The Death Of Thomas Kinsella, Editor of the Eagle. (As reported Feb. 11^th 1884 B.D.E.)

Thomas Kinsella, who for nearly a quarter of a century has been chief editor of the Eagle died this afternoon after an illness which began twelve weeks ago last Saturday night. In its earlier stages the malady was not deemed serious, nor were there until within the past fortnight any grave fears entertained by his family. His large frame and naturally vigorous constitution seemed adequate to the task of throwing off almost any disease, while behind these was a will power which in itself appeared sufficient to offset many of the attacks to which less resolute men succumb. His disorder was of the liver, which, beginning with the familiar signs of lethargy, by degrees passed into jaundice and culminated in the wreck of the whole system, consequent on the absorption by the blood of the poisonous element of the bile. To what, if any, extent the structure of the organ was impaired is not known, but its refusal to respond to the medicinal agents employed leads to the opinion that recovery was impossible from the beginning.

The story of Thomas Kinseki's life, in so far as the hard and dry data of events are concerned, can be briefly told, but to give anything like an adequate account of the man and his work would require not only the space of a large volume, but a disposition which, while the sense of loss is keen, no person competent to the task can bring to bear. At the present moment sorrow is mistress of the mind and throws all things into shadow except the image of the generous but now pulseless heart. To trace his influence upon the events in which he played an important part; to body forth the measure of his services to Brooklyn; to follow his career as a journalist and nicely mark the qualities which made his pen powerful in the land; to set in a clear light the principles by which he guided in his discussions of public affairs, and finally to illustrate what he was to his associates, his friends and his kindred would require a degree of meditation and dispassionate labor which the reader may well believe can not in this hour of sadness be commanded by any one who knew him well. Yet it is imperative that even the poor tribute of which the occasion admits be paid.

Concerning his ancestry, his boyhood and struggles by which he fitted himself to enter upon his career as a journalist, Thomas Kindles never spoke much even to those in whom he most confided, and he has not, to our knowledge, left any written account. Nor are these things material. It is not difficult for the imagination to picture the boy, frank and fair, learning in his Irish home that life meant labor, passing in due time into the lists of toil, feeling later on the stirrings of ambition and like all who, in the language of the poet,

--seeking knowledge by the fireplace, by the lamp when others were asleep, or in the occasional hours of day not devoted to ordinary toil. He used to say, in his later years, that he did not remember the time when he could not read, or when his chief pleasure was not in books. Always shy, even when in the busy world he had to thrust himself into the forefront of affairs, he appears to have been in his boyhood abnormally averse to the boisterous sports of the young people about him. This was due neither to any lack of physical vigor nor to any gloom of spirit—for his habit of mind was unmistakably cheerful.—but to love a contemplation for its own sake. his vivid imagination and inquisitive intellect yielded when in action an excitement more to his liking than others found in physical exertion.

Born in the County Wexford, Ireland, in December, 1832, he came to this country at so early an age that the features of his native land lived in his thought rather than in his memory. With the utmost joy he revisited the Green Isle last summer, but the only sense of familiarity he found was in the leaping of his blood. He knew the land was the land of his forefathers; its traditions were a part of his inheritance, and the language of its peasantry was music to his ears. Otherwise he was in a place that knew him not, save as his kinsfolk extended to him the warm welcome characteristic of Irish hearts. The year of his arrival in the United States and the ship on which he came are not known to the writer of this sketch, but what the boy Thomas did distinctly recall of both was that New York Bay opened before him like a vision of heaven, and that he was wearied beyond expression of his pilgrimage on the deep. His parents were dead and in common with his brothers and sister, he had to take a hand in the struggle for existence as soon as he was able. Whether it was by change or choice he entered the printing trade is not important, nor is it worth while speculating upon what might have become of him had he, through some deflection of circumstances, been indentured to some other pursuit; though, indeed, it is difficult to conceive of any manly calling in which he would not have risen to distinction. He had by nature the calm capacity for facing danger which enables the skillful mariner to outride the storm; he had a soldierly courage and audacity, coupled with a born talent for inspiring men in the face of adversity; while nothing in his makeup was more noticeable than the business like clearness with which he dealt with commercial matters. It is certain, however, that his duties as a printer led him logically to the field of exertion which he would have chosen had he in his maturity been required to live his life over again. He idealized the press and the type stick. The mere mechanical view of them he could not abide. They were to him not only the chief instruments of modern though, but the almost conscious ministers of intelligence. Only a born dunce, he would say, can be a printer and not learn to love literature. It is as natural for the right minded printer to delight in the thought which he labors to promote among men as it is for farmers to like the smell of new mown hay or shipwrights to take pride in the vessels they have built. Form the time of his apprenticeship until nineteenth year of his age there is little to record, except that he worked steadily, read with an all devouring appetite and came to have a fixed resolution to make the pen his sword of fortune. Curiously enough, his unshakableness (sic) of purpose and quietude of character were joined to a desire for seeing new places, which, to a careless observer, might have looked like fickleness of will. He did not cast in anchor in one place until after he had passed his majority, not because he was unstable, but because he desired while yet unencumbered by the graver cares of life to see what he could of the world. In his nineteenth year we find him in Washington County of this state working as a printer of the Washington County Post, the proprietor of which, Mr. Edward Gardner, made him an inmate of his home and laid the basis of a friendship unbroken till the hour of Mr. Kinseki's death. How is evidenced by some hurriedly written notes we have received from this early friend and employer;

‘In 1851,’ says Mr. Gardner, ‘I was publishing the Washington County Post, at Cambridge, New York, when Thomas Kindles came into my establishment as a compositor. He remained with me and boarded in my house for about a year.

