Webster, Daniel- Continued

Venerable men! you have come down to us from a former generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your lives, that you might behold this joyous day. You are now where you stood fifty years ago, this very hour, with your brothers, and your neighbors, shoulder to shoulder, in the strife for your country. Behold, how altered. The same heavens are, indeed, over your heads; the same ocean rolls at your feet; but all else, how changed! You hear now no roar of hostile cannon, you see now no mixed volumes of smoke and flame rising from burning Charlestown; the ground strewed with the dead and the dying; the impetuous charge; the steady and successful repulse; the loud call to repeated assault; the summoning of all that is manly to repeated resistance; a thousand bosoms freely, and fearlessly bared in an instant to whatever of terror there may be in war and death; - all these you have witnessed, but you witness them no more. All is peace. The heights of yonder metropolis, its towers, and roofs, which you then saw filled with wives and children and countrymen in distress and terror, and looking with unutterable emotions for the issue of the combat, have presented you to-day with the sight of its whole happy population come out to welcome and greet you with an universal jubilee. All is peace; and God has granted you this sight of your country's happiness, ere you slumber in the grave forever.

But alas! you are not all here. Time and the sword have thinned your ranks. Prescott, Putnam, Stark, Brooks, Read, Pomeroy, Bridge-our eyes seek for you in vain amidst this broken band. But let us not too much grieve, that you have met the common fate of men. You lived to see your country's independence established, and to sheathe your swords from war. On the light of Liberty you saw arise the light of Peace, like

Another morn Risen on mid-noon; ».

and the sky on which you closed your eyes was cloudless. But ah!- him! the first great martyr in this great cause! Him! the premature victim of his own self-devoting heart! Him! the head of our civil councils, and the destined leader of our military bands, whom nothing brought hither but the unquenchable fire of his own spirit! Him! cut off by Providence in the hour of overwhelming anxiety and thick gloom; falling ere he saw the star of his country rise; pouring out his generous blood, like water, before he knew whether it would fertilize a land of freedom or of bondage! - how shall I struggle with the emotions that stifle the utterance of thy name! Our poor work may perish, but thine shall endure! This monument may moulder away; the solid ground it rests upon may sink down to a level with the sea; but thy memory shall not fail! Wheresoever

among men a heart shall be found that beats to the transports of patriotism and liberty, its aspirations shall be to claim kindred with thy spirit!

Veterans! you are the remnant of many a well-fought field. You bring with you marks of honor from Trenton and Monmouth, from Yorktown, Camden, Bennington, and Saratoga. Veterans of half a century! when, in your youthful days, you put everything at hazard in your country's cause, good as that cause was, and sanguine as youth is, still your fondest hopes did not stretch onward to an hour like this! Look abroad into this lovely land, which your young valor defended, and mark the happiness with which it is filled; yea, look abroad into the whole earth, and see what a name you have contributed to give to your country, and what a praise you have added to freedom, and then rejoice in the sympathy and gratitude which beam upon your last days from the improved condition of mankind. (At Bunker Hill. 1825.)

"Advance, Then, Ye Future Generations » - Living at an epoch which naturally marks the progress of the history of our native land, we have come hither to celebrate the great event with which that history commenced. Forever honored be this, the place of our fathers' refuge! Forever remembered the day which saw them, weary and distressed, broken in everything but spirit, poor in all but faith and courage, at last secure from the dangers of wintry seas, and impressing this shore with the first footsteps of civilized man!

Advance, then, ye future generations! We would hail you, as you rise in your long succession, to fill the places which we now fill, and to taste the blessings of existence, where we are passing, and soon shall have passed, our own human duration. We bid you welcome to this pleasant land of the fathers. We bid you welcome to the healthful skies and the verdant fields of New England. We greet your accession to the great inheritance which we have enjoyed. We welcome you to the blessings of good government, and religious liberty. We welcome you to the treasures of science, and the delights of learning. We welcome you to the transcendent sweets of domestic life, to the happiness of kindred, and parents, and children. We welcome you to the immeasurable blessings of rational existence, the immortal hope of Christianity, and the light of everlasting truth!-(At Plymouth, December 22d, 1820.)

