The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 | Page 2

He was then nominated for Lieutenant
Governor by a very large majority, and was elected. In the convention
of 1879, Governor Thomas Talbot declining a re-nomination,
Lieutenant Governor Long received 669 votes to 505 votes for the Hon.
Henry L. Pierce, and was nominated and elected, having 122,751 votes
to 109,149 for General Benjamin F. Butler, 9,989 for John Quincy
Adams, and 1,635 for the Rev D.C. Eddy, D.D.
On the fifteenth of September, 1880, Governor Long was re-nominated
by acclamation, and in November he was re-elected by a plurality of
about 52,000 votes,--the largest plurality given for any candidate for
the governorship of Massachusetts since the presidential year of 1872.
He continued to hold the office, by re-election until January, 1883.
Several important acts were passed during the administration of
Governor Long, and notably among these was an act fixing the
penalties for drunkeness,--an act providing that no person who has been
served in the United State army or navy, and has been honorably
discharged from the service, if otherwise qualified to vote, shall be
debarred from voting on account of his being a pauper, or, if a pauper,
because of the non-payment of a poll tax,--an act which obviated many
of the evils of double taxation by providing that, when any person has
an interest in taxable real estate as holders of a mortgage, given to
secure the payment of a loan, the amount of which is fixed and stated,
the amount of said person's interest as mortgagee shall be assessed as
real estate in the city or town where the land lies, and the mortgagor
shall be assessed only for the value of said real estate, less the
mortgagee's interest in it.
The creditable manner in which Mr. Long conducted the affairs of the
State induced his constituents to send him as their representative in
Washington. He was elected a member of the Forty-eighth Congress,
and is now a member also of the Forty-ninth. His record thus far has

been altogether honorable and characterized by a sturdy watchfulness
of the interests entrusted to his care.
As a man of letters. Governor Long has achieved a reputation. Some
years ago, he produced a scholarly translation, in blank verse, of
Virgil's Æneid, which was published in 1879 in Boston. It has found
many admirers among students of classical literature. Governor Long,
amid busy professional and official duties, has also written several
poems and essays which reflect credit upon his heart and brain. His
inaugural addresses were masterpieces of literary art, and the same can
be said of his speeches on the floor of Congress, all of them, polished,
forceful and to the point.
Mr. Long is a very fluent speaker, and, without oratorical display, he
always succeeds in winning the attention of his auditors. It is what he
says, more than how he says it, that has won for him his great
popularity on the platform. When, in February last, the Washington
monument was dedicated, he it was that was chosen to read the
magnificent oration of Robert C. Winthrop.
As a specimen of Mr. Long's happy way of expressing timely thoughts,
the following passage, selected from an address which he delivered at
Tremont Temple, Boston, on Memorial Day, 1881, deserves to be
read:--
"Scarce a town is there--from Boston, with its magnificent column
crowned with the statue of America at the dedication of which even the
conquered Southron came to pay honor, to the humblest stone in rural
villages--in which these monuments do not rise summer and winter, in
snow and sun, day and night, to tell how universal was the response of
Massachusetts to the call of the patriots' duty, whether it rang above the
city's din or broke the quiet of the farm. On city square and village
green stand the graceful figures of student, clerk, mechanic, farmer, in
that endeared and never-to-be-forgotten war-uniform of the soldier or
the sailor, their stern young faces to the front, still on guard, watching
the work they wrought in the flesh, and teaching in eloquent silence the
lesson of the citizen's duty to the state, How our children will study
these! How they will search and read their names! How quaint and

antique to them will seem their arms and costume! How they will
gather and store up in their minds the fine, insensibly filtering
percolation of the sentiment of valor, of loyalty, of fight for right, of
resistance against wrong, just as we inherited all this from the
Revolutionary era, so that, when some crisis shall in the future come to
them, as it came to us, they will spring to the rescue, as sprang our
youth, in the beauty and chivalry of the consciousness of a noble
descent."
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