the cause which has been pleaded in vain by his open sore for ages, lying as he was at the gate of Dives.

The spectre of a social revolution has been happily unknown in England - unknown for this among other reasons — that the duties of the wealthy towards the suffering classes have been- I dare not say adequately, but largely recognized among us for a great number of years. But the immense disparities of our society its masses, its increasing masses, of poverty its vast accumulations of wealth-present a contrast which year by year may well cause, as it does cause,. increasing anxiety; and this anxiety can only be lessened, if those to whom God has given wealth and influence lose no opportunity at their disposal of supplying the wants and bettering the position of their poorer fellow countrymen.

All the

Here is Hospital Sunday upon us,- a great, a blessed occasion for the fruitful exercise of pure benevolence. common objections to charitable effort are silent here. The social and political economists do not warn us to-day that we demoralize the poor when we bring them the highest medical skill and knowledge as they lie on their bed of pain. The financiers do not suggest that our alms are spent partly or wholly on the way to the object for which we give them. And at the gates of the hospitals, those true temples of compassion, our controversies are silent. Those who know most of our Lord and Saviour those who know less or least about him those even who do not own the empire of his ever blessed name agree as to the urgency of his precept and his blessing, "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." Lazarus is close to us. Hundreds of thousands in this vast city have succeeded to his inheritance; and if we, the servants of Christ, would not be as was Dives here and hereafter, we must not wait for larger means, for more striking

occasions, for more commanding motives to self-sacrifice than we have.

We must enter now the secret chambers of our own hearts. We must listen to all that God has taught us individually of his own astonishing mercy to us in Jesus Christ—of our utter need of it. For us Christians, Christ is Lazarus to the end of time, coming to us from the dead to warn us of our duty, receiving in the persons of his poor what we give as given to himself. Surely no social catastrophe, no unforeseen providence, no palpable miracle, could restrain us more effectually than his boundless, his patient, his unmerited love— than those divine words of his which faith, it seems to me, must trace over the door of every hospital: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ze have done it unto me."

R

CONKLING

OSCOE CONKLING, a noted American politician, was born at Albany, New York, October 30, 1829. He was educated at Mount Washington Collegiate Institute in New York city, and after pursuing the study of law at Utica, New York, was admitted to the Oneida County bar in 1850. Here he soon became conspicuous for his abilities, and was especially noted for his successful management of criminal cases. He took an active interest in politics and was mayor of Utica in 1858. In the year following he was sent to Congress as a Republican representative and after the outbreak of the Civil War stoutly upheld the Union cause. He failed of re-election in 1862 and practised his profession in Utica until in 1864 he was again returned to Congress. In 1867 he was elected to the national Senate. He took a leading part in the debate on reconstruction measures, opposing the policy of President Johnson with great vigor, and heartily deploring the failure of the impeachment proceedings against him. He was a zealous supporter of the administrations of President Grant, over which he exerted almost a controlling influence in certain directions, and in 1880 ardently championed the nomination of Grant for a third term, but was finally persuaded to acquiesce in the nomination of Garfield. Soon after Garfield's inauguration Conkling and his colleague Platt withdrew from the Senate on account of the President's assumption of the control of official appointments in New York, which the Senate confirmed. The remainder of Conkling's career was spent in New York city in the exercise of his profession. In 1882 he declined the offer of a seat on the Supreme Bench of the United States as associate-justice, tendered him by President Arthur, and refusing all inducements to return to public life remained unreconciled till his death, which occurred in New York city, April 18, 1888. Among his most noted speeches are the oration in the Senate in 1867 on the proposed impeachment of Henry Smythe, and a brief speech on the Cincinnati convention of 1880 nominating Grant for a third term in the presidency. Conkling was a man of fine powers but imperious and self-willed.

SUMMING-UP IN THE HADDOCK COURT-MARTIAL 1

M

DELIVERED AUGUST, 1865

AY IT PLEASE THE COURT,- Happily for the honor of the military profession, and for the fair fame of our land, prosecutions such as this have, until of late, been unknown in our history. In olden time, and

1 Used by permission of A. R. Conkling.

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in later time, a commission in the army was a certificate of character and a passport everywhere. But the Rebellion, now ended, seems to have been appointed to illustrate, in manifold ways, the shame not less than the glory of humanity. A vessel tossed and groaning in a gale, a crew heroically manful, and a myriad of sharks following the ship—such is a faithful emblem of our condition during the mighty convulsion which has just subsided.

The nation was in the last peril of existence. The continent quaked under the tramp of an uncounted host, eager, from general to private, to suffer all, and dare all, for the salvation of the government of their fathers. But with them came knaves, titled and even shoulder-strapped, a darkening cloud of vampires, gorging themselves upon the heart's blood of their country. Shoddy contractors, bounty gamblers and base adventurers found their way even into the army, in order that they might the better, under patriotic pretensions, make to themselves gain of the woes of the community.

And accordingly spectacles like this trial have come to be familiar to the public eye. Officers are put to the bar of justice for crimes deserving rank among the baser felonies. Whether such instances shall continue, depends largely upon the result of exposures of which this trial is a somewhat conspicuous one. It is the peculiar privilege of the army that its honor is confided to its own keeping solely.

Infractions of its integrity are triable before soldiers alone, and thus the officers of the army become the guardians and avengers of its purity and honor. Such a prerogative is the property of no other profession, and it imposes responsibilities in the ratio of its exclusiveness. In one sense, this trial relates to the morale of the army. In another and a broader sense, it relates to the universal interest of the whole public. The

war has ushered in an epoch of heroes and thieves. A carnival of venality has raged, until business connected with the government has become one grand masquerade of fraud.

Courts of every grade are kept open. The national jurisprudence, civil and military, is administered in splendid expense and with superfluous appointment. Petty offenders and common culprits are the vermin destroyed by the great machinery of justice, while right is humbled and baffled, if not abashed, in the presence of criminals too great to be punished.

A prolific cause of this is the free-masonry of profitable crime. Accusations, such as you sit to try, usually involve, as they do in this case, the impunity of many men. The prosecution must encounter, as it has done here, classes and combinations; and the result of pursuing offenders of such a grade, with the shrewdness, the money, the facilities they possess, is certain to be abortive unless special and exceptional effort is employed. Therefore, special and exceptional effort should be made. Whenever an instance occurs of guilt, traceable to one in an official station of power and sacredness, its exposure and punishment is a triumph of right, which should be emphasized by every salutary lesson which the fact can be made to enforce.

Such is, fortunately, the opinion of the government. Such is the undoubting faith of him selected to conduct this prosecution.

The arraignment of the accused proceeds upon the distinct avowal that it is not only justifiable and right, but the solemn duty of the government to ferret out those iniquities which have marred the sublimest moral spectacle of all time. The prosecution illustrates the principle that no partisanship of the criminal toward the administration, that no chagrin which