"Although at the time in humble circumstances he was always self respecting and dignified in manner, and enjoyed the esteem of all who knew him. he was remarkably studious, employing all his spare hours in reading and study, usually till his spare hours in reading and study, usually till midnight or after. My wife observing his fondness for reading, offered him the free use of our library of books, containing some 300 volumes, every one of which I believe he read. in his later years he often spoke of the knowledge gathered at this time. An incident in this connection foreshadowed the 'coming man.'

Colonel (now General) John S. Crocker, warden of the United States Jail at Washington, D. C., was then a young and rising lawyer of the village, and with his partner and myself formed a little trout fishing party one afternoon and invited 'Thomas,' as we then all familiarly called him, to accompany us. He gladly accepted the invitation and we proceeded some distance across the beautiful Cambridge Valley to a mountain stream, and cautiously threw in the rapid rocky stream our 'flies.' Soon afterward Thomas was observed reclining on the bank of the stream, holding his rod and reel in one hand and with the other holding a pocket edition of Burns' poems, in which he was deeply absorbed, apparently oblivious to all surroundings! Within the past year General Crooker and myself recalled the incident with deep interest, little dreaming at the time that it foreshadowed the distinguished man who has filled so large a space in the public affairs of this city, the State and the nation." 

The young man who fished with one hand and held a book with the other--catching we may be sure, than trout--did not by any means confirm his labors on the Poet to the composing room. he was ambitious to be a writer, and Mr. Gardner was more than willing to try his hand; and perhaps the proudest day of his young life was that on which the proprietor, having been called to a distance on some business, left him in charge of the paper as editor. What the first patent is to the young physician, the first retainer to the lawyer, the first speaking part to the actor, the first exhibited picture to the painter--all that the first published article is to the young writer, in whose-vivid imagination authors of established reputation move as gods, and renowned editors seem in very truth to touch the stars with their heads. But even the glory of the earliest article pales its ineffectual fires before the dazzling light which fills the eye when the youth to whom journalism has long been a dream hears himself called, "Mr. Editor." The heir of all the ages in the foremost files of time is not more enviable than he. What editorship means he knows not; to the drudgery, the obloquy, the vilification, the delusive hopes and the heart breaking disappointments he is a total stranger. His dream is woven of after dinner speeches made by orators who never weary of repeating stale and utterly misleading quotations about the lever that moves the world, the palladium of our liberties and the superiority of the pen to the sword. Not only was Kindles an editor now, but he had what seemed a great opportunity. As fortune would have it, Henry Clay died during the absence of Mr. Gardner, and it fell to the lot of the young man to comment on the character and career of the great Whig leader. To this performance Mr. Kindles would often refer when speaking to the "boys' of the EAGLE about his early efforts. The article was indelible in his memory. It had been written under an almost crushing sense of responsibility, for to him the little country constituency wore all the features of the vast critical world. Of the article it is, perhaps, enough to say that it was highly thought of by the readers of the paper, was honored with reproduction by several esteemed contemporaries and had nearly all the faults of style which Mr. Kindles, in his maturity, desired to have his young literary friends avoid. Any one, with cynical good humor he would say, could tell by the article that an important person named Clay had died and that the writer thought highly of him, but for the person who wanted to learn some exact truth about him, as for instance what he died of and how old he was, the florid production was of no sort of use. In this, perhaps, as well as in any other relation, a word may be said of what Mr. Kindles, as editor of the EAGLE held to be qualities indispensable in an editorial dealing with any serious matter. These wee first of all a clear, direct statement of the matter or case to be commented on, so that a person who had never heard of it before would be able to see the force or weakness of the arguments advanced; second, the postponement of all appeals to the emotions till the reason had been satisfied; third, never to discuss the motives of an opponent unless the subject or project in hand depended for its significance upon the motives of the persons advancing it, and fourth, an appeal to the feelings only in so far as it might seem necessary to quicken action in a direction which the judgment had already pronounced right, but which the will did not join in, wither because of indifference or because duty was disagreeable. It is hardly necessary to add that these cardinal requirements did not exclude the lighter graces of rhetoric, or deprive wit its province, any more than the bones and muscles of the body interfere with the sparkle of the eye or the bloom on the cheek of youth. They did not restrict, but they gave shape; they did not--if we may change the figure--regulate the music of the stream of thought, but they determined its course.

