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it is my judgment now that the result of this great struggle has been accepted as final by the intelligence and patriotism of the Republican party. At the time, however, it was as fierce a conflict as ever engaged the attention of the country, and, with the fate of the enactment trembling in the balance during many months, there was a period of great excitement. Party sentiment was aroused to an intense degree, and into this conflict Senator GORMAN threw himself with an earnestness of purpose that can never be forgotten.

He was the leader of his party in that contest, and if it had not been for his devotion to the cause he was championing, for his parliamentary skill in the resourceful attacks which he made when defeat seemed certain, and for the restless labor he underwent throughout the wearisome days of that momentous period, we might today, instead of having the South united in the interest of the Union and pervaded by a spirit of patriotism as earnest and as ardent as any that throbs in the heart of any other section of this country, have every one of her Commonwealths submerged in ruin and disaster, with their spirits broken, their enterprise retarded, and their entire territory, with the glorious progress that awaits it, converted into a desolated and subjugated political province.

I desire to refer now to one of the qualities of his private life which deserves mention. I have been informed by friends. of Senator GORMAN, who were upon terms of the closest intimacy with him, that, while he did not indulge in any ostentatious acts of philanthropy, that he was constantly engaged in acts of private benevolence and charity, and that any appeal of poverty or of suffering always awakened his tenderest sympathy and his ready response. This is the heart and essence of true religion. When the time arrives for us to take a final reckoning with our life and balance the account, deeds like this are of more priceless value than all the accomplishments

of ambition, all the achievements of fortune and fame, all the possessions of power and of worldly glory and renown.

For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight,

His can't be wrong whose life is in the right.

I come now briefly to another phase of Senator GORMAN'S life which I shall pass over tenderly, because I think it is too sacred for intrusion, even upon an occasion of this sort. The best impulses of his heart seemed to radiate around the glare of his fireside and the circle of his family. His happiest and most contented hours were passed among those to whom he was bound by the bonds of affection and for whose comfort and well-being he was at all times prepared to make any sacrifice invoked by love or duty. He found but slight amusement and took only passing interest in the pleasures of the world, and he centered his deepest devotion upon the altar of his home. His fondest hopes clustered around those who looked to him for aid and for counsel as they grew to manhood and womanhood under his fostering care.

I believe that if Senator GORMAN at any time would have been required to have taken his choice between the accomplishment of his own ambition and his duty to those dependent upon him, he would not have hesitated a moment in making the election. As full of ambition as he was, he would have abandoned the worship of its idols for the idols of his household. Our home is really the holiest spot on earth. It is the oasis in the trackless desert and the fountain amidst the parched and thirsty longings for restless power and aspirations unattained. As years go by the fleeting phantoms of political honor recede from view and we gladly retrace our steps to the temple we have reared our own architecture-so that we may strengthen its pillars and rear its spires toward the sky.

There is no word or phrase in any language, dead or living, that I know of that carries with it the full significance of the

English word "home." It is not capable of translation, or even of definition or interpretation, and I hope, therefore, that the day will never come when any iconoclast will change the orthography of that Anglo-Saxon term and destroy the memories and imagery that cluster around its meaning.

And now his pilgrimage is ended and he is in his eternal home, where the mystery is unfolded-a mystery that neither philosophy nor science has ever solved. We have unbosomed the secrets of the earth, exposed the cycles of geologic time and gazed into revolving planets, but we stand aghast and dumb at the problem of man's creation. We can explain from a natural standpoint almost everything except the most vital of them all, and that is the problem of our existence. Upon this subject we can gather as much information from the unlettered savage as we can from the profoundest thought that ever dawned upon the earth. The most learned scientist of the present age has written a volume entitled "The Riddle of the Universe," in which he has essayed modestly to solve the riddle. But the last page of this remarkable production leaves us absolutely forlorn, comfortless, and deserted, the human heart without an aspiration, and the universe an utter scene of desolation.

The German philosopher, Goethe, the profoundest student of his age, when one of his companions was communicating to him his doubts upon the authenticity of revealed religion, said, "My friend, give me some faith-I have sufficient doubts of my own without requiring them to be supplemented." The cynic, Rabelais, exclaimed, "Ring down the curtain; the farce is done." Spinoza, the outlaw of the synagogue and the greatest of them all, stood like a solitary sentinel upon the confines of the universe in communion with his Creator and constructed a system which has made him the idol of the philosophical world.

Mr. President, I have pored for years over this cheerless

desire of human thought, and while I am a firm believer in the absolute liberty of thought, I can say what has been well said upon another occasion, that my warm love of genuine liberty has never chilled me into rebellion with its author, and so I believe it was with our departed friend.

That is the impression he left on me upon the last occasion when I met him. I questioned him then in regard to his health, and while I had the gloomiest forebodings of the mortal malady that seemed to encompass him, I was extremely careful not to communicate my thoughts, or to give him the slightest evidence of my feelings in that regard. He was a man of courage, and when he informed me that his physician had admonished him that his heart was seriously and perhaps fatally involved, one of the most beautiful of all poetic thoughts came speedily to my mind, because it was so appropriate to the occasion, that:

Our hearts though stout and brave,
Still like muffled drums are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

I am told that he met death as he had passed through many critical vicissitudes of his active and remarkable career, with composure, with resignation, with fortitude, and with hope. The chamber of death always presents a scene of sorrow and often of despair, but penetrating the gloom there is a conviction more potent than all the processes of reasoning, that this can not be a finality in Creation's work, and that the soul can not perish when the chords and keys that gave it utterance are broken. Reason as we will, this belief, as the years.go by, becomes a sacred and a divine inspiration, an inspiration that grows stronger and stronger as the frail tenement that contains it weakens and dissolves until, at the very moment of dissolution, in every life consecrated to some sublime and lofty purpose, it blazes forth and penetrates into distant realms with all the radiance of the morning sun.

SUPPORTING THE CREDENTIALS OF JOHN WALTER SMITH.

Perhaps the ablest extemporaneous argument ever delivered by Senator Rayner was that on March 26, 1908, when he successfully contended that Senator-elect Smith, from his State, was entitled to be seated.

I shall be very much mistaken if I can not convince the Senate, within a very short time, that the Senator from Michigan has fallen into an error upon the question under discussion. I shall do this principally by precedents that I have that I think conclusively settle the matter.

I wish to state, in the first place, that there is no contestant here at all. There is no protest whatever against the seating of the Senator-elect. Governor Whyte died last Tuesday a week at 7 o'clock. The General Assembly of Maryland, then in session, had immediate notice of his death. The law does not speak of any official notice, and does not require any.

On the following Tuesday-that is to say, Tuesday of this week-the two Houses initiated their proceedings for the election of a Senator to fill the unexpired term of Senator Whyte. They met on Tuesday for that purpose, and yesterday, Wednesday, met in joint convention. The Senator-elect who is now present, was declared, in accordance with the law, to have received the majority of votes, and to be the duly elected Senator. The Legislature of Maryland adjourns next Monday by constitutional limitation. If the Senator is right in what he states, Maryland will be without its proper representation upon this floor.

Mr. President, we do not propose to call an extra session of the Legislature of Maryland if the Senator from Maryland is entitled to be sworn in, as I contend that he is. There is no constitutional inhibition upon the Governor, but the Governor

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