Part 12

The fire of London, in September, 1666, raged from Sunday to Thursday, with the wind blowing a gale, reducing two-thirds of the city to ashes. Thirteen thousand two hundred houses were consumed, and eighty-nine churches, including St. Paul’s, covering three hundred and seventy-three acres within and sixty-three without the walls. The value of buildings and property burned was estimated at between ten and twelve millions sterling, which, making allowance for difference of values, now would be more than one hundred million dollars. I doubt if the population of London then was larger than that of Chicago. And yet an English historian, recounting this event, says, “Though severe at the time, this visitation contributed materially to the improvement of the city.”[129]

Ancient Rome had her terrible conflagration, hardly less sweeping, when populous quarters were devoured by the irresistible flame; and history records that out of this destruction sprang a new life.

Is there not in these examples a lesson of encouragement for Chicago sitting now in ashes? A great fire in other days was worse than a great fire now; for then it was borne in solitude by the place where it occurred; now the whole country rushes forward to bear it, making common cause with the sufferers. I cannot doubt that out of this great calamity, which we justly deplore, will spring improvement. Everything will be bettered. The city thus far has been a growth; it will become at once a creation. But future magnificence, filling the imagination, will not feed the hungry and clothe the naked, nor will it provide homes for the destitute. The future cannot take care of the present. This is our duty, and it is all expressed in Charity.

Other speakers followed. The resolutions were adopted, and a subscription was commenced at once.

RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF OUR COLORED FELLOW-CITIZENS.

LETTER TO THE NATIONAL CONVENTION OF COLORED CITIZENS AT COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA, OCTOBER 12, 1871.

This letter was read in the Convention October 24th, the sixth day of its sitting, and received a vote of thanks.

BOSTON, October 12, 1871.

DEAR SIR,--I am glad that our colored fellow-citizens are to have a Convention of their own. So long as they are excluded from rights or suffer in any way on account of color, they will naturally meet together in order to find a proper remedy; and since you kindly invite me to communicate with the Convention, I make bold to offer a few brief suggestions.

In the first place, you must at all times insist upon your rights; and here I mean not only those already accorded, but others still denied, all of which are contained in Equality before the Law. Wherever the law supplies a rule, there you must insist on Equal Rights. How much remains to be obtained you know too well in the experience of life.

Can a respectable colored citizen travel on steamboats or railways, or public conveyances generally, without insult on account of color? Let Governor Dunn of Louisiana describe his journey from New Orleans to Washington. Shut out from proper accommodation in the cars, the doors of the Senate Chamber opened to him, and there he found that equality which a railroad conductor had denied. Let our excellent friend, Frederick Douglass, relate his melancholy experience, when, on board the mail-boat of the Potomac and within sight of the Executive Mansion, he was thrust back from the supper-table, where his brother Commissioners were already seated. You know the outrage.

I might ask the same question with regard to hotels, and even the common schools. A hotel is a legal institution, and so is a common school, and as such each must be for the equal benefit of all. Nor can there be any exclusion from either on account of color. It is not enough to provide separate accommodations for colored citizens, even if in all respects as good as those of other persons. Equality is not found in any pretended equivalent, but only in equality; in other words, there must be no discrimination on account of color.

The discrimination is an insult, a hindrance, a bar, which not only destroys comfort and prevents equality, but weakens all other rights. The right to vote will have no security until your equal rights in the public conveyances, hotels, and common schools are at last established; but here you must insist for yourselves by speech, by petition, and by vote. Help yourselves, and others will help also.

The Civil Rights Law needs a supplement to cover these cases. This defect has been apparent from the beginning, and for a long time I have striven to remove it. A bill for this purpose, introduced by me, is now pending in the Senate. Will not colored fellow-citizens see that those in power no longer postpone this essential safeguard? Surely here is an object worthy of effort. Nor has the Republican party done its work until this is accomplished.

Is it not better to establish all our own people in the enjoyment of equal rights before we seek to bring others within the sphere of our institutions, to be treated as Frederick Douglass was on his way to the President from San Domingo? It is easy to see that a small part of the means, the energy, and the determined will spent in the expedition to San Domingo, and in the prolonged war-dance about that island, with menace to the Black Republic of Hayti, would have secured all our colored fellow-citizens in the enjoyment of equal rights. Of this there can be no doubt.

Among cardinal objects is Education, which must be insisted on; here again must be equality, side by side with the alphabet. It is vain to teach equality, if you do not practise it. It is vain to recite the great words of the Declaration of Independence, if you do not make them a living reality. What is a lesson without example?

As all are equal at the ballot-box, so must all be equal at the common school. Equality in the common school is the preparation for equality at the ballot-box. Therefore do I put this among the essentials of education.