"They Went to War Against a Preamble » - Every encroachment, great or small, is important 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 in 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 declaration. They poured out their treasures and their blood like water, in a contest, in opposition to an assertion, which those less sagacious and not so well schooled in the principles of civil liberty would have regarded as barren phraseology, or mere parade of words.

England's Drumbeat-They saw in the claim of the British Parliament a seminal principle of mischief, the germ of unjust power; they detected it, dragged it forth from underneath its plausible disguises, struck at it, nor did it elude either their steady eye, or their welldirected blow, till they had extirpated and destroyed it to the smallest fibre. On this question of principle, while actual suffering 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 possessions and military posts; whose morning drumbeat, following the sun, and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth daily with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England. - (Continuation of the preceding.)

Liberty and Union - 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 all over 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 forever, one and inseparable! (Closing sentences of the "Reply to Hayne.")

-

Af

Eloquence in Great Crises-When public bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions, when great interests are at stake and strong passions excited, nothing is valuable in speech further than it is connected with high intellectual and moral endowments. Clearness, force, and earnestness, are the qualities which produce conviction. True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshaled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. fected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire after it, they cannot reach it. It comes, if it come at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force. The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men, when their own lives, and the fate of their wives, their children, and their country, hang on the decision of the hour. Then, words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then, patriotism is eloquent; then, self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward, to his object, this, this is eloquence; or, rather, it is something greater and higher than all eloquence, it is action, noble, sublime, godlike action!-(On John Adams.)

The Progress of Liberty- Mr. President, the contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power. Whoever has engaged in her sacred cause, from the days of the downfall of those great aristocracies which had stood between the king and the people to the time of our own independence, has struggled for the accomplishment of that single object. On the long list of the champions of human freedom, there is not one name dimmed by the reproach of advocating the extension of executive authority; on the contrary, the uniform and steady purpose of all such champions has been to limit and restrain it. To this end, the spirit of liberty, growing more and more enlightened, and more and more vigorous from age to age, has been battering for centuries against the solid butments of the feudal system. To this end, all that could be gained from the imprudence, snatched from the weakness, or wrung from the necessities of crowned heads, has been carefully gathered up, secured, and hoarded as the rich treasures, the very jewels of liberty. To this end, popular and representative right has kept up its warfare against prerogative with various success; sometimes writing the history of a whole age

Webster, Daniel - Continued

in blood; sometimes witnessing the martyrdom of Sydneys and Russells; often baffled and repulsed, but still gaining, on the whole, and holding what it gained with a grasp which nothing but the complete extinction of its own being could compel it to relinquish. At length the great conquest over executive power, in the leading western states of Europe, has been accomplished. The feudal system, like other stupendous fabrics of past ages, is known only by the rubbish which it has left behind it. Crowned heads have been compelled to submit to the restraints of law, and the people, with that intelligence and that spirit which make their voice resistless, have been able to say to prerogative, "Thus far shalt thou come, and no farther." I need hardly say, sir, that, into the full enjoyment of all which Europe has reached only through such slow and painful steps, we sprang at once, by the declaration of independence, and by the establishment of free representative governments; governments borrowing more or less from the models of other free states, but strengthened, secured, improved in their symmetry, and deepened in their foundation by those great men of our own country, whose names will be as familiar to future times as if they were written on the arch of the sky.

