The Adair County news., 1908-06-03
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STANLEY AND DALZELL
(By SavOyard.)
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Some three or four weeks ago the
agricultural appropriation bill was un-
der consideration in committee OF the
whole in the house of representatives,
and on March 25, Mr.. Stanley of Ken
lucky got the floor and proceeded to
reply to very able speech by Mr.. Dali
zell, some time earlier, in which the
accomplished statesman from Pennsyl-
vania undertook to contrast Alexander
Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, much
to the disparagement of the latter, and
much to the credit of the former.
Mr.. Dalzell got his history Of the
New England school-the Harvard set
Henry Adams, Henry Cabot Lodge,
Theodore Roosevelt, and 80 on, not to
forget William E. Curtis and Edward
S. Ellis, and it made the sedate think
er from Pittsburg, ordinarily SO wary
and so accurate, very credulOus per-
son. We see the somewhat similar
effect when the brilliant mind of Ger
trude Anterior contemplates Hamilton
tOric specs.
Owsley Stanley's reply to DalZell
was crushing and conclusive. He
painted the two men, Hamilton and
Jefferson, precisely as they were, and
placed them precisely where authentic
history will put them-the Virginian
the wisest of political philosophers;
the West Indian the most brilliant Of
political adventures. Many of Stan
ley's political friends tried to dissuade
him from the encounter. They did not
know much about Hamilton and JEFF
ferson, but they knew a deal of John
Dalzell, whose conclusions they had
never embraced, but whose statements
Of facts they had never challenged.
Stanley did not dare to enter the
lists without being armed cap-a-pie,
and he spent week Of almost cease
less investigation night and day. He
searched fifty volumes and drew from
manuscripts In the national library
and the state department. When he
began the Democrats were apprehen-
sive and the Republicans confident. A
few minutes the Democrats were san
guine and the Republicans confused.
Both were astonished. Never before
in more than 100 years of history
making had the American congress
sene the two great fathers of Ameri-
can politics as they were and as they
will be estimated by the future GibbOn
or Hume
Alexander Hamilton was born a
British subject, in the insignificant
island of Nevis, in the West Indies.
His father was a Scotchman and his
mother French woman. In his earli-
est youth he gave earnest of the
splendid genius of which nature had
endowed him. Ere he was twenty he
was the first political controversialist
in the colony of New York, whether
with tongue or pen. His motto might
have been:
''Why, then. the worlds mine oyster,
Which with mind will open"
AS a political writer he was greater
than Paine and little inferior to
Burke. AS an orator he was, perhaps.
second to Henry only of the Revolu-
tionary generation. Had he gone to
London he would have been capable
of filling bigger place in English an
nails than the younger Pitt. Had he
gone to France and escaped the Terror
he might have been second to Napole-
on Bonaparte alone, an honest Talley-
rand, a more fortunate Massena
Instead, Hamilton came to America
and assumed the role of Hampden. He
opposed Lord North, not for the tax
he levied so much as the principle it
involved 1t was a little bit of a tax,
great piece of folly on the part of
the ministry, though not oppressive;
but if allowed to be a precedent, it
was in the power of the crown to
make serfs of the colonists Hamilton
entered the army and became the sec
rotary of the commanderin-chief, and
in the field he was as daring as he was
able in the forum. That arch-fiatterer
and matchless scoundrel, Talleyrand,
declared that Hamilton was greater
than Napoleon or Fox, which is all
bosh; but Hamilton's eulogists are alb
surd enough to take what the unscru-
pulous French miscreant said for his
real opinion Well might the shade
Of Hamilton pray to be delivered from
American history as she is writ
Hamilton is actually held up as the
father of the constitution, when the
one thing for which he had more con-
tempt than for that instrument was
the Articles of Confederation which it
supplanted. AS for patriotism-the
real stuff, not the brand described by
Walpole-Hamilton had none, and it
was impossible for him to have any,
having expatriated himself at the age
of sixteen years. The patriotism that
springs from the heart and fills the
soul is not a plant that can be carried
from cline to cline. The patriot is
made of the boy that plays around the
spring, gambols in the orchard, re-
clines in the shade of trees in happy
bOyhood. IT. is Catching in the
schoolroom as it is impaired from ur-
chin to urchin, and it is all over and
around the playground. Washington
and Henry, Adams and Putnam, Rut-
y -