The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-11-14
Mustrious Constituencies
By SAVOYARD

Walk Into the first newspaper office you come to and ask the editor who succeed ed Roscoe Conkling as Senator in Con- sress, and the chances are twenty to one that he will answer Search mel" But every
 one of them will tell you who succeeded Allen G. Thurman. who was succeeded by two men in fact-Jas. A. Garfield and John Sherman It was in the month of May, slo- rfous in her effuigent efflorescence, the good year 1880. that Tom Young, then a mem Der of Congress from one of the Hamilton County districts. linked his arm in that of Garfield. at the south end of the Capitol edifice, and said. Walk with me-" They proceeded to the north end. entered the Senate chamber. Garfield all wonder Young all solemnity. Young escorted him to the seat of Thurman. and asked, "Can you fill it?" Garfield had been chosen to the suc- cession. Giant mind that 1t was. the fullest of acquired information since Caleb Cushing left the District of Columbia, boy that he was in his daily walk and In his buoyant spirit a serious expression came on his countenance.s and he gave reply. fTll try" He knew what big job it wak. But he was saved from 1t. Of all places, the Senate was Garfleld's place. and of all plaees. the White House was not his place. On his feet. ip forensic discussion. he was the sub- tie n b.d of Nestor end the heavy hand of Ajax. As an Executive he was thing of wax. to melt in the fervent heat of fac- ton. Lincoln was little less fortunate in his cruel and violent death than as Garfield in his.
 We'll. an old fellow of the name of Lap ham succeeded Conkling in the Senate and answered yea" or nay on roll call It was said that he was a good lawyer; but for his work ip the Senate he might as well have been a good shoemaker, Conkling was nearly as mean as he was great. It was his plan to enfranchise the negro at the South and withhold the suffrage from him at the North. and that was one of those innumer- able conceptions known in politics as "ohio ideas" Intellectually. Conkling was perhaps the greatest Senator the Republican party ever produced-above Sumner. above Blaine. above Carpenter, above Morton, above Fes- senden. even; and it Is a mystery of the mysteries that such giant mind could de- Jude itself with the idea that the proudest people that ever trod this earth could be held in subJection to their former slaves of the most inferior of all races of the human family.
 Official station never made statesman H. lustrious. Could that be. shysteT in the robes of Marshall might have the fame of MarshallN A great writer of English letters expressed it thus;
 Cato lost the lection of praetor and that of consul, but Is any one blind enough to truth to imagine that these repulses reflect ed any disgrace on him? The dignity of those two magistrates would have been in- creased by his wearing them. They suffered; not CatO."
 Pope said something of not alien import when he rhymed of Marcelus exiled and Caesar with a Senate obsequious.
 But what started to write about illus trious constituencies. and the civic duty of every electorate to choose It's best and abiest man. Send him to Congress and keep him there. Legislation Is a trade. so recognized in England, and it is no less SO here Clad stone. the youth. splendid orator; Gladstone, at three-score and ten. was sage You can't buy statesmanship like you can cord wood. or limestone, or cotton or tobacco. It is much matter of inspiration Sometimes 1t is the child of genius; always tt is the child of common sense. It Is mat ter of thought; too frequently a thing of lungs.
 Here are our llustrious constituencies Quincy, of Massachusetts; Lancaster of Nineteenth Ohio; the "Burnt district of Indiana: the Ashland of Ken lucky, and Charlottesville, Ga John Quincy Adams made the first of these the first American constituency for eighteen years He was the greatest of his name and one of