In asserting your rights, you will not fail to insist upon justice to all, under which is necessarily included purity in the Government. Thieves and money-changers, whether Democrats or Republicans, must be driven out of our Temple. Let Tammany Hall and Republican self-seekers be overthrown. There should be no place for either. Thank God, good men are coming to the rescue. Let them, while uniting against corruption, insist upon Equal Rights for All,--also the suppression of lawless violence, whether in the Ku-Klux-Klan outraging the South, or illicit undertakings outraging the Black Republic of Hayti.

To these inestimable objects add Specie Payments, and you will have a platform which ought to be accepted by the American people. Will not our colored fellow-citizens begin this good work? Let them at the same time save themselves and save the country.

These are only hints, which I submit to the Convention, hoping that its proceedings will tend especially to the good of the colored race.

Accept my thanks and best wishes, and believe me faithfully yours,

CHARLES SUMNER.

HON. H. M. TURNER.

ONE TERM FOR PRESIDENT.

RESOLUTION AND REMARKS IN THE SENATE, DECEMBER 21, 1871.

MR. PRESIDENT,--In pursuance of notice already given, I ask leave to introduce a Joint Resolution proposing an Amendment of the Constitution confining the President to one term. In introducing this Amendment I content myself with a brief remark.

This is the era of Civil Service Reform, and the President of the United States, in formal Message, has already called our attention to the important subject, and made recommendations with regard to it.[130] It may be remembered that I hailed that Message at once, as it was read from the desk. I forbore then to observe that I missed one recommendation, a very important recommendation, without which all the other recommendations, I fear, may be futile. I missed a recommendation in conformity with the best precedents of our history, and with the opinions of illustrious men, that the Constitution be amended so as to confine the President to one term.

Sir, that is the initial point of Civil Service Reform; that is the first stage in the great reform. The scheme of the President is the play of “Hamlet” without Hamlet. I propose by the Amendment that I offer to see that Hamlet is brought into the play. I send the resolution to the Chair.

MR. BAYARD. I should like to have that paper read for the information of the Senate.

THE PRESIDENT _pro tempore_. The Joint Resolution will be read at length.

The Chief Clerk read as follows:--

Joint Resolution proposing an Amendment of the Constitution, confining the President to One Term.

Whereas for many years there has been an increasing conviction among the people, without distinction of party, that one wielding the vast patronage of the President should not be a candidate for reëlection, and this conviction has found expression in the solemn warnings of illustrious citizens, and in repeated propositions for an Amendment of the Constitution confining the President to one term:

Whereas Andrew Jackson was so fully impressed by the peril to Republican Institutions from the temptations acting on a President, who, wielding the vast patronage of his office, is a candidate for reëlection, that, in his first Annual Message, he called attention to it;[131] that, in his second Annual Message, after setting forth the design of the Constitution “to secure the independence of each department of the Government, and promote the healthful and equitable administration of all the trusts which it has created,” he did not hesitate to say, “The agent most likely to contravene this design of the Constitution is the Chief Magistrate,” and then proceeded to declare, “In order particularly that his appointment may as far as possible be placed beyond the reach of any improper influences; in order that he may approach the solemn responsibilities of the highest office in the gift of a free people uncommitted to any other course than the strict line of constitutional duty; and that the securities for this independence may be rendered as strong as the nature of power and the weakness of its possessor will admit, I cannot too earnestly invite your attention to the propriety of promoting such an Amendment of the Constitution as will render him ineligible after one term of service”;[132] and then, again, in his third Annual Message, the same President renewed this patriotic appeal:[133]

Whereas William Henry Harrison, following in the footsteps of Andrew Jackson, felt it a primary duty, in accepting his nomination as President, to assert the One-Term principle in these explicit words: “Among the principles proper to be adopted by any Executive sincerely desirous to restore the Administration to its original simplicity and purity, I deem the following to be of prominent importance: first, to confine his service to a single term”;[134] and then, in public speech during the canvass which ended in his election, declared, “If the privilege of being President of the United States had been limited to one term, the incumbent would devote all his time to the public interest, and there would be no cause to misrule the country”; and he concluded by pledging himself “before Heaven and Earth, if elected President of these United States, to lay down, at the end of the term, faithfully, that high trust at the feet of the people”:[135]

Whereas Henry Clay, though differing much from Andrew Jackson, united with him on the One-Term principle, and publicly enforced it in a speech, June 27, 1840, where, after asking for “a provision to render a person ineligible to the office of President of the United States after a service of one term,” he explained the necessity of the Amendment by saying, “Much observation and deliberate reflection have satisfied me that too much of the time, the thoughts, and the exertions of the incumbent are occupied during his first term in securing his reëlection: the public business consequently suffers”;[136] and then, again, in a letter dated September 13, 1842, while setting forth what he calls “principal objects engaging the common desire and the common exertion of the Whig party,” the same statesman specifies “an Amendment of the Constitution, limiting the incumbent of the Presidential office to a single term”:[137]