From Washington County our hero proceeded to the city of Troy, and there, as compositor and occasional contributor, worked for a time--how long we do not know, but the period did not extend over twelve months. From Troy he came again to New York, and from the Metropolis he proceeded South in '54' or '55,' not because he hoped to accomplish anything there in the way of fortune, but because having become interested in the slavery question he desired to study the system of slavery for himself as it appeared in actual practice. He lived alternately in New Orleans and Vicksburg, working at his trade, and found opportunity for scouring the surrounding country pretty thoroughly. He had early become a thorough going Democrat of the Jeffersonian school, and never regarded slavery other than as an evil to be got rid of. His southern experience depended and confirmed his hostility to "the peculiar institution." Not until he realized his own person how it degraded labor did he fully conceive its utter incompatibility with every thing right in morals and in manly intercourse. When, however, he saw that where a mechanic could command the respect due to every honest man, he was quite prepared to join hands with those who had taken the field against tolerating any further extension of slavery in this country, and in favor of extirpating it as speedily as the constitution and the preservation of peaceful relations between the States would admit of. In other words' when, in 1858, he returned North and took up his abode in Brooklyn he was quite prepared to take his stand with the men who, far removed from the "dough faces" who first trembled at the snap of the slave owner's whip, and later besought the North to let the "erring sisters go in peace," were, though willing to trust to time and free discussion to break the black man's shackles, resolved neither to brook secession nor suffer human bondage to raise its head in the Western Territories.

Having pitched his tent in Brooklyn, Thomas Kindles sought and found employment in the EAGLE office at the hands of the late Isaac Van Anden, to whose patience, diligent labor, fine rectitude and quiet courage in the face of many difficulties, the Eagle owed its existence up to the time under consideration. The Eagle had unquestionably been helped by other men in various degrees, but their exertions had been fitful and, upon the whole, of a kind not likely by themselves to establish a great property. Van Anden had no delusions, never flew off at a tangent, appreciated small things at their true worth and was the freest of mortals from anything resembling crankiness. Even now his picture may be recalled and placed with that of the man whose genius was to spread far and wide the influence of the newspaper which, with infinite care, he had nursed through innumerable ailments, and finally placed, like a grown boy with a sound constitution, in a position to enter manfully upon serious work of the world. He was of slight build, rather under than over the medium height, somewhat careworn, though not at all somber, of a ruddy complexion telling of his hearty Dutch ancestry, with a pair of kindly but remarkably keen gray eyes, and noticeable for the simplicity of his manner and speech. There was not a line in his face suggestive of any species of insincerity, nor one which would have encouraged a knave to select him as a possible victim. This was the man to whom Kindles applied for employment, from whom he obtained it and with whom he speedily rose to favor. At this time Henry McCloskey was editor of the paper, a position which he entered upon in 1853 and held till the 7^th of September 1861. McCloskey was a singularly warm hearted man, as impulsive in his friendship as in his animosities. A most trenchant writer and an accomplished scholar, he carried with him through life a heart as fresh as the flowers of May. Kinseki's place was at the outset in the composing room; but he and the editor soon made each other's acquaintance, and before long, with Van Anden's approval and McCloskey's encouragement, the newcomer was duly installed as the chief of the paper's exceedingly small reportorial staff. It cannot be said that he was appointed to write for the EAGLE; he rather wrote himself into an appointment. Of his own motion he tried his hand on communications touching current matter; from these he passed to little reviews of the new books which fell under his notice, and these having seemed good to the editor he was advanced to the dignity of a regular writer. At the time the Eagle, as we have indicated, was not burdened by a large staff of reporters and editors. McCloskey was not above doing a ward meeting at a pinch, and the best reporter was expected to take what sailors would call 'a trick' now and again at the editorial wheel. Kindles was just the man for an opening of this kind, and the opening was the opportunity which of all others, he needed. Full of energy, alive with ideas on all sorts of subjects, and of tireless industry, he made himself thoroughly felt on the paper and before long on the community. In this shape matters went on till the civil war broke out, when an entirely unlooked for occurrence took place in our little republic of letters. McCloskey believed in the right of secession and had no confidence in the sincerity of the party in power. Kindles, as we have already said, did decidedly not believe in the right of secession, and whether the party in power was sincere or not he recognized its legal right to rule and as a Union man believed in assisting it to put down the Rebellion. The importance of this difference of opinion was soon shown. The Government interdicted the circulation of the EAGLE through the United States mail as a treasonable sheet and threatened to stop its publication altogether unless a loyal man were appointed to the editorship. This was made known to Van Anden and McCloskey. The former advised the latter to pursue a more moderate course. But though the advice was not taken he had with courage and forbearance stood by his editor, deeming the right of the liberty of opinion to be involved. The latter was prepared to suffer, but he would not bend. It was his nature to hold to his convictions as misers cling to their gold. In truth, the only world in which he had any important possessions was in the realm of thought. When, therefore, the decision of the Government was communicated, he ended the trouble by resigning, and Van Anden, with equal promptitude, appointed Thomas Kindles in his stead. These are the circumstances under which the subject of this notice entered upon the duties in the discharge of which he was destined to become famous.

