MATTHEW P. DEADY. BY HARVEY W. SCOTT, EDITOR OF "THE OREGONIAN." The rise of American communities and their formation into States have given opportunity for the growth and development of many of our most noted and useful public men. The man who has borne a prominent part in establishing one of the States of our American Union, who has been instrumental in giving direction to its growth and distinctiveness to its character, and who has largely assisted in infusing a spirit of independence and selfreliance, as well as a moral and practical progressive energy into its development-such a man is sure of an honorable and permanent place in our history. All our States have those who are thus held in remembrance, and their history forms a large part of the general history of the country. To illustrate this, particular names need not be recounted. Every one who studies the history of the origin of the several States, readily selects the individuals whose influence has given them the distinguishing characteristics which they as communities possess. The person who acquaints himself with the history of Oregon will assign to JUDGE DEADY a leading place among those who are entitled to be regarded as the representative men of the Pacific Coast. A residence of twenty years' duration, the greater part of which has been spent in active participation in the affairs of the Territory and State, has enabled him to exert a remarkable influence upon the thought, the habits, the jurisprudence, and the general interests of this rising commonwealth. Few men have ever more thoroughly impressed their ideas upon a large community than he has done. He came to Oregon at a time when the various elements of society, which had been drawn together from localities separated widely from each other by customs as well as by distance, had met and begun to coalesce; and taking them in this transition state, he has been largely instrumental in moulding them into their present form. Possessing many, though not all, of the qualities necessary for a leading public character, he has often been able to guide and direct where he has not had power to absolutely control. His extensive learning, his ready judgment, his clear perception of the whole relations of a subject, with the ability to state his opinions in a consistent and convincing manner, have always given him influence and power; and while he is lacking in certain elements of character which enable some men to achieve a very high popularity, he possesses those solid qualities which always command respect, and which, in general, enable their possessor to make a more enduring impression upon the public thought than is made by many whose praises are continually on the popular tongue. MATTHEW P. DEADY was born May 12, 1824, in Talbot county, Maryland, nine miles from Easton. He is of Irish and English extraction. His father was a man of education, and a schoolmaster by profession. His parents were married in Baltimore, his mother's native place, where they mainly resided until the year 1828, when they removed to Wheeling, Virginia. Here his father had charge of the Lancasterian Academy, a public school conducted upon the monitorial system of the celebrated English Quaker, Joseph Lancaster, and in this school Matthew took his first lessons in the "hornbook and ferule." In 1833, the family returned to Baltimore on a visit. On the return to Wheeling, Matthew's mother died and was buried in May, 1834, near Burkettsville, in western Maryland. Thenceforward, Matthew was thrown for the most part upon his own resources and impulses for his progress through the world and the direction of it. During the summer of 1834, he attended school at Fredericktown, Maryland. In the autumn of the same year, he returned to Baltimore and entered his grandfather's store, where he remained until the spring of 1836, when he returned to his father in Wheeling. Here he went to school, and was employed in a music store until 1838, when he removed with his father to Belmont county, Ohio. There he lived and labored upon his father's farm for about three years, when he voluntarily left home and went to Barnesville, Ohio, to learn the trade of blacksmithing. With the exception of six months, during which he attended the Barnesville Academy, he wrought at the anvil for the next four years, when his engagement with his employer closed. During this period, he became a skillful mechanic. Besides the physical development and hardiness which these years of wholesome labor gave him, he obtained at the same time a knowledge of men and things in the practical affairs of life which no amount of mere school culture could have bestowed. In this country, where every man must make his own way to fortune, and where "self-made men," to adopt a trite phrase, are the only ones who win position and hold it, the man whose early life is one of severe struggles, has, in general, a great advantage over those who might seem to be more favored by fortune. He who has accus tomed himself in early life to meet difficulties and surmount them, acquires a courage and a steadfastness which will serve him better than any patrimonial estate; for no man, in a country like ours, where competition is so great, and where continued success depends on absolute merit, can sustain himself for a day after he relaxes his effort and loses faith in himself. In Troilus and Cressida, Ulysses, remonstrating with Achilles for his inactivity, says: Perseverance, dear my lord, Keeps honor bright: To have done, is to hang In monumental mockery. Take the instant way; Where one but goes abreast; keep then the path; That one by one pursue. If you give way, Grit and pluck are good words to describe the qualities which are indispensable to every American. And there is nothing which gives these qualities a better development than the necessity which compels a man to obtain a practical knowledge of what labor is, and causes him to commence to build upon this solid foundation of all human improvement. Most of our public men have had preparatory discipline in the school of labor, and this has generally been not the least valuable part of their education and training for public duty. Such a beginning is almost necessary to Americanize our public men. But none except low minds attempt to make particular merit of it. There has been as much mean demagogism on this point as on almost any other. A great writer says: "There is no qualification for public place but virtue and wisdom, actual or presumptive. Wherever they are found, they have in whatever state, condition, profession or trade, the passport of Heaven to human place and honor. Woe to the country that would madly and impiously reject the service of the talents and virtues, civil, military or religious, that are given to grace and serve it; woe to that country, too, that passing into the opposite extreme, considers a low education, a mean, contracted view of things, a sordid, mercenary occupation, as a preferable title to lead and command." After his apprenticeship closed, Matthew pursued his studies in an academy six months longer. This was the end of his school days. He therefore never had the advantages which a collegiate education would have given him; but the person who obtains any idea of the extent |