Weekly commercial herald. (Vicksburg, Miss.) 1884-18??, 1885-09-18
a MAN o. MASSIVE Nine.
Lamar, the Dreamer, Scholar,
Statesman and Orator.

Statesman and Orator.
Correspondence Louisville Times.
The characters of public men are
full Of surprises. 1t often occurs that
men from whom the world expects
great things accomplish little, while
others, long misunderstood, develop
into giants in more than one walk. In
a representative government Parlia-
mentary talents will insure the success
of the charlatan as well as the states
man; but when Parliamentary talents
are united with great executive abili-
ties and political sagacity, a man is
produced who will inevitably exert
great influence upon his country. Sec.
retary Lamar has long been known as
a most accomplished gentleman, philo-
sophie scholar and graceful orator, but
it was not until he vas called 20 a seat
in the Cabinet that the great abilities
of the man were fully developed. The
scholar is so long a pedant, the dream
er so often a visionary and the man
of thought so often devoid of
the qualities of the man of action,
lat woeful failure was expected Of
the brilliant Southerner in his admin
istrative capacity; for Lamar is a
scholar, a dreamer and a man of
thought. He is not to be compared
with any other American statesman,
and of all the English statesmen he
most resembles Lord Carteret. He
possesses the same vast stores of
knowledge; the same fertility of i'm
Imagination; the same strength of un-
derBtanding and the same lucidity of
expression. but without the exuber-
ance of spirit and excess of convivial-
ity that characterizes the victor in the
great Walpolean battle of the time of
George the Second. In Congress the
shining abilities Of Mr.. Lamar were
conspicuous. His reputation as an
orator and a scholar had been made be-
fore the wal between the States, and
upon his return to Congress his pow
ers were approaching their zenith.
His pieces on reconciliation were mas
%terpieces, and deserve to be studied as
models Of craftsmanship and beauties
of English composition. His eulogy
upon the life and character of Charles
Sumner was the first tribute the South
paid to the e~arnestness Of conviction
and honesty of purpose of the original
| Abolitionists. 1t was not generally
| approved at the South at the time of
its delivery, but the character Of the
author was so high and his talents so
transcendant that he did not forfeit
the confidence or respect of the peo-
pie because Of it.
Perhaps the finest retort ever made
in a Parliamentary body was Lamar's
reply to Hoar. The Mexican Pension
Bill was before the Senate, and Mr..
Hoar took occasion to wave the bloody
shirt and villify Jefferson Davis. For
an hour he heaped every epithet of
abuse that his vocabulary afforded on
the defenseless head of the Confeder-
ate chief. After he sat down Lamar
arose and, with fine dramatic effect,
said.
"When Prometheus was chained to
the rock it was the vulture, and not
the eagle, that tore his tortured vitals."
O'Connell never said anything more
severe, nor Halifax anything more
elegant.
The Mississippi Senator at another
time gave Roscoe Conkling a castiga-
ton such as no other man ever be-
slowed On that naughty and Supercill-
Gus gentleman. 1t was at the extra
session of 1877, when the question of
voting supplies without redress of
grievances was before Congress. Mrs.
Sprague was in the galleries in all the
voluptuous splendor of her matured
charms. The New York Senator had
been more than usually naughty during
the sitting uf the Senate. To Lamar
he was exceedingly offensive, and
joined issue with him on a question of
fact. The %Southerner at once gave
him the lie direct. Conkling flushed
with anger, and in a score of those
magnificent and stately sentences Of
which he had illimitable command, re.
torted the charge. Lamar smiled, and
with the most cutting severity said:
IL have characterized the Senator from
New York in a manner that no good
man deserves, and no brave man will
wear" Though it had been asserted
that Conkling vas anxious to meet
Gen. Gordon, of Georgia, in a duel, he
sent no message to Lamar.
There is no department upon which
the cormorants have so Toasted as they
have in the interior. The Indian rings,
the railroad rings, the land Office rings,
the Pension rings have been robbing
the country for twenty years, and filled
their Golfers with millions of the peo-
ple's money. When. more than forty
years ago, congress granted a subsidy
to the Illinois Central Railroad Com
pany, it opened Pandora, made the
Credit Mobilier possible, and pavedth the
way for "pratical politics" and all its
reeking corruptions. Secretary Lamar
is battling with the released genii
within the portals Of that chamber
upon whose walls is inscribed:
"Who entereth here a conqueror hath been;
Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he will win"
His massive mind is teeming with
plans Of reform, and he is perhaps the