Two Virginians

Before Franklin Roosevelt uprose to praise Thomas Jefferson at Monticello, near Charlottesville, Va., last Independence Day (TIME, July 13), Virginia's senior Senator, Carter Glass, speaking as a Southern host and lifelong Democrat, declared in a carefully prepared introduction: "Virginia greets him because of the high station he holds; Virginia greets him for the courage and patience exhibited in dealing with public problems; Virginia greets him because he professes the humanitarianism and the love of the plain people which Thomas Jefferson manifested throughout his life."

Last week in Hanover County, Va. there was performed a pageant commemorating the 200th anniversary of the birth of an-other Virginia hero, Patrick Henry. Feature of the celebration was an extemporaneous address by Carter Glass. Speaking not from a pondered text but from his heart, not as a Democrat but as an Elder Statesman, the 78-year-old Senator barked out his real opinion of Franklin Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. Said he:

"We now have a system of government of privilege and discrimination, such as Patrick Henry denounced in the House of Burgesses when he made his brief speech that it was not proper to take the money of taxpayers of Virginia and appropriate it to pay off mortgages that had been made by thriftless and unwise individuals. That is just what we are doing in this country today, whether it be due to the mismanagement of bank managers, insurance com-pany managers, or the mismanagers of business or railroads. . . . He was opposed to tyranny of all kinds, and I submit that there is no more damaging species of tyranny than that of taxing the many for the benefit of the few.

"The easiest thing in the world to do is to spend somebody else's money, and it must be a very pleasant thing, judging from the number of people who vote for it. . . .

"What did Democrats proclaim from every stump throughout the length and breadth of the land? We would go to Washington and modify the Smoot-Hawley [tariff] bill. They haven't written a single line to repeal a single line! We will let industries continue their species of robbery and let other groups institute their species of robbery. . . .

"If Patrick Henry were living, could he be bamboozled by talk of Federal aid to the States? How does the Government of the United States get money? Many people have the idea that all it has to do is start its printing presses. . . . When the Government needs money it goes down in your pocket and gets it. All this Govern-ment aid talk is folly. . . .

"Patrick Henry was very much opposed to Virginia ratifying the Constitution. His reasons went toward the proposition that it did not curb Government enterprise enough. . . . The Constitution was intended to curb Government enterprise when the Government hasn't got sense, patriotism or courage enough to curb itself and remain within Constitutional limitations.

"Patrick was the greatest orator who ever lived. . . . If I had his force of speech we might have accomplished some-thing in the Senate without putting the Supreme Court to the trouble of deciding these matters.

"The President of the United States has been bitterly criticized; but my com ment on his actions would be to the effect that he made the mistake of taking all the power that Congress was willing to give him. It is the Congress that should be blamed for abjectly surrendering its own Constitutional functions and delegating them to the President of the United States and to various minor executive officials."

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