To write fully the story of his connection with the EAGLE and the part he has taken in raising it to its present importance would involve an account of almost every issue of the paper for the past twenty-two years, for even when his pen was not busy on its pages his thought was shaping the sentences written for its columns. The EAGLE, it was happily said by one who knew the office well, was a map of Thomas Kinseki's brain. No one could recognize more generously than he did how much he owed to his subordinates, but the fact remained, after all due credit had been given to these gentlemen, that the broadly marked features of the work done were his own. They were indeed efficient soldiers, and in hours of emergency skillful counselors, perhaps, but after all, he was the general and his the genius that shaped the movements of the army. He was, however, very far from holding himself aloof from the actual battle ground, as field marshals are sometimes wont to do. He rarely absented himself from the office, and when in it his example was one of unflagging industry. It is questionable whether any other chief editor of an important paper wrote as much as he. It had become second nature for him to speak through his pen, and the days were few in which he did not find some subject which he preferred to write about himself rather than assign it to any of his associates, though it was no uncommon thing for him to modify his own views after hearing theirs, and to commend their works more highly than he would ever suffer any person to speak of his own. Indeed, in this a notable phase of his character appeared. He not only regarded the EAGLE, with pride felt by an artist in the creation of his genius, but upon the men who helped to make it he lavished the admiration which parents expend upon their children. The writers were "his boys", and their achievements were to him a delight which fathers can understand, but which no mere employer can possibly comprehend. This it need hardly be observed, made it a pleasure to labor by his side. He hated with a cordial detestation the sharp lines of formal relationship. The man who could not enter into his spirit and become worth of his confidence could not editorially work for or with him at al to any purpose worth mentioning. His triumphs had to be theirs, and his failures or disappointments, when they occurred, common property. He had nothing which he was not prepared to give to those who, under these conditions, found the way to his heart, and he expected and received what to him was more than fame--an affectionate and unwavering support which it is not the lot of many men in high station to secure.

From the time be came editor till the close of the civil war, the course of the Eagle ran smoothly in line with the strong Union wing of the Democracy, not by any means agreeing with all the measures of the Administration, but unmistakably devoted to the support of the men in the field and tolerant of no settlement short of a complete restoration of the Union. With the close of the struggle, however, the question of reconstruction had to be dealt with, and on this the EAGLE was among the earliest of the Democratic journals to declare for Lincoln's policy, as it was popularly understood, and to join hands with Andrew Johnson in carrying that policy into effect in the teeth of the more radical Republicans who, under the leadership of men like Thaddeus Stevens, regarded the South as conquered territory, State rights as dead and the Commonwealths as so many provinces annexed by the sword and destined to be rules by it. Into the discussions of that period it is not necessary to enter now; suffice it to say that they stirred Kinseki's mind to its depths and served to bring him into notice as a man well equipped for the discussion of national affairs. He shrank with horror from the thought of having the South treated as another Ireland, and pointed out with prophetic clearness the dismal consequences which ensued when the theories of Stevens were carried into execution and political thieves turned loose to carry desolation where our soldiers had in the brave manner of honorable war smitten to subdue, but not to plunder. One result of this was that he attracted the attention of the President, who promoted him to his first public position by making him Postmaster of the city. That this was neither a bribe nor a compensation those who knew Kindles understood thoroughly. No one ever confounded him with the Hessians of the press whose convictions are as purchasable as the arms of professional swashbucklers. The postmastership, however, did not come to him amiss. He was poor; his salary was far from being large and he had a young family to provide for. He held the office without changing his relations to the EAGLE until the close of Johnson's Administration, when he gave place to a representative of the Grant regime. This, with the exception of four months service as a commissioner in the Board of City Works, completes the exceedingly short story of his experience as a paid local officeholder. He went into the then just organized Board of City Works, hoping to find it compatible with his duties as an editor; but the utter incompatibility having been made clear to him, he resigned. From time to time references have been made to him in hostile political journals as though he ad served in the Board during what are called its palmy days and profited by the opportunities popularly supposed to have been open to the Commissioners for making money. Such references are utterly false. He left the Board, as we have indicated, after holding his seat for just four months, and with no dollar added to his fortune beyond, what rightfully came to him among other things, however, was that editors cannot afford to play the part of critics and beneficiaries at one and the same time. It is open, he would remark, for a man to be an editor and public place holder, but he cannot well be both without finding his duties clash at times. This, it may be worth of note, Mr. Van Anden, his elder in years, had suggested in advance, but it required personal experience to make him feel the force of the counsel. That he subsequently consented to serve a term in Congress and did serve may seem to have been a departure from this rule, but as things stood it was not. The EAGLE was a Democratic paper, and there was nothing in the obligations of a Congressman likely to hamper his liberty as a writer. And yet it is but just to record the fact that he did feel a constraint not to his liking, so that at the close of his term he could not be induced to accept a re-nomination. He profoundly regretted in after life that he had for any reason ever suffered himself to be drawn from the congenial atmosphere of his editorial room into the vortex of practical politics. In this relation it may interest the reader to see in what light he regarded his own candidacy and in what spirit he became a candidate. The passage here quoted is from his address accepting the Congressional nomination, and it is a fair specimen of his more formal style of speech:

Very few men of my profession who have had the same opportunity of addressing the public have troubled the public less with their personal concerns and their individual affairs. I may be pardoned, then, if I take this occasion to refer to matter personal to myself. When my name was mentioned as a candidate for Congress, my experience as a journalist taught me to expect the usual amount of misrepresentation and slander, which seem inseparable, unfortunately, from political contests in our country. Some harsh things have been said, and it will be strange if still harsher things will not be forthcoming. To one strange misrepresentation, and to one only, do I intend to reply. It has been charged that I am not a friend to the laboring classes, and that I have not looked with a kindly eye on the efforts of those who honestly labor to better their condition. I am myself a working man. (Loud applause.) There has been no day since or before, I arrived at the year of manhood, that I have not been under the necessity of working for my living. If I am elected to Congress, as I will be, I will perhaps be the only man there who could earn his living any day, and as a mechanic, by the labor of his hands. If I have risen at all, I have risen from the ranks of the laboring classes. I am proud of my old business as a printer. The associates of my early manhood, honest mechanics, are still my comrades and my friends. My heart goes out to every man who is following the path I have tired to pursue, to elevate himself, and to leave those who are dependent upon him in a better condition than he was. I refer to those who know me best, and they are soldiers in the grand army of wealth creators, honest bread earners, to answer the calumny that I am the enemy of the laborer. Nay, more; the honor you have conferred on me today is precious tome for this reason above all. I cling to the conviction-and if it be egotism I trust it is not unpardonable-that my career, humble as it is will be an incentive to others. Nearly twenty years ago I made Brooklyn my home. I was poor, friendless, foreign born. I went to work as a journalman at the trade I had just acquired in Western New York. By successive steps I advanced from the printer's case to the desk of the reporter, and finally to the chair of editor of a paper already influential and distinguished. Within that time I have held offices of honor at the hands of the city, the State and the National Government. To the credit of our institutions, of the character which they form, my early struggles are never referred to except by those who desire to make such reference to my credit and to my honor. On every side and from every class of men I have had a cheering word and a helping hand, and, I believe, because I am one of those who illustrate, however feebly, how men may help themselves by diligence in the calling, by fidelity to their trusts and by "taking occasion by the hand," when it offered a prospect of bettering their condition. It seems to me that a mechanic may turn to his boy, and even from my humble career inspire him with high hopes and honest ambition, for greater disadvantages than mine rarely lie in the pathway of those who look upward, and push forward in trying to better their condition in life, and to cheer them with the high hope of ultimate advancement, without which life is barely worth living.

From the close of his career in Congress which was marked by no significant incidents, though several of his speeches on the conditions of government in the South remain as examples of statesmanlike thought, expressed in language befitting men who are governing a great republic, down till but few weeks ago, his thought was devoted to the EAGLE and to the duties which grew out of it. He consented to fill various unsalaried positions, such as a member of the Board of Education and bridge trustee, but these were to him mere eddies so to speak, in the current of his busy life, which in no degree slackened or diverted the stream. In the discussion of politics and even as an organizer of political forces he, indeed, continued until but recently to be the most distinguished man of Brooklyn. To nearly all the important State Conventions of the Democratic party during the past fifteen years he was a delegate, or was absent only because he declined to serve, while in our purely local affairs his personality may be said to have colored at least half a score of hotly contested campaigns. It was no more possible for him to live the absolutely peaceful life he coveted than it is for fire to burn and not give heat. His nature was positive, and men sought him whether he wanted to be drawn forth by them or not. Moreover, his talents laid him under contribution. He was as good as advocate with his tongue as with his pen. He carried audiences with him, whether at the supper table of social organizations, in lecture halls where men gather to be both please and instructed, or in places where the city's interests were either to be protected against bad legislation or promoted by wise enactment's. It led him inevitably into all sorts of struggles for the improvement of our municipal government, and at times it compelled him to figure as the promoter of factional war when nothing was further from his desire than to become, in any form whatever, the head of anything outside of his family or the EAGLE office.

We have now outlined for our readers very hastily the course of Thomas Kinsella's career. To fill up this outline is a task which we have no heart for at the present hour, and which, happily, the readers of the Eagle can, out of their own abundant knowledge of his work, accomplish for themselves. As, however, it cannot be amiss to draw upon an estimate of the man, made in a calmer hour by one who had the fullest opportunity for judging of his qualities, we here submit an analytical portraiture made while he was yet in the full tide of his manly vigor.

