X.

Harrison resumes Practice in Indianapolis-His Position at the Bar-Speech on Ireland and Irishmen-Speech at Danville on the Franchise in the South-The Country and the SoldiersThe Irish Liberation-Speech at Indianapolis Cheap Prices-Living Wages and Fair Prices-Reducing the Revenue-A Navy needed-Work for the Republican Party.

ESUMING private life in Indianapolis in the latter part of March, 1887, General Harrison once more devoted himself characteristically heart and soul to the laborious but congenial work of his profesOf General Harrison as a lawyer in the full maturity of his powers his old partner, the Hon. W. P. Fishback, has said: "He possesses all the qualities of a great lawyer in rare combination. He prepares a case with consummate skill; his written pleadings are models of clearness and brevity; he is peerless in Indiana as an examiner of witnesses; he discusses a legal question in a written brief or in oral argument with convincing logic, and as an advocate it may be said of him that when he has finished an address to a jury nothing remains to be said on that side of the case. I have often heard able lawyers in Indiana and elsewhere say that he was the hardest man to follow they had ever met. No lawyer who ever met General Harrison in a legal encounter has afterward placed a small estimate upon his ability."

April 8, 1887, General Harrison spoke at Indianapolis on the subject of Ireland and Irishmen, as follows:

"It may be suggested that we are engaged to-night in an act that savors somewhat of impertinence-that the question of the pending legislation relating to Ireland, which is the subject of discussion in the British Parliament, is not a proper subject of discussion in an American meeting. But the man who makes that suggestion does not understand the scope and powers of an American town meeting. We all understand that an American newspaper is free to discuss every

question. There is no limit upon its jurisdiction. Now, the American town meeting has just as broad a jurisdiction. We have no official representations to make to the British government. It can take notice or not of what we do and say here, but all the same we will exercise the liberty of saying it. There was a time when communication with Europe was so tardy and difficult that America was separated in its sympathy; but that time has passed. The electric current has been put into service not only upon the land but under the seas. Nations have by this rapid intercommunication been tied together. The bonds of sym

pathy have been strengthened, mutual interests have been enlarged, and the time will soon come when the whole earth will be one commonwealth in sympathy and thought. Nothing involving the lives or liberties of men can happen now anywhere in the world, whether in the frozen North or in South Africa, that does not evoke interest and sympathy here. I am not here to discuss particular measures of relief for Ireland. I am not here to suggest that legislation should take this or that precise form, but all here will at least agree that it should be progressive in the direction of a more liberal government for Ireland than she now We are not here to suggest to Great Britain that she shall concede Irish

has.

independence.

The disintegration of nations is seldom by parliamentary enactment. When that comes it comes as the fruit and result of successful revoluWe are here simply to say that, in our opinion as American citizens, what Ireland needs is not coercion, is not the constable, is not the soldier with musket and bayonet; but liberal laws, tending to emancipate her people from the results of long centuries of ill government, and that when this British Ministry starts in the direction of coercion, and postpones suggestions for reform until a coercion bill has been enacted, it is traveling in the wrong direction. It is not possible, in this age of the world, to govern à people as numerous and inhabiting a country of such extent as Ireland by coercion. The period in the world's history when men might be governed by force-their inclinations coerced, their aspirations for participation in government suppressed-is passed away forever. More and more the American idea that government rests upon the consent of the governed is making its way in the world. If it be true that the British government finds difficulty in Ireland in impaneling juries that will convict for offenses there against the landlord, it is because it is deeply settled in the convictions of those people that the laws are egregiously wrong in principle and hurtful in their application. Such a conviction cannot be removed by coercion; by finding another jurisdiction. and venue in which to try those offenses, and the government becomes a failure when that becomes a necessity. We were not without experience in that in our own country at the close of the war. I unite with you as an American citizen in the expression of the hope that we shall soon witness the adoption of such measures as will win the Irish heart and give to the helpless and povertystricken in the land of their fathers contentment and prosperity."

