were in a sense complete. We may pass judgment upon them. The vindication of history is already at hand.

There is still another reason why the contemporary estimate of James A. Garfield is likely to become permanent. It is because the field of his principal achievements was not one of popular interest. It was not one which takes hold of the people's hearts, and sweeps the popular judgment from its moorings. It lacked the glamour of military fame. The present age will hand down to posterity the fame of mighty soldiers, but their glory must be viewed with some reserve, some mistrust for the present.

Julius Cæsar, who was assassinated as a tyrant, now takes his place at the head of all secular history. Napoleon Bonaparte, the mention of whose name has, for three quarters of a century, been enough to convulse Paris and fill every wall with placards and every street with barricades, is likely to become the most odious figure of modern times. Garfield's chosen field of work, that where his fame must rest, was to the careless masses dull. Men grow excited over battles, but not a pulse beats higher over a computation of interest on the public debt. The stories of marches and sieges thrill the reader a thousand years after every combatant has been vanquished by the black battalions of Death. But the most eloquent orator in America finds it difficult to hold an audience with the discussion of the tariff list or of public expenditures or of the currency, even when every man in the audience knows that his pocket is touched. If such discussions are thrown into newspaper editorials they are but little read. No argument, however powerful, on the fallacy of fiat money ever drew a tear or roused a cheer. No table of the reduction of public expenditure is ever greeted with huzzas. When the news of a victory comes, every corner has a bonfire and every window an illumination. But the change of the balance of trade in our favor only awakens a quiet satisfaction in the merchant's heart as he glances through the morning papers. A new kind of gun attracts world-wide attention; it is talked over at every breakfast-table and described in every paper, but a new theory of surplus and deficits in the public treasury is utterly unnoticed. We see no flushed assemblies straining

to catch every word that falls from the orator's lips as he discusses the tariff on sugar or quinine. But when Kearney shouts his hoarse note of defiance to capital, the street is packed with listening thousands.

Hence it is that the man who significantly whispers "Garfield is overestimated" is more likely to be wrong than right. There is no tide of popular excitement over his work. The calm conviction of his abilities is a different thing from the feverish hurrahs of a campaign. In 1859 his old neighbors in his county had this conviction when they sent him to the State Senate. From the county, this spread to his Congressional district; from the district to the State of Ohio; from Ohio to the Union. It was gradual, and sure.

Garfield's speeches must be the foundation for his fame. To these history will turn as a basis for its estimate. The first thing which is to be said of them, is that they dealt with the real problems of the epoch. That he was a great orator is true; that he was much more than this is equally true. While other men busied themselves with political topics Garfield took hold of the great non-political problems of the time. He refused to view them from a partisan or a personal stand-point. He grappled with the leviathans of reconstruction, tariff, and currency in the spirit of the statesman. That he was always

right, we are not prepared to say; that he was right in his views on the great questions above mentioned, that with regard to them he was a leader of leaders, seems hardly to admit of a doubt. He was so radical in opinion that on almost every question he was ahead of his party and the country. This was the case in his arguments on the status of the rebel States, and what ought to be done with them; in his arguments in favor of a reduction of the tariff as prices declined after the war, and in his discussion of the currency and banking problems. Yet so nearly right was he that in every one of these instances Congress and the country gradually moved up to and occupied the position which he had taken in advance of them.

On the other hand, he was so conservative in practice that

on no question was he ever an extremist. While he was a strong believer in the nationality of the Republic, and its powers of self-preservation, he faced the entire North in his opposition to the provisions of the "Force Bill," for the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and the declaration of martial law in a country bleeding at every wound from war, but in a state of peace. Let no reader omit his speech of April 4, 1871. We say it the more willingly because at the time we thought Garfield was wrong. While he was a protectionist, he believed in tariff which avoided both extremes. While he was an original and unintermittent hard-money man, he believed in the necessity of an elastic volume of currency. As the end of resumption forbade inflation, he demanded that every part of the country should have its share of banks, and the drafts and checks which they threw into the circulation.

Of the variety as well as the quantity of his work, men will not soon cease to wonder. There were few who could equal him in the discussion of any one of the great topics of the day, much less all of them. His name and fame can never be identified with any single question or measure, for he displayed the same ability on every subject alike.

In other respects he also differed from the men around him. He was a scholar in the broadest sense. His speeches are absolutely unequaled anywhere for their scientific method. In their philosophical discussions they were the product of the ripest scholarship; in their practical suggestions and arguments, they were, they are the product of the highest statesmanship.

Finally, a man of more spotless honor and loftier integrity never trod the earth than James A. Garfield. He lived in an atmosphere of purity and unselfishness, which, to the average man, is an unknown realm. After all, there are men enough with intellect in politics, but two few with character. An estimate of Garfield would be incomplete which failed to include the inflexible honesty of the great orator and legislator, whether in affairs public or private. History shows that while no institutions ever decayed because of the intellectual weak

ness of the people among which they flourished, empire after empire has perished from the face of the earth through the decay of morals in its people and its public men. History repeats itself. What has been, will be. What has been, will be. Name after name of the great men of the new Republic is stained with private immorality and public crime. The noblest part of Garfield, with all his genius, was his spotless character. There was, there is, no greater, purer, manlier man.

"His tongue was framed to music,

His hand was armed with skill,
His face was the mold of beauty,
And his heart the throne of will."

CHAPTER X.

THE CLIMAX OF 1880.

HE fathers and founders of the Republic had no suspicion

of the form which American politics has assumed. The thing which we know as a political party is new under the sun. All ages and countries have had parties, sects; but no other country or age ever had any thing like what America. understands by the word party. When we speak of a party, we do not have in mind a mere sect, or class, distinguished by peculiar opinions, and composed of individuals whose only bond of union is their harmony of opinion, passion, or prejudice. We do not mean a caste, nor a peculiar section of American society, nor a portion of the masses, whose birth, condition, and surroundings predestine them to take a traditional sort of a view of political affairs, which they hold in common with their parents and their fellows. This was what Rome, in the days of her Republic, understood by the name of party. Patrician and plebeian stood not merely for opinion, but for more-for birth, heritage, and station. When there was an election, it was a rout, a rabble, without organization, work, or object. Rich and poor were arrayed against each other; the public offices were the glittering prize. But they were captured more by seditions, revolts, coups d'état, than by the insinuating arts of the wire-puller. The same thing is largely true of England and France, although less so lately than formerly.

But in America by a political party, we mean an organism, of which the life is, in the beginning at least, an opinion or set of opinions. We mean an institution as perfectly organized as the government itself; and taking hold of the people much more intimately. We mean an organization so power