The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1910-08-21

Congress, and never in the history of that
since, a more triumphant maiden argu-
ment. 1t attracted universal attention
and drew the fire of every prominent re-
publican statesman, editor and lawyer, in
Congress and out of Congress- 1t stated
with memorable logic the democratic case,
that liberty WAS inconsistent with force
at the polls. and that no people was free
whose elections must be kept free by mill
tary supervision 1t was the cue to every
other democratic leader, and Ben Hill
and Allen c. Thurman, in the Senate, only
House of Representatives. There was no
buster, no passion torn to tatters, no
fervid defamation. no splitting of ground
ling ears The speech was as simple as
the English tongue could express 1t, as
plain as the human understanding could
conceive If, and the reason so clear that
the dullest mind could follow it. There
were no big words, no involved phrases,
no reconcile meanings Admit the prem
ises and the conclusion was inevitable
it was statement, clear, lucid, artless IN
unheralded, though his was a strange
face. his an unaccustomed voice, John
G. Carlisle from that day was the first
lawyer and the first 1ogician in Congress,
and 1t Is dun to say that Garfield's reply
stamped the intellectual Titan one of the
greatest debaters of our history.
Carlisle belonged to the Morrison wing
of the party, and in subsequent Con-
gresses he was leader of the tariff re-
formers. and doubtless he was the ablest
man among then-first in a company of
which Morrison, Mills. Hurd, Tucker, Tur-
ner, Knott. the Breckinridges, Cox, Cock
ran, Wilson and others were members,
and these were men whose forensic tai
ents would have lent lustre to any Sen
ate that ever deiiberated in either hemis-
pheres- Carlisge's speeches differed from
AL the others He was not SO fierce a
debater as Ben Hill. not SO brilliant an
orator AIS William L. Wilson. He did
not employ the rapier of wit or the
biudgeon OF sarcasm with humor as did
Proctor Knott. NOT did he embellish them
with classical a11usion as does Bourke
Cochran. Stately sentences he left to w.
c. F. Brec1inr1dge, aud convincing Stats
tics nc left to James B. Beck. He was
to Congress what Marshall was to the
bench, a sedate. profound, a conscien-
tioaas thinker. Who of our public men
xayc the great chief Justice alone ever
found SO little use for the flowers Of
fancy, or the tropes of rhetoric as John
G. Carlisle? He never used two SEN
tsnces II he could express the idea in one:
he never employed 10 words IL nine would
suffice. No other Of our public men
ever had SO little use for an adjective
unlesD 1t was Marshall, and not even
In u1yo1 OH hi n a
proposition clearer.
Though master of several languages
and a wel1-read man. familiar with the
classics, no one would ever suspect 1t
from his speeches. There Is not a quo
tation from the ancierlts, not classical
allusion, not a poetic thought, not a
flower Of rhetoric. not an epigram, not
a metaphor In any of his productions,
written or spoken. If Greece or Rome
man. If Shakespeare and Milton were
poets, Carlisle does not appear to have
discovered the fact Compare his speeches
with those Of ]. Proctor Knott himself q
lawyer of the very first rank, and there
is all the difference there Is between the
tulip and the violet. Knott has an ex-
uberant style, is brilliant In command Of
language, and felicitous In classic allu-
sion. What a wealth of expression is his
How vast his reading, and under what
admirable and instantaneous command
is his acquired knowledge! But Knott
and Carlisle are as different In express
sion as the poetry Of Lord Byron Is diff
ferent from the prose of John Locke
Carlisle was made for the bar and the
bench He has the finest mind for the
separation of truth from error of any
man of his generation. AS chief justice
Of the UnAed States his fame would rival
Marshalls and he would do the work