is considered a
great man. He is called the "Liberator"; but I can conceive that none
but a very crude mind, inspired by a false sentiment, could have made a
horde of slaves, the most ignorant people on the globe, the political
equals of the American people. A great man in such a crisis would have
resisted popular clamor and have refused them suffrage until they had
been prepared to receive it by at least some education. Americans are
prone to call their great politicians statesmen. Blaine, Reed, Conkling,
Harrison were types of statesmen; Hanna, Quay, and others are
politicians.

The Lower House was a disappointment to me. There are too many ordinary
men there. They do not look great, and at the present time there is not
a really great man in the Lower House. There are too many cheap lawyers
and third-rate politicians there. Good business men are required, but
such men can not afford to take the position. I heard a great captain of
industry, who had been before Congress with a committee, say that he
never saw "so many asses together in all his life"; but this was an
extreme view. The House may not compare intellectually with the House of
Commons, but it contains many bright men. A fool could hardly get in,
though the labor unions have placed some vicious representatives there.
The lack of manners distressed a lady acquaintance of mine, who, in a
burst of indignation at seeing a congressman sitting with his feet on
his desk, said that there was not a man in Congress who had any social
position in Washington or at home, which, let us trust, is not true.

As I came from the White House some days ago I met a delegation of
native Indians going in, a sad sight. In Indian affairs occurs a page of
national history which the Americans are not proud of. In less than four
hundred years they have almost literally been wiped from the face of the
earth; the whites have waged a war of extermination, and the pitiful
remnant now left is fast disappearing. In no land has the survival of
the fittest found a more remarkable illustration. But the Indians are
having their revenge. The Americans long ago brought over Africans as
slaves; then, as the result of a war of words and war of fact, suddenly
released them all, and, at one fell move, in obedience to the hysterical
cries of their people, gave these ignorant semisavages and slaves the
same political rights as themselves.

Imagine the condition of things! The most ignorant and debased