If the Duke of Wellington was a great captain and a poor minister, the British people show their gratitude by remembering his brilliant successes in war and generously forgetting his failures in peace. If the Duke of Wellington could rise up from the dead to-day, hale and hearty, the British people would make him general again, but they would make him minister no more. And if General Grant meets with a similar fate at the hands of his most appreciative fellow-citizens, he has no reason to complain of “the ingratitude of republics.”
Sir, I do not want this Republic to be ungrateful. No, sir, let us pay all our debts of gratitude to the utmost farthing. In our school-boy days we were apt to grow enthusiastic over the stem republican spirit of ancient Greece and Rome. In the history of Greece we read of Miltiades, who saved the independence of his republic on the field of Marathon, and then died in chains. In the history of Rome we read of Manlius, who, by his resolute bravery, repulsed the barbarians from the Capitol, and on the very theater of his exploit he was precipitated from the Tarpeian rock. And of neither of them is it recorded that he was guilty of acts more dangerous to republican liberty than those we have been now discussing.
Sir, nothing could be farther from my mind than to recommend the punishment inflicted upon the Greek and the Roman hero as examples worthy of imitation. However much more grievous the transgressions now before us may be than those of Miltiades and Manlius, surely nobody here thinks of chains and Tarpeian rocks. Let all these evil deeds pass without the correction which the Constitution provides for them. We all are ready, even in our judgment, to temper justice with gratitude and charity. Yes; let us be grateful. It is true, he who has deserved well of the Republic should never forget,
