Page:Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (Volume One).djvu/264

Rh experience in affairs give him an education in that particular. Of his long career in the Senate only his speeches remain. During the period of my acquaintance with him there, he introduced a large number of bills, several of them upon matters of finance, but none, as far as I can recall them, stood the test either of logic or experience. From his seat in the Senate he was able to affect and perhaps even to control the opinions of the country upon the slavery question, and thus indirectly he helped to shape the policy of the Republican Party. His knowledge of European diplomacy was far greater than that of any other Senator and greater, probably than that of any other American, excepting only Mr. Bancroft Davis. It was his good fortune to live and act in a revolutionary period. Had he fallen upon quiet times, when the ordinary affairs of men and states are the only topics of thought and discussion, his career as a public man, if such a career should have been opened to him, would have been brief and valueless alike to himself and to the public. In all his life, he was a victim to authority in affairs, and a slave to note- and common-place books.

Henry Wilson, Sumner’s future colleague in the Senate of the United States, had large influence in securing the adoption of measures, but his learning was inadequate to the preparation of specific provisions of a constitution. Indeed, in his later years, he was unequal to the work of composing and writing with even a fair degree of accuracy. But his judgment of the popular feeling was unequalled, and he had capacity for shaping public opinion, whenever it was found to be hostile or uncertain, far superior to that of any of his contemporaries. He was not an orator, but his style of speaking was effective, and his speeches, as they appeared in the columns of the newspapers, would bear the test of ordinary criticism. He was a thorough politician who aimed to have things right, but who would not hesitate to use