George F. Hoar

In opposition to this bill I made an earnest speech showing it to be in conflict with the doctrines on which our fathers founded the Republic; with the principles of the Constitutions of nearly all the States, including that of California…

But I could not consent to striking at men, as I have just said, because of their occupation.

The hearts of the people were full of the great doctrines of liberty which Jefferson and the Fathers of our country had learned from Milton and the statesmen of the English Commonwealth.

It would be better to say that there are occasions when the instinct is a better guide than the reason.

But somehow or other, I am strongly tempted to say there are occasions in life where the meanest thing a man can do is to do perfectly right.

I suppose a good many moralists will think that it is a very wicked thing indeed for a man to vote against his convictions on a grave public question, from a motive like this, of personal friendship.

It is American at both ends, and throughout all the way.

It is not only wonderful in its amount, but in its origin, its resources, and in its whole conduct.

That ended the foolish outcry against the great policy of internal improvement, which has helped to make possible the marvels of our domestic commerce, one of the most wonderful creations of human history.

They are faces into which I am neither afraid nor ashamed to look." The assembly hesitated a little between indignation at the tone of defiance, and approval of a man's standing by his convictions.

Clapp, of the Boston Journal, with a manliness that did him infinite credit, declared publicly in its columns that he had been all wrong, and that I was right.

But it convinced the people, and I believe it had a very great effect throughout the country, and was the means of saving the policy of internal improvements from destruction.

I concluded by saying that I knew they would not come to my way of thinking that afternoon or that week, but that they were sure to come to it in the end.

I wrote a letter to the people of Massachusetts in which I took up case by case each provision of the bill, and showed how important it was for the interest of commerce between the States, or with foreign countries, and how well it…

If I had flinched or apologized, I should have been destroyed.

The conduct of no pick- pocket or bank robber could have been held up to public indignation and contempt in severer language than the supporters of that bill.

I told him I should vote for the bill, because I believed it to be right, but that it would lose me the support of every newspaper in Massachusetts that had been friendly to me before.

But when the vote came on I said to myself: "This measure is right.

So I claim no credit that I have voted and spoken as I thought, always without stopping to consider whether public opinion would support me.

Alexander Hamilton said that if every Athenian citizen had been a Socrates, still every Athenian assembly would have been a mob.

The one thing the people of Massachusetts will not forgive in a public servant is that he should act against his own honest judgment to please them.

When she has chosen them she expects them to act according to their best judgement, and not to be thinking about popularity.

I have done what I thought for the public interest without much troubling myself about public opinion.

I have throughout my whole public political life acted upon my own judgment.

So I think it is rarely safe for a man who is in political life for public, and not for personal ends, and who values the political principles which he professes, to decline any position of power, either from modesty, doubt of his own…