the Declaration of Independence. This address was to a considerable extent a philosophical treatment of the development of the federal government and a discussion of some of the present mischiefs apparent in the conditions which had recently resulted from notable changes in the organic law and in political methods. He dwelt with special emphasis upon the dangerous progress that was observable in the demoralization of the suffrage by the direct exercise of unlawful and even corrupt influences upon the voters.

A few years later he delivered two notable addresses which were afterwards published in pamphlet form, one in the spring of 1880, a Memorial Day address before Marshal Sanders Post, G. A. R., at Littleton, and the other the annual address in December, 1882, before the Grafton and Coös Bar Association at Lancaster.

These efforts were widely different, both in character and method. The former was a catholic, patriotic, and philosophical treatment of the results of the war, and an exposition of the position of high honor and deep responsibility which belonged to the great body of veterans whose valor had reëstablished the Union and placed the governmental structure upon enduring foundations for the future. The other address was upon the subject of "Certain Political Conditions and Tendencies which Imperil the Integrity and Independence of the Judiciary." This was an arraignment of the court, and a denunciation of its methods, as that tribunal was at that time constituted, and as its policy was then formulated and directed by its chief justice. He attributed the then existing conditions, both in the federal and state judiciary, to the encroachment of party politics within that sphere which belonged exclusively to an independent judiciary. He urged as a remedy that the bar assert itself in aggressive and effective opposition to these demoralizing political conditions and tendencies.

Mr. Bingham made a number of notable contributions to the literature of legal biography between 1880 and 1892. Among the prominent lawyers and judges as to whom he prepared extended memorials were Andrew Salter Woods, 1880; Gilman Marston and Nathaniel Wait Westgate, 1887; John Hatch George, 1888, and William Spencer Ladd, 1892. Mr. Bingham's

method in biography was to subordinate what are commonly made prominent as biographical dates, statistics, facts, and events in the career of his subject, and to devote most of his attention to character analysis and to the relations of his subject with important events and measures.

He was not an infrequent contributor to periodical literature. Among his more carefully prepared political essays might be mentioned an article in the Manchester Union, February 14, 1883, under the title "The Political Situation," and one in the Riverside Magazine of Concord, in 1890, on "The Issues at Stake," to which Senator Chandler contributed a reply in the same publication.

In the long contest which was maintained between the rival railroad systems in New Hampshire, occupying the attention of the Legislature and the courts from about 1870 to about 1890, Mr. Bingham was a conspicuous and potent factor. This most important epoch in the industrial, corporate, legislative, judicial, and political history of the state has its own literature, which is as important and interesting as it is voluminous. Mr. Bingham's elaborate and exhaustive argument on the "Hazen" bill and the "Atherton" bill, nominally before the railroad committee of the house in 1887, but really before almost the entire membership of the state government and the auxiliary forces, was one of the events of that remarkable session. Many of his most carefully prepared, most characteristic and most effective arguments on the railroad issues of those years were not reported for the press, or delivered by him in form for preservation. Others of his briefs and arguments in that litigation are printed in papers and pamphlets, but now buried in court files and the inmost recesses of other Lethean repositories. When an adequate history of the transition period in railroad affairs and railroad progress in New Hampshire is written, a competent and impartial historian cannot fail to accord Harry Bingham the part of a most efficient directive force in the strategic and forensic working out of the far-reaching conceptions and results embodied in the railroad unification now accomplished, not only in New Hampshire, but in the entire area of northern New England.

With but one intermission, from 1871 to 1891, Mr. Bingham

served continuously as a legislator in the House, in the Constitutional Convention (1876), or the Senate. In this twenty years his masterful powers in debate were repeatedly tested. He was chairman of the House judiciary committee in 1871 and 1874, the only two years of his service in which his party was in the ascendency, and at every other session at which he was a senator or representative he was a member of that committee. It is impossible to estimate the influence, both positive and negative, that he exerted in developing a sound, consistent and progressive system of statutory law.

He contributed formal and carefully prepared arguments, reports and drafts of bills (among which were those relating to the protection of the ballot from corrupt influences, including the so-called Australian ballot bill), to the proceedings of these bodies, and many of them, embodying, in several instances, the results of his best efforts in research and presentation, are lost for want of adequate reporting by the press, or his own failure to extend them in manuscript.

