The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1880-01-19
Garfield.
The Ohio Senator's Career and Future
Course.
Correspondence Cincinnati Enquirer.l

loud complaint against the way he has been
used and showed about and edged off to admit
more experimental and less conscientious men
| into great places, but with a certain belief and
| hopefulness he made no complaint, trusting to
the good intentions of his party friends and
now he enters the Senate as victoriously and
unanimously as Conkling or Blaine or any OF
them.
| WHY HE SHOULD GO TO THE SENATE.
While it has been said that he ought to stay
| in the House, where he has been leader for
| several years past, am of the opinion that his
| very full mind and capacity for frequent pro-
longed efforts has better station in the Senate.
| 1t is but seldom that the House of Representa-'
| tives can hear good long, wholesome speech,
| as it is too full of members, most of whom want
| the floor Though Garfield has delivered some
admirable and exhaustive speeches in the
| House he can put his knowledge to better gen.
eral use in the Senate. 1 think that if he holds
| himself in check, particularly when worthless
| or interests, ;a2opie tempt him to go to their
help, he will att.lct the attention of the whole
country even more than he has done.
The people of northeastern Ohio, who have
several times been solicited to set Garfield aside
in favor of the pretensions of some more anxious
candidate for Congress, now have reason to re-
ioice that they were faithful to himithrough
many years. and have sent him forward to be
the exemplification of themselves, of their
modes of thought and love Of intelligence and
light.
HIS LEARNING AND CHARACTER.
1t may be remarked on Garfeld's quality Of
learning that, while he handles it for public
uses very well, it betrays little of the passion
for mere reading which boy might have who
had been kept from books for years. Too much
reading is apt to fetter a mans faculties and
keen his mind in toward the books, like a YES
sci in to shore, instead of giving vent to the
buoyancy of his character and the nature that
is in it, and sailing boldly out into the open
exploration.
Nature has equipped Garfield munificently.
He has a large, substantial figure, plenty OF
beard and color, none of the nervousness said
to exist in the American temperament. and
none of the rowdyism and unscrupulous party
audacity which often belittles our public life.
Though he has been attacked for what he
chose to do in certain large cases and contin-
gents. it is, neverthelessstrue that the great
opposition to him among his equals in Congress
is that he is "too fresh.' If he is disliked at
all, it is because he has not enough coarseness
of motive and character. Men don't like to be
kept uneasy in the company OF their politlclans
Garfield is q man to whom no one would I'M
dertake to make dishonorable proposition,
from the very Observation-Disclosures tnat MS pe-
haviour and moral shyness would generate.
Very much of legislation is designed to get the
advantage and persons of that class see many
others whom they had rather talk to than Car
field But his election to the Senate is, per-
haps, the first contribution the west has given
of scholarship to the Senate.
WESTERN MEN AND LITERARY SENATORS.
The necessities of Western men have made
them all ultra-practical, relying on their OBJ
saryation and intercourse for knowledge in
stead of ON example and science. Mr. Booth,
of California, was expected to be literary con-
tr;bution to the Senate, but it seems that he is
man who prepares at long intervals some
essay and delivers 1t, instead OF being confident
and rapid enough to rise TO occasion and speak
out of the general fullness OF his mind. do
not recall any literary man in the Senate since
Carl Schurz went out. He was as well read as
Garfield, and was rapid debater, but there
was ALWAYS a foreign idiosyncrasy about him
which kept him out of the full sympathy that
man of equal intelligence, bred among US,
would receive. Mr.. Schurz has in general
thrown himself against the current OF things
in America, and while he has gotten applause,
has vet detached himself more and more from
the substantial feeling of the country until,
seems to be cold phenomenon there, looking
out for little errors instead of enjoying the
general success.
In many things the late Senator Grimes, of
Iowa, had one of the strongest minds IN the
Senate-a mind sufficiently booked to give all
his utterances something of the impression OF
man of learning and of scientific cast. But
he, like too many of our Senators, had the pas
sion to get money, and it absorbed and swal-
lowed the other distinctive features OF his
..,,I hat of Lost fnneraI.
Matt Carpenter has some little quality, but 1t
is careless and rapid like that of tine Bohe-
mian.
OTHER READING MEN.
The reading men in the Senate when Gar
field comes there will not be numerous. We
may put down Edmunds, Conkling, Hoar and
perhaps Hill, of Colorado, in the list. The
tone of scholarship is not as high as 1t was be-
fore the civil war, when both North and South
sent men Of some literary polish on frequent
occasions to the Senate, like Daniel Webster,
Jared Ingersoll, Anson Burlingame, Judah
BENJAMIN and Col. Benton. With Pendleton
and Garfield in the Senate from Ohio, two
very opposite types of men, though both cour-
teous, confront each other, Pendleton, both
by family and party attachments belongs ON
the lost side of things; he is like a courtier at
the close of the French Revolution, sitting in
the same Assembly with q child Of that Revo-
ever, and hardly able to understand how the
others motives begin. Garfield has seen the
war, which of itself was enough to tear up and
reconstruct the mind of green man. The
man who rode on the day OF the battle OF
Chickamauga from one flank OF the army 10 the
other and saw ON that rock the two sections
of the country concentrated, and killing each
other to carry out their purpose, has premise
to start from more vivid than If he were fed ON
the constitution boiled in milk from the nipple
up.
GOV. GARFIELD AND GOV. FOSTER.
1t is to the credit of Gov Foster that he has
preserved the faith Garfield felt in him, and
assisted that indefatigable stumper to the place
in the Senate he ought to have had when Sner-
man resigned. Mr.. Matthews's relation to
events while in the Senate was at least ambig-
uous as most people saw it. He went there to
some extent as personal candidate, and tne
most tolerant view of his election was that
President Hayes and John Sherman thought
he had that kind of talent to give the Execu-
tive the support it expected to need. They
were possibly a little afraid that in physical
emergency Garfield would be too mild. But
Mr.. Matthews had not yet got to the Senate
when the Stalwart element, led by Conkhng,
found out that he had written some letters
touching the Presidential question which not
even Garfield, with all his freshness, would
have done. On the production of the man
Anderson from the loft of a newspaper office,
Mr.. Matthews felt that his situation was
trihe too ridiculous to be the great Executive
knight in the lists. He afterward concilated
some Of his opponents, bnt on the whole has
retired from the Senate, leaving trlne VI All
impression that he is too fine. He may always
be a formidable man in reserve, however, with
his manifest brilliacy.
HOW GARFIELD WORKS.
The idea got abroad, 1 think, that he was
too ambitious. While Garfield had fought for
every point he had made, spending an i'm
mense amount of vitality in every campaign,
paying the closest attention to debate, supris-
ing his party friends and confounding his ene-
mics, not only by his readiness on instant occa-
sion, but by his sincere and enthusiastic mind
and huge industry, Mr.. Matthews suddenly
appeared and got the vacant seat in the Senate
after such effort as he might have selected to
make once or twice for that end only. The
temporary chairman of the Greeley Conven-
tion.in 1872, and soon afterward the counsel of
President Grants administration, he appeared
the third time before the general public as the
especial miracle and lion of President Hayes.
1t is enough TO say that if he had beaten
Garfield feeling would have started IN the
Republican party that long services were rather
a disqualification in it. As the friends of
Matthews and Garfield seem to believe that
one is the others equal in defending cause or
supporting policy, 1 suggest that the Repub-