languages, over diversity of habits, over prejudice, and over
bigotry. The civilized and Christian world is fast learning the
great lesson that difference of nation does not imply necessary
hostility, and that all contact need not be war. The whole world
is becoming a common field for intellect to act in. Energy of
mind, genius, power, wheresoever it exists, may speak out in
any tongue, and the zvorld will hear it. A great chord of senti-
ment and feeling runs through two continents, and vibrates over
both. Every breeze wafts intelligence from country to country;
every wave rolls it: all give it forth and all in turn receive it.
There is a vast commerce of ideas; there are marts and ex-
changes for intellectual discoveries, and a wonderful fellowship
of those individual intelligences which make up the mind and



DANIEL WEBSTER



15741



opinion of the age. Mind is the great lever of all things; human
thought is the process by which human ends are ultimately an-
swered: and the diffusion of knowledge, so astonishing in the last
half-century, has rendered innumerable minds, variously gifted
by nature, competent to be competitors or fellow-workers on the
theatre of intellectual operation. . .

Whatever benefit has been acquired is likely to be retained,
for it consists mainly in the acquisition of more enlightened
ideas. And although kingdoms and provinces may be wrested
from the hands that hold them, in the same manner that they
were obtained; although ordinary and vulgar power may, in
human affairs, be lost as it has been won: yet it is the glorious
prerogative of the empire of knowledge, that what it gains it
never loses. On the contrary, it increases by the multiple of its
own power: all its ends become means; all its attainments, helps
to new conquests. Its whole abundant harvest is but so much
seed wheat; and nothing has ascertained, and nothing can ascer-
tain, the amount of ultimate product.

And now let us indulge an honest exultation in the convic-
tion of the benefit which the example of our country has pro-
duced, and is likely to produce, on human freedom and human
happiness. Let us endeavor to comprehend in all its magnitude,
and to feel in all its importance, the part assigned to us in the
great drama of human affairs. We are placed at the head of
the system of representative and popular governments. Thus far
our example shows that such governments are compatible, not
only with respectability and power, but with repose, with peace,
with security of personal rights, with good laws, and a just ad-
ministration.

We are not propagandists. Wherever other systems are pre-
ferred, either as being thought better in themselves, or as bet-
ter suited to existing condition, we leave the preference to be
enjoyed. Our history hitherto proves, however, that the popular
form is practicable, and that with wisdom and knowledge men
may govern themselves; and the duty incumbent on us is, to
preserve the consistency of this cheering example, and take
care that nothing may weaken its authority with the world. If,
in our case, the representative system ultimately fail, popular
governments must be pronounced impossible. No combination
of circumstances more favorable to the experiment can ever be
expected to occur. The last hopes of mankind therefore rest



1^742 DANIEL WEBSTER

with us; and if it should be proclaimed that our example had
become an argument against the experiment, the knell of popu-
lar liberty would be sounded throughout the earth.

These are incitements to duty; but they are not suggestions
of doubt. Our history and our condition — all that is gone
before us, and all that surrounds us — authorize the belief that
popular governments, though subject to occasional variations,
perhaps not always for the better in form, may yet, in their
general character, be as durable and permanent as other systems.
We know, indeed, that in our country any other is impossible.
The principle of free governments adheres to the American soil.
It is bedded in it, immovable as its mountains.

And let the sacred obligations which have devolved on this
generation, and on us, sink deep into our hearts. Those are
daily dropping from among us who established our liberty and
our government. The great trust now descends to new hands.
Let us apply ourselves to that which is presented to us, as our
appropriate object. We can win no laurels in a war for inde-
pendence. Earlier and worthier hands have gathered them all.
Nor are there places for us by the side of Solon, and Alfred,
and other founders of States. Our fathers have filled them. But
there remains to us a great duty of defense and preservation;
and there is open to us, also, a noble pursuit, to which the
spirit of the times strongly invites us. Our proper business is
improvement. Let our age be the age of improvement. In a
day of peace, let us advance the arts of peace and the works of
peace. Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its
powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests,
and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not
perform something worthy to be remembered. Let us cultivate
a true spirit of union and harmony. In pursuing the great
objects which our condition points out to us, let us act under a
settled conviction, and an habitual feeling, that these twenty-four
States are one countr}^ Let our conceptions be enlarged to the
circles of our duties. Let us extend our ideas over the whole of
the vast field in which we are called to act. Let our object be,

OUR COUNTRY, OUR WHOLE COUNTRY, AND NOTHING BUT OUR COUN-
TRY. And by the blessing of God, may that country itself
become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and
terror, but of wisdom, of peace, and of liberty, upon which the
world may gaze with admiration forever!