In any summary of these efforts mention should be made of his argument on the question of law raised by the contests between Proctor and Todd, and Priest and Head over seats in the senate in 1875; his argument against abolition of capital punishment in 1877; his argument in opposition to the opinion of the court as to the election of a United States senator in 1881; his discussion of questions of taxation, the constitution of the courts, the regulation of corporations, the consolidation of railroads and the concession of other powers and privileges to them; and, finally, his argument before the court and in the House of Representatives in 1891 on the duty of that tribunal and of the house in the exclusion of the so-called "if entitled" representatives-elect from seats in the House pending the organization of that body.

This should not be regarded as in any sense a complete or methodical résumé of even the more important forensic efforts and productions in the second period of his legislative career. It is, at best, but a brief and desultory attempt to call attention to the variety and extent of Mr. Bingham's labors in that field of his action and influence.

In the fifty years of his identification with the Democratic

party in constant and unvarying advancement from controlling local influence to extended national recognition, the organization encountered three transitional crises which were at least temporarily disastrous to all the rational hopes it could entertain for immediate accession to the control of a national administration. These epochs were marked by the secession of the eleven states under the control of the southern wing of the party in 1860 and 1861-the change of front on national lines and the nomination of Mr. Greeley in 1872-and the startling revolution in party policy and party conduct which culminated in the Chicago convention of 1896.

Mr. Bingham refused to support any of the nominations for the presidency emanating from the national convention in 1860. He voted a ballot for electors bearing names which he selected for himself and which is unique in the town records for that election. He made no formal statement of his position at that time which has been preserved*

In the Greeley campaign he was a delegate to the Baltimore convention, advocated the new departure and cordially and unreservedly supported Mr. Greeley after he was accorded the Democratic nomination.

He was president of the Democratic state convention following the national convention, and on that occasion (Sept. 13, 1872) made an address singularly clear, straightforward and argumentative in support of the party ticket and the principles which had been formulated on the changed alignment of the two parties. This address was extensively circulated as a campaign document.

In the recasting of Democratic policy, according to the edicts of the convention of 1896, Mr. Bingham regarded its action as a radical and unjustifiable departure from the essential principles of genuine Democracy. He was president of the state

*In the presidential election of 1860 the Lincoln and Hamlin ticket for electors had a considerable plurality in Littleton. The next largest vote was for the Douglas and Johnson ticket. The Breckenridge and Lane ticket had a few votes, as did the so-called Union or Bell and Everett ticket. Mr. Bingham, however, preferred not to vote either of these tickets. He made one for electors to suit himself on which appeared the names of Franklin Pierce, Harry Hibbard, Jeremiah Blodgett, Nathaniel Swazey, and William Heywood. This ticket had only one vote in Littleton, and that was cast by Mr. Bingham.

Democratic convention in the spring, preceding the session of the national convention, and delivered a carefully prepared address in which he presented his views on the tariff, the currency, and other pending questions with conspicuous lucidity and directness. In the ensuing fall he presided at the convention of the national Democracy called in protest against the policy of accepting and endorsing the platform and candidates of the Chicago convention, and on this occasion delivered another characteristic, cogent and convincing address, taking as his theme, "The Present Duty of the Democracy."

These two addresses were published in one pamphlet, under the title, "Consistent Adherence to Democratic Principles," and extensively circulated in the campaign then pending. To these two statements recourse must be had for the evidence of the attitude and opinion of Mr. Bingham on the issues which were the result of the political upheaval of 1896-for his deliberate and unbiased judgment rendered at the termination of fifty years of party service, distinguished by unselfish loyalty, unfailing persistency and courage, and an intellectual primacy in leadership which find no parallel in the later history of the New Hampshire Democracy.

In the years that ensued between the termination of his legislative career in 1891 and his death in 1900, he withdrew himself gradually from the active duties of his profession and devoted his time largely to renewed research in such directions as would afford material for literary productions which he had long contemplated. He accomplished before 1898 all of these later undertakings that he had given himself to do. This work took the form of addresses and monographs, the dates and titles of which were as follows:

"The Muniments of Constitutional Liberty," address before the Grafton and Coös Bar Association at Berlin, Jan. 26, 1894. "Progress in Asiatic Civilization and its Significance for the Western World," address before the same association at Littleton, Feb. 14, 1895.

"The Rights and Responsibilities of the United States in Reference to the International Relations of the Great Powers of Europe and the Lesser Republics of America," an address before Marshal Sanders Post, G. A. R., at Littleton, Dec. 26, 1895.