New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1875-11-24

have been better for the party and for the
country. It was Mr.. Wilson's strength that he
watched public sentiment rs keenly and inter
preted it as correctly as any man In the
country. II WAS his failing that he was con-
tent to watch and interpret, and did not boldly
address himself to the task of guiding ana
shaping public opinion He had sincere patrl-
otism he had also courage in no small degree.
But from early years he had trained himself
to be representative rather than leader OF
men. and faithful and honorable representa-
tive he lived and died.
If Mr.. Wilson was not altogether well quail
fled to deal with the more difficult questions
of statecraft, he was, nevertheless, better quail
fled than many of the men of his time. The
coarser measures of the latter era OF Re
publicanism found no favor with him. YET
with riper craftsmanship, he would have
seen the germs of such measures in the policies
which were adopted at an earlier day with his
approval. He did not defend the prostitution of
public power and patronage to the uses OF an
individual or party, and yet he shared IN
large degree that unquestioning devotion TO
party which made such abuses easy. In truth,
he was trained like the great majority OF the
people, in times when parties were sharply
divided upon questions of moral and religious
duty. when intellect was held to a straight and
narrow way by conscience, and when any devO-
ton to party, however Jealous, was excused
by the convection that the party was
in the right, and was the only agency by which
the cause of Justice and freedom could be
promoted. There are thousands like Mr.. Will
son, who think of the Republican party, what
ever its errors, as still the champion of a
sacred cause, and who lend their influence
and their votes to defend the errors of to-day,
imagining that they are only defending the
holy cause of yesterday. Few Republicans
was more clearly, or with more just ndlgna-
ton than Mr.. Wilson, the baser uses to which
their devotion had been put aud when the
defeats of 1874 had made it clear that the
publication of the party was necessary TO its
preservation, none spoke more clearly. lie
would have been more Just to his own fame,
but less truly representative of the Repub-
lean masses, had he seen and spoken earlier.
He rests at last His sincere errors and his
faithful labOrs are both ended, and it is more
pleasant now to lis, as it must have been to
him in the closing hours of life. to think OF the
earlier days when he was indeed the champion OF
a glorious and sacred cause. In these days he
was mighty worker for the right. Not gifted
by nature with eloquence of speech, he had
acquired by long practice and by patient study
of human nature, rare power OF moving popu-
lar opinion. Among all the great men who
battled for the Republican party before
and during the war, very few welded greater
popular influence than Henry Wilson. In
Congress, too, he was a worker of singular
industry and energy. As Chairman of the
Military Committee of the Senate, he rendered
services which few now living can ap
precate and which only Abraham Lincoln
and Edwin NJ. Stanton could justly value. To
the end a faithful man-faithful to such an
ideal of duty as his training had enabled him
TO form-he honored his party and his country
by the purity of life and character with which
he served both with the very best work that
was i'm him,