some years afterward, it was the fixed and undoubted creed of the great Liberal party. But somehow all is changed. We who stand upon the old landmarks, who walk in the old paths, who would conserve what is wise and prudent, are hustled and shoved about as if we were come to turn the world upside down. The change which has taken place seems to confirm the opinion of a lamented friend of mine, who, not having succeeded in all his hopes, thought that men made no progress whatever, but went round and round like a squirrel in a cage. The idea is now so general that it is our duty to meddle everywhere, that it really seems as if we had pushed the Tories from the field, expelling them by our competition.

It is for you to decide whether our greatness shall be only temporary, or whether it shall be enduring. When I am told. that the greatness of our country is shown by the £100,000,000 of revenue produced, may I not also ask how it is that we have 1,100,000 paupers in this kingdom, and why it is that £7,000,000 should be taken from the industry chiefly of the laboring classes to support a small nation, as it were, of paupers? Since your legislation upon the corn laws, you have not only had nearly £20,000,000 of food brought into the country annually, but such an extraordinary increase of trade that your exports are about doubled, and yet I understand that in the year 1856, for I have no later return, there were no less than 1,100,000 paupers in the United Kingdom, and the sum raised in poor-rates was not less than £7,200,000. And that cost of pauperism is not the full amount, for there is a vast amount of temporary, casual, and vagrant pauperism that does not come in to swell that sum.

--

Then do not you well know -I know it, because I live among the population of Lancashire, and I doubt not the same may be said of the population of this city and county-that just above the level of the 1,100,000 there is at least an equal number who are ever oscillating between independence and pauperism, who, with a heroism which is not the less heroic because it is secret and unrecorded, are doing their very utmost to maintain an honorable and independent position before their fellow-men?

While Irish labor, notwithstanding the improvement which has taken place in Ireland, is only paid at the rate of about one shilling a day; while in the straths and glens of Scotland there are hundreds of shepherd families whose whole food almost consists of oatmeal porridge from day to day, and from week to

week; while these things continue, I say that we have no reason to be self-satisfied and contented with our position, but that we who are in Parliament and are more directly responsible for affairs, and you who are also responsible though in a lesser degree, are bound by the sacred duty which we owe our country to examine why it is that with all this trade, all this industry, and all this personal freedom, there is still so much that is unsound at the base of our social fabric?

I have been already told by a very eminent newspaper publisher in Calcutta, who, commenting on a speech I made at the close of the session with regard to the condition of India and our future policy in that country, said that the policy I recommended was intended to strike at the root of the advancement of the British empire, and that its advancement did not necessarily involve the calamities which I pointed out as likely to

occur.

My Calcutta critic assured me that Rome pursued a similar policy for a period of eight centuries, and that for those eight centuries she remained great. Now, I do not think that examples taken from pagan, sanguinary Rome are proper models for the imitation of a Christian country, nor would I limit my hopes of the greatness of England even to the long duration of eight hundred years.

But what is Rome now? The great city is dead. A poet has described her as "the lone mother of dead empires." Her language even is dead. Her very tombs are empty; the ashes of her most illustrious citizens are dispersed.

"The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now." Yet I am asked, I, who am one of the legislators of a Christian country, to measure my policy by the policy of ancient and pagan Rome!

I believe there is no permanent greatness to a nation except it be based upon morality. I do not care for military greatness or military renown. I care for the condition of the people among whom I live. There is no man in England who is less likely to speak irreverently of the crown and monarchy of England than I am; but crowns, coronets, mitres, military display, the pomp of war, wide colonies, and a huge empire are, in my view, all trifles, light as air, and not worth considering, unless with them you can have a fair share of comfort, contentment, and happiness among the great body of the people. Palaces, baronial castles, great halls, stately mansions, do not make a

nation. The nation in every country dwells in the cottage; and unless the light of your constitution can shine there, unless the beauty of your legislation and the excellence of your statesmanship are impressed there on the feelings and condition of the people, rely upon it you have yet to learn the duties of govern

ment.

