One can hardly imagine a better school for the training of a good American citizen than that which Carleton enjoyed. By inheritance and birth in a New Hampshire village, he knew “the springs of empire.” By actual experience of farming and surveying in a transition era between the old ages of manual labor and the new aeon of inventions, he learned toil, its necessity, and how to abridge and guide it by mind. In the acquaintance, while upon a Boston newspaper, with public men, and all kinds of people, in the unique experiences as war correspondent, in wide travel and observation around the whole world, in detailed studies of new lands and life in the Northwest, in reading and research in great libraries, and in the constant discipline of his mind through reflection, his knowledge of man and nature, of society and history, was at first hand.

Intensely interested in politics from boyhood, Carleton sought no public office.

When, in his early manhood, he revolved in his mind the question of attempting this or that career, he may have thought of entering the alluring but thorny path of office-seeking and “practical” politics. It cannot be said that his desire for public emolument lasted very long. He deliberately decided against a political career. Even if the exigencies of the moment had not tended to forbid the flight of his ambition in this direction, there were other reasons against it.

He was a school commissioner in Malden, faithfully attending to the details of his duty during two years. The report of his work was given in a pamphlet. As we have seen, before the breaking out of the war, when in Washington, he sought for a little while government employment in one of the departments, but gave up the quest when the larger field of war correspondent invited him. He never sought an elective office, but when his fellow citizens in Boston found out how valuable a member of the Commonwealth he was, so rich in public spirit and so well equipped to be a legislator, he was made first, for several terms, a Representative, and afterwards, for one term, a Senator, in the Legislature of Massachusetts. Carleton sat under the golden codfish as Representative during the years 1884 and 1885, and under the gilded dome as Senator, in 1890.

Faithful to his calling as a maker of law, Carleton was abundant in labors during his three terms, interested in all that meant weal or woe to the Commonwealth; yet we have only room to speak of the two or three particular reforms which he inaugurated.

Until the year 1884, Boston was behind some of the other cities of the Union, notably Philadelphia, in requiring the children in the public schools to provide their own text-books. This caused the burden of taxation for education, which is “the chief defence of nations,” to fall upon the men and women who reared families, instead of being levied with equal justice upon all citizens. Carleton prepared a bill for furnishing free text-books to the public schools of Boston, such as had been done in Philadelphia since 1819. Despite considerable opposition, some of it on the part of teachers who had severe notions, bred chiefly by local Boston precedent, which had almost the force of religion, Carleton had the happiness of seeing the bill passed.

The administration of municipal affairs in the “Hub of the Universe,” during the seventies and early eighties of this proud century, was one not at all creditable to any party nor to the city that prides itself on being distinctive and foremost in fame. The development of political life in New England had been after the model of the town. Municipal organization was not looked upon with much favor until well into this century. While the population of the Middle States was advancing in the line of progress in government of cities, the people in the Eastern States still clung to the model of the town meeting as the perfection of political wisdom and practice. This was done in the case of Boston, even when several tens of thousands of citizens, dwelling as one political union, made the old system antiquated.

Before the opening of the 19th century, all the municipally incorporated cities of the Northern United States, excepting Albany, lay along a line between the boundaries of Manhattan Island and Philadelphia. It was not until 1830 that “Boston town” became a city. For fifty years afterwards, the development of municipal enterprise was in the direction of superficial area, rather than according to foresight or genius. It is very certain that the fathers of that epoch did not have a very clear idea of, certainly did not plan very intelligently for, the vast growth of our half of the century. Added to this ultra conservatism, came the infusion, with attendant confusion, of Ireland’s sons and daughters by myriads, a flood of Scotch-Irish and other nationalities from Canada, and the flocking of large numbers of native Americans from the rural districts of New England. Nearly all of the newcomers usually arrived poor and with intent to become rich as quickly as honesty would allow, while not a few were without limit of time or scruple of conscience to hinder their plans. The Americans of “culture and character” were usually too busy in making money and getting clothes, houses, and horses, to attend to “politics,” while Patrick was only too glad and ready to develop his political abilities. So it came to pass that a ring of powerful political “bosses” if we may degrade so good and honest a Dutch word was formed. Saloons, gambling-houses and dance-halls multiplied, while an oligarchy, ever grasping for more power, nullified the laws and trampled the statutes under its feet. The sins of drunkenness and bribery among policemen, who were simply the creatures for the most part of corrupt politicians, were too frequent to attract much notice. That conscientious wearer of the blue and the star who enforced the laws was either discharged or sent on some unimportant suburban beat. The relations between city saloons and politics were as close as hand and glove, palm and coin. The gambler, the saloon-keeper, the masters of houses of ill-fame, were all in favor of the kind of municipal government which Boston had had for a generation or more.

