An Autobiography of Seventy Years, countrymen, while they have listened to his eloquent warnings, have not, it would seem, shown any inclination to insist that that liberty and self-government won by the sword, shall be the peaceful and blessed heritage of an alien and inferior people. Stripped of argument and rhetoric, his atti tude is simply this : that every nation or peo ple has an inalienable right to govern itself in its own way and according to its own lights; that our very origin and the Declaration of Independence forbid us of all people from holding an alien race in subjection; that our duty in the light of our origin and traditions, is to enable such alien people to obtain the blessings of lib•erty and self government, not to annex and govern them, and that our failure to raise ourselves to the full height of this duty will •eventually and inevitably blunt our own moral consciousness and lead us away from the primitive ideals for which two genera tions lived and died. To the plea that our .government is in all probability better than any government that the Filipinos would or could organize at this time, he would re ply that it is not their government. To •draw an illustration from British history: the supporters of the Stuart pretender urged that Hanoverian George spoke only German, while the Pretender spoke a per fect English. To this Sir Richard Steele gave the unanswerable reply that he did not care to be tyrannized over by any man even although he spoke the best English in the world. The Senator's noble and disinterested at titude has not as yet converted his own •countrymen, but "Every Filipino," he in forms us, "is in favor of his policy." The consciousness of this appreciation has con soled him in his loneliness and isolation, and he says, in speaking of it: "I would rather have the gratitude of the poor peo ple of the Philippine Islands, amid their
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sorrow, and have it true that what I may say or do has brought a ray of hope into the gloomy caverns in which the oppressed peoples of Asia dwell, than to receive a Ducal Coronet from every monarch in Eu rope, or command the applause of listening Senates and read my history in a nation's eyes. Enough has been said to prove, it is hoped, that the Autobiography of Seventy Years is a delightful book which throws a constant flood of light on its gentle and genial author. It is full of deeply interest ing passages; it teems with anecdotes of men distinguished in public life, and records many and precious observations of manners in his early days at home and expressions of people and customs in his various jour neys to and wanderings through the old home, as he is pleased to call England. It also throws light on public affairs in his beloved Massachusetts and in the nation at large; but it cannot be said, as previously stated more than once, to offer much to the student of affairs, or to the historian of the period of his public activity. It touches the surface of many things, but Senator Hoar never uncovers the troubled and in ward currents that go to make up our his tory. It is rather a book to make one love the man, and the picture it gives of the kindly author, his likes, which are many, and of his dislikes, which are few; of his weaknesses, which are mainly personal and somewhat akin to childlike simplicity; of the sources of his strength, which arc manly and pure in every detail, make this record a singularly delightful and at times a fasci nating work. It were indeed well for the country if every man were like George Frisbie Hoar. • ' • • • • • • Since the above was written Senator Hoar has departed this life, but the reviewer has been unwilling to recast th article in
