The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-07-21

The town of Jefferson. Ashtabula County. Ohio. was the depository of that part of the New England conscience that went west about 100 years ago to grow up with the country. Ashtabula County was the heart of the Western Reserve and peopled from Massachusetts and Connecticut At Jeffer- son lived Joshua R. Giddings and Benjamin F. Wade both radical Abolitionists. They were of New England stock and when we think of them the following from that oth CT and more brilliant son of New England
 John James Ingalls--obtrudea over the mind
 The conscinece of New England was nev- CT thoroughly aroused to the immortality of African slavery until 1t ceased to be profita- ble. and the North did not finally deter mine to destroy the system. until convinc ced that its continuance threatened not only their industrial Independence. but their polit- icai supremacy"
 That passage not only evidences the blunt candor of MT. Ingalls, but in 1t is shown the sagacity with which he judged mon and things. and here We have one of the most brilliant men our country has produced defining the New England conscience ss merely a synonym for thrift. material and political. It was New Finland. by the way. that put the African slave trade in the Constitution of the United states.
 It was at this town of Jefferson that Theodore E. Burton was born in 1851, the year after Henry Clay and Stephen A. Douglass had prevented Joshua R. Giddinss. Thaddeus Stevens, and men of that i.k from accomplishing the dissolution of the Union. Mir. Burton got his education at Oberlin College, an abolition institution and the narowest-minded school in the world. Young Burton studied law. was ad- mited to the bar and opened an office in the city of Cleveland He was a fine stu dent has IaUa nd nd might have nsde as great a lawyer as Eu- fus P. Ranney Virgil P. Kline had he stuck to the profession and given his whole soul to 1t. His strong point is clearness of statement. and that is the strong point of the lawyer. Unless 1t be John Sharp Will Hams. no man in Congress is the equal of Burton in stating a case. When on his legs making speech he constantly reminds one of John c. Carlisle. Williams is a much greater man tha Burton. for he is richly en- dowed with the keenest sense of humor. whereas Burton Is as serious as "a basket of chips going to hell to be burned"
 Burtons first advent in Congress was in 1889. when Thomas B. Reed revolutionized that body and subtracted its self-govern- ment from the general membership on the floor and lodged 1t with the Speaker. It was the Congress that sought to deprive the South of its privilege to vote the Democrat ic ticket. that curtailed surplus revenues by increasing taxation. that sought to make a sound currency by demonetizing gold, a thing that was accomplished by the Sher- man silver law. In 1890 the country got wback at tho Fifty-first Congress and that very year the Democrats gained the most signal victory ever achieved by political party in the United States. Tom Johnson beat Burton for Congress that very year.
 The Democrats had their day in court and pIayed the devil. In 1893 they mutinied
 lot 0f PretO- rians, deposed him. set up a boy orator in his place. and for a dozen years they have abused Gods patience and the Kings Eng fish, cuss1ng the deposed general TOT the misfortunes and disasters that have overtak- en them under the lead of the youthfui ora tor Their conduct Is not at all logical hut fl is immensely human. In 1S9+, after the Democratic party had repudiated CieVe- landIsm as a principle and deposed Cieve- land as a leader, an appeal was hao 'o 'he country which responded with an over whelminr Republican victory that mas oeeh six times duplicated since lSs4.
 Rurton was returned to the Ffty-fourth Compress and Speaker Reed put him on Rivers and Harbors. When Ben odeH got In need of a judge in western NC" io.A he drafted Hooker out of Congress TOT the ioh and then Burton became chairman or o,,'or. ard IJarbors and 1t Is only Just to say that in that place he has shown himself ,o be one of the ablest and most accom- nIished legislators the American congress ever knew MT, Burton never unoer'akss 'o .,n,,or with A piece of solonism until he make. himself absolute master of the facts and the philosophies of the case. viewed from any and every standpoint That Is n secret all too few of our Congressmen have at least too few Of them act upon 1t.
 I, ,s doubtful if all the rest of Congress together. Senate and House. know as much about our rivers and harbors as Burton knows If there is creek or inlet from ocean to ocean that he does not know all about, Congress has never heard Of 1t. Not only does he know where 1t is. but what 1t ia He knows the volume of ter, the depth the width. the fall. He knows the commerce that each shore will supply and what 1t is