William Hubbard, one of the two who remained in Massachusetts after graduating, wrote the History of New England. Samuel Bellingham, son of one of the governors of Massachusetts, went to Europe, took the degree of Doctor of Medicine at Leyden, and then practised physic in London. Henry Saltonstall, son of Sir Richard, took a medical degree at Padua, in 1649, and became a Fellow of New College, Oxford. John Wilson remained here, serving more than forty years in the ministry. Tobias Barnard went to England, and there we lose him. Nathaniel Brewster, after serving as minister at Norfolk, England, and then under the Lord Deputy, in Ireland, where he received a degree at Dublin, returned here after the Restoration. Samuel Mather, one of the four graduates of 1643, became Chaplain to the Lord Mayor of London, and preacher at Magdalen College, Oxford. He was Master of Arts, at Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin, was one of Oliver's Commissioners to Scotland, and went to Ireland with Deputy Henry Cromwell. John Allin, of the same class, became Vicar of Rye, in Sussex, then a physician in London, serving during the Plague. He was a famous astrologer, and it would appear that, after a strangely varied career, he recrossed the ocean, and was a preacher in New Jersey. So we might cull from Mr. Sibley's pages very many sketches of the lives and fortunes, some of them of romantic or thrilling interest, of men who, as youths, received their academic training in the primitive halls of Harvard, while as yet the "howling wilderness" environed the now historic grounds. The author is sure of receiving, for all coming time, the grateful appreciation of the sons of Harvard for what he has done, while the living will unite in the hope that he will yet pursue his work. A stanza from Dr. Gilman's exquisite Ode, "Fair Harvard," written for its Second Centennial, rings in our remembrance: "O Relic and Type of our ancestors' worth, That has long kept their memory warm! First flower of their wilderness! star of their night, ART. VI. - THE SESSION. THE first topic to which the mind naturally reverts, in connection with the recent session, is the Crédit Mobilier investigation, and the nature and extent of the corruption it has brought to light. The most important question suggested by this topic is whether the interest thus excited will result in any serious attempt to reform our politics, or purify the management of our great moneyed corporations. Our answer to this question will depend, not on the intensity of the public indignation against the real or suspected offenders of the past, but on the wisdom and efficiency of the measures the public shall take against a recurrence of like abuses in the future. In conducting a campaign against strongly entrenched abuses, as in the military field, it is necessary to proceed in a regular and systematic manner, to beware of having the attention diverted by false attacks, and carefully to avoid engagements with our own forces. We do not hesitate to say that if the just indig nation excited by the operations of the Crédit Mobilier is to be entirely expended upon the members of Congress known or suspected to be interested in that scheme, more harm than good will be done. If we wish to seek for that state of things which has made possible, not only the Crédit Mobilier, but all the other schemes which have brought American financial management into such deserved disrepute, we must look much deeper than the reports of investigating committees can carry us. The root of the evil is to be found in the vast accumulation of wealth during the past half-century, unaccompanied by any corresponding increase in the diffusion among the public of political and financial knowledge. Every citizen is now more or less dependent upon a multitude of joint-stock companies whose organization is complex to a degree never thought of in times past. The old line of stages with a single owner is replaced by the modern railroad, with its paid-up stock, its purely nominal par value, its watered stock, its preferred stock, its stock dividends, its bonds payable in gold, its bonds payable no one knows how, its mortgages, its leases, and every other device which ingenu ity can suggest to prevent the public from understanding its financial condition. Against this we have no corresponding increase of financial knowledge to serve as a set-off. The average citizen of to-day knows little more of political economy and nothing more of practical finance than did his ancestors of the last century. Indeed, when we say that we no longer punish or denounce men for making the most profitable use they can of their labor and wealth, saving when they loan their money at exorbitant interest, we chronicle the only decided step in advance which we can claim to have taken. The general result is that a large portion of our national and individual wealth, and a portion in the management of which the poorest citizen has a deep interest, is in the hands of corporations of which the organization and operation are, to the masses, as great a mystery as Newton's Principia. To this state of things neither the law nor the political economy of the past are applicable, except in and through their most general and abstract principles. 