experience of thirty-five years, what is there which an enemy could
condemn? What is there which either his friends, or the friends of the
country, could wish to have been otherwise? I speak, of course, of great
measures and leading principles.

In the first place, all his measures were right in their intent. He
stated the whole basis of his own great character, when he told the
country, in the homely phrase of the proverb, that honesty is the best
policy. One of the most striking things ever said of him is, that "_he
changed mankind's ideas of political greatness_."[22] To commanding
talents, and to success, the common elements of such greatness, he
added a disregard of self, a spotlessness of motive, a steady submission
to every public and private duty, which threw far into the shade the
whole crowd of vulgar great. The object of his regard was the whole
country. No part of it was enough to fill his enlarged patriotism. His
love of glory, so far as that may be supposed to have influenced him at
all, spurned everything short of general approbation. It would have been
nothing to him that his partisans or his favorites outnumbered, or
outvoted, or outmanaged, or outclamored, those of other leaders. He had
no favorites; he rejected all partisanship; and, acting honestly for the
universal good, he deserved, what he so richly enjoyed, the universal
love.

His principle it was to act right, and to trust the people for support;
his principle it was not to follow the lead of sinister and selfish
ends, nor to rely on the little arts of party delusion to obtain public
sanction for such a course. Born for his country and for the world, he
did not give up to party what was meant for mankind. The consequence is,
that his fame is as durable as his principles, as lasting as truth and
virtue themselves. While the hundreds whom party excitement, and