An American back is like the camel’s, able to bear mighty loads, but insurgent at the last feather. So, in Boston, the long-outraged moral sense of the people suddenly revolted. A Citizens’ Law and Order League was formed, and Charles Carleton Coffin, elected to the House of Representatives for the session of 1885, was asked to be their banner bearer in reform. With the idea of destroying partisanship and making the execution of the laws non-partisan, Carleton prepared a bill, which was intended to take the control of the police out of the hands of the Mayor and Common Council of the city, and to put it into the hands of the Governor of the Commonwealth.

When Mr. Coffin began this work, Boston had a population of 412,000 souls. From the “Boston bedrooms,” that is, the suburban towns in five counties, one hundred thousand or more were emptied every day, making over half a million people. In this city there was an array of forces all massed against any legislation restricting their power, while eager and organized to extend it. These included 2,850 licensed liquor sellers, and 1,300 unlicensed places, besides 222 druggists; all of which, and whom, helped to make men drunk. To supply the thirsty there were within the city limits three distilleries and seventeen breweries. To show the nature of the oligarchy, we have only to state that there were twenty-five men who had their names as bondsmen on no fewer than 1,030 licenses, and that eight men signed the bonds of 610 licenses. These “bondsmen” of one sort controlled the votes of from 15,000 to 20,000 bondsmen of a lower sort. The liquor business was then, as it is now, the great incentive to lawlessness, helping to make Boston a place of shame. Ten thousand persons and $75,000,000 capital were employed in work mostly useless and wicked.

“Boston’s devil-fish was dragging her down.” The Sunday laws were set at defiance. The clinking of glasses could not only be distinctly heard as one went by, but the streams of young men openly filed in. The laws, requiring a certain distance between the schoolhouse and the saloon, were persistently violated. Of two hundred saloons visited by Carleton, one hundred and twenty-eight had set the law at defiance. While six policemen were needed in one Salvation Army room, to keep the saints and sinners quiet, often there would be not one star or club in the saloons.

Carleton began by arming himself with the facts. He visited hundreds of the tapster’s quarters in various parts of the city. In some cases he actually measured, with his own hands and a surveyor’s chain, the distance between the schoolhouse and the home-destroyer. He talked with scores of policemen. He then prepared his bill and reported it in the Judiciary Committee, the members of which, about that time, received a petition in favor of a non-partisan metropolitan board of police commissioners, in order to secure a much better enforcement of law. On this petition were scores of names, which the world will not willingly let die. Yet, after reading the petition, seven of the eleven members of the Committee were opposed to the bill, and so declared themselves. Carleton was therefore obliged to transfer the field of battle to the open House. When he counted noses in the Legislature, he found that in the double body there were but four men who were heartily in favor of the apparently unpopular reform. The bill lay dormant for many weeks. Almost as a matter of course, the Sunday newspapers were bitterly hostile to it. They informed their readers, more than once, that the reform was dead. By hostile politicians the bill was denounced as “infamous.”

Nevertheless, the minority of four nailed their colors to the mast, “determined, if need be, to sink, but not to surrender.” Behind them were the State constitution, the statutes of the General Court, and the whole history of Massachusetts, whose moral tonic has so often inspired the beginners of better times in American history. When the day came for discussion of the bill, in public, Mr. Coffin made a magnificent speech in its favor, March 17, 1885. Despite fierce opposition, the bill finally became law, creating a new era of hope and reform in the City on the Bay.