Moral Force and Civilization — Moral causes come into consideration, in proportion as the progress of knowledge is advanced; and the public opinion of the civilized world is rapidly gaining an ascendency over mere brutal force. It is already able to oppose the most formidable obstruction to the progress of injustice and oppression; and, as it grows more intelligent, and more intense, it will be more and more formidable. It may be silenced by military power, but it cannot be conquered. It is elastic, irrepressible, and invulnerable to the weapons of ordinary warfare. It is that impassable, unextinguishable enemy of mere violence and arbitrary rule, which, like Milton's angels,

• Vital in every part,

Cannot, but by annihilating, die."

- (1823.) "My God's and Truth's" - I mean to stand upon the Constitution. I need no other platform. I shall know but one country. The ends I aim at shall be my country's, my God's, and Truth's. I was born an American; I live an American; I shall die an American; and I intend to perform the duties incumbent upon me in that character to the end of my career. I mean to do this, with absolute disregard of personal consequences. What are personal consequences? What is the individual man, with all the good or evil that may betide him, in comparison with the good or evil which may befall a great country in a crisis like this, and in the midst of great transactions which concern that country's fate? Let the consequences be what they will, I am careless. No man can suffer too much, and

no man can fall too soon, if he suffer, or if he fall, in defense of the liberties and constitution of his country - (1850.)

"Matches and Overmatches» (Replying to Hayne) - Matches and overmatches! Those terms are more applicable elsewhere than here, and fitter for other assemblies than this. Sir, the gentleman seems to forget where and what we are. This is a Senate; a Senate of equals; of men of individual honor and personal character, and of absolute independence. We know no masters; we acknowledge no dictators. This is a hall for mutual consultation and discussion; not an arena for the exhibition of champions. I offer myself, sir, as a match for no man; I throw the challenge of debate at no man's feet. But, then, sir, since the honorable member has put the question, in a manner that calls for an answer, I will give him an answer; and I tell him, that, holding myself to be the humblest of the members here, I yet know nothing in the arm of his friend from Missouri, either alone, or when aided by the arm of his friend from South Carolina, that need deter even me from espousing whatever opinions I may choose to espouse, from debating whenever I may choose to debate, or from speaking whatever I may see fit to say, on the floor of the Senate.

Sir, when uttered as matter of commendation or compliment, I should dissent from nothing which the honorable member might say of his friend. Still less do I put forth any pretensions of my own. But, when put to me as matter of taunt, I throw it back, and say to the gentleman that he could possibly say nothing less likely than such a comparison to wound my pride of personal character. The anger of its tone rescued the remark from intentional irony, which, otherwise, probably, would have been its general acceptation. But, sir, if it be imagined that, by this mutual quotation and commendation; if it be supposed that, by casting the characters of the drama, assigning to each his part,-to one, the attack; to another, the cry of onset; - or, if it be thought that, by a loud and empty vaunt of anticipated victory, any laurels are to be won here; if it be imagined, especially, that any or all these things shall shake any purpose of mine,-I can tell the honorable member, once for all, that he is greatly mistaken, and that he is dealing with one of whose temper and character he has yet much to learn. Sir, I shall not allow myself, on this occasion,-I hope on no occasion,- to be betrayed into any loss of temper; but if provoked, as I trust I never shall allow myself to be, into crimination and recrimination, the honorable member may, perhaps, find that in that contest there will be blows to take, as well as blows to give; that others can state comparisons as significant, at least, as his own; and that his impunity may, perhaps, demand of him whatever powers of taunt and sarcasm he may possess. I commend him to a prudent husbandry of his resources.— — (1830.)

Webster, Daniel - Continued

Massachusetts-Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts; 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.

Secession in Peace Impossible-Such a thing as peaceable secession! It is utterly impossible. Is the Constitution under which we live, covering this whole country, to be thawed and melted away by secession, as the snows upon the mountains are melted under the influence of a vernal sun, to disappear almost unobserved? Our ancestors will rebuke and reproach us; our children and grandchildren would cry shame upon us, if we of this generation should tarnish those ensigns of the honor, power, and harmony of the Union, which we now behold with so much joy and gratitude.