As an actual but undeclared force he has thus been the leaders in the third city of the Union for the better part of a generation, in which Brooklyn put off the attributes of a city for the imperial proportions and institutions of a metropolis. But his qualities as a politician are quite fully and more instructively apparent in the consideration of him as a statesman, using the word in the strictest sense as one who leads a great party to advanced points or who, if he 'Follows it,' follows it as the driver follows the steeds who obey his will and guiding impulse and who pull, move and go where and as he directs. Part of this statesmanship service of Thomas Kinsella to the American Democracy has been rendered in his paper and part in the personal relation of a leader, representative and counselor of the organization in its State and national councils and undertakings. At the outset of his responsible editorship of the paper, he threw more light on the disputed question of the right of secession than any other American journalist. He showed by research and reasoning, both of a masterly character, that the intent purpose and understanding of the States which ratified the Constitution at the first were that the Union formed under it was to be perpetual and indissoluble, unless by a clear and deliberate change in the structure of the government by a dispensation with the forms and spirit of the bond and compact altogether. This manner of settling a modern dispute by reference to what was the understanding of the original makers of the Union was at once hailed as unique and thorough. It passed into history as a substitution of authority for speculation which ended the controversy outside the arena of arms. Always careful to insist that the war should be pursued in good faith our subject was equally careful to protest against the Democracy putting itself on the wrong side of moral questions, which were fusing the best thought and character of the country into unity and making the war itself a forceful means to civilizing ends. That those protests were not wholly successful and that the Democracy were afterward as slow in recognizing the results of the war as they had been in scoping it are facts which account for the party's long retirement from affairs and for the great lengths of intolerance to which the other party, lacking the censorship of an effective opposition, went. The older leaders of the party were eight years in learning the necessity of a forward movement, which our subject had divined by intuition at the first. The EALGE, however, was always kept abreast with these ideas, and then, as often since, was manifestly and much more Democratic than the party of the name. Skipping the long years in which Mr. Kinsella acted with the party more to preserve and educate it than to accept its law of progress which moved at a glacial rate, it is well to come at once to 1871-72 when our subject was a member of Congress, and in a position to meet face to face the leaders who had kept the party small enough for any man to be prominent in it for nearly a decade. He then insisted what he had long before impressed, that the party should give the people an unmistakable sign that it accepted and wanted ended the issues of the war. Contemporaneous with this advancing spirit within the Democracy was a protest from within the republican party against its mingled centralization of policy and corruption of administration. The fact that these movements coincided presented the duty of making them concur. To that duty, more than any other Democrat in the United States, Thomas Kinsella addressed himself. In the same sense in which a great General is accounted the winner of the great battles of his life, Thomas Kinsella won this battle of self deliverance and progress for the American Democracy. He led on the extreme right of every front line of advance which took part in the movement by which the Democracy turned its face toward the morrow and planted its feet on the heights of victory, by taking them out of the ditches plowed by the war. He got his country right. He got his State right. He helped get other States right. He helped them get the National Convention right and he helped gain that moral victory in a canvass in which the material success went to the other side, only to disintegrate and ruin it. With equal preciseness Mr. Kinsella, in 1874, saw that administrative reform was the duty and destiny of the State and National Democracy. From 1874 until the close of 1876 he labored with all the 1872 earnestness and more than the 1872 power to pledge the party to the people for a return to the business interests of government. This time it was as essential to win the fight as in 1872 it was to get into form and into line at all on an issue too excellent to come to immediate recognition, but indispensable to be made broad and affirmative and even sensational. The fight was won, and though the entry of the Democracy into the Government was prevented by fraud, the purposes of statesmanship were answered and the preponderance, mobility and reinspired character of the national party were vindicated.

