The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1906-07-02
WHO is HERE DESCRIBED?
A Famous Characterization, of Pos
sib!e Contemporaneous Interest.
New York Times.D

TO the Editor of the New York Times:
While glancing through the pages of
a book by statesman of world wide
| renoWn | happened upon the follow
/ ing:
He combined a great talent for ac-
llon with Very limited powers of
thought. Busting, energetic, versatile
gifted with ar indomitahle persever-
ance' and stimulated by an ambition
that knew no repose, with a capacity
for mastering details and an inordi-
nate passion for affairs, he could per-
nit nothing TO be done without his in
reference, and consequently was per-
petually involved in transactions which
were either failures or plumbers. He
was one OF those leaders who are not
guides. Having little real knowledge
and not endowed with those high quail
tiles of intellect which permit their
possessor to generalize the details af-
forded by study and experience, and
so deduce rules of conduct -, when
he received those frequent appeals
which were the necessary consequence
of mis- offieiaus life, became obscure,
confused contradictory, inconsistent, i'll
logical. The oracle was always dark.
Placed in high post In an age of
political analysis the bustling inter-
with q single solution. Enuneiating
second hand, with characteristic pre-
cipitation, some big principle in vogue,
as If he were a diseQVer4r, he inVari-
ably shrank from its subsequent appli-
cation the moment that he found it
might be unpopular and inconvenient.
All his quandaries terminated in the
same catastrophe, compromise Alb
stract principles with him ever ended
in concrete expediency. The aggregate
of circumstances oUtweighed the iso-
lated cause. The primor0ial tenet,
which had been advocated with UNI
compromising arrogancs, gently sub
sided into some second rate measu
recommended with all the artifce of an
impreenable ambiguity.
lit viii be seen, therefore that -
was one of those characters not ILL
adapted to an eminent station in an age
like the present. and in country like
our own; an age of movement. but of
confused ideas; a country of progress,
but too rich TO risk much change. In
der these circumstances, the spirit of
a period and a people seeks safety
valve in hustle. They do something,
lest it be said that they do nothing
Find a man, who, totally devoid of
genius, possesses nevertheless consider
able talents; who has official aptitude,
volubility of routine rhetoric, great
perseverance, a love of affairs, who,
embarrassed neither by the principles
OF the philosopher nor by the preju-
dices of the bigOt, can assume, with n
cautious facility, the prevalent tone, and
disembarrass himself of it with a dex-
ferrous ambiguity the moment it ceases
to be predominant; recommending HIM
self to the innpvator by his approba-
ton of change in the abstract and 10
the conservative by his prudential and |
practical respect for that which is es-
tablished; such q man. though he be of
an essentially small mind, though his |
intellectual qualities be less than mod |
crate. with feeble powers nf thought. |
no Imagination, contracted sympathies. |
and a most loose public morality: such /
a man is the individual > to |
govern tho state or rlle the church |
in the abstract. is what Is |
wanted by a people who are both i'm
quiring and wealthy. Instead of states
men, they desire shutters; and comprp-
mise inconduet and ambiguity in speech |
are. though melody will confess it, the /
public qualities now most in vogue
Can any of your readers guess whose
this was or ise l.. NJ p. /
New York, May is, 06.