DANIEL WEBSTER 15743

MASSACHUSETTS AND SOUTH CAROLINA
From the Speech in the Senate, January 26th, 1830

SIR, let me recur to pleasing recollections; let me indulge in
refreshing remembrance of the past; let me remind you
that in early times no States cherished greater harmony,
both of principle and feeling, than Massachusetts and South Caro-
lina. Would to God that harmony might again return! Shoul-
der to shoulder they went through the Revolution; hand in hand
they stood round the administration of Washington, and felt his
own great arm lean on them for support. Unkind feeling, if
it exists, alienation ai;id distrust, are the growth, unnatural to
such soils, of false principles since sown. They are weeds, the
seeds of which that same great arm never scattered.

Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachu-
setts: she needs none. There she is. Behold her, and judge for
yourselves. There is her history; the world knows it by heart.
The past at least is secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and
Lexington, and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain forever.
The bones of her sons, falling in the great struggle for independ-
ence, now lie mingled with the soil of every State from New Eng-
land to Georgia; and there they will lie forever. And, sir, where
American liberty raised its first voice, and where its youth was
nurtured and sustained, there it still lives, in the strength of its
manhood and full of its original spirit. If discord and disunion
shall wound it, if party strife and blind ambition shall hawk at
and tear it, if folly and madness, if imeasiness under salutary
and necessary restraint, shall succeed in separating it from that
Union by which alone its existence is made sure, it will stand
in the end by the side of that cradle in which its infancy was
rocked; it will stretch forth its arm with whatever of vigor it
may still retain over the friends who gather round it; and it will
fall at last, if fall it must, amidst the proudest monuments of its
own glory, and on the very spot of its origin.



iey^4 DANIEL WEBSTER

LIBERTY AND UNION
From the Speech in the Senate, January 26th, 1830

IF ANYTHING be found in the national Constitution, either by-
original provision or subsequent interpretation, which ought
not to be in it, the people know how to get rid of it. If
any construction be established unacceptable to them, so as to
become practically a part of the Constitution, they will amend it
at their own sovereign pleasure. But while the people choose to
maintain it as it is, while they are satisfied with it and refuse
to change it, who has given or who can give to the State legis-
latures a right to alter it, either by interference, construction, or
otherwise ? Gentlemen do not seem to recollect that the people
have any power to do anything for themselves. They imagine
there is no safety for them any longer than they are under the
close guardianship of the State legislatures. Sir, the people have
not trusted their safety, in regard to the general Constitution, to
these hands. They have required other security, and taken other
bonds. They have chosen to trust themselves, first, to the plain
words of the instrument, and to such construction as the govern-
ment itself, in doubtful cases, should put on its own powers, and
under their oaths of ofHce, and subject to their responsibility to
them; just as the people of a State trust their own State govern-
ment with a similar power. Secondly, they have reposed their
trust in the efficacy of frequent elections; and in their own
power to remove their own servants and agents whenever they
see cause. Thirdly, they have reposed trust in the judicial
power; which, in ord^r that it might be trustworthy, they have
made as respectable, as disinterested, and as independent, as was
practicable. Fourthly, they have seen fit to rely, in case of neces-
sity, or high expediency, on their known and admitted power to
alter or amend the Constitution, peaceably and quietly, whenever
experience shall point out defects or imperfections. And finally,
the people of the United States have at no time, in no way,
directly or indirectly, authorized any State legislature to con-
strue or interpret tJieir high instrument of government; much
less to interfere by their own power, to arrest its course and oper-
ation.

If, sir, the people in these respects had done otherwise than
they have done, their Constitution could neither have been pre-
served, nor would it have been worth preserving. And if its



DANIEL WEBSTER 15745

plain provisions shall now be disregarded, and these new doc-
trines interpolated in it, it will become as feeble and helpless a
being as its enemies, whether early or more recent, could possi-
bly desire. It will exist in every State but as a poor dependent
on State permission. It must borrow leave to be; and will be,
no longer than State pleasure or State discretion sees fit to grant
the indulgence, and prolong its poor existence.

But, sir, although there are fears, there are hopes also. The
people have preserved this, their own chosen Constitution, for
forty years; and have seen their happiness, prosperity, and re-
nown grow with its growth, and strengthen with its strength.
They are now, generally, strongly attached to it. Overthrown by
direct assault, it cannot be; evaded, undermined, nullified, it will
not be, if we, and those who shall succeed us here as agents and
representatives of the people, shall conscientiously and vigilantly
discharge the two great branches of our public trust, faithfully to
preserve and wisely to administer it.

