, notwithstanding great differences of character and temperament, were good friends, and Morrill left among his papers a brief note about Cameron which says this in the plainest terms:

General Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania was an example of American self-educated men or the type of such as first push along themselves, and then, help to push along the world. Left an orphan at nine years of age, getting his education while learning the printer's trade, he became the publisher and editor of a Democratic newspaper at the early age of twenty-two years and ten years later established a bank. It was not enough for him to be an editor of a newspaper, cashier of bank, president of two railroads, and so he accepted the office of Adjutant-General of the State by which the title of General adhered to him through life. He was a remarkable man, and while he was in the U.S. Senate from 1866 to March, 1877, I became much attached to him. He occupied a seat adjoining mine and was a member of the Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds of which I was then Chairman. He was first elected a Senator in 1845, serving until 1849, and was again reëlected to the same position in 1857 for the term ending in 1863, but resigned in 1861, to become Secretary of War, and Minister to Russia in 1862. He was once more reëlected to the Senate in 1866, but resigned in 1877 when he was succeeded by his son James Donald Cameron.

With his native conservatism and a sense of continuity much stronger than is common among his fellow countrymen, Morrill was but little disposed to change or tear down. So, although he approved the judgment of W. W. Story set forth in long and eloquent letters opposing the original design for the Washington Monument, which Story somewhat scornfully referred to as a "chimney," and for which he proposed a substitute on the lines of classic monuments, Morrill finally acquiesced in completing the great obelisk largely in accordance with the plans first accepted. In the case of the Capitol, he was a steadfast opponent of any structural changes and proved so formidable against all plans to make over the great building and thus provide for the Library of Congress, that those projects were given up.

There ensued a long delay, but, secure in his conviction, Morrill could wait, knowing that time was on his side, and

at last he saw his dream come true in the magnificent building placed where he had desired to see it, across the great plaza facing the front of the Capitol. Patience, tact, and no small political skill were required to bring the dream to fruition, but he had set his heart on it and gave it his utmost efforts. The library came to be known as Morrill's pet, and certain it is that, but for his persuasiveness, his tenacity, and the strong prestige of his position as Chairman of the Finance Committee, then and for long regarded as the most powerful post in the Government, the vast sums required could not have been had. He was too old and sagacious a legislator not to know the wisdom of the aphorism, “Ce ne que la première pas que coûte," and his first step was a cautious one. It was to obtain the acceptance of plans and an initial appropriation. The amount of this first appropriation, $500,000, which was voted in 1886, was foreseen by some, and perhaps by Morrill himself, to be inadequate. Two years later revised plans were presented offering an alternative of $4,000,000 or $6,000,000 outlay. It is very certain that if even the smaller of these two vast sums had been originally proposed for a single building, it would have been summarily rejected, but now Congress was committed to the undertaking; it had "put its hand to the plough," and by judicious persuasive handling was led to vote the greater suma result generally regarded as a personal triumph for Morrill.

His fondness for Washington and pride in the attractions of the city made him ever ready to go to her defense. He found an occasion to his liking in 1873 when President Eliot of Harvard, in the course of a speech against a national university, made some disparaging remarks about Washington; whereupon Morrill prepared an article 1 which he sent to his friend J. W. Forney for publication. Time has made the 1 Philadelphia Press, October 17, 1873.

article obsolete, but the letter to Forney has a phrase or two that embalm a prejudice not wholly unjust and not yet quite outgrown. He speaks of "the Harvard President's speech," and adds, "I think your sympathies are like mine - rather favorable toward our capital and rather less for the Brahmins of Harvard. They are too aristocratic."

Throughout the whole of the Grant period Morrill continued as faithfully as a sentinel at his post to defend that policy of protection and those principles of sound finance to which he had given his adhesion years before. He had so well considered them, and had matured them in so many hours of study and debate, that no matter how new were the aspects presented or how novel the propositions advanced, he had never to shift his ground or change his weapons. His speeches on the Funding Bill, on Free Banking and Specie Payments, on the Resumption of Specie Payments, on Silver as Legal Tender, furnish an array of sound reasons and supply an armory of cogent arguments for the defense of honest finance. On the subject of the Tariff he maintained the position of a moderate protectionist. It was the position which he had taken at the outset of his career and he never consciously departed from it. He was similarly consistent in his attitude on foreign policy. He had begun his political career as an opponent of annexation to the southward and one of his latest speeches was to be in opposition to expansion in the Pacific. This unvarying support of settled principle made his opposition to General Grant's plan of annexing San Domingo so natural as to rob it of any captiousness or offense.

On still another great subject he had early defined his position and now defended it valorously, but without bitterness. This was the matter of reciprocity. As far back as 1858, when he was one of the younger members of the House, he had proposed a resolution looking toward rescinding the

reciprocity treaty with Canada. He continued an avowed opponent of all reciprocity treaties whether with Canada, Hawaii, or Mexico, and in 1874 stated his opinion with excellent clearness and point in a letter to Hamilton Fish: WASHINGTON, June 4, 1874

DEAR SIR:

I have received your memorandum confidentially communicated to me with the propositions for a new reciprocity treaty and I comply with your request to make such suggestions or

comments as occur to me.

First, I think such a treaty is a plain and palpable violation of the Constitution which gives to the House of Representatives the sole power to originate revenue bills. If such a treaty can be made with one nation, it may be made with all, and in time the treaty-making power might absorb the entire jurisdiction of revenue questions, so far as customs duties are concerned. This question was elaborately considered in the Senate of the United States at the time of the negotiation of the Zollverein Treaty, and adverse reports made thereon; one by Mr. Archer of Virginia, Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, and one the year following by Senator Choate of Massachusetts. These reports so made coincided then with the judgment of the Senate and the Zollverein Treaty was lost with the almost universal concurrence of the Senate. I have no idea, in view of the embarrassments we suffered while the former reciprocity treaty was in force when it became necessary during the war to largely increase the tariff, that the House of Representatives would willingly place such fetters on their action again. I am very sure they would not without a fierce struggle and am confident that the old members, who have not forgotten our experience, would utterly decline any such commercial arrangement.

It must be borne in mind that the most favored nation clause existing in our treaties with other powers may prove a matter of grave embarrassment. At the time the Zollverein Treaty was pending, the British Minister of Foreign Affairs, I think Lord Aberdeen, immediately notified the American Minister, probably Mr. Everett, that Great Britain would claim all the privileges that might be granted by the Zollverein Treaty, and I think he made very cogent arguments in support of the claim.