Part 283

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SPECIMEN PAGE OF CYCLOPÆDIA OF AMERICAN ELOQUENCE.

92 FISHER AMES.

country.” In 1788 he was chosen to the State legislature, in which assembly he advocated important educational measures, in view of elevating the character of the great mass of the people, and rendering them capable of higher enjoyments. In 1789 he was elected a member of the first Congress under the constitution, in which body he remained during the eight years of Washington’s administration. He was a strong advocate of the federal policy, and on every question of importance took an active part. He opposed the commercial resolutions of Mr. Madison, because he thought “that commerce could not be served by regulations, which should oblige us to ‘sell cheap and buy dear,’ and he inferred that the effect of the resolutions could only be to gratify partialities and resentments, which all statesmen should discard.” In April, 1796, he delivered his celebrated speech on the appropriation for Jay’s Treaty, a production full of the deepest pathos and richest eloquence. At the termination of the session of Congress, Mr. Ames travelled at the south for his health, which had for many months been gradually sinking. On his partial recovery, he took his seat at the next session, and entered upon the duties of his office. At the end of this session he returned to his home at Dedham, and declining a re-election, took upon himself the practice of his profession. He continued writing political essays during the remainder of his life, all of which bear the mark of the statesman and ripe scholar. In the year 1804 he was called to the chair of the presidency of Harvard College, which honor he declined on account of failing health, and a consciousness that his habits were not adapted to the office. On the morning of the Fourth of July, 1808, he expired, having just completed the fiftieth year of his age.

MADISON’S RESOLUTIONS.

The House of Representatives, on the third of January, 1794, resolved itself into a Committee of the Whole, on the report of Mr. Jefferson, Secretary of State, “On the nature and extent of the privileges and restrictions of the commercial intercourse of the United States with foreign nations, and the measures which he thought proper to be adopted for the improvement of the commerce and navigation of the same,” when Mr. Madison introduced a series of resolutions, proposing to impose “further restrictions and higher duties, in certain cases, on the manufactures and navigation of foreign nations, employed in the commerce of the United States, than those now imposed.” On these resolutions Mr. Ames addressed the committee, on the twenty-seventh of January, as follows:

MR. CHAIRMAN: The question lies within this compass: is there any measure proper to be adopted by Congress, which will have the effect to put our trade and navigation on a better footing? If there is, it is our undoubted right to adopt it, (if by right is understood the power of self-government, which every independent nation possesses,) and our own as completely as

Dr. Charles Caldwell, in his autobiography, thus speaks of Ames’s eloquence: “He was decidedly one of the most splendid rhetoricians of the age. Two of his speeches, in a special manner--that on Jay’s treaty, and that usually called his ‘Tomahawk speech’ (because it included some resplendent passages on Indian massacres)--were the most brilliant and fascinating specimens of eloquence I have ever heard; yet have I listened to some of the most celebrated speakers in the British Parliament--among others, to Wilberforce and Mackintosh, Plunket, Brougham, and Canning: and Dr. Priestley, who was familiar with the oratory of Pitt the father and Pitt the son, and also with that of Burke and Fox, made to myself the acknowledgment that, in his own words, the speech of Ames, on the British treaty, was the most bewitching piece of parliamentary oratory he had ever listened to.”

In the preparation of this sketch, the editor has relied mainly on Mr. Kirkland’s chaste memoir of Mr. Ames, which is attached to the published works of that eminent orator.

Mr. Madison, in explanation of his motives and views, spoke of the security and extension of our commerce as a principal object for which the federal government was formed. He urged the tendency of his resolutions to secure to us an equitable share of the carrying trade; that they would enable other nations to enter into competition with England for supplying us with manufactures; and in this way he insisted that our country could make her enemies feel the extent of her power, by depriving those who manufactured for us of their bread. He adverted to the measures enforced by a certain nation contrary to our maritime rights, and out of the proceeds of the extra impositions proposed, he recommended a reimbursement to our citizens of their losses arising from those measures. He maintained that if the nation cannot protect the rights of its citizens, it ought to repay the damage; and that we are bound to obtain reparation for the injustice of foreign nations to our citizens, or to compensate them ourselves.--Ames’s Works, page 24.