and an ultimate retreat. To accept these heresies now is a cowardly surrender at the post of duty.

I want it known that we can never take this step unless we do it voluntarily. If we become the party of the Federal Government as against the rights of the States, if we are to fill our platform with the creed of the propogandist, if this is our new role, and we are to abjectly abandon everything that we have stood for in the past and venture into this foreign field and partake of this forbidden fruit, then when history recounts the tragic manner of our death as a political party, I want posterity also to know that in the hour of our brightest hopes and most alluring prospects, determined to end our great historic career, that of our own free will and choice we threw ourselves upon the poisoned weapon of Federal centralization and died of a self-inflicted wound.

ADDRESS UPON THE DEATH OF SENATOR WILLIAM PINCKNEY WHYTE.

Eulogies were pronounced upon the life and public services of Maryland's Grand Old Man in the Senate January 16, 1909. He was at three different periods a member of that body, an historic fact not true of any other Maryland statesman.

We are here today to pay the last tribute to the memory of our departed colleague, the Hon. William Pinckney Whyte, Senator from Maryland.

The word "honorable" has had a varied signification in the political nomenclature of this country. It often has no meaning, and is frequently attached to names that have very little claim to its title. In his case it has a double signification. His life was full of honors, conferred upon him by the people of his State, and as he bore them successively, his public and private career was as honorable in all of its acts and deeds as that of

any man who ever served his people in the history of this country.

Senator WHYTE was a remarkable man in point of character and ability, and certainly not in my days, has our State ever produced anyone who had so firm a hold upon popular confidence and affection. In fact, looking over the history of Maryland, I can safely say, taking his record as a unit-at the bar, and at the various professional employments that he filled, and the high places that he honored and in the universal esteem that he was held by our people for over half a century— I know of no one who occupied a higher or more distinguished position than he did in the annals of our State.

Coming from a distinguished ancestry, of which fact he was never known to boast and never even allude to, the representative of an illustrious and honored lineage that was the pride of Maryland in its earlier days and that will continue to reflect glory upon her in all the years to come, it might be supposed that such a descent and such an environment became his easy passports to favor when he entered upon the public career that he had planned for himself in the pursuit of an honorable ambition. This was not the case. He seemed to throw off at the very outset of his career every help and claim that such an influence might be supposed to give and to practically proclaim to the people that he desired nothing from their hands except that which his merits entitled him. He had made up his mind at an early age to work by honest toil from the bottom round of the ladder to the top, if possible, and never to depend in the slightest degree upon any extraneous influence to lift him into places that his qualifications did not entitle him to hold.

He filled so many posts of honor with such lasting credit, that it would be almost impossible to sketch in this brief presentation the history of all that he did and the great and arduous work that he accomplished. It is sufficient to say that he was either elected or appointed to every office that the State

of Maryland could give him and which he was willing to accept.

He had a business, a professional and a political training combined. Commencing his active life in one of the largest commercial houses in America, he acquired an experience and knowledge that were of invaluable service to him afterwards in his profession, and that for years gave him a reputation in certain of its departments unsurpassed by any of his brethren at the bar. In commercial practice, when it became necessary to investigate in detail the accuracy of complicated accounts, he was the most marvelous hand at our bar to unravel and explain them and to discover the slightest mistake or inaccurate entries that they contained.

I remember once an important case in which I was associated with him, in which a large amount of money was involved, embracing partnership settlements that had run over a long period of years, upon which the auditor of one of our courts, himself an expert accountant, had stated an account and certified its accuracy to the court, and which Senator WHYTE had set aside through the discovery of an error in bookkeeping that had not occurred to any one of the numerous counsel who were connected with the case.

When it came to the trial of cases before juries, civil and criminal, when he was at the heighth of his practice, he stood without a peer. For years and years he was the leading counsel in almost every great criminal case that was tried in our courts, and his success was so wonderful that it would sound like fiction if I were to attempt to recapitulate the verdicts that he secured and the victories that he won. In his palmy days upon the hustings he was incomparable. As has been well said by my colleague, with a commanding presence, with a captivating voice, with ready wit, and a memory for events and individual recollections that seemed to grow stronger as he

advanced in years, Senator WHYTE held hundreds of audiences spellbound by the charm and magic of his eloquence.

A man may possess all of these great gifts and still not be personally popular with the masses. This was not his case, however. He was the idol of his fellow-citizens, because he was always easy of approach, never exclusive in the slightest degree, and at all times willing to place himself upon a par with the humblest of his constituents with whom he came in contact.

He possessed another gift that was with him until his death. He had the greatest capacity for untiring and systematic work of anyone whom I ever knew. For years and years I saw him almost daily, but I never saw him disengaged or idle. He was always at work on something. And during almost the whole of the time he held public office, with the exception perhaps of the period during which he was Governor of the State, he never relinquished his professional work, but carried it right along, accomplishing the rare feat of being able to bestow his attention upon his practice and at the same time faithfully and assiduously perform the great public trusts that had been committed to him. And, Mr. President, he did loyally perform them. No matter how minute the detail, how tiresome the inquiry, or how laborious the examination, no subject was ever committed to his charge to which he did not devote the concentrated powers of his great intellect.

He filled the office of Comptroller of the State of Maryland; he was Governor of the State; he held important posts as legal advisor for the municipality of Baltimore; he was Mayor of the city; he was Attorney-General of Maryland; and three times a member of this body-once to fill the unexpired term of Reverdy Johnson by appointment, second by election of the general assembly, and third by appointment of Governor Warfield to fill the unexpired term of Senator Gorman.

During the whole of his political career, he was the type and representative of a generation of constitutional Democrats, who have shed imperishable luster and renown upon the history of their country. He believed in the Constitution of his country as it was written and intended, and not as it has been perverted and disfigured. He was not what we may designate a strict constructionist of its provisions, because he always believed in putting into exercise the powers of the Federal Government whenever the emergency demanded it. He was, however, irrevocably opposed to conferring upon the Federal Government powers that were never intended it should possess. And, so far as the rights of the States were concerned, he stood here in this body and elsewhere as a sentinel upon the watchtower, to protect them from invasion by sounding the alarm whenever an assault was attempted upon their institutions. In this political faith he lived, and in it he died.

There is but one Senator here now who was with him in those stormy and memorable days, the senior Senator from Colorado [MR. TELLER], whose voluntary absence from this body we shall all lament in the years to come. Beyond the Senate, however, the people of Maryland and the Democracy of the Union will never forget the services that Senator WHYTE rendered in their behalf. If Democracy means anything at all, he illustrated it in its truest sense. Time and time again he lifted his voice in this Chamber without avail against political tyranny and oppression, and time and time again he thundered through this hall the discarded warnings of the Constitution. His last effort in the Senate, when his clarion voice rang as it did in the days of yore, was upon the reserved rights of sovereign States. He pointed to the fact that the States were still sovereign when they acted within their own jurisdiction, and that no emergency justified a violation of their constitutional prerogative or a breach of their inherent rights. Inherent rights of the States and not inherent rights