Mr. President, I have thus stated the reasons of my dissent
to the doctrines which have been advanced and maintained. I
am conscious of having detained you and the Senate much too
long. I was drawn into the debate with no previous delibera-
tion, such as is suited to the discussion of so grave and import-
ant a subject. But it is a subject of which my heart is full, and
I have not been willing to suppress the utterance of its spon-
taneous sentiments. I cannot, even now, persuade myself to
relinquish it, without expressing once more my deep conviction,
that since it respects nothing less than the union of the States,
it is of most vital and essential importance to the public happi-
ness. I profess, sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept steadily
in view the prosperity and honor of the whole country, and the
preservation of our federal Union. It is to that Union we owe
our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad.
It is to that Union that we are chiefly indebted for whatever
makes us most proud of our country. That Union we reached
only by the discipline of our virtues in the severe school of
adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered
finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its benign
influences, these great interests immediately awoke as from the
dead, and sprang forward with newness of life. Every year of
its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its
blessings; and although our territory has stretched out wider and

XXVII — 985



15746



DANIEL WEBSTER



wider, and our population spread farther and farther, they have
not outrun its protection or its benefits. It has been to us all a
copious fountain of national, social, and personal happiness.

I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the Union, to
see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. I have
not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty when the
bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder. I have
not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion, to
see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the
abyss below; nor could I regard him as a safe counselor in the
affairs of this government, whose thoughts should be mainly bent
on considering, not how the Union should be best preserved, but
how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it shall
be broken up and destroyed. While the Union lasts, we have
high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, — for us
and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil.
God grant that in my day, at least, that curtain may not rise!
God grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies
behind! When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last
time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken
and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States
dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil
feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last
feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of
the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still
full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their
original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star
obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory
as " What is all this worth ? '^ nor those other words of delusion
and folly, ^* Liberty first and Union afterwards ^* ; but everywhere,
spread over all in characters of living light, blazing on all its
ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in
every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear
to every true American heart — Liberty and Union, now and for-
ever, one and inseparable!



DANIEL WEBSTER 15747

THE DRUM-BEAT OF ENGLAND
From Speech in the Senate, May 7th, 1834

THE Senate regarded this interposition [the President's Protest]
as an encroachment by the executive on other branches
of the government; as an interference with the legislative
disposition of the public treasure. It was strongly and forcibly
urged yesterday by the honorable member from South Carolina,
that the true and only mode of preserving any balance of power
in mixed governments is to keep an exact balance. This is very
true; and to this end encroachment must be resisted at the first
step. The question is therefore whether, upon the true principles
of the Constitution, this exercise of power by the President can
be justified. Whether the consequences be prejudicial or not, if
there be any illegal exercise of power it is to be resisted in the
proper manner. Even if no harm or inconvenience result from
transgressing the boundary, the intrusion is not to be suffered to
pass unnoticed. Every encroachment, great or small, is import-
ant enough to awaken the attention of those who are intrusted
with the preservation of a constitutional government. We are
not to wait till great public mischiefs come, till the government
is overthrown, or liberty itself put into extreme jeopardy. We
should not be worthy sons of our fathers were we so to regard
great questions affecting the general freedom. Those fathers
accomplished the Revolution on a strict question of principle.
The Parliament of Great Britain asserted a right to tax the
colonies in all cases whatsoever; and it was precisely on this
question that they made the Revolution turn. The amount of
taxation was trifling, but the claim itself was inconsistent with
liberty; and that was in their eyes enough. It was against the
recital of an act of Parliament, rather than against any suffering
under its enactments, that they took up arms. They went to
war against a preamble. They fought seven years against a dec-
laration. They poured out their treasures and their blood like
water, in a contest against an assertion which those less saga-
cious and not so well schooled in the principles of civil liberty
would have regarded as barren phraseology, or mere parade of
words. They saw in the claim of the British Parliament a sem
inal principle of mischief, the germ of unjust power; they de-
tected it, dragged it forth from underneath its plausible disguises,



15748 DANIEL WEBSTER

struck at it; nor did it elude cither their steady eye or well-
directed blow till they had extirpated and destroyed it, to the
smallest fibre. On this question of principle, while actual suffer-
ing was yet afar off, they raised their flag against a power, to
which for purposes of foreign conquest and subjugation, Rome,
in the height of her glory, is not to be compared: a power which
has dotted over the surface of the whole globe with her posses-
sions and military posts; whose morning drum-beat, following
the sun and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth
with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of
England.



IMAGINARY SPEECH OF JOHN ADAMS

From the < Discourse on the Lives and Services of Adams and Jefferson, >

August 2d, 1826.

