nce. His
speeches are numerous, many of them brilliant, all of them well studied,
carefully phrazed, and exhaustive of the subject under consideration.
Collected from the scattered pages of ninety royal octavo volumes of
Congressional record, they would present an invaluable compendium of the
political events of the most important era through which the National
government has ever passed. When the history of this period shall be
impartially written, when war legislation, measures of reconstruction,
protection of human rights, amendments to the Constitution, maintenance
of public credit, steps toward specie resumption, true theories of
revenue, may be reviewed, unsurrounded by prejudice and disconnected
from partisanism, the speeches of Garfield will be estimated at their
true value, and will be found to comprise a vast magazine of fact and
argument, of clear analysis and sound conclusion. Indeed, if no other
authority were accessible, his speeches in the House of Representatives
from December, 1863, to June, 1880, would give a well-connected history
and complete defense of the important legislation of the seventeen
eventful years that constitute his parliamentary life. Far beyond that,
his speeches would be found to forecast many great measures yet to be
completed--measures which he knew were beyond the public opinion of the
hour, but which he confidently believed would secure popular approval
within the period of his own lifetime, and by the aid of his own
efforts.

"Differing as Garfield does, from the brilliant parliamentary leaders,
it is not easy to find his counterpart anywhere in the record of
American public life. He, perhaps, more nearly resembles Mr. Seward in
his supreme faith in the all-conquering power of a principle. He had the
love of learning, and the patient industry of investigation, to which
John Quincy Adams owes his prominence and his presidency. He had some of
those ponderous elements of mind which distinguished Mr. Webster, and
which, indeed, in all our public life have left the great Massachusetts
Senator without an intellectual peer.

"In English parliamentary history, as in our own, the leaders in the
House of Commons present points of essential difference from Garfield.
But some of his methods recall the best features in the strong,
independent course of Sir Robert Peel, to whom he had striking
resemblances in the type of his mind and in the habit of his speech. He
had all of Burke's love fo