Gouverneur Morris. Theodore Roosevelt
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he was particularly fond of Shakespeare; and even thus early he showed great skill in discussion and much power of argument. He made the oration, or graduating address, of his class, choosing for the subject "Wit and Beauty;" it was by no means a noteworthy effort, and was couched in the dreadful Johnsonian English of the period. A little later, when he took his master's degree, he again delivered an oration,—this time on "Love." In point of style this second speech was as bad as the first, disfigured by cumbrous Latinisms and a hopeless use of the superlative; but there were one or two good ideas in it.
As soon as he graduated, he set to work to study law, deciding on this profession at once as being best suited for an active, hopeful, ambitious young man of his social standing and small fortune, who was perfectly self-confident and conscious of his own powers. He soon became interested in his studies, and followed them with great patience, working hard and mastering both principles and details with ease. He was licensed to practice as an attorney in 1771, just three years after another young man, destined to stand as his equal in the list of New York's four or five noted statesmen, John Jay, had likewise been admitted to the bar; and among the very few cases in which Morris was engaged of which the record has been kept is one concerning a contested election, in which he was pitted against Jay, and bore himself well.
Before this, and while not yet of age, he had already begun to play a part in public affairs. The colony had been run in debt during the French and Indian wars, and a bill was brought forward in the New York Assembly to provide for this by raising money through the issue of interest-bearing bills of credit. The people, individually, were largely in debt, and hailed the proposal with much satisfaction, on the theory that it would "make money more plenty;" our revolutionary forefathers being unfortunately not much wiser or more honest in their ways of looking at the public finances than we ourselves, in spite of our state repudiators, national greenbackers, and dishonest silver men.
Morris attacked the bill very forcibly, and with good effect, opposing any issue of paper money, which could bring no absolute relief, but merely a worse catastrophe of bankruptcy in the end; he pointed out that it was nothing but a mischievous pretense for putting off the date of a payment that would have to be met anyhow, and that ought rather to be met at once with honest money gathered from the resources of the province. He showed the bad effects such a system of artificial credit would have on private individuals, the farmers and tradesmen, by encouraging them to speculate and go deeper into debt; and he criticised unsparingly the attitude of the majority of his fellow-citizens in wishing such a measure of relief, not only for their short-sighted folly, but also for their criminal and selfish dishonesty in trying to procure a temporary benefit for themselves at the lasting expense of the community; finally he strongly advised them to bear with patience small evils in the present rather than to remedy them by inflicting infinitely greater ones on themselves and their descendants in the future.
At the law he did very well, having the advantages of his family name, and of his own fine personal appearance. He was utterly devoid of embarrassment, and his perfect self-assurance and freedom from any timidity or sense of inferiority left his manner without the least tinge of awkwardness, and gave clear ground for his talents and ambition to make their mark.
However, hardworking and devoted to his profession though he was, he had the true family restlessness and craving for excitement, and soon after he was admitted to the bar, he began to long for foreign travel, as was natural enough in a young provincial gentleman of his breeding and education. In a letter to an old friend (William Smith, a man of learning, the historian of the colony, and afterwards its chief justice), in whose office he had studied law, he asks advice in the matter, and gives as his reasons for wishing to make the trip the desire "to form my manners and address by the example of the truly polite, to rub off in the gay circle a few of the many barbarisms which characterize a provincial education, and to curb the vain self-sufficiency which arises from comparing ourselves with companions who are inferior to us." He then anticipates the objections that may be made on the score of the temptations to which he will be exposed by saying: "If it be allowed that I have a taste for pleasure, it may naturally follow that I shall avoid those low pleasures which abound on this as well as on the other side of the Atlantic. As for these poignant joys which are the lot of the affluent, like Tantalus I may grasp at them, but they will certainly be out of my reach." In this last sentence he touches on his narrow means; and it was on this point that his old preceptor harped in making his reply, cunningly instilling into his mind the danger of neglecting his business, and bringing up the appalling example of an "Uncle Robin," who, having made three pleasure trips to England, "began to figure with thirty thousand pounds, and did not leave five thousand;" going on "What! 'Virtus post nummos? Curse on inglorious wealth?' Spare your indignation. I, too, detest the ignorant miser; but both virtue and ambition abhor poverty, or they are mad. Rather imitate your grandfather [who had stayed in America and prospered] than your uncle."
The advice may have had its effect; at any rate Morris stayed at home, and, with an occasional trip to Philadelphia, got all he could out of the society of New York, which, little provincial seaport though it was, was yet a gay place, gayer then than any other American city save Charleston, the society consisting of the higher crown officials, the rich merchants, and the great landed proprietors. Into this society Morris, a handsome, high-bred young fellow, of easy manners and far from puritanical morals, plunged with a will, his caustic wit and rather brusque self-assertion making him both admired and feared. He enjoyed it all to the full, and in his bright, chatty letters to his friends pictures himself as working hard, but gay enough also: "up all night—balls, concerts, assemblies—all of us mad in the pursuit of pleasure."
But the Revolution was at hand; and both pleasure and office-work had to give way to something more important.
CHAPTER II.
THE OUTBREAK OF THE REVOLUTION: MORRIS IN THE PROVINCIAL CONGRESS.
During the years immediately preceding the outbreak of the Revolution, almost all people were utterly in the dark as to what their future conduct should be. No responsible leader thought seriously of separation from the mother country, and the bulk of the population were still farther from supposing such an event to be possible. Indeed it must be remembered that all through the Revolutionary War not only was there a minority actively favorable to the royal cause, but there was also a minority—so large that, added to the preceding, it has been doubted whether it was not a majority—that was but lukewarm in its devotion to the American side, and was kept even moderately patriotic almost as much by the excesses of the British troops and blunders of the British generals and ministers, as by the valor of our own soldiers, or the skill of our own statesmen. We can now see clearly that the right of the matter was with the patriotic party; and it was a great thing for the whole English-speaking race that that section of it which was destined to be the most numerous and powerful should not be cramped and fettered by the peculiarly galling shackles of provincial dependency; but all this was not by any means so clear then as now, and some of our best citizens thought themselves in honor bound to take the opposite side,—though of necessity those among our most high-minded men, who were also far-sighted enough to see the true nature of the struggle, went with the patriots.
That the loyalists of 1776 were wrong is beyond question; but it is equally beyond question that they had greater grounds for believing themselves right than had the men who tried to break up the Union three quarters of a century later. That these latter had the most hearty faith in the justice of their cause need not be doubted; and he is but a poor American whose veins do not thrill with pride as he reads of the deeds of desperate prowess done by the confederate armies; but it is most unfair to brand the "tory" of 1776 with a shame no longer felt to pertain to the "rebel" of 1860. Still, there is no doubt, not only that the patriots were right, but also that they were as a whole superior to the tories; they were the men with a high ideal of freedom, too fond of liberty, and too self-respecting, to submit to foreign rule; they included