'In the case of law we may hope to find these principles intelligently applied to suit the exigencies of the new state of things, because men are expected to make a profound study of them before entering upon the practice of the profession. But the abstract principles of political economy are held in contempt by the masses both of our citizens and statesmen, if one can properly be said to contemn a thing of which he has no correct conception, and which he would respect if he only knew what it was. The result is, that the students of political economy and finance are few in number, insignificant in direct influence, and not to be found among practical financiers. This state of things has given rise to a powerful class of agents, managers, and operators of a multitude of kinds, whose business it is, in the majority of cases, to turn the public ignorance to the best account. They are the financial quack doctors of the body politic. In their hands the public is an Argan, tormented with a multitude of imaginary disorders of which they fully understand the symptoms and the treatment. Their remedies are as well adapted to any real disease as were those of Dr. Thomas Diaforus. Every intellectual weakness of the public tends in some way to facilitate or encourage their operations. They find the business of the country constantly suffering from a lack of paper currency, and its industry from a lack of adequate encouragement on the part of Congress. They have complete systems of political economy and finance, ingeniously contrived to delude the public, but entitled to no higher rank among political economists than patent-medicine almanacs can claim among physicians. The worst of this class feel a direct interest in keeping the public from understanding their operations, and therefore increase their complexity in every way, and introduce some kind of financial legerdemain wherever it can be applied. To one who considers the extent of this evil, the number of temptations to prey upon the public, the wide applicability of Samuel Butler's trite couplet, and the difficulty of obtaining precise information respecting financial measures, it would 'seem wonderful if we could find nothing worse than the Crédit Mobilier to show. As a matter of fact, the past half a dozen years have given rise to so many worse things on which public indignation might be profitably expended, that we may seriously inquire whether the attack on the Crédit Mobilier is not to be deplored as a diversion of our attention from the points to which it ought to have been directed. The character of the Crédit Mobilier, as a financial scheme, is germane to our subject only so far as we may suppose members of Congress to have been acquainted with it, and to have been influenced by the hope of profit to be derived from it. It does not appear that, at the time, it was known as anything more than a contracting company to build the Union Pacific Railway; we need not therefore enter into any discussion of its legality, or of the moral category to which we are to assign it. The fact with which we are mainly concerned is essentially this: the principal promoter of the scheme, Mr. Oakes Ames, fearing that when the exact character of the operation became known public opinion would demand some adverse legislation on the part of Congress, sought to strengthen it by inducing a number of the strongest members to take small quantities of the stock. The plan had so much of the character of a snare, that it was essential to keep the object secret from the victims; he therefore assured them there was nothing improper in the transaction, for the reason that no further legislation would be asked of Congress. The latter statement was entirely correct, indeed, rather too true, for further legislation on the subject was the very thing he wished to prevent. Some paid for the stock in cash; to others he claims to have allowed credit until the accruing dividends paid or helped to pay for the stock, when the surplus was bonded over to them. The latter cases seem, at first sight, to savor much more of bribery or corruption than the others; but if we examine them we find that the transactions, as stated by Mr. Ames, were all in strict accordance with the customs of business and the law of contracts. The question of corruption is therefore, in these cases as in the others, to be decided entirely from accessory circumstances, if we admit that the contract to purchase was entered into really and in good faith. Since the existence of the contract lies at the base of the charges against the members in question, the prosecution cannot object to its being taken for granted. But it is to be remembered that in all these cases, which include only those of Messrs. Garfield, Kelly, and Colfax, the evidence is very weak, and the facts seriously contested. Against Messrs. Garfield and Kelly the evidence of Mr. Oakes Ames is so uncertain and vacillating, and so completely unsupported by any collateral circumstances, that hardly any weight should be assigned to it, and the explanations of those gentlemen must, we conceive, be regarded as satisfactory. We do not, however, press this point because, granting the worst that is alleged against them, they would still stand on the same footing with those who paid for their stock in advance, and all might still be considered together. After an exhaustive investigation, the conduct of which was marred only by an ill-advised attempt to keep the testimony secret during its progress, the Poland Committee found no evidence of corrupt intent on the part of any member who purchased stock of Mr. Ames. The most gratifying feature of this report is its unanimity, a feature which has not offered itself in a Congressional investigation of a political subject during the last twenty years. Judging from all recent precedents, we should have expected a majority report declaring the Crédit Mobilier a patriotic undertaking, and all the members of Congress who had been willing to invest their funds in it entitled |