Peaceable secession! A concurrent resolution of all the members of this great republic to separate! Where is the line to be drawn? What States are to be associated? What is to become of the army? What is to become of the navy? What is to become of the public lands? Alas! what is to remain of America? What am I to be? Where is our flag to remain? Where is the eagle still to soar aloft ? or is he to cower, and shrink, and fall to the earth ?

Sir, we could not sit down here to-day, and draw a line of separation that would satisfy any five men in the country. There are natural causes that would keep and tie us together, and there are social and domestic relations which we could not break if we would, and which we should not if we could.-(From a speech in 1850.)

"Sink or Swim, Live or Die»- 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?-(Attributed by Webster to John Adams.)

Public Opinion-We think that nothing is powerful enough to stand before autocratic, monarchical, or despotic power. There is something strong enough, quite strong enough,— and, if properly exerted, will prove itself so,— and that is the power of intelligent public opinion in all the nations of the earth. There is not a monarch on earth whose throne is not

Let

liable to be shaken by the progress of opinion, and the sentiment of the just and intelligent part of the people. It becomes us, in the station which we hold, to let that public opinion, so far as we form it, have a free course. it go out; let it be pronounced in thunder tones; let it open the ears of the deaf; let it open the eyes of the blind; and let it everywhere be proclaimed what we, of this great republic, think of the general principle of human liberty, and of that oppression which all abhor.- (From a speech in 1852.)

Popular Government-The people's government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people.- (From a speech in the U. S. Senate, 1830.)

Weed, Thurlow (American, 1797-1882.)

"A Good Enough Morgan»- That is a good enough Morgan for us until you bring back the one you carried off. (Another version is: That is a good enough Morgan until after election.)-(During the Anti-Masonic excitement of 1872.)

Wesley, John (England, 1703-1791.)

"Pleasures, Shadows, Dreams!"-It is true, those who are void of all virtue may have pleasures, such as they are; but happiness they have not, cannot have. No :

"Their joy is all sadness; their mirth is all vain; Their laughter is madness; their pleasure is pain!"

Pleasures? Shadows! dreams! fleeting as the wind! unsubstantial as the rainbow! as unsatisfying to the poor gasping soul,—

"As the gay colors of an eastern cloud. "Painted and Gilded, but Empty Still »— O ye lovers of money, hear the word of the Lord! Suppose ye that money, though multiplied as the sand of the sea, can give happiness? Then you are "given up to a strong delusion to believe a lie »;-a palpable lie, confuted daily by a thousand experiments! Open your eyes! Look all around you! Are the richest men the happiest? Have those the largest share of content who have the largest possessions? Is not the very reverse true? Is it not a common observation, that the richest of men are, in general, the most discontented, the most miserable? Had not the far greater part of them more content, when they had less money? Look into your own breasts. If you are increased in goods, are you proportionally increased in happiness? You have more substance; but have you more content? You know that in seeking happiness from riches, you are only striving to drink out of empty cups. And let them be painted and gilded ever so finely, they are empty still.-(From a sermon I. Timothy, vi. 9.)

on

Wilberforce, William (England, 1759-1833.)

On the British Slave Trade- The true way to virtue is by withdrawing from temptation;

let us, then, withdraw from these wretched Africans those temptations to fraud, violence, cruelty, and injustice, which the slave trade furnishes. Wherever the sun shines, let us go round the world with him, diffusing our beneficence; but let us not traffic, only that we may set kings against their subjects, subjects against their kings, sowing discord in every village, fear and terror in every family, setting millions of our fellow-creatures a-hunting each other for slaves, creating fairs and markets for human flesh through one whole continent of the world, and, under the name of policy, concealing from ourselves all the baseness and iniquity of such a traffic. Why may we not hope, ere long, to see Hans-towns established on the coast of Africa as they were on the Baltic ? It is said the Africans are idle, but they are not too idle, at least, to catch one another; seven hundred to one thousand tons of rice are annually bought of them; by the same rule, why should we not buy more? At Gambia one thousand of them are continually at work ; why should not some more thousands be set to work in the same manner? It is the slave trade that causes their idleness and every other mischief. We are told by one witness: "They sell one another as they can"; and while they can get brandy by catching one another, no wonder they are too idle for any regular work. (In Parliament, 1789. From "The World's Best Orations. »)

Wilkes, John (England, 1727–1797.)

