Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1881-09-14
THE SUPPOSED DECLINE cg GREAT ABIL-
fEY II CONGRESS.

The lament is already heard that the alb
sence Of Conkling, Blaine and Garfield
from Congress will mark tho decline of
greatness in that body. These men will no
doubt be missed from the Republican side.
but in due time their places viii be filed,
and possibly by even higher order Of
ability. This nation has produced but one
man whose place could not be filed with
abilities as highly distinguished as his
own, and That man was Webster. We
see men Of the past through
medium of idealization. The
admirers of Clay still hold him as their
idol statesman and live in his memory, but
the forensic efforts left by him have been
equalled and surpassed by orators of the
present time who remain in comparative
obscuIity To those who knew nothing Of
the magnetic presence of Clay, his great.
ness will not be fully understood. But
magnetic oratory is not intellectual great
ness, and later times will know men only
through cool Judgment, based upon the
intellectual value of what they left behind
them. At recent dinner given by the
Lord Mayor of Loadon, John Bright re-
lated the following illustrative anecdcte
"A good many years ago Lord Palmerston
made an extraordinary speech in the
90 House of Commons when vote of Gen.
"sure had been passed against him by
"the House of Lords in connection with
lone OF those mistakes-ons of the good
"many mistakes-which he made IN his
foreign policy. He spoke for four hours
"and forty minutes. Somebody said
"think it was Mr.. Gladstone-that he
''spoke from the end of one day to the
" dawn OF the next. The day after that
great speech / went to Mr.. Leigh, who
twas then clerk at the table of the
"House. and very old man, and I said
to him How do you judge of that
"speech of Lord Palmers5on's as compared
with the speeches of men whom we
have been taught to believe were the
''' giants of the past generation 2 Mr..
Leigh said: 1 think not one of them
ever made a speech equal to that, and
latter pause he added 'But in those
"' days there were only half a dozen men
'"i In the House who could make good
'Hspeech, and there were not more than
'' dozen or two who could understand
." them when they did So" There is
most significant point in this Much that
was deemed great in the past owed its ap-
parent greatness to contrast What Mr..
Leigh said of Parliament was equally true
of Congress. The earlier groups of great
men in Congress were small, and they had
no contemporaneous peers. In the day of
Webster and Clay there were not half
dozen men in Congress who could make
really good speech; but their number
increases in later groups, and if
the individual greatness does not
reach the exalted hight of Webster the
average ability rises. No prior period
in our history could boast Of higher
average of ability than the Senate of 1860,
while the House of Representatives Of the
sa~ue period will forever remain illustrious
with the brilliant memory of Thaddeus
Stevens. No statesman among all the
great men of this nation more truly de-
served the title Of 'Great Commoner
than the illustrious Pennsylvania, for no
man possessed higher clements of personal
and intellectual greatness. The masterful
consistency and courageous conviction OF
that great mind would have lost nothing
by contrast il placed in the most brilliant
galaxy of American Statesmen. Mr..
Bright's story reminds US that modern
greatness must reach higher altitude,
since it must rise in contrast with higher
general level of ability. The times will
always find the man. Greatness is the
incarnation OF the spirit of the time, and
the spirit of the age will not want
personal embodiments or intellectual
opponents. Congress viii not long miss
from its councils the brillancy of Conk-
ling, the intrepidity OF Blaine. or the ar
gumentative eloquence OF Garfield. All
those will find legitimate and worthy sue
cessors.
.