Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 16.pdf/777

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The Green Bag.

strongest tribute that a political opponent could pay to another and it is very honor able to Senator Hoar. Although a keen partisan, there are not a few occasions on which the Senator has gone out of his way and his party to do a good turn to a Demo crat. The cases of General Corse and Judge Putnam are additional instances. The Judge did not live long to enjoy the honor, but the act of Senator Hoar was no less gracious and Judge Jackson was en tirely worthy of the honor. As Senator Hoar says: "Howell E. Jackson had this ancient senatorial temperament. He never seemed to me to be thinking of either party or section or popular opinion, or of the opinion of other men; but only of public duty." And no less a person than an Attorney General said of Mr. Justice Jackson: "He was not so much a Senator who had been appointed Judge, as a Judge who had served for a time as a Senator." The chapters devoted to Mr. Hoar's ser vice in the Senate from his taking the oath of office to the present day contain much interesting, even important matter; but they do not lend themselves to quotation. The Senator would no doubt regard these various chapters and his part in them as of importance, else he would not have written them, and valuable they are. He has, however, himself singled out three in cidents in his life work as -of special mo ment, and to these the reader's attention may be briefly called. "If," he says, "on looking back, I were to select the things which I have done in public life in which I take most satisfaction, they would be, the speech in the Senate on the Fisheries Treaty, July 10, 1888; the letter denouncing the A. P. A., a secret, political association, organized for the purpose of ostracizing our Catholic fellow-citizens, and the numer ous speeches, letters and magazine articles

against the subjugation of the Philippine Islands." The question of the Newfoundland Fish eries is one of peculiarly local interest, but it has certainly risen at times to national importance. Mr. Hoar does not believe that any one argument, "certainly not my argument," he says, "caused the defeat of the Fisheries Treaty, negotiated by Mr. Joseph Chamberlain and Mr. Bayard during Mr. Cleveland's first administration." But Mr. Hoar does not underestimate the value of his argument, of which he says, in his outspoken and kindly way: "I discussed the subject with great earnestness, going fully into the history of the matter, and the merits of the Treaty. I think I may say without undue vanity that my speech was an important and interesting contribution to a very creditable chapter of our history." He is not, however, unjust to Mr. Bayard's mo tives, but he sincerely believed that Mr. Bayard was giving away much and getting nothing in return. His second claim to remembrance is his "A. P. A." letter given in full (vol. II., pp. 278-293). Mr. Hoar is right in singling this out as one of his achievements, and it is a great pity that this letter is not better known than it is; for it is manly from beginning to end and shows how keenly a moral question has always roused him to the full expression of his manhood. Mr. Hoar's third claim tq consideration is probably his strongest, and one which pos terity is not likely soon to forget. Whether we believe in colonial expansion or not, there is something pathetic as well as ma jestic in the Senator's championship of the Filipinos, for on this question his voice and his vote have not parted company. His own party has turned a deaf ear to his arguments; the Democratic party has hardly dared to rise to the question, and his