I have not, as you have observed, pleaded that this country should remain without adequate and scientific means of defense. I acknowledge it to be the duty of your statesmen, acting upon the known opinions and principles of ninety-nine out of every hundred persons in the country, at all times, with all possible moderation, but with all possible efficiency, to take steps which shall preserve order within and on the confines of your kingdom. But I shall repudiate and denounce the expenditure of every shilling, the engagement of every man, the employment of every ship, which has no object but intermeddling in the affairs of other countries, and endeavoring to extend the boundaries of an empire which is already large enough to satisfy the greatest ambition, and I fear is much too large for the highest statesmanship to which any man has yet attained.

The most ancient of profane historians has told us that the Scythians of his time were a very warlike people, and that they elevated an old cimeter upon a platform as a symbol of Mars,for to Mars alone, I believe, they built altars and offered sacrifices. To this cimeter they offered sacrifices of horses and cattle, the main wealth of the country, and more costly sacrifices than to all the rest of their gods. I often ask myself whether we are at all advanced in one respect beyond those Scythians. What are our contributions to charity, to education, to morality, to religion, to justice, and to civil government, when compared with the wealth we expend in sacrifices to the old cimeter? Two nights ago I addressed in this hall a vast assembly composed to a great extent of your countrymen who have no political power, who are at work from the dawn of the day to the evening, and who have therefore limited means of informing themselves on these great subjects. Now I am privileged to speak to a somewhat different audience. You represent those of your great community who have a more complete education, who have on some points greater intelligence, and in whose hands reside the power and influence of the district. I am speaking, too, within the hearing of those whose gentle nature, whose finer instincts, whose purer

minds, have not suffered as some of us have suffered in the turmoil and strife of life. You can mold opinion, you can create political power;-you cannot think a good thought on this subject and communicate it to your neighbors, you cannot make these points topics of discussion in your social circles and more general meetings, without affecting sensibly and speedily the course which the government of your country will pursue.

May I ask you, then, to believe, as I do most devoutly believe, that the moral law was not written for men alone in their individual character, but that it was written as well for nations, and for nations great as this of which we are citizens. If nations reject and deride that moral law, there is a penalty which will inevitably follow. It may not come at once, it may not come in our lifetime; but rely upon it, the great Italian is not a poet only, but a prophet, when he says:

"The sword of heaven is not in haste to smite,

Nor yet doth linger."

We have experience, we have beacons, we have landmarks enough. We know what the past has cost us, we know how much and how far we have wandered, but we are not left without a guide. It is true we have not, as an ancient people, had Urim and Thummim,- those oraculous gems on Aaron's breast,— from which to take counsel, but we have the unchangeable and eternal principles of the moral law to guide us, and only so far as we walk by that guidance can we be permanently a great nation, or our people a happy people.

PHILLIPS BROOKS

(1835-1893)

HILLIPS BROOKS ranks with Henry Ward Beecher as one of the most admired pulpit orators of the latter half of the nineteenth century. He was less popular than Beecher because he was less emotional and more polished. His style approximates the simplicity of conversation even when it is most artistic. It has an Attic severity, which, while it ennobles the successful expression of a great thought, requires great thoughts to make it tolerable. And the underlying thoughts which shaped the life of Brooks and made him an orator were great. He sympathized at once with what is weakest and what is strongest in human nature. He is remarkable for restrained force, which, in spite of restraint and the better because of it, moves irresistibly forward, drawing the mind of the hearer with it.

He was born December 13th, 1835. His father, a Boston merchant, educated him at Harvard. After studying theology for four years in an Episcopal seminary, he entered the ministry of that church. After ten years in Philadelphia, he became rector of Trinity Church, Boston, assuming thus the cure of the souls of the "largest and wealthiest Episcopal congregation in Massachusetts." He was elected bishop of Massachusetts in 1891 and died January 23d, 1893.

WHILE

LINCOLN AS A TYPICAL AMERICAN

(Delivered in Philadelphia as a Funeral Oration)

HILE I speak to you to-day, the body of the President who ruled this people, is lying, honored and loved, in our city. It is impossible with that sacred presence in our midst for me to stand and speak of ordinary topics which occupy the pulpit. I must speak of him to-day; and I therefore undertake to do what I had intended to do at some future time, to invite you to study with me the character of Abraham Lincoln, the impulses of his life and the causes of his death. I know how hard it is to do it rightly, how impossible it is to do it worthily.