of political action, the sacrifices of no other man were comparable
to his. Youth, health, fortune; the favor of his king; the
enjoyment of ease and pleasure; even the choicest blessings of
domestic felicity--he gave them all for toil and danger in a
distant land, and an almost hopeless cause; but it was the cause of
justice, and of the rights of human kind. ...

Pronounce him one of the first men of his age, and you have not yet
done him justice. Try him by that test to which he sought in vain to
stimulate the vulgar and selfish spirit of Napoleon; class him among
the men who, to compare and seat themselves, must take in the
compass of all ages; turn back your eyes upon the records of time,
summon from the creation of the world to this day the mighty dead of
every age and every clime--and where, among the race of merely
mortal men, shall one be found, who, as the benefactor of his kind,
shall claim to take precedence of Lafayette?

There have doubtless been, in all ages, men whose discoveries or
inventions, in the world of matter or of mind, have opened new
avenues to the dominion of man over the material creation; have
increased his means or his faculties of enjoyment; have raised him
in nearer approximation to that higher and happier condition, the
object of his hopes and aspirations in his present state of existence.

Lafayette discovered no new principle of politics or of morals. He
invented nothing in science. He disclosed no new phenomenon in the
laws of nature. Born and educated in the highest order of feudal
nobility, under the most absolute monarchy of Europe, in possession
of an affluent fortune, and master of himself and of all his
capabilities, at the moment of attaining manhood the principle of