GENERAL GRANT'S ADMINISTRATION. 219 Note 95. GENERAL GRANT'S ADMINISTRATION. THAT General Grant's administrations were marred by conspicuous errors and mistakes, his most ardent admirers now willingly concede; but that they sprang from ignoble or ambitious motives on his part, or that they were the acts of a man heedless or careless of the public good, his coldest critic will not now assert. The times in which he was called to act were full of peril. The passions which the war had roused had not yet subsided. New questions of policy, new and complicated problems of government confronted him; and under such circumstances to err was not only human, it was inevitable. But it was not these things alone that rendered the position of President Grant difficult. He was a man of the most confiding and trustful nature, a man whose training in arms had developed in a high degree the sentiments of honor, fidelity, and obedience to the demands of duty. He seemed unable to realize that other men could be swayed more powerfully by motives of personal success, personal gain, and private greed than by the high demands of honor. Thus it happened that adventurers, men who were in politics as a trade, taking advantage of the large, open, and ingenuous nature of the President only to betray it and the trusts reposed in them, involved him in complications which brought upon him much unmerited personal censure, and left a cloud upon an administration that was distinguished by achievements as splendid as any which were accomplished by him in the field. Later events in his career brought into sharper relief this great vulnerable point in the character of General Grant, to which his failures as a ruler may be attributed. When the commercial world was startled by the announcoment of the failure of the banking house of Grant & Ward, when the name of the man, upon whom the honors of civilization had been exhausted, into whose lap fortune had poured the full tide of favor, was mentioned in connection with the most stupendous of defalcations and swindles, the American people stood amazed and astounded. But when, day after day, through the courts and newspaper investigation, the hidden facts were, little by little, revealed; when the tangled web of chicane and fraud in which he unwittingly had been enmeshed was rent and ravelled; when from his dying bed, and as it seemed, beating back for an hour the foe that beleaguered his life, he rose to tell under oath the simple story of his confidence abused, his trust betrayed, and his good name coined for gold by others; when upon the altar of his honor he placed the trophies of his victories, the princely gifts and priceless relics of travel and adventure; when out of the ruins of the house of Grant & Ward, the familiar figure of the sturdy old General slowly emerged, dusty, battered, begrimed, but without the smell of personal dishonesty upon his garments, the great heart of the American people beat with new joy and pride, to know that the man who never yet played false to a public obligation, who never yet faltered before a public duty, had not in his old age, and in the plenitude of his honors betrayed a private trust. Then they saw, as never before, that it was the same guileless and ingenuous nature that adventurers in Wall Street had victimized, that had been victimized ten years before by adventurers in Washington. Out of a life and career so strange, so romantic, so fruitful, history will hereafter delight to gather lessons, which we, standing so close to them, cannot see nor read. There is, however, one fact in them, quite obvious indeed, but which here and now must be a source of deepest satisfaction to every American heart. It is the oft-repeated truth, illustrated so many times in the lives of our great men, but never more magnificently than in that of General Grant, that the genius and character of our institutions place no obstacles in the pathway of aspiring worth; that there is an avenue open from every dwelling in the land along which the humblest child may walk to public honor and station, THE MORAL LAW FOR NATIONS. 223 Note 96. THE MORAL LAW FOR NATIONS. (Abridged.) 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. Crowns, coronets, mitres, military display, the pomp of war, wide colonies and a huge empire are all trifles, light as air, 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 government. 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 scimetar upon a platform as a symbol of Mars, for to Mars alone they built altars and offered sacrifices. To this scimetar 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 these 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 scimetar? The moral law was not written for men in their individual character alone: but it was written as well for nations. 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, 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. JOHN BRIGHT. LASCA. Note 97. I WANT free life and I want fresh air : And Lasca! Lasca used to ride On a mouse-gray mustang close to my side, From her little head to her little feet She was swayed in her suppleness to and fro That grows on the edge of a Kansas bluff, And wars with the wind when the weather is rough, Is like this Lasca, this love of mine. She would hunger that I might eat, Would take the bitter and leave me the sweet; To a glorious girl on the Alamo, She drew from her girdle a dear little dagger, That I quite forgave her. Scratches don't count Her eye was brown—a deep, deep brown! And something in her smile and frown, Showed that there ran in each blue vein, The air was heavy, the night was hot, |