At Danville, Ind., November 26, 1887, General Harrison spoke as follows: "There is not a man fit to transact the duties of the simplest vocation from day to day that does not know that the Republican majorities in three or four of the Southern States are suppressed, are not allowed to find expression at the ballot-box. I do not accept the explanation recently given by a badly reconstructed Southern statesman in his speeches in Ohio. It has not been received with confidence by the people of the North. He tried to make the Ohio people believe that the reason the colored vote did not appear at their elections for members of Congress, and for President, was on account of the fact that the colored man did not take any interest in national elections, but, he said, whenever the fence question' comes up, then you have a full colored vote. The colored people are interested in the fence question and they turn out! My

fellow citizens, that was a very grim joke. If there is any class of voters in this country who do take an interest in national elections, who do take an interest in the question of who shall be President, it is the freedmen of the South and those colored men who have sought kindlier homes under more hopeful auspices here in our own and other Northern States. There has not been written in the history of any civilized nation a more abominable, cruel, bloody page than that which describes the treatment of the poor blacks in the South, since those States passed under Democratic control. Why are they not allowed to vote? Because they want to vote the Republican ticket. In the last presidential election, and this one to come, our Democratic opponents count with absolute certainty upon one hundred and fifty-three electoral votes from the South, when there is no man, not a fool, who does not know that if every qualified elector in those States was allowed to express himself, they would give their electoral vote for the Republican nominee.

"Up here in the Northwest is a fair Territory, enormous in extent, the onehalf of it applying for admission to the Union as a State more than twice as large as the State of Indiana, having a population of nearly a half million of souls at this time, kept out of the Union of States; was kept out in 1884, will be kept out and not allowed to cast an electoral vote in 1888. Why? Simply because a majority of the people in that Territory are Republicans. That, and nothing more. For the whole period of my term in the Senate, as a member of the Committee on Territories, I fought with such ability as I could, I pleaded with such power as I could, with these Democratic Southern Senators and members to allow these free people of Dakota the common rights of American citizenship. In 1884, to placate, if I could, their opposition to the admission of that State, I put a clause in the bill that the constitutional convention should not assemble until after the presidential election of that year. But now, four years more have gone around; again a President is to be elected, and still that young State, peopled with the best blood of all the States, full of the veterans of the late war, loyal to the government and the Constitution, ready to share the perils and burdens of our national life, is being, will be, kept out of the Union, will be denied any right to cast any electoral vote for President by the Democratic House of Representatives at Washington, solely because a majority of her people hold the political sentiments which we hold.

"Some national questions of interest turn upon the coming election. Soldiers, I believe that the question whether your fame and honor shall be exalted

above the fame of those who fought against the flag, whether the rewards of your services shall be just and liberal and the care of your disabled comrades ungrudging and ample, depends upon the election of a Republican President in 1888. For the first time in the history of the American nation, we have had a President, who, in dealing with the veto power, has used it not only to deny relief, but to impeach the reputations of the men who made it possible for him to be a President of the United States. The veto messages of Cleveland, sent in during the last Congress, were, many of them, tipped with poisonous arrows. He vetoed what is called the dependent pension bill. What is the principle of I believe that the first bill introduced in Congress embodying the principles of that bill was introduced by me. It was prepared in view of the fact that Congress was being overwhelmed with private pension bills for men now disabled and unable to maintain themselves, who could not, by proof, connect their disability with their army service. I said let us make the limitations of the pension law wider, and instead of taking in these men one at a time, let us take the whole class in at once-and hence this bill. Some men sneered at it; said I was simply trying a buncombe game with the soldiers. But, gentlemen, the general principles of that bill have come to stay. It has, with slight modifications, received now the vote, almost unanimous, of the Grand Army of the Republic. That will be laid before Congress at its approaching session. What is the principle of it? Why, it is something like the old rule we had in the army as long as a man was able he marched and carried his own gun and knapsack, but when he got hurt or sick, and fell out, we had an ambulance to put him in; and that is the principle embodied in this bill-that we, the survivors of the late war, as long as God gives us strength and health, will march in this column of civil life, making our own living and carrying our own burden; but here is a comrade falling by the way: sickness, casualty-not his own fault-and he has to fall out; we want the great national ambulance to take him in. That was the idea of this bill. Is it not just? Is it not as much as 'the soldiers can now hope to secure? Why, my countrymen, somebody must care for these veterans who stood up amid shot and shell and saber stroke, but cannot now trace their infirmities to the army by any satisfactory proof. They have fought the battle of life manfully since. They are dependent on their work for a living, and they cannot work. Somebody must take care of them; the expense cannot be avoided unless you kick the old veterans out and let them die on the roadside. Somebody must care for them, and the simple question is, shall they be