134 WISCOISrSIN" ACADEMY SCIEIS'CES, ARTS, AND LETTERS, 



history, one is even ready to wish there had been a less exacting 

 standard for our early heroes. For, if ever men deserved the for- 

 mal and cordial commendation of a people by resolutions or other- 

 wise, it was they who, in the face of so great a parsonal and 

 common peril, pledged '' their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred 

 honor" i;o the establishment and maintenance of American Inde- 

 pendence. Nobl}' in the great drama of the Revolution, and no 

 less nobly in the founding of the Federal Government, they played 

 their part. Yet, where are recorded the thanks of the Federal 

 Congress, or of legislative assemblies in the States whereon they 

 shed the lustre of their names? 



What, then, does it mean that to-day, in face of this example of 

 the Fathers, ere the close of the fir.-'t hundred years of our national 

 existence, and ere the completion of the only national monument 

 to the Father of his country, we hear of legislative resolutions 

 thanking the Chief Magistrate of a nation, second in resources and 

 power to none other on the face of the earth, and his Secretary of 

 the Treasury, with others of lower official rank, for that, in the 

 fulness of titue — when all honest patriots are alarmed, if not ap- 

 palled at the corruption seen and suspected on every hand; wlien 

 venality, theft, and robbery stalk abroad and threaten a universal 

 disgrace as well as national ruin; — they, the President and a high 

 cabinet officer of his appointment, have shown a disposition to> 

 bring the villains to justice? It means a demoralization of the 

 public sentiment, the cause of which, and the remedy for which 

 demand a most serious consideration. 



A people may very properly, even in the most formal manner, as 

 by legislative resolution or enactment, express their grateful ap- 

 preciation of an important public service, when such service illus- 

 trates a superior wisdom supported by an exalted virtue. An occa- 

 sion for such expression is furnished when, in the time of public 

 danger or national trial, an officer charged with discretionary au- 

 thority, steadily holds his intellectual powers to the forming of just 

 judgments and lofty purposes, uninfluenced by personal prejudice- 

 or popular clamor, and bravely leads his countrymen and kind to- 

 take new steps on the road to a higher civilization. But surely an 

 occasion is not furnished when a public officer merely fulfills his 

 sworn duty as the executor of a plainly written statute of the land, 

 whether it be a law against frauds on the ballot-box or on the pub- 



