Xii.
But the deepest grief was in the hearts of the children of Africa, for whose redemption he had lived and died. Never again were they to have such a friend; and, blessed be God! the day had gone by when they would ever need another like him. It was, then, after all, a vain and needless regret of Sumner, in his last hours, that his work was not done. It was done. The immolation was perfected—his work was complete.1 A few brief passages more must be entwined into the final wreath we lay over his ashes. The Boston Daily Advertiser draws the parallel between the American Senator and Edmund Burke.Mr. Sumner will hold some such place in history as that which belongs to Edmund Burke, who is as well known to our times, though he has been in his grave almost fourscore years, as he was to his contemporaries,—and there is every reason for supposing that he will be just as well known in future centuries as he is known to the nineteenth century. Burke was in Parliament about twenty-eight years. He held office—and never high office—only about a year. He belonged to the opposition throughout most of his public life. He was never popular in the House of Commons. Often he spoke to empty benches, and [542] not unfrequently to the most hostile of hearers. He became, under the workings of poverty and illness, of disappointments and insults, one of the most irritable of mankind. He indulged in savage language on occasions that even the most factious and fractious of men ordinarily have allowed to control their imaginations and to bridle their tongues. He was, for most of his public life, positively odious to the majority of the English people. Yet he was the ablest man of his time, and made the ablest speeches that ever were heard in the British Parliament. His original legislation was small, nor does any great statute owe its existence to him. But he connected himself and his history by the most indissoluble of ties with a number of the greatest subjects that ever were discussed and debated by man: with the contest between England and her American Colonies; with Catholic Emancipation; with the Trial of Warren Hastings, and generally with all East Indian affairs; with the French Revolution,—and with other matters;—and the dozen volumes which contain his writings and speeches belong to the very first rank of British political and historical literature, and they are read by every man who aspires to understand history and politics. Mr. Sumner, like Burke, often was in opposition; like Burke, he would not be governed by his party when he thought that party was in the wrong; like Burke, his sympathies were with the oppressed, and he would labor hard for men whom he never could expect to see, and many of whom never could hear of him; and, like Burke, his works make his best monument, and are integral parts of the history of his country and his age. Finally, as he resembled Burke in the character of his labors, and in his readiness to be the champion of the wronged and the oppressed, so will he resemble him in the circumstance that his fame will be the greater as it is removed from the mists of contemporary calumny and detraction; and the true proportions of his character will stand out clearly before men when ‘the dead grow visible from the shades of time.’