Whereas the Whig party, in its National Convention at Baltimore, May 1, 1844, nominated Henry Clay as President and Theodore Frelinghuysen as Vice-President, with a platform where “a single term for the Presidency” is declared to be among “the great principles of the Whig party, principles inseparable from the public honor and prosperity, to be maintained and advanced by the election of these candidates”;[138] which declaration was echoed at the great National Ratification Convention the next day, addressed by Daniel Webster, where it was resolved that “the limitation of a President to a single term” was among the objects “for which the Whig party will unceasingly strive until their efforts are crowned with a signal and triumphant success”:[139]

Whereas, in the same spirit and in harmony with these authorities, another statesman, Benjamin F. Wade, at the close of his long service in the Senate, most earnestly urged an Amendment of the Constitution confining the President to one term, and in his speech on that occasion, February 20, 1866, said, “The offering of this resolution is no new impulse of mine, for I have been an advocate of the principle contained in it for many years, and I have derived the strong impressions which I entertain on the subject from a very careful observation of the workings of our Government during the period that I have been an observer of them; I believe it has been very rare that we have been able to elect a President of the United States who has not been tempted to use the vast powers intrusted to him according to his own opinions to advance his reëlection”; and then, after exposing at length the necessity of this Amendment, the veteran Senator further declared, “There are defects in the Constitution, and this is among the most glaring; all men have seen it; and now let us have the nerve, let us have the resolution to come up and apply the remedy”:[140]

Whereas these testimonies, revealing intense and wide-spread convictions of the American people, are reinforced by the friendly observations of De Tocqueville, the remarkable Frenchman to whom our country is under such great and lasting obligations, in his famous work on “Democracy in America,” where he says, in words of singular clearness and force, “Intrigue and corruption are vices natural to elective Governments; but when the chief of the State can be reëlected, these vices extend themselves indefinitely, and compromise the very existence of the country: when a simple candidate seeks success by intrigue, his manœuvres can operate only over a circumscribed space; when, on the contrary, the chief of the State himself enters the lists, he borrows for his own use the force of the Government: in the first case, it is a man, with his feeble means; in the second, it is the State itself, with its immense resources, that intrigues and corrupts”:[141] and then, again, the same great writer, who had studied our country so closely, testifies: “It is impossible to consider the ordinary course of affairs in the United States without perceiving that the desire to be reëlected dominates the thoughts of the President; that the whole policy of his Administration tends toward this point; that his least movements are made subservient to this object; that, especially as the moment of crisis approaches, individual interest substitutes itself in his mind for the general interest”:[142]

Whereas all these concurring voices, where patriotism, experience, and reason bear testimony, have additional value at a moment when the country is looking anxiously to a reform of the civil service, for the plain reason that the peril from the Chief Magistrate, so long as he is exposed to temptation, surpasses that from any other quarter, and thus the first stage in this much-desired reform is the One-Term principle, to the end that the President, who exercises the appointing power, reaching into all parts of the country and holding in subserviency a multitudinous army of office-holders, shall be absolutely without motive or inducement to employ it for any other purpose than the public good:

And whereas the character of Republican Institutions requires that the Chief Magistrate shall be above all suspicion of using the machinery of which he is the official head to promote his own personal aims: Therefore,

_Be it resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives, &c._, That the following Article is hereby proposed as an Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and, when ratified by the Legislatures of three-fourths of the several States, shall be valid, to all intents and purposes, as part of the Constitution; to wit:

ARTICLE ----.

SEC. 1. No person who has once held the office of President of the United States shall be thereafter eligible to that office.

SEC. 2. This Amendment shall not take effect until after the 4th March, 1873.

On motion of Mr. Sumner, the resolution was ordered to lie on the table, and be printed.

THE BEST PORTRAITS IN ENGRAVING.

ARTICLE IN “THE CITY,” AN ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE, NEW YORK, JANUARY 1, 1872.

Engraving is one of the Fine Arts, and in this beautiful family has been the especial hand-maiden of Painting. Another sister is now coming forward to join this service, lending to it the charm of color. If, in our day, the “Chromo” can do more than Engraving, it cannot impair the value of the early masters. With them there is no rivalry or competition. Historically, as well as æsthetically, they will be masters always.

