ns, including myself. The
offer was communicated to me by Mr. Evarts who was, at that
time, Secretary of State. But there were many good reasons
why I could not accept it. The offer was made to Governor
Alexander H. Bullock, a member of the little society of which
I have spoken. I was myself authorized by the President to
communicate his desire to Governor Bullock. His answer, declining
of account of the condition of his family, will be found in
the life prefixed to the published volume of his speeches.

Now, if Governor Bullock had accepted the appointment, which
was undoubtedly very attractive to him, what Mr. Lowell did
in England would not have been done. He will doubtless go
down in literature as a great poet. But it seems to me he
is entitled to an equal rank among the prose writers of the
country, and indeed among the prose writers of the English
language of our time. His admirable address on Democracy,
the delightful address as President of the Wordsworth Society,
several estimates of the British poets, delivered by him on
various occasions in England when he was Minister there, are
among the very best examples of his work in prose.

APPENDIX I

It was upon Mr. Sherman's motion that the words, "Common Defence
and General Welfare," which have played so important a part
in the construction of the Constitution, were introduced into
that instrument. He proposed to add to the taxing clause
the words, "for the payment of said debts and for the defraying
of expenses that shall be incurred for the defence and general
welfare."

This proposition, according to Mr. Madison, was disagreed
to as being unnecessary. It then obtained only the single
vote of Connecticut. But three days afterward Mr. Sherman
moved and obtained the appointment of a Committee, of which
he was a member, to which this and several subjects were committed.
That Committee reported the clause in the shape in which it
now stands, and it was adopted unanimously.

Its adoption is an instance of Mr. Sherman's great tenacity,
and his power to bring the body, of which he was a member,
to his own way of thinking in the end, however unwilling in
the beginning. This phrase had played not only an important
but a decisive part in the great debate between a strict construction
of the Constitution and the construction which has prevailed
and made it the law of the being of a great National life.

This story is well told in Farrar's "Manual of