called forth, not a paragraph, nor a period, is attributable to Franklin
Pierce. He had no need of these devices to fortify his constituents in
their high opinion of him; nor did he fail to perceive that such was not
the method to acquire real weight in the body of which he was a member.
In truth, he has no fluency of words, except when an earnest meaning and
purpose supply their own expression. Every one of his speeches in
Congress, and, we may say, in every other hall of oratory, or on any
stump that he may have mounted, was drawn forth by the perception that it
was needed, was directed to a full exposition of the subject, and (rarest
of all) was limited by what he really had to say. Even the graces of the
orator were never elaborated, never assumed for their own sake, but were
legitimately derived from the force of his conceptions, and from the
impulsive warmth which accompanies the glow of thought. Owing to these
peculiarities,--for such, unfortunately, they may be termed, in reference
to what are usually the characteristics of a legislative career,--his
position before the country was less conspicuous than that of many men
who could claim nothing like Pierce's actual influence in the national
councils. His speeches, in their muscular texture and close grasp of
their subject, resembled the brief but pregnant arguments and expositions
of the sages of the Continental Congress, rather than the immeasurable
harangues which are now the order of the day.

His congressional life, though it made comparatively so little show, was
full of labor, directed to substantial objects. He was a member of the
judiciary and other important committees; and the drudgery of the
committee room, where so much of the real public business of the country
is transacted, fell in large measure to his lot. Thus, even as a
legislator, he may be said to have been a man of deeds, not words; and
when he spoke upon any subject with which his duty, as chairman or member
of a committee, had brought him in relation, his words had the weight of