Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1852-11-06
DEATHS POLITICAL LESSON.

That kindly and charitable Latin maxim which
exhorts not merely to spare the dead, but if pos
sible to speak well of them, is perhaps almost as
wise as it is gentle. For there are many whose
virtues remain, to great degree, unfelt till they
are no more; while, on the other hand, there are
people who can do no justice to the living So diff
fcult is it, indeed, to judge fairly while alive,
that sagacious nation of antiquity (he Egyptians
were accustomed Historians tell us) to hold regular
Assizes of the Dead, where grave but no doubt in
dugent men sat upon the departed, weighed all their
conduct without passion and assigned the reputation
which could not be fixed until then. We imagine
that these must have been tribunals that knew how to
make large allowances for human infrmities, listen
ed little to the voices of envy and detraetion, and
dwelt lovingly upon the good and great qualities.
In such courts, what witness but must have hest
tated to produce his rancors, to refuse giving up
his prejudices, and to stand disarmed by death of
every injurious opinion towards him who could harm
him no more? Nothing, indeed, can be more pa
thetically right, as to most mentor there are few
in whom there was not much good, or at least much
matter for strong human sympathes-than those
mournful words of the poet
OF them who, wrapped in earth SO cold,
No more the smiling day shall view,
Should many tender tale be told;
For many gentle thought is due.
All this is true of our common brothers of the
earth ; and of course still truer of such as more
eminent part in the conflict of human life has ex
posed to many personal resentments. And accord
ingly out of that tardy compuncon or those solemn
sympathes which we have supposed as sure to act
in those Egyptian trials, still sees, at the death
of great men, sudden sense of their true merits
seize upon their enemies themselves and turn obloquy
into admiration and sorrow. Such was, some years
since, the scene when Mr.. ADAMS was all at once
struck down, before the nations eyes, from that
high place in the public councils which he had SO
long filled, if a little too combatively, yet ably,
honestly, and periodically. Such was, far more
strikingy STILL the funeral spectacle at the death OF
him SO long, in this country, from the very strenu
BUSINESS of his public abilities and services, the fore
most object of all love and hate, HENRY CLAY.
| Whatever of odious men had said of him while he
lived cancelled by their praises and their tears
over his tomb So was it, the other day, in Eng
land, when the Iron Duke-that infexible man who
had, for so many day. divided the reverence and
the contumelies of the European world without
seeming much to care for either, or for any thing
but his own idea of his duy-yelded at last to fail
the only thing to which he ever could yield And at
hismoment, we have once more the same consoling,
if sad spectacle of the poshumous justice which they
who had most denounced DANIEL WEBSTER are now
(sncere at LAST doing throughout the land to his
memory as great and patriotic statesman. 1t
easy to see that they will equally, by like encomiums
and lamentations, expiate their injustice to WIN
FIELD SCOTT when that greatest of surviving public
servants shall die, day of retribution and atone
ment, however, which is yet, we trust, far of.