The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1894-02-23

FREDERICK was modest enough 10 SEND
the American leader a picture in
scribed. From the oldest general in
Europe to the greatest general on
earth" However, it goes without
saying that there was nothing In
Washington's military career 70 equal
the splendor of Austerlitz or the stra-
tegy of the Prussian king; and it is
equally true that there is little in the
permanent civil achievements Of Ma
poleon and Frederick to compare with
the political results of Washington 8
labor. The French Emperor wisely
said in the earlier days of his career
and in a strain of prophecy: Future
races will talk of Washington as the
founder of great empire, when my
name shall be lost in the vortex of
revolution" He was nearly right,
for il his name has not been lost in
that maelstrom, at least his empire
has been, while Washington's repub-
lie became in one hundred years
stronger and richer power than any
European State had grown 10 be in a
thousand years. Today il stands in
the amount of its wealth at S66, 0O0,-
100000 or within four billions of the
combined wealth of France and Ger
many; the local commerce which
passes it's single city OF Detroit, under
the American flag, is said to have a
greater tonnage than the merchant
fleet of Great Britain; the annual
revenues of one of the American rail-
roads are greater than those of the
Dominion of Canada and of its con-
tiguous British territory, embracing
one-third of the British empire; the
annual pensions granted by the Uni
ted States exceed the sum OF the total
military expenditures for n year OF
France and Germany; and in respect
of size it has been lately said that
"a lake might be dug in the single
State of Texas so large that Great
Britain could be put in the middle of
il and not be seen from the shores
and there would be enough land left
under Texas Jurisdiction to compare
with the dimensions of the average
European kingdom" In the matter
of defensive and offensive power, the
republic founded by Washington but
four generations ago can put ten mil
lion adult fighting men into the field
as against eighteen millions in all
Europe; and its people can stand be-
hind their defenses and say, nearly in
Shakespeare's phrase:
arms
And we can shock them, Naught can
make US rue,
IF the republic TO itself be true.
Perhaps, ladies and gentlemen, it
was a rising vision of this spectacle of
national greatness which the French
conqueror saw in the mists of the
future when he made that prophecy
about the enduring fame of him who,
in his policies and in his farewell adj
dress, had pointed the way of his
countrymen in the path of political
safety and glory and predOminance.
III we estimate the value OF states
mans work by its permaHency, by
the public blessings which flow from
it, by the ease with which its pro-
cesses, though experimental in ma
ture, are conducted, by the power
embodied in it, then we must accept
the United States Of America as they
stand as proof that Washington was a
statesman of exalted rank. 1t is true
that he did not do the work alone. 1t
is also true that he was sur
rounded by what historians call
great men which any era has pro-
duced-men who, when they assem-
bled to declare American independ-
ence in Philadelphia, drew this eulogy
from Lord Chatham in Parliament:
al must declare and avow in all my
reading and study-and history has
been my favorite study; L have read
and have studied and adj
mired the master States of the world
and / say that for solidity of reason
ing, for force of sagacity, for wisdom
of conclusion, under such a complica-
ton of circumstances, no body of men
can stand in preference to the General
Congress in Philadelphia" 1t is true,
Il hnf in OFT
ed by such an assembly, but he was
easily its chief. To him that band of
statesmen turned for wisest counsel
and to the observance of that counsel
in the first Congress, in the field, in
the first Constitutional Convention,
in the Presidency and in the farewell
address, America owes much OF its
safety and its greatness.
1t Is an unusual circumstance that
the estimate OF Washington's states
manship by his contemporaries and
by those living close to the times in
which he had moved, left very little
TO be added In the form of praise by
posterity. 1t is the cynic's sheer THAI
a statesman is a successful politician
who is dead. Often his is true, es-
pecially in our own time; but WASH
ington was n statesman without being
a politician, and he did not have to
wait upon posterity for the acknow-
Judgement of that fact. What Fred
erick, Napoleon and Lord Chatham,
the elder Pitt, said of him you have
heard; but there are other chaplets
for his living brow. Lord Erskine, in
writing to Washington from London,
said: III have taken the liberty TO in
troduce your august and immortal
name in a short sentence, which is TO
be found in n book send you. l have
a large acquaintance among the most
valuable and exalted classes of men,
but you are the only human being for
whom have ever felt an awful rev.
erence. I sincerely pray God to grant
you a long and serene evening TO IL
life so gloriously devoted to the uni
versal happiness OF the world" Said
Charles James Fox, Premier of Great
Britain: "How infinitely wiser must
appear the spirit and principles mani
tested in his late address to Congress
than the policy of modern European