which Mr. Scott worked accorded perfectly with the propensities of his mind. He had a contempt for what he termed "outward flourishes"; his mind went to the core of every issue. If the subject were reconstruction or finance or the tariff or civil service or foreign policy or whatnot, he dealt with it not after the fashion of the mere journalistic recorder, but in the profounder spirit of the philosophic historian. Your average journalist is a mere popularizer of appropriated materials. He applies to current events conclusions pretty much always obvious and for the most temporary. Mr. Scott, sitting apart from all but the essential facts and exercising a true philosophic instinct, sought out the subtle links through which, in history and in logic, facts stand related to facts. He saw the essential always. He wore upon himself like an ample garment a splendid erudition under which he moved with entire ease; and it so possessed his mind that he could bring to bear upon any contemporary event all the lights of history and philosophy with a judgment unbiased by trivial incidents and petty considerations.
It is not within the purpose of this writing to consider the specific judgments of Mr. Scott in relation to public policies, still less to recite the story of the many battles of opinion in which he stood in the forefront. These phases of Mr. Scott's career form a separate theme which will be treated by another hand in this publication. But I hope that without invasion of that aspect of Mr. Scott's life which is to engage the pen of another, I may speak of his championship of one great cause—a championship which ran through many years, developing in their fullest power the ample resources of the man and which must, I think, in the final summing up of Mr. Scott's professional life, stand as the most imposing of his many public services. I refer to his advocacy of sound money as against recurrent attempts to inflate the currency of the country by issues of "fiat" paper and to debase the monetary standard by giving, or attempting to give, to silver an arbitrary parity with the world's standard of value, gold. Careful study of history had impressed upon Mr. Scott's mind the vital importance of
