EDUCATION

DEVOTED TO THE SCIENCE, ART, PHILOSOPHY AND

LITERATURE OF EDUCATION.

VOL. XIII.

IN

APRIL, 1893.

JAMES G. BLAINE.

HON. JOHN D. LONG, EX-GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS.

No. 8.

N the career of Mr. Blaine there are two distinct epochs. The first when the brilliant legislator and ambitious young politician held his seat in the National Congress. The second when as the finished statesman, he exhibited the ripened intellectual maturity and experience taught by success and defeat.

Born and brought up west of New England, in his early manhood he moved to Augusta, Maine, and became the editor of the Kennebec Journal. He at once took a leading part in politics and made his name known by his trenchant editorials and his remarkable knowledge of political history. He was one of the founders of the Republican party in that state, and his ability was so marked and his opinions so weighty that, after distinguishing himself in the state legislature, where he first gave promise of his wonderful faculty of drawing men together, and serving with distinction as Speaker, he was elected to Congress in 1862 by the largest majority his district had ever given.

Hardly had he been a member of that body a single term before he was at the front. He became a leader, "because all the world. in concert could not have kept him in the back-ground."

The aim and result of his brilliant service in Congress can be grasped from one sentence of a speech made to his constituents in 1862, on the subject of slavery and the war. "Perish all things else, the national life of the nation must be saved."

At that early

date, he, like Lincoln, was of that wing of the Republican party which put the preservation of the Union before the abolition of slavery. True, however, to the advancing spirit of the time, he favored the repeal of the Fugitive-slave law; resisted the proposition of Stevens that the basis of apportionment should be the number of legal voters instead of the number of inhabitants; and proposed a resolution, the substance of which was adopted in the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. Yet, while he was determined that the South should accord just rights to the negro, when it was proposed to put the South under arbitrary military control, he opposed the bill until it was amended by a provision which allowed the states to find their way back to the Union by accepting the conditions imposed by the results of the war. He was willing to bring the southern people to a realizing sense of their self-caused humiliation, but he was not willing to see them. reduced to perpetual vassalage. Again, when another measure was proposed which he thought unjustly humiliating to the rebellious section, he descended from the Speaker's chair and defeated it in the hour when its triumph seemed assured. A wellknown southern paper recognizes his motive in thus acting when it says: "He wanted a restored Union not for love of the South, but out of statesmanship and patriotism." This spirit pervaded all his public actions.

So great was his popularity that he was thrice chosen to the Speakership, an honor paid to few Americans. In this position he exhibited his remarkable quickness of comprehension and readiness of adaptation to any exigency. Few men have more brilliantly filled that high place. He is to-day a recognized parliamentary authority. He combined at once the dignity and strength requisite in a successful speaker, with an uncommon degree of courtesy. When party defeat deprived him of his chair he assumed the leadership of the minority, and his ascendancy over the House was such as no other man has maintained in recent years.

The latter part of his legislative life was spent in the Senate from 1876 to 1881. Although not an eventful period, Mr. Blaine took an active and influential part in the work of that body and proved himself the peer of his associates not only as a party leader and legislator but also as a Constitutional lawyer. Matt Carpenter, then in the zenith of his powers, after his famous debate with

Blaine, confessed that he was never so hard pressed in his life, and expressed himself as fully satisfied if he had succeeded in holding his own.

No one can accuse Blaine of unsoundness in financial matters. In the House of Representatives he vigorously opposed paying the public debt in legal tender notes, and advised a resumption of specie payments. After he entered the Senate he steadfastly resisted the policy embodied in the Bland bill as tending to bring about an unstable and depreciated currency. He favored a bi-metallic currency, but would have none but an honest dollar, each standard so adjusted as to bear its just proportion to the other.

The second, and if possible the more important era in Blaine's career, dates from the time when, as Garfield's Secretary of State, he showed his ability to deal with nations as before he had controlled men. At the helm of the diplomacy of the nation during two administrations, he gained an unsurpassed reputation as a diplomatist. He surprised even his friends by his resolute yet delicate handling of questions which others found it difficult to settle amicably. Without loss of prestige to the nation, he solved the Fisheries question after his predecessor, an able man, had proved his inability to cope with it. He extricated us honorably from several awkward complicated situations, making clear to the Italian government the difference between the responsibility of our Federal government and that of the city of New Orleans or the State of Louisiana. And he finally succeeded in adjusting for the paltry sum of $75,000, an affair which might have cost the country a war.

Entering into diplomatic discussions with keen zest, he convinced his adversaries and the public opinion by unanswerable logic, and carried on all negotiations with such consummate wisdom and indefatigable thoroughness, that he not only won the admiration of Americans but has, it is said, been termed by foreigners the greatest Secretary of State this country ever had.

During Harrison's administration, Blaine's position before the public was such that his enemies had no longer any cause for stirring up antagonism against him and more readily gave him the credit he deserved. It was during this epoch of his political life that his enlarged ideas and plans for the greatness of our land shone with their full radiance.

It was well said of him in those last years of his public service