HIS SERVICES TO MANKIND. 613 sovereign will. And this, not by force but by argument and reason. The independent press is undoubtedly one of the beneficent logical developments of the free institutions established by the founders of our American Republic. But in giving that press character as representative of the whole people, armed, therefore, with power superior to that of party or of the state, the genius of Horace Greeley was preeminently originating and potential. And it is not impossible that the establisment thus of public journalism as a powerful means to the people of peaceful revolution, while not ceasing to be their daily teacher, may come to be generally regarded as amongst the greatest victories of freedom. A score of great journals, thoroughly independent, unbought and unpurchasable, are a safer defense of the rights and liberties of the people, than the constitutional obligations of all the partizans of all parties. But Horace Greeley not only rendered this service of incalculable value to his country by the establishment of The Tribune and the character his genius impressed upon it, making it the most powerful means of political influence which was ever exerted by reason and persuasion and peaceful appeal; but, as we have seen, he also conferred notable benefits upon literature, art, every good reform; encouraged, cheered every attempt at progress in every land; constantly directed all peoples onward and upward; fearlessly assailed every wrong and every abuse, utterly regardless of personal consequences to the editor; almost daily laboured to prepare the way whereby all peoples may settle national and international disputes, all the while eliminating progress, without appeal to the barbarism of war; but through the peaceful means of intelligent public opinion. If the sublime polity which Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright have so conspicuously advocated shall be realized: nations learning war no more, injustice and oppression giving way to the just rule of democracy: it will be found and cheerfully admitted that in bringing about a consummation so greatly to be wished, The New-York Tribune's early and powerful arguments in that behalf were of great and lasting value. Such, in briefest outline, were the inestimable services rendered his country and mankind by Horace Greeley. It will hardly be doubted by the candid that they were greater and better than those which many, if any, of his cotemporaries were able to perform. During all his wonderfully active life, and though the greatest honours were conferred upon him by friends and the widest renown by the world, yet he never ceased for an instant to be the devoted friend of the labouring man, himself ever remaining one of the People-plain, unostentatious, unsophisticated in the indirect ways of the world. He was not a perfect character. He made some mistakes; he was guilty of certain solecisms of speech and of breeding which were unfortunate, but never of any malignity or premeditated unkindness. He was a great, a good, an honest man, whose worse faults were rather those of manner than of character, and whose entire unselfishness, sublime philanthropy, magnanimity more than of the earth, work for man's progress and happiness, make a lesson which can forever be studied with profit; while the triumphs of his wonderful genius can only be appropriately recorded on the pages of that history which shall recount the most important, the most beneficent events in the annals of his country and of his times. APPENDIX A. MR. GREELEY IN CONGRESS. I. SPEECH ON RECRUITING IN THE ARMY. Reference has been made in the text to a speech made in Congress by Mr. Greeley on recruiting in the Army. The army appropriation bill being under discussion, the official report proceeds: The following item of the bill being under consideration: For expenses of recruiting, thirty-eight thousand and fifty-two dollars. Mr. Greeley moved to strike it out. Mr. G. (in explanation) said he did not believe Government should pay these thirty-eight thousand dollars for the recruting service of the army of the United States. Nothing like that amount of labour was required for this service. He believed, indeed, that an abundant supply of men for the army could be obtained without the expense of hiring men for the purpose, by merely putting up the flag, as was often done for hiring labourers on the railroads and other public works. In this case the Government was to pay thirty-eight thousand dollars for persuading men to serve them. This was done for one of two reasons: either the service itself was improper for men to engage in, or the pay was not what it ought to be. If the service was wrong, it ought to be discontinued; and if the pay was inadequate, it ought to be increased. There was no service on earth - certainly no branch of the public service in this country, in which so much robbery and wrong was perpetrated as in this mattter of recruiting. Recourse was had to intoxication, to fraud- to bribing men outside to bring in recruits for the United States army, by continually robbing wives of their husbands, and widows of their sons under circumstances which would ordinarily render the individual liable to indictment for fraud. He wished to inquire a little into this branch of the public expenditures. He had before him a statement of the total cost of war and warlike preparations by this Government for the last sixty years from 1789 to 1849-and it amounted to the large sum of $685,930,802.27. He did not believe there was any necessity for this large expenditure. The bill proposed to appropriate $5,425,867 for the military service of the United States for the present year; and in the naval appropriation bill it was proposed to set apart for the naval service $9,650,012. Total for warlike preparations, $15,079,878. Now, he desired to compare this with the cost of the military and naval service of the whole period of the eight years of Washington's administration. For the military service it was $9,244,027; for the naval service $10,078,102; total, $19,322,129. From this it appeared that there was now expended for warlike preparations in a single year almost as much as was expended during the whole period of the eight years of Washington's administration. During the four years of the administration of Thomas Jefferson-from 1802 to 1806-upon a retrenchment of the expenditures of his predecessor, the elder Adams, the expenditures for the naval and military service amounted to only $7,956,108, or less than the cost of the naval service alone for the current or ensuing year. During Washingtou's administration there was an army to be organized and a navy to construct-to create; and during the period referred to in Jefferson's administration the country was threatened with foreign wars. Wars were raging everywhere, and the whole world was rocking and tumbling. He considered one of the items of this expenditure. The country was having Indian wars every few years, which were very expensive. But how came it to pass, that Great |