ism, self-respect, hope, perseverance, cheerfulness, courage, self-reliance, gratitude, pity, mercy, kindness, conscience, reflection, and the will.

SECTION 2. That it shall be the duty of the teachers to give a short oral lesson every day upon one of the topics mentioned in Section 1 of this act, and to require each pupil to furnish a thought or other illustration of the same upon the following morning.

SEC. 3. That emulation shall be cherished between the pupils in accumulating thoughts and facts in regard to the noble traits possible, and in illustrating them by their daily conduct.

General Burnside asked the Senate to pass this bill, to which he said there could be no possible objection. "I am sure," said he, "that some of the legislative bodies of our country would be better behaved if some such bill as this had been enforced earlier in the history of the Republic." The Senate was not, however, disposed to pass the bill, although much of it was stricken out, Senator Eaton saying, "I should as soon think of striking the part of 'Hamlet' out of the play of Hamlet." The consideration of the bill was postponed.

A bill to promote the education of the blind received General Burnside's earnest support. "It had been the policy of the government,” he said, "from its earliest days, to promote education of all kinds throughout the country, by gifts, by grants of both lands and money. I do not see why money cannot be appropriated to promote the education of the blind, as well as land to promote education in agricultural colleges. Moneys have already been appropriated by the government of the United States specially for the education of the deaf and dumb-45,440 acres of land and half a million of money. Why not make an appropriation for the education of the blind?”

The best analysis of the character of General Burnside while he was a Senator was made after his death, by his able and accomplished associate, Senator Edmunds, of Vermont, who said:

The career of General Burnside exemplifies, I think, in an eminent degree the life of a warrior who does not admit craft or indirection among his weapons. Whether right or wrong, he was one of the simplest and most direct of men. Calculation of incidents or consequences did not seem to enter into the measure of his estimation of what it was fit for him to do, so far as it regarded its effects upon himself, in going forward with any enterprise or measure in hand. If what was proposed appeared right according to the standard that commended itself to him, he "followed right because right is right, in scorn of consequence." Invective and ridicule in such a case fell upon his head without apparently diminishing in the least degree the real enthusiasm with which he held fast to and endeavored to advance whatever cause he had espoused. I have often thought when I have seen him- not educated in the law in its technical and precise character, nor yet largely informed in the wider realms of municipal and public jurisprudence-stoutly maintain some proposition which but for the necessary conventionalities of all systems of government and all relations between nations would have been proper, and was frequently in the abstract, how noble must be the character that for the sake of what he believes does not hesitate to discard the force of precedent and rebel against the mandates of authority.

Nor can we, I think, who act our short parts in the great drama of government -a stage on which there can be, humanly speaking, no final drop-scene-fail to admit how valuable to the continuing interests of society are the elements in legislative bodies that resist the force of precedent, that have small respect for what has been because it has been, that are fettered by no technicalities, and that feel as free as if the world had just begun.

The tendency to a blind obedience to forms, to precedents, and to methods is thus counterbalanced, just as, reciprocally, the converse elements in a legislative body restrain excess in the opposite direction. The equation and sum of perfect government, as we on this continent understand it, is thus made up. But this is not the proper occasion to enlarge upon these interesting topics. Let me, rather, as I join his colleague and successor in mourning his untimely departure, testify to the charming qualities of his private character. I have known him for more than ten years, but not intimately until he came to take his place in this great conclave of the representatives of states. I am happy to remember that since then I have enjoyed frequently his unostentatious but warm-hearted and almost exuberant hospitality, and have been often honored with his apparently unreserved confidence in respect of many matters of public concern with which he had to deal. In our merely social intimacy, courtesy, candor, and unfailing kindness of heart were his constant characteristics. In relation to his connection with public

affairs and measures, he received praise without vanity or elation, and criticism without annoyance. Generous and gentle, his very faults seemed to attract the sympathy and touch the sensibility of his friends. He has left us without warning, not as a deserter, but in obedience to the power that dominates both senators and states. May his future be as peaceful and happy as his past has been full of the storms of war and the vicissitudes and labors of this our life.

THE DEMOCRATS GAIN POSSESSION OF THE SENATE CHANGE OF OFFICERS RHODE ISLAND PUBLIC WORKS-SPEECH ON THE MONROE DOCTRINE-FAIR PLAY AT WEST POINT SOLDIERS AND SENATORS - RE-ELECTION TO THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

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HE Democrats, who had controlled the House of Representatives for the preceding two years, had also a majority in the Senate at the commencement of the Forty-sixth Congress. A knowledge of this had prompted them to secure the defeat of the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Appropriation bill in the closing hours of the Forty-fifth Congress, and thus to render it necessary for President Hayes to convene the Forty-sixth Congress on the 4th of March, 1879. The Democratic majority in the Senate, which then, for the first time in eighteen years, controlled that body, determined to change its officers and servants,-not because of any incompetency

or neglect of duty on their part, but in obedience to the inexorable decrees of political partisanship. The Republicans had retained a considerable number of Democrats in office in 1861, and had afterwards appointed others, but the Democrats made a clean sweep of all officials not of their party, with the exception of a very few, whose services could not be dispensed with. Men who had served the country during the war, and whose especial knowledge of their duties could not be denied, were summarily discharged, that their positions, which they had creditably filled, might be given to political place-hunters belonging to the Democratic party. "We are responsible," said Senator Eaton, "and able to be responsible, for the carrying on of legislation, and we intend to do it with our own serThat is the way to tell it and to talk it."

vants.

The standing, special, and joint committees of the Senate were also changed, and placed under Democratic control. General Burnside was deposed from the chairmanship of the Committee on Education and Labor, which was given to Mr. Bailey, of Tennessee. Then came Messrs. Gordon, Maxey, and Randolph; and after these, four Republicans, Messrs. Burnside, Morrill, Bruce, and Sharon. General Burnside was also the first named of the Republican minority on the Committee on Military Affairs, but he was dropped altogether from the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads.

General Burnside was ever on the alert to promote the success of some public work in the State of Rhode Island. Acting in concert with his colleague, Mr. Anthony, they secured the appropriation of large sums for the improvement of Providence River; for a harbor of refuge at Block Island, connected with the main land by a sub-marine telegraph; for additional light-houses and fog-signals