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gell, of the University of Michigan, Hugh McCulloch, exSecretary of the Treasury, Senator Hoar, Henry L. Dawes, and his colleague Senator Edmunds, who were unaccustomed to pay idle compliments, wrote him in unaffected admiration for his speeches on finance. But Morrill maintained his modest appraisal of them, and replied in 1890 to one of his constituents who praised his speeches:

I never speak in the Senate without feeling afterwards that I ought to have done better and am only comforted by the reflection that such contributions there all have an unmortal oblivion in the "Congressional Record," read by nobody, but, stored away voluminously, will there abide until the crack of doom.

I do not [he wrote another correspondent] set a high value upon Congressional speeches, except so far as they go to make up the history of the legislation of the country. Mine, few of them were made for Buncombe, but made when action was pending upon the measures of which they treat. They are consequently embroidered more with facts than with rhetoric. In point of fact those who have much to do with the business of important committees are usually more solicitous to carry their measures than to make fine speeches. Such as they are, I suppose I have made my full share, but I have never found time to revise and correct them, as I should if I had had any faith in their immortality, which I have not.

It is in his brief eulogies, such as that on "Thad" Stevens in the House and that on Sumner or Collamer in the Senate, and in his letters of condolence, that he appears at his best. Here the sobriety and restraint and that deep sense of the solemnity of life and the nearness of the other world, so characteristic of the older New England stock, revealed their power over him.

Yet he was not a long-faced man: on the contrary, he was an agreeable companion, cheerful and ready in the conduct of business, a genial host, and a blithe and welcome addition to dinner parties. He had a pleasant, dry wit, and his speeches were lighted by a glow of mild, ironic humor. From

his youth he had written verses, chiefly to amuse his friends; his commonplace book contains a number of experiments, for the most part gay, including a parody on Hamlet's soliloquy turned to celibacy, a hymn on the hard times, verses on a "Bachelor's Ride with a Coquette," and on having a "Bump for Poetry." As evidence that he could be playful, he closes some lines written on Saint Valentine's Day with

"No; I can't be your valentine

But, with one quill,

Your Porcupine"

- and is not above writing, to end another set of rhymes to another lady,

have no distrust in Your old friend Justin.".

During the latter part of his life he was constantly besieged by editors for interviews or articles or books. To most of these requests he returned a courteous negative, as he did to the invitation sent him in 1893 by Walter Hines Page, then editor of the "Forum" and afterwards our distinguished Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, whose proposal shows that he was already an adept in the art of letter-writing of which he later showed himself so great a master:

MY DEAR SIR:

I beg pardon for troubling you at so inopportune a time, but I hope to get your consent to prepare a very brief article for the forthcoming number of The Forum on The Duty of the Republican Party now that it has become the party of the Opposition. A group of short papers on this subject has been suggested to me from several sources, and I have asked Senator Lodge and Senator Walcott also to write brief articles. They have come into the Senate in the last days in the long period of almost unbroken Republican control and they ought to speak for the future; but what you will write, I beg you will permit me to say, I shall value and the readers of The Forum will value more highly than what

any other man would say, your public career having, I believe, spanned the whole period of the party's dominance.

When articles on one subject must be grouped, I am obliged to ask that each be very brief - how brief, I do not care, the main purpose being to sound a clear note in a foggy time. I sincerely hope that you will be able to dictate such a brief paper this week so that it may reach me not later than Monday.

I am with sincere respect

Yours very truly

WALTER H. PAGE

To this graceful invitation Morrill sent a graceful reply:

MY DEAR SIR:

In response to your favor of the 6th inst. I have to say that I do nothing of value without labor, and nothing unless in harmony with my convictions. When about such work it is not easily dismissed from my brain, and frets me now and then with insomnia. At my time of life it may be best to shirk extra labor. My recent tariff remarks absorbed the chief part of three weeks of the late vacation of Congress in their preparation, and I had determined to have a rest, perhaps at the Theater or at Whist. Notwithstanding my appreciation of the winning way of your invitation to give you something for the Forum, I feel obliged to say, I can do nothing for you at present, if ever.

It is true when I began the article on the tariff I was in doubt whether to make it for some of the magazines or for the Senate. Duty carried the day, and I made it for the Senate. I had also reached the conclusion last year that I would hereafter contribute to no periodical without the best honorarium for like work offered to any one. Not that my work would be equal to the best, but, unless thus tempted, that I had other personal use for my time not less attractive.

Thanking you for the kind words with which you clothed your courteous invitation, I am, with much respect

Very truly yours

JUSTIN S. MORRILL

It was not for want of inclination that he declined, for writing was always tempting to him, and during the last

decade he wrote nearly if not quite a score of articles on topics that ranged from "Union with Canada" to the "Erratic Platforms of the Democratic Party." Probably nothing that he wrote then or at any time gave him more concern than his article for the "North American Review" in reply to an article which the "Review" had printed by Gladstone on "Free Trade or Protection." It was already becoming the fashion in a certain class of papers to refer to Morrill as "the Gladstone of America," the "Grand Old Man of the Republican Party," and a comparison was natural, though not entirely warranted. The two men had been born within a year of each other; each had been in public life so long as to become the Nestor of his party; both had been identified with tariff and finance. One feels that Morrill enjoyed the opportunity of crossing swords with the foremost public man of England.

The article appeared in the "Review" for March, 1890, where it can be found and read by the curious, but political controversy so soon becomes obsolete that, although only thirty-three years have passed since it saw the light, the paper has already an antiquated air. Morrill was never at his best in controversy and was content to score points rather than traverse the main thesis of Gladstone's argument. When Gladstone wrote, "If America shall frankly adopt and steadily maintain a system of free trade, she will by degrees, perhaps not slow degrees, outstrip us in the race, and will probably take the place which at present belongs to us; but... she will not injure us by the operation," Morrill replied, "How is it possible that the United States would not, as a rival, injure British trade by coming to the front and taking the place and primacy which at present belong to Great Britain? Their government is making ambitious efforts in every quarter of the globe to obtain an increase of its foreign trade, and, if that is now diminishing, or insufficient

for one, how can it be enough for two, or for both England and America?"1

There was, of course, no question of Gladstone's candor or sincerity. The difference between them lay in their different views of trade and industry, Gladstone holding that the total of trade possible, whether local, national, or international, is not a fixed quantity, but indefinitely expansible, and that exchange of goods rightly conducted should benefit both parties.

Though Morrill wrote no book, but rejected several very flattering proposals for a volume of Memories or Reminiscences, he often dallied with the idea as he admitted in his speech to the Legislature of Vermont upon his sixth election to the Senate in 1896. After referring to his age, he said:

You will forgive me, I hope, for acknowledging that I have sometimes thought that, in the evening of my days and in the sweetness of leisure, I might be able, for the benefit of dear and long-cherished friends, to put together a snug volume of personal recollections concerning the men whom I have met, and perhaps edit and publish some of their characteristic letters among a considerable number that were once held to be worthy of preservation. Pleasant dreams of this kind now, I fear, must be shoved aside for the higher duties to which you have assigned me.

The dream persisted and led him not long afterwards to propose to the editor of the "Forum" a series consisting of selected letters with notes and comments to hold them together:

I have [he wrote] a multitudinous number of letters received within the last forty years from men of more or less prominence, which were at their date reckoned worth preserving, either on account of the authors as autographs, or that of the subject treated, and it has been my intention at some time, rather than to leave such recreation to my executors, to give the reason very briefly

1 North American Review, no. cccc, p. 291 (March, 1890).

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