THADDEUS STEVENS manners and who fancy that the attitude of the old school lawyers and politicians toward each other was always so dignified and unruffled. It happened that Mr. Stevens (who, in this instance, at least, had absorbed Jefferson's sentiment that cities were "sores of the body politic), favored a limited legislative representation in Philadelphia — just as a later convention actually engrafted upon the fundamental law a restriction in senatorial representation which a most thoroughly regenerated execu tive and legislature have both found an in surmountable obstacle to the constitutional enforcement of the Constitution. Mr. Mere dith, resenting the bucolic reflection upon urban rights, spoke of Stevens as the "Great Unchained of Adams," and called him even worse names; whereupon — imagine the feelings of a polite Philadelphian — the ar tillery of Gettysburg thus blazed forth : "The extraordinary course of the gentle man from Philadelphia has astonished me. During the greater part of his concerted personal tirade I was at a loss to know what course had driven him beside himself. I could not imagine on what boiling cauldron he had been sitting to make him foam with all the fury of a wizard who had been con cocting poison from bitter herbs. But when he came to mention Masonry, I saw the cause of his grief and malice. He unfor tunately is a votary and tool of the 'hand maid,' and feels and resents the injury she has sustained. I have often before endured such assaults from her subjects. But no personal abuse, however foul or ungentlemanly, shall betray me into passion, or make me forget the command of my temper, or induce me to reply in a similar strain. I will not degrade myself to the level of a blackguard to imitate any man, however respectable. The gentleman, among other flattery, has intimated that I have venom without fangs. Sir, I needed not that gentleman's admonitions to remind me of my weakness. But I hardly need fangs, for I never make offensive personal assaults; however, I may, sometimes, in my own de fense, turn my fangless jaws upon my as sailants with such grip as I may. But it is well that with such great strength that gentleman has so little venom. I have little
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to boast of, either in matter or manners, but rustic and rude as is my education, des titute as I am of the polished manners and city politeness of that gentleman, I have a sufficiently strong native sense of decency not to answer arguments by low, gross, per sonal abuse. I sustained propositions which I deemed beneficial to the whole state. Nor will I be driven from my course by the gentleman from the city or the one from the county of Philadelphia. I shall fearlessly discharge my duty, however low, ungentlemanly, and indecent personal abuse may be heaped upon me by malignant wise men or gilded fools." It was possibly due as much to what his most admiring biographer calls his "total want of creative power" as to his partisan and personal antagonisms that Stevens' in fluence was very light in a convention com posed largely of lawyers and assembled to make laws; but he was no inconspicuous fig ure in a body which embraced in its mem bership beside Mr. Meredith such distin guished and able men as Daniel Agnew, Wm . Darlington, S. A. Purviancc, James Pollock, George W. Woodward, John Sergeant. Jos eph R. Chandler, Joseph Hopkinson, Charles Chauncey, Thomas Earle, Charles J. Ingersoll, James M. Porter, and Walter Forward. Thirty years later, when Mr. Stevens died, one of this distinguished galaxy, George W. Woodward, was his colleague in the federal House of Representatives. He had been justice and chief justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, and knew the law yers of the Commonwealth for a full genera tion. He had no political sympathy with Mr. Stevens and deplored "the final influence of his great talents;" but he "knew much of him as a lawyer," and when, after his death, the memorial addresses in the House were made, Judge Woodward said of him: "As a lawyer Mr. Stevens was bold, hon orable, and candid, clear in statement, brief in argument, and always deferential to the Bench. He was not copious in his citation of adjudged cases. I think he relied more upon the reasons, than upon the authorities of the law. Indeed, his tastes inclined him rather to the study of polite literature than
