The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1908-05-17
STANLEY AND DALZELL
BY sAVOYARD.

BY saw
Some three OF four weeks ago the
agricultural appropriation bill was I'M
der consideration in committee of the
whole In the House of Representatives,
and on March %, Mr.. Stanley of Ken
lucky got the floor and proceeded to
reply to a very able speech by Mr.. Dali
zeH, some time earlier in which the
accomplished statesman from Pennsyl-
vania undertook to contrast Alexander
Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, much
10 the dlsparagement of the latter, and
much TO the credit OF the former.
Mr.. Dalzell got his history of the New
England school-the Harvard set-Hen-
ny Adams. Henry Cabot Lodge, Theo-
dore Roosevelt. and so on, not to for
get William f. Curtis and Edward s.
Ellis, and il made the sedate thinker
from Pittsburg. ordinarily so wary and
so accurate, very credulous person
We see the somewhat similar effect
when the brilliant mind of Gertrude
Atherton contemplates Hamilton and
Jefferson through the same historic
specs.
Owsley Stanley's reply TO DaIzeH was
crushing and conclusive. He painted
the two men, Hamilton and jefferson.
precisely as they We're, 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 adven-
turers. Many of Stanley's political
friends tried to dissuade him from the
encounter. They did not know much
about Hamilton and Jefferson, but they
In a n ,f T..
clusions they had never embraced, but
whose statements of facts they had
never challenged.
Stanley did not dare to enter the
lists without being armed capapie, and
he spent week of almost ceaseless IN
VestigatiOn night and day. He searched
fifty volumes, and drew from manu-
scripts in the National Library and the
state department. When fully prepared
he could get but half an hour to de-
liver the speech, though he should have
had at least two hours. When he be-
gan the Democrats We're apprehensive
and the Republicans confident. A few
minutes later the Democrats were san
guine and the Republicans confused.
Both were astOnished. Never before in
more than one hundred years of his
tory-making had the American Con-
gress seen the two great fathers of
American politics as they were and as
they will be estimated by the future
GibbOn OF Hume.
Alexander Hamilton was born a sub
ject of the British crown, in the insig
nificant island of Nevis, in the West
Indies. His father was a ScOtchman and
his mother a French woman. In his
earliest youth he gave earnest of the
splendid genius with which nature had
endowed him. Ere he was 20 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 l 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 all the Revolution
AIRY generation. Had he gone to Lon
don he would have been capable of fill
ing a bigger place In English annals
than the younger Pitt. Had he gone
to France and escaped the Terror ne
might have been second to Napoleon
Bonaparte alone. an honest Talleyrand,
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 for the principle
il involved II was a little bit of
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 en-
tered the army and became the secre-
tary of the commander in chief. and
in the field he was as daring as he was
a BILE in the forum. That arch-flatterer
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 sup
planted. As for patriOtism-the real
stuff, not the brand described by Wal
pole-HamiltOn had none, and ii was
impossible for him to have any. having
eXpatriated himself at the age of IL
years. The patriotism that springs
from the heart and mis- the soul Is not
plant that can be carried from CLINE
TO cline. The patriot is made of the
boy that plays around the spring, gam
bols in the orchard. reclines in the
shade of trees in happy boyhOod. II is
catching" in the school room as il is
impaired from urchin to urchin, and it
is all over and around the playground.
Washington and Henry, Adams and
Putnam, Rutledge and Marion, were
patriots. SO were old George Clinton
and Philip Schuyler. These were
Native and to the manner born.
But Hamilton, an adventurer. was
not, and could not be, moved by the
sentiments that were natural to these
men.
Hamilton made one great speech i'm
the constitutional convention, and then
he disappears; but the rOmancers-one
of whom makes him a compound of
AriStides, Cineinnatus and Scipio Afri-
canus-say that Hamilton wrought
more effectually for the Constitution
in the background. True, his writings
secured the adoption of the COnstitu-
ffo,, af Madison