IT WAS for Mr. Adams to reply to arguments like these. We
know his opinions, and we know his character. He would
commence with his accustomed directness and earnestness.
" Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my
hand and my heart to this vote. It is true, indeed, that in the
beginning we aimed not at independence. But there's a divinity
which shapes our ends. The injustice of England has driven us
to arms; and blinded to her own interest for our good, she has
obstinately persisted, till independence is now within our grasp.
We have but to reach forth to it and it is ours. Why then
should we defer the declaration ? Is any man so weak as now to
hope for a reconciliation with England which shall leave either
safety to the country and its liberties, or safety to his own life
and his own honor? Are not you, sir, who sit in that chair, — is
not he, our venerable colleague near you, — are you not both al-
ready the proscribed and predestined objects of punishment and
of vengeance ? Cut off from all hope of royal clemency, what are
you, what can you be, while the power of England remains, but
outlaws ? If we postpone independence, do we mean to carry on
or to give up the war ? Do we mean to submit to the measures
of Parliament, Boston Port Bill and all ? Do we mean to submit,
and consent that we ourselves shall be ground to powder, and
our country and its rights trodden down in the dust ? I know
we do not mean to submit. We never shall submit. Do we in-
tend to violate that most solemn obligation ever entered into by



' DANIEL WEBSTER 15749

men, — that plighting, before God, of our sacred honor to Wash-
ington, when, putting him forth to incur the dangers of war as
well as the political hazards of the times, we promised to adhere
to him in every extremity, with our fortunes and our lives ? I
know there is not a man here who would not rather see a general
conflagration sweep over the land, or an earthquake sink it, than
one jot or tittle of that plighted faith fall to the ground. For
myself, having twelve months ago in this place moved you that
George Washington be appointed commander of the forces raised,
or to be raised, for defense of American liberty, — may my right
hand forget her cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my
mouth, if I hesitate or waver in the support I give him.

*^ The war, then, must go on. We must fight it through. And
if the war must go on, why put off longer the declaration of
independence ? That measure will strengthen us. It will give us
character abroad. The nations will then treat with us; which
they never can do while we acknowledge ourselves subjects, in
arms against our sovereign. Nay, I maintain that England her-
self will sooner treat for peace with us on the footing of inde-
pendence, than consent, by repealing her acts, to acknowledge
that her whole conduct toward us has been a course of injustice
and oppression. Her pride will be less wounded by submitting
to that course of things which now predestinates our independence,
than by yielding the points in controversy to her rebellious sub-
jects. The former she would regard as the result of fortune; the
latter she would feel as her own deep disgrace. Why then, why
then, sir, do we not as soon as possible change this from a civil
to a national war ? And since we must fight it through, why not
put ourselves in a state to enjoy all the benefits of victory, if we
gain the victory ?

" If we fail, it can be no worse for us. But we shall not fail.
The cause will raise up armies; the cause will create navies. The
people, the people, if we are true to them, will carry us, and will
carry themselves, gloriously through this struggle. I care not
how fickle other people have been found. I know the people of
these colonies; and I know that resistance to British aggression
is deep and settled in their hearts, and cannot be eradicated.
Every colony indeed has expressed its wilhngness to follow, if
we but take the lead. Sir, the declaration will inspire the peopie
with increased courage. Instead of a long and bloody war for



jeyro DANIEL WEBSTER

the restoration of privileges, for redress of grievances, for char-
tered immunities held under a British king, set before them the
glorious object of entire independence, and it will breathe into
them anew the breath of life. Read this declaration at the head
of the army: every sword will be drawn from its scabbard, and
the solemn vow uttered to maintain it, or to perish on the bed
of honor. Publish it from the pulpit: religion will approve it,
and the love of religious liberty will cling round it, resolved to
stand with it or fall with it. Send it to the public halls; pro-
claim it there; let them hear it who heard the first roar of the
enemy's cannon; let them see it who saw their brothers and
their sons fall on the field of Bunker Hill and in the streets of
Lexington and Concord, and the very walls will cry out in its
support.

"Sir, I know the uncertainty of human affairs; but' I see, I
see clearly, through this day's business. You and I, indeed, may
rue it. We may not live to the time when this declaration shall
be made good. We may die; die colonists; die slaves; die, it
may be, ignominiously and on the scaffold. Be it so. Be it so.
If it be the pleasure of Heaven that my country shall require
the poor offering of my life, the victim shall be ready at the ap-
pointed hour to sacrifice, come when that hour may. But while
I do live, let me have a country, or at least the hope of a coun-
try, and that a free country.

" But whatever may be our fate, be assured, be assured, that
this declaration will stand. It may cost treasure, and it may cost
blood; but it will stand, and it will richly compensate for both.
Through the thick gloom of the present, I see the brightness of
the future, as the sun in heaven. We shall make this a glorious,
an immortal day. When we are in our graves, our children will
honor it. They will celebrate it with thanksgiving, with festivity,
with bonfires and illuminations. On this annual return they will
shed tears, — copious, gushing tears, — not of subjection and
slavery, not of agony and distress, but of exultation, of gratitude,