The age-herald., 1897-09-12

From the St. Louis Globe-D Democrat.
 Senator Hoar has had a long public career that reaches back almost. if not quite, to the golden time when states manship was at its zenith and marked out destiny as pilot does the route of a ship. He has seen the slow but in- evitable. change right about him from an era of grandeur to ore of dull and uninterestlng drudgery. He thinks there is no such statesmanship as of yore, no such glory as fell to the politician of the past. The individual Is being crushed in the aggregate. The govern- ment Is the thing, the man nothing. This absorbing and irresistible growth of enpre, Mir. Hoar says, has been par ticularly noticeable with us since the close of the civil war and in England for seventy years, and this observation he makes the basis of an article on statesmanship here and in England. Both goverhments have the same trend, and while they demand as good intel lect in their maintenance as in their earlier development, it is of different and more business-lilze character.
 Such a state of affairs is. of course, less agreeable to the statesman than when he felt the eyes of the world were upon him. It stimulates man to great effort to believe that in his life will be read for that time the history of his country. It was so with the first Pitt in England, and with Washington. Ham, ilton, Adams and Jefferson here in the early days and the great triumvirate 114 s,,1~ h gloomily, it seems, that there is no such incentive now. The statesmen of today, to use his own words, "has little room in his life for new schemes, new prin- ciples or new thoughts" As to new schemes, there is apparently no lack of them. New principles and new thoughts are different. They are elemental. He was wise man who said there is noth- ing new. That MT. Hoar should fix upon the senate as a kind of a center of lead ership is but natural, and that he should refer in a regretful tone to the palmy days when Webster, Clay and Calhoun held intercourse and carnival, as it were, in the senate chamber is not surpris- ing. Tn his estimation, American states manship probably eliminated in Web- ster, and the twilight on this side sat Charles Sumner. There Is quite as much statesmanship as ever, and maybe more in the aggregate than forInerly-it only differs in kind.
 When MT. Hoar says that if Clay and Calhoun were alive today they would have to do their teaching elsewhere than on the floor of the senate he is right but when he includes Webster in the statement, he is wrong. There would likely be impatience at the glowing and rushing oratory of Clay and Cadhoun, but of the concise and reasonable speech of Webster there could never be too much. It was eloquent, and 1t meant business. toos The fanciful had little fascination for Webster. The truth he adored. The first of all critics, St. Beuve of France, resolved to know noth- ing but truth. Webster was ever try- ing to get at that very thing, which of itself simplified his language and of necessity made it durable. Senator Hoar, in aonther sphere and in differ ent language, has put repeated in de- gree an observation of Andrew Lang as to literature and art-that the more we systematize and educate in the rou- tine the less authority we have. It is not different in statesmanship. After all there is nothing better or worse than a man. All things whatsoever, from the Pitts, the Burkes, the Hamiltons, the Websters, as well as from the Homers, the Raphaels, the Shakespeares, teem with individuality-not personality, but with strokes of 8 hand that is unlike any other. Mr. Hoar is perfectly right in saying that the statesman is less lofty than he was. :?
 The senaItorfa1 career of rhe Massachu- setts man comprises twenty years, and is only three years less than Summers S. So that 1t reaches back to the time when the effulgence of the senate was very materially dimned, if not put out, by the exacting practicalfties thah can alone rezlore the arts and professions of peace and prosperity. Sumner enter ed the senate as the successor of Web ster with the reputation cf the abfest and most flea rless champion of emanci- patton. George F. Huar was then "a young man of 25; when Sumner died near the end of his fourith term, he was in the house, and three years later took his place i'm the senate. He speaks therefore, of what he knows. of what he has seen. With the forces of ths l epoch he has been personally identified and from his posf;ion in congress caught a glimpse of the fading glory he writes of with a tinge of melancholy. As de. batter MT. Hoar IS neckoned a peer oi the best, and 1t is but in keeping witt the logic of things that he should re. greIt khe passing of the opportunity fol utilizing the talents in this direction The debate. in the main, is being squelched, but intrudes Itself as ne- cessity now and then. The orations and orators that were announced as plays and actors aft certain times, and that packed the galleries are but memories The splendor of the old senator like tha. of the old tragedfan, is reminiscent. The past rises before him.
 American statesmanHfiip is, of course, not the exclusive property of the United