In a banquet given by the Citizens’ Law and Order League, at the Hotel Vendome, to talk over the victory of law, about two hundred ladies and gentlemen were present. Among them were President Capen, of Tufts College, president of the League, and such grand citizens as Rufus Frost, Jonathan A. Lane, and Dr. Henry Martin Dexter; the Honorable Frank M. Ames, Senator, and Charles Carleton Coffin, Representative, being guests of honor. Carleton, being called upon for an address, said, among other things:

“There are no compensations in life more delightful and soul-satisfying than those which come from service and sacrifice for the welfare of our fellow men.... It has never troubled me to be in the minority. If you want real genuine pleasure in a battle, go in with the minority on some great principle affecting the welfare of society.”

In his speech he had said: “The moral sense of this community is a growing quantity, and no political party that ignores or runs counter to the lofty ideal can long stand before us.”

The Honorable Alanson M. Beard had already paid a merited tribute when he said that Carleton had “lifted up this question above the domain of party politics into the higher realm of morals, where it belonged.”

No one who knew Carleton need be told that, during all these weeks of uncertainty of issue, he was in constant prayer to God for light, guidance, and success. From all over the Commonwealth came letters of cheer and sympathy, especially from the mothers whose sons in Boston were tempted beyond measure because of the non-enforcement of law. To these, and to the law-loving editors of the newspaper press, the statesman afterwards returned his hearty thanks.

Carleton was a man ever open to conviction. To him, truth had no stereotyped forms. His mind never became a petrifaction, but was ever growing and vital. At first he was opposed to civil service reform; but after a study of the subject, he was convinced of its reasonableness and practicality, and became ever afterwards a hearty upholder of this method of selecting the servants of government, in the nation, the State, and the city.

He was a friend of woman suffrage. On the occasion of a presentation of a petition from twenty thousand Massachusetts women, though four thousand of them had petitioned against the proposed measure, he made a strong and earnest plea for granting the ballot to women. Among other things he said: “No fire ever yet was lighted that could reduce to ashes an eternal truth.” He believed that women, as well as men, form society, and “the people, who were the true source, under God, of all authority on earth,” were not made up wholly of one sex. He quoted from that pamphlet, “De Jure Regni,” published by George Buchanan in 1556, which was burned by the hangman in St. Paul’s churchyard, where so many Bibles and other good books have been burned, which declared that “the will of the people is the only legitimate source of power.” He declared that the “lofty ideal of republicanism is the Sermon on the Mount.” Of women, he said, “Wherever they have walked, there has been less of hell and more of heaven.”

After an ex-mayor, in his speech, had referred to Carleton’s bill, which changed the appointing power of the police from the Mayor and Common Council, and, by putting it in the hands of the Governor and Executive Council, placed it on the same foundation as the judiciary, as “that infamous police law,” Carleton said: “Make a note of it, statesmen of the future. Write it down in your memoranda, politicians who indulge the expectation that you can ride into power on the vices of society, that moral forces are marshalling as never before in the history of the human race, and that the women of this country are beginning to wield them to shape legislation on all great moral questions. Refreshing as perfume-laden breezes from the celestial plains were the words of encouragement and sympathy that came to me from mothers in Berkshire, from the Cape, from all over the Commonwealth.”

In 1890, in the Massachusetts Senate, there was an attempt made to divide the town of Beverly. Into this, as into so many of the pleasant towns, villages, and rural districts around Boston, wealthy Bostonians had come and built luxurious houses upon the land which they had bought. Not content with being citizens in the place where they were newcomers, thus securing release from heavier taxes in Boston, where they lived in winter, they wished to separate themselves, in a most un-American and un-democratic manner, from the older inhabitants and “common” people, and to make a new settlement with a separate local government for those who formed a particular class living in luxury. Carleton, hostile to the sordid and unsocial spirit lurking in the bill, vigorously opposed the attempted mutilation of an old historic town, and the isolation of “Beverly Farms.” He opposed it, because it would be a bad precedent, and one in favor of class separation and class distinction. His speech embodies a masterly historical sketch of the town form of government.