GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR. 767 



ure of his statesmanship, just the qualities which should have alienated 

 support. He outgrew these faults, as he showed best by his jests about 

 them." 



All this is true and candid. Mr. "Williams's error comes, I think, in 

 assuming it as the highest merit attributable to a public man that he had 

 invariably stood by his party in the end, however he might criticise it. 

 Not such was the standard of merit of the earlier teachers, the Conscience 

 Whigs, who first taught Senator Hoar the path of freedom. Charles 

 Sumner, Charles Francis Adams, Jolin G. Palfrey, — these were the 

 men who first brought him into public life by showing the higher 

 strength required to forsake one's party. In the first impulse of youth 

 he had done this, but in later life he showed it to be often, in the long 

 run, impossible for him to make the required sacrifice. So far as his 

 speeches went, no one can doubt that they had plenty of pluck in 

 them. 



A man, after all, judges himself in his autobiography. It will one 

 day be recognized that in an age of great self-devotion ajid great 

 sacrifices, Senator Hoar made many small sacrifices, but no large ones ; 

 and was amply rewarded by filling in return, for the greater jjart of his 

 active life, the position held highest by all American public men, — higher 

 than even that of President, as being more permanent. It is absurd to 

 compare his career for an instant with that of Sumner in respect to sacri- 

 fices, any more than in regard to scholarship ; or with the lifelong sacri- 

 fice made by a man like Wendell Phillips, for whom Mr. Hoar frankly 

 expressed his want of sympathy. Wendell Phillips was incomparably 

 the superior of all around him in requisite ability for public life. There 

 were occasions when there was needed only the slightest sacrifice of prin- 

 ciple in him to be the head of a successful party and to be launched in 

 that official career for which every attribute in him except conscience 

 longed. I myself know by his own testimony that it was for this public 

 life alone he yearned, but he forbore it. To those who knew the period 

 and place which Mr. Hoar's autobiography describes, there is something 

 almost pathetic in the types of men whom he holds up to admirers in 

 Worcester — second-rate politicians, of whom he makes heroes — and, 

 on the other hand, in the importance attached to the rescue of a frightened 

 slave-catcher by a gathering of men, half in play, who piloted him to the 

 railway station. 



The severe test usually came later with Senator Hoar as the moment 

 for voting drew near. Meeting with direct and unequivocal opposition, he 

 was only strengthened by it. Reiterate it, and he sometimes came to re- 



