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behold! in the very crisis of our affairs, on the very eve of victory, the honorable member cries out to the enemy, not to us, his allies, but to the enemy, "Holloa! a sudden thought strikes me' -I abandon my allies! Now I think of it, they have always been my oppressors! I abandon them; and now let you and me swear an eternal friendship!"

Such a proposition, from such a quarter, Sir, was not likely to be long withstood. The other party was a little coy, but, upon the whole, nothing loath. After proper hesitation, and a little decorous blushing, it owned the soft impeachment, admitted an equally sudden sympathetic impulse on its own side; and, since few words are wanted where hearts are already known, the honorable gentleman takes his place among his new friends, amidst greetings and caresses, and is already enjoying the sweets of an eternal friendship.

181. THE PLATFORM OF THE CONSTITUTION, 1838. — Webster.

A PRINCIPAL object, in his late political movements, the gentleman himself tells us, was to unite the entire South; and against whom, or against what, does he wish to unite the entire South? Is not this the very essence of local feeling and local regard? Is it not the acknowledgment of a wish and object to create political strength, by uniting political opinions geographically? While the gentleman wishes to unite the entire South, I pray to know, Sir, if he expects me to turn toward the polar-star, and, acting on the same principle, to utter a cry of Rally! to the whole North? Heaven forbid! To the day of my death, neither he nor others shall hear such a cry from me.

Finally, the honorable member declares that he shall now march off, under the banner of State rights! March off from whom? March off from what? We have been contending for great principles. We have been struggling to maintain the liberty and to restore the prosperity of the country; we have made these struggles here, in the national councils, with the old flag- the true American flag, the Eagle and the Stars and Stripes-waving over the Chamber in which we sit. He now tells us, however, that he marches off under the State-rights banner! Let him go. I remain. I am, where I ever have been, and ever mean to be. Here, standing on the platform of the general Constitution, -a platform broad enough, and firm enough, to uphold every interest of the whole country, I shall still be found. Intrusted with some part in the administration of that Constitution, I intend to act in its spirit, and in the spirit of those who framed it. Yes, Sir. I would act as if our fathers, who formed it for us, and who bequeathed it to us, were looking on me, as if I could see their venerable forms, bending down to behold us from the abodes above! I would act, too, as if the eye of posterity was gazing on me.

Standing thus, as in the full gaze of our ancestors and our posterity, having received this inheritance from the former to be transmitted to the latter, and feeling that, if I am born for any good, in my day and generation, it is for the good of the whole country, no local policy, no

local feeling, no temporary impulse, shall induce me to yield my foothold on the Constitution and the Union. I move off under no banner not known to the whole American People, and to their Constitution and laws. No, Sir! these walls, these columns,

"fly From their firm base as soon as I."

I came into public life, Sir, in the service of the United States. On that broad altar my earliest and all my public vows have been made. I propose to serve no other master. So far as depends on any agency of mine, they shall continue united States; - united in interest and in affection; united in everything in regard to which the Constitution has decreed their union; united in war, for the common defence, the common renown, and the common glory; and united, compacted, knit firmly together, in peace, for the common prosperity and happiness of ourselves and our children!

182. RESISTANCE TO OPPRESSION IN ITS RUDIMENTS. Daniel Webster.

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. 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 well-directed 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 drum-beat, 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.

183. PEACEABLE SECESSION, 1850.-Webster.

SIR, he who sees these States now revolving in harmony around a common centre, and expects to see them quit their places and fly off without convulsion, may look the next hour to see the heavenly bodies rush from their spheres, and jostle against each other in the realms of space, without causing the crush of the universe. There can be no such thing as a peaceable secession. Peaceable secession is an utter impossibility. Is the great Constitution under which we live, covering this whole country, is it to be thawed and melted away by secession, as the snows on the mountain melt under the influence of a vernal sun, disappear almost unobserved, and run off? No, Sir! No, Sir! I will not state what might produce the disruption of the Union: but, Sir, I see, as plainly as see the sun in Heaven, what that disruption itself must produce; I see that it must produce war, and such a war as I will not describe, in its two-fold character.

Peaceable secession! - peaceable secession! The concurrent agreement of all the members of this great Republic to separate! A voluntary separation, with alimony on one side and on the other. Why, what would be the result? Where is the line to be drawn? What States are to secede? What is to remain American? What am I to be? An American no longer? Am I to become a sectional man, a local man, a separatist, with no country in common with the gentlemen who sit around me here, or who fill the other House of Congress ? Heaven forbid! Where is the flag of the Republic to remain? Where is the eagle still to tower?—or is he to cower, and shrink, and fall to the ground? Why, Sir, our ancestors - our fathers and our grandfathers, those of them that are yet living amongst us, with prolonged liveswould rebuke and reproach us; and our children and our grandchildren would cry out shame upon us, if we, of this generation, should dