Differing in many respects, Hayes and Grover Cleveland were alike in the possession of executive ability and the lack of oratorical. We all know that it is a purely academic question which is the better form of government, the English or our own, as both have grown up to adapt themselves to peculiar conditions. But when I hear an enthusiast for Cabinet government and ministerial responsibility, I like to point out that men like Hayes and Cleveland, who made excellent Presidents, could never have been prime ministers. One cannot conceive of either in an office equivalent to that of First Lord of the Treasury, being heckled by members on the front opposition bench and holding his own or getting the better of his opponents. I have brought Hayes and Cleveland into juxtaposition, as each had a high personal regard for the other. Hayes died on January 17, 1893. Cleveland, the President-elect, was to be inaugurated on the following fourth of March. Despite remonstrance and criticism from bitter partisans of his own party, who deprecated any honor paid to one whom all good Democrats deemed a fraudulent President, Cleveland traveled from New York to Fremont, Ohio, to attend the funeral. He could only think of Hayes as an ex-President and a man whom he highly esteemed. EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN Lecture read at Harvard University, April 13, 1908; printed in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for September, 1908. EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN Our two great journalists of the nineteenth century were Greeley and Godkin. Though differing in very many respects, they were alike in possessing a definite moral purpose. The most glorious and influential portion of Greeley's career lay between the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 and the election of Lincoln in 1860, when the press played an important part in the upbuilding of a political party which formulated in a practical manner the antislavery sentiment of the country. Foremost among newspapers was the _New York Tribune_; foremost among editors was Horace Greeley. Of Greeley in his best days Godkin wrote: "He has an enthusiasm which never flags, and a faith in principles which nothing can shake, and an English style which, for vigor, terseness, clearness, and simplicity, has never been surpassed, except perhaps by Cobbett."[171] Greeley and Godkin were alike in furnishing their readers with telling arguments. In northern New York and the Western Reserve of Ohio the _Weekly Tribune_ was a political Bible. "Why do you look so gloomy?" said a traveler, riding along the highway in the Western Reserve during the old antislavery days, to a farmer who was sitting moodily on a fence. "Because," replied the farmer, "my Democratic friend next door got the best of me in an argument last night. But when I get my _Weekly Tribune_ to-morrow I'll knock the foundations all out from under him."[172]