The Hawaiian Star

HE REFUSED A CROWN.

AN EXAMPLE OF WASHINGTON'S NOBLE NATURE

How This Action Impressed Gladstone and Carlyle-It Seemed Incomprehensible to Bonaparte.

Mr. Gladstone, in one of his chats with Chauncey M. Depew, said that he was inclined to the belief that all in all perhaps the greatest man since Martin Luther was George Washington, and the great English statesman went on to explain what he meant by this characterization. He did not regard Washington as intellectually possessed of such genius as any one of half a dozen men whom he could name. His military genius is undisputed, although of course it is hardly fair to compare it with that displayed by John Churchill or Napoleon or Wellington. Judged simply by results, it was as great as the victories of any of these men, since it led to the establishment of a nation destined to be pre-eminent in the nations of the world.

Every one who has studied the military movements of the revolution on both sides, is aware that Washington was very greatly helped by the distractions which existed in Great Britain and which made it impossible to concentrate its efforts in the American colonies. What the result would have been had Great Britain sent a Wellington commanding a great British army in case he and Washington joined in battle, no man can say.

Yet Mr. Gladstone thought, that in some respects Washington stood the greatest tests. His so called Fabian policy, which consisted in extraordinarily skillful avoidance of battle, when defeat would have been almost certain, and when it required strategy of the highest order to avoid it, was carried out with the patience and the conviction of genius. His retreat after the battle of Long Island was of itself, in Gladstone's opinion, sufficient evidence of great military ability to justify his appointment as commander-in-chief of the American armies.

But it was not in respect of military quality that Mr. Gladstone regarded Washington as so pre-eminently great. It was in the perfect balance of all his greater moral and intellectual qualities that this pre-eminence lay. His patience according to Mr. Gladstone, was something exceeding that of any other man who achieved greatness, for it was patience under extraordinary irritations and patience exercised for no personal ambition, but simply for the cause.

His conception of what the government which he was seeking to establish should be was quite as distinct and comprehensive as that of Hamilton, Jay, Madison or Jefferson, although he probably could not have set forth in legal argument as they did the reasons for that conception. They were admirably set forth in his messages, and especially in his farewell address, although there are indications that some of the messages were written by Hamilton, while the farewell address was unquestionably written by Madison, although some writers believe that Madison wrote it.

But if the phraseology was that of the secretary the ideas were those of Washington, and he undoubtedly set them forth to his secretaries, asking them, who were more familiar with the literary use of the pen than he, to put them in fitting language.

Mr. Gladstone regards the finest triumph of noble, unselfish, patriotic and majestic impulse to be illustrated by one brief incident in Washington's career. When Washington refused the crown, then the world had the finest exemplification of a noble, majestic nature.

The incident is not as familiar as it should be. American youth know that Washington captured Cornwallis, made a brilliant retreat after the battle of Long Island, and worried and fretted the British armies into exhaustion during a seven years' war. They also know that he was president twice, and declined to become president a third time. There are not many who know that the only time tears were seen in his eyes and the manifestation of great personal sorrow was made to those about him, was upon that occasion at the close of the war, when his army encamped upon the banks of the Hudson, was about to be disbanded.

There were men who were fearful that the ambitions and jealousies of some of those who had been of influence during the revolution, would lead them to attempt to gain great personal power. There were others who believed that as a result of the victory, there would be established in America a constitutional monarchy modeled after that of Great Britain. The nation as we now know it was a government yet to be created.

So a company of officers—men having influence, having talked this matter over, agreed to go to Washington, ask him to accept the crown of empire and to promise him the support of the army in establishing thus a personal throne. When they approached him, Washington believed that these officers and friends of his had come upon some such errand as led them often to seek him for counsel. He was in a happy frame of mind that morning. The war was ended victoriously, and he had already been in consultation with Hamilton and some others respecting the form of civil government which now the free colonies should undertake.

They offered him the crown in but a single sentence. A few years before across the river, Washington, being seated at breakfast, had been approached by an officer, who said to him that Benedict Arnold had fled after an attempt to betray West Point into the hands of the British. The news was appalling and to Washington must have been
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extraordinarily painful, since for Arnold he had a personal affection which he bestowed upon only two or three of his officers. Yet so great was his self-command, so superb his capacity for suppressing emotion, so thoroughly had he schooled himself to face adversity with calmness, that those about him only saw a look of sad sternness came to his countenance as he uttered the now historic words, "Whom can we now trust."

But when these officers proposed to him the empire and tried to put the scepter in his hand Washington broke down. There was sorrow and there was anger in his countenance and in his manner. Tears came to his eyes, and when he dismissed them with a sad gesture and only a brief word these men realized that Washington had been shocked and grieved that it could have entered into their hearts that he for one moment could have regarded an empire as possible or could have fought through those seven years that he might himself attain the throne.

In that action Washington not only revealed his moral greatness, but according to the opinion of Mr. Gladstone and other great English thinkers who have studied his life, made it impossible that a monarchy could ever be established in the United States.

Carlyle, who had no great opinion of the American Revolution, believing, as he in his private talks with Americans whom he met have been correctly reported that it was little more than a guerrilla warfare, nevertheless has said that this half sorrowful, half angry and contemptuous repulse to those who were bringing to him a crown was something greater than the command of the American armies through seven years to ultimate victory. It was an act that Europeans could not understand.

Bonaparte was always inclined to believe the story purely apocryphal, although he was a great admirer of Washington and paid a higher tribute to his military genius than some other great captains have done. But it was incomprehensible to Bonaparte that man should have conducted a prolonged warfare to success without any idea of personal aggrandizement, and, moreover, Bonaparte himself had no conception whatever of any other form of republican government, than that hideous nightmare which followed the French revolution.