Were this a sketch and not an estimate, space could be filled to any extent in stating, in particulars, events and their consequences which, for the purposes of a portrait and a measurement, must be only indicated and not explored. In the prime of his years and his powers Thomas Kinsella has come up from a self taught printer to be second to none other in the United States in their journalism and in the guidance of the springs of their affairs. The draft which duty of any degree has drawn on him has been drawn always on the same faculties--his last successes of magnitude are sampled in the qualities which achieve them by the first relatively little conquests he made of adverse circumstances. Not extraordinary powers--such as genius enfolds--but an extraordinary vigor and scope of the capital parts of great and grave talent distinguished him. The elements which led him to acquire literature's treasures while learning the art which preserves them were identical to those which impelled him while conducting a great journal for a great community to practice for great results on a great party. His character, too, has always admirably assisted the qualities of his faculties or tempered them. A tendency to lose simples or details in large general plans, and in a habit of classifying events and epochs into grand families or orders, has been restrained by a strong affection which centers round one locale and which loves with the fervor of a home feeling, though it comprehend a million of souls. The circumstances which have made Brooklyn the theater of his work, in the main have been very much helped by his abundant neighborly sympathies. He has by those sympathies been enabled to assimilate the very life of Brooklyn into his own; while the strength, expansiveness and uniformity of his powers have on the other hand enabled him so to educate and advocate Brooklyn was gives a phenomenal position in especial regards and at the expense of the general reputation of the city as one of diffused culture. Her pulpit stars drew so much light into themselves as to leave the town in comparative darkness. They celebrated themselves or advertised a sect. Thomas Kinsella in journalism and politics has brought Brooklyn as a whole to the observation of the United States, to a character distinct from the that mere contiguity to New York, and those who have helped him in this work or who have assumed any of its roles have been simply the various persons on whom he has poured or through whom he has effected his purposes. A love of excellence in knowledge and of the reality, not the appearance, of power in the use of knowledge, accounts of the mental side of his life. What the traits are which make his thoroughness and expertness have already been considered. His career is simply those traits in evolution in Brooklyn and in the things in which he had made Brooklyn and himself effective in the life of the State and the Confederacy. He did all he set to do well. he learned what he set to study well. This was as much the result of pride to study well. This was as much the result of pride and of conscientiousness at the start as it became the law of a habit born of those motives and of compliance with them. He would half acquire nothing when knowledge was to be a weapon that would make or break him. He would content himself with merely seeming to know nothing when hypocrisy was a vice he detested. He would put himself on masterful terms with each range of life he labored in by learning more of it and beyond it than its average class knew. He would not force promotion, but he would be ready for it when it came. The principles he carried into the acquisition of those branches of knowledge which he has mainly acquired have tempered the use he has made of it in all the departments of his life. One of those departments has been the work of suggestion or dictation, in outline, of facts, views, topics and lines of thought to his associates. Another has been the prescription of policies to organizations. Another has been the exchange of the role of instructor in the press for that, at times, of public speaker. As such public speaker he has fairly divided, or, better yet, combined the work of information and amusement, of education or appeal and entertainment. In all these duties, where the real consideration of subjects or affairs has been imposed the evidence has been presented that a careful, vigorous, subtle writer at home in every prose style, can also become an epigrammatic talker in the best sense. The enlightening power of this gentleman in speech is remarkable. A phrase will lay bare or sum up a case. A single characterization will bring out on a parallel of illustration all there is in a theme. The bottom of a subject will be brought up in sample to the top, but a single thought as a probe. The quality of a very natural and buoyant humor here comes into exuberant play, either to illumine the whole of a proposition from a side view point, or end it by flashing on it, passing, a flame which lights it to the catastrophe of an absurdity, or which discloses its internal inconsistencies and external assumptions, as a calcium lamp brings out all that the day reveals of a thing by annihilating the night around it. On this manifold power--the statement making one inspired with colloquial heat, and made familiar in its play--rests a reputation as a conversationalist and speaker which challenges that of Thomas Kinsella as a writer in the circles where his influence is felt. In that personal field he lives himself at his freest and best. It becomes an educating, inspiriting and disillusioning experience to hear him set facts, or principles, or policies, or motives in order and make havoc of humbug. His large and ready reading and larger thinking on it respond at once. His wit, humor, cynicism go ahead, as Calvary goes ahead of a main column. His elaborate addresses bear the impress of literary preparation. His off hand talks are as informal as mere practice or recreation, but as compact and effective as "planned war" itself. More could not be written without going from our subject as a public quantity into his very personality, into the man that he is to those he loves and love him. That is not within the scope of this indication. Only one may be sure that there his rare strength of understanding is matched by an equal strength of attachment; that there his sturdy independence of parties is matched by a manliness that is as a very religion unto him; that there a theory of the collective public which secures them to their rights by an appeal to their interests is put in contrast with a conception of the obligations and spirituality of friendship, which is as tender as the heart of a woman, as unquestioning as the faith of a child. A great self made man, with none of the half finish of one-sidedness which undermade men, improperly denominated self made, exhibit, Thomas Kinsella as a journalist, has impressed the best, if not all, the life it has on local American journalism; as an editor has made independence compatible with the elevation of parties and free from trimming between them; as a politician has rendered the dominant opinion of the third city of the Union a factor of hitherto less than little and now of unequaled force in the land, and as a statesman has started, governed, shaped, preserved and magnified the influences which put the Democracy on the right side of moral questions, placed it on even and congenial terms with the conditions of progress and recalled to its ranks the hosts who parted company with it at the dividing of the ways in the years gone before, when the nation and the party of the nation for awhile diverged, the former to waste herself on empiricism, the latter to refine itself by reflection in retirement, and both at the end to meet again with a clearer view of duty and of destiny and with a common purpose to discharge the one and to encounter the other, for a long future as in a long past. 