"The Wide Arch of the Raised Empire Will Fall" I shudder at our injustice and cruelty; I tremble for the consequences of our imprudence. You will urge the Americans to desperation. They will certainly defend their property and liberties, with the spirit of freemen, with the spirit our ancestors did, and I hope we should exert on a like occasion. They will sooner declare themselves independent, and risk every consequence of such a contest, than submit to the galling yoke which the administration is preparing for them. Recollect Philip II., King of Spain; remember the Seven Provinces and the Duke of Alva. It was deliberated in the council of the monarch what measures should be adopted respecting the Low Countries; some were disposed for clemency, others advised rigor; the second prevailed. The Duke of Alva was victorious, it is true, wherever he appeared; but his cruelties sowed the teeth of the serpent. The beggars of the Briel, as they were called by the Spaniards, who despised them as you now despise the Americans, were those, however, who first shook the power of Spain to the centre. And, comparing the probabilities of success in the contest of that day, with the chances in that of the present, are they so favorable to England as they were then to Spain? This none will pretend. You all know, however, the issue of that sanguinary conflict, how that powerful empire was rent asunder, and severed forever into many parts. Profit, then, by the experience of the past, if you

would avoid a similar fate. But you would declare the Americans rebels; and to your injustice and oppression you add the most opprobrious language and the most insulting scoffs. If you persist in your resolution all hope of a reconciliation is extinct. The Americans will triumph, the whole continent of North America will be dismembered from Great Britain, and the wide arch of the raised empire fall. But I hope the just vengeance of the people will overtake the authors of these pernicious counsels, and the loss of the first province of the empire be speedily followed by the loss of the heads of those ministers who first invented them.— (House of Commons. 1775.)

Rebellion and Revolution- A successful resistance is a revolution, not a rebellion! Rebellion indeed, appears on the back of a flying enemy; but revolution flames on the breastplate of the victorious warrior.

Williams, George H. (American, 1823-.)

Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - We can look back and see, in the dim distance, the slowlymoving train; the wagons with their once white, but now dingy covers; the patient oxen, measuring their weary steps; men travel-stained and bronzed by exposure; women with mingled hope and care depicted upon their anxious faces; and children peering from their uneasy abodes, and wondering when their discomforts will cease. These are pioneers on their way to the promised land. Moons wax and wane, again and again; but day after day the toilsome march is resumed. Sometimes there are Indian scares and depredations; unbridged streams are encountered: rugged ascents and steep declivities occur; teams give out and wagons break down; but finally, through "moving accidents by flood and field," and when the year has glided into the gold and russet of autumn, they reach the long-looked-for end of their journey. To some, all this did not happen; to others, more than this happened. And there were those who looked back with sad hearts, and remembered where they had left the wild winds to chant their funeral requiem over a lonely and deserted grave.

When the pioneers arrived here, they found a land of marvelous beauty. They found extended prairies, rich with luxuriant verdure. They found grand and gloomy forests, majestic rivers, and mountains covered with eternal snow; but they found no friends to greet them, no homes to go to, nothing but the genial heavens and the generous earth to give them consolation and hope.-(From an address delivered at Portland, Oregon, in March, 1895.) Wilmot, David (American, 1814-1868.)

"Fanaticism" and "Property Rights » — The instincts of money are the same the world over, the same here as in the most grinding despotism of Europe. Money is cold, selfish, heartless. It has no pulse of humanity, no feelings of pity or of love. Interest, gain, accumulation, are the sole instincts of its nature;