Everybody knows something of engraving, as of printing, with which it was associated in origin. School-books, illustrated papers, and shop-windows are the ordinary opportunities open to all. But, while creating a transient interest, or perhaps quickening the taste, they furnish little with regard to the art itself, especially in other days. And yet, looking at an engraving, like looking at a book, may be the beginning of a new pleasure and a new study.

Each person has his own story. Mine is simple. Suffering from continued prostration, disabling me from the ordinary activities of life, I turned to engravings for employment and pastime. With the invaluable assistance of that devoted connoisseur, the late Dr. Thies, I went through the Gray Collection at Cambridge, enjoying it like a picture-gallery. Other collections in our country were examined also. Then, in Paris, while undergoing severe medical treatment, my daily medicine for weeks was the vast cabinet of engravings, then called Imperial, now National, counted by the million, where was everything to please or instruct. Thinking of those kindly portfolios, I make this record of gratitude, as to benefactors. Perhaps some other invalid, seeking occupation without burden, may find in them the solace that I did. Happily, it is not necessary to visit Paris for the purpose. Other collections, on a smaller scale, will furnish the same remedy.

In any considerable collection Portraits occupy an important place. Their multitude may be inferred, when I mention that in one series of portfolios in the Paris Cabinet I counted no less than forty-seven portraits of Franklin and forty-three of Lafayette, with an equal number of Washington, while all the early Presidents were numerously represented. But in this large company there are very few possessing artistic value. The great portraits of modern times constitute a very short list, like the great poems or histories; and it is the same with engravings as with pictures. Sir Joshua Reynolds, explaining the difference between an historical painter and a portrait-painter, remarks that the former “paints man in general; a portrait-painter a particular man, and consequently a defective model.”[143] A portrait, therefore, may be an accurate presentment of its subject without æsthetic value.

But here, as in other things, genius exercises its accustomed sway without limitation. Even the difficulties of “a defective model” did not prevent Raphael, Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens, Velasquez, or Van Dyck from producing portraits precious in the history of Art. It would be easy to mention heads by Raphael yielding in value to only two or three of his larger masterpieces, like the Dresden Madonna. Charles the Fifth stooped to pick up the pencil of Titian, saying, “It becomes Cæsar to serve Titian!” True enough; but this unprecedented compliment from the imperial successor of Charlemagne attests the glory of the portrait-painter. The female figures of Titian, so much admired under the names of Flora, La Bella, his Daughter, his Mistress, and even his Venus were portraits from life. Rembrandt turned from his great triumphs in his own peculiar school to portraits of unwonted power; so also did Rubens, showing that in this department his universality of conquest was not arrested. To these must be added Velasquez and Van Dyck, each of infinite genius, who won fame especially as portrait-painters. And what other title has Sir Joshua himself?

Historical pictures are often collections of portraits arranged so as to illustrate an important event. Such is the famous _Peace of Münster_, by Terburg, just presented by a liberal Englishman to the National Gallery at London. Here are the plenipotentiaries of Spain and the United Provinces joining in the ratification of the treaty which, after eighty years of war, gave peace and independence to the latter.[144] The engraving by Suyderhoef is rare and interesting. Similar in character is _The Death of Chatham_, by Copley, where the illustrious statesman is surrounded by the peers he had been addressing,--every one a portrait. To this list must be added the pictures by Trumbull in the Rotunda of the Capitol at Washington, especially _The Declaration of Independence_, in which Thackeray took a sincere interest. Standing before these, the author and artist said to me, “These are the best pictures in the country,”--and he proceeded to remark on their honesty and fidelity; but doubtless their real value is in their portraits.

Unquestionably the finest assemblage of portraits anywhere is that of the artists occupying two halls in the Uffizi Gallery at Florence, being autographs contributed by the masters themselves. Here is Raphael, with chestnut-brown hair, and dark eyes full of sensibility, painted when he was twenty-three, and known by the engraving of Forster,--Giulio Romano, in black and red chalk on paper,--Masaccio, one of the fathers of painting, much admired,--Leonardo da Vinci, beautiful and grand,--Titian, rich and splendid,--Pietro Perugino, remarkable for execution and expression,--Albert Dürer, rigid, but masterly,--Gerard Dow, finished according to his own exacting style,--and Reynolds, with fresh English face: but these are only examples of this incomparable collection, which was begun as far back as the Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici, and has been happily continued to the present time. Here are the lions, painted by themselves,--except, perhaps, the foremost of all, Michel Angelo, whose portrait seems the work of another. The impression from this collection is confirmed by that of any group of historic artists. Their portraits excel those of statesmen, soldiers, or divines, as is easily seen by engravings accessible to all. The engraved heads in Arnold Houbraken’s biographies of the Dutch and Flemish painters, in three volumes, are a family of rare beauty.[145]