Nature has made a mould in which his parts and the prodigious activity of the main intellectual work and play can find ample scope. His form is strong without portiliness, tall without ungainliness, active in its movements, but with such an activity as comports with dignity, decision, deliberation. About five feet eleven inches in height and weighting about 170 pounds, his body of itself is a fine example of manly strength, and it is admirably proportioned in all its parts. His head, the crown and key of the man, is unusually large and of a cerebral development marked in the uniformity of its parts, the capital ones coming to large expression, the minor to less but inter-equal manifestation. Large, calm, deep eyes, sometimes brown and sometimes gray blue in suggestion, are thoroughly capable of interpreting the distinct phases of his mood or thought, now calm and cold, now vivid and searching, now abeam with fancy and giving to observation an advance notice of the relish and quality of the on-coming joke, repartee or epigram. They look but from under a massive forehead, very high in its extent, very broad between the temples, the visible throne of power and the seat of a marvelous memory, as well as the secure barrier round the playground of a nimble wit. The nostrils are broad, ample and as marked, in the side they give to the impression of decision, as the air passages to the brain should be--the mouth being firm in its set, but most mobile in its movements, as a guard over a strong, square chin, of which the parts are shaded by a graying beard which mates with the thickness of the rich brown hair above. Shapely hands and feet neither large nor yet small in size but comporting in their appearance with the compact power of the body and its excellent proportion, contribute to the full significance of a vigorous physique, which would attract attention anywhere for its appearance of conscious health and by natural ease of movement as well as by the unusual strength. Looked at as a whole, the features are striking in their vigor, definiteness and harmony of outline withal. They are all large, but large in equality. They are also so responsive to the quality of the character and to the mutability of the mood as to be a study whether in repose or in action as one may study the index to a volume or the argument to a play. Dressing always with a perfect taste and with a preference toward grave colors and toward unity in colors the naturally imperious manner to strangers and the always easy, gracious manner to friends, of our subject mate completely with the dignity of his character and with his entire ease in the grace duties and responsibilities which fall to his lot. In the prime of his powers and life, the distance and difference between the shy, studious, reserved lad and the debonair, confidant, self-contained gentleman of to-day can be but noted by any who have remarked his steady, progressively unfolding life, in its relations to the history of his city, State and country and to himself. The distance however, reaches back on a road as regular and ascensive in its rise as it is straight in its course, and the difference is only that which the full development of an eminent and honored life bears to the seed causes which produced it in due and constant order, under the careful culture of emphatic and elevating purposes, persistent and consistent labor, high and ennobling ambition and a policy of fearless honesty which would affect nothing it did not know, avow nothing it did not believe, promise nothing it did not perform, and seen nothing which it was not, in reality and in full. This is indeed a picture drawn by an admiring mind; but even enthusiasm has not overpainted the original. Of Thomas Kinsella in his social relations there are a thousand things which rush to the memory, but which cannot in the measure of the time be expressed. Enough, perhaps, for the present are the suggestive hints borrowed from a fluttering memory which tell of the journalist, wide, alert, and resolute; of the patriot turned by no base party spirit from his devotion to his adopted countryman; of the neighbor who made every honest man in Brooklyn his debtor; of the friend who was as steadfast as the fixed stars and as kindly as the breath of early Summer; of the companion full of cheery thought, happy turns of speech, inexhaustible anecdote and generous entertainment; of the gentleman, in short, in whose heart and brain were blended by the qualities which sweeten existence, temper the winds of adversity, shame pride into humility and inspire the humblest with a new and excellent sense of their own dignity.

Concerning the disease which ended his life we have already spoken, and there is little to add. During his illness he had the most skillful medical attention procurable in the two cities. Doctor John G. Johnson, Dr. John Byrne, the regular attendant, Professor Armor, Professor Lewis–Professor Flint, of New York and Dr. Loomis, men representing perhaps the entire compass of modern medical attainments, were all from time to time called in to deal with the case. That they did not effect a cure must be accepted as proof that the blow was fatal, to begin with. For a while, indeed, he seemed to mend, but looking back now, it is plain that the indications of improvement were illusory. He had not been in good health for more than a year. He went to Europe last Summer, hoping to recover tone, but his hopes were not realized. He was not well when in Europe, and he was plainly not any better when he returned, though there were days and even weeks when he seemed to himself and others to have all his old time strength. Of his closing hours there is little to tell beyond what is common to all who close their lives peaceably. He was nursed with all the tenderness possible to affection; his children, five of whom, daughters, survive him, were in the house day and night; his wife was constantly near him; friends innumerable were at hand to render whatever friendship can accomplish. He within the past ten days looked forward to death calmly, though far from being without hopes of recovery. Like a man of reason he quite prepared himself for the inevitable, though still anticipating an extension of his life. As the end drew nearer, however, he became less and less anxious, apparently, to resist the common conqueror of humanity. On Wednesday last he received the final consolations of the church into which he was born, at the hands of Reverend Father O'Reilly, of St. Stephen's, and thereafter may be said to have turned his thoughts from this world to the next. As death closed in upon him there were periods when the tired brain found relief in unconsciousness, but even through the final shadow he may be said to have cast a look of recognition, and passed from the eyes of his loved ones with that clear and kindly courage in his countenance which the trials of his varied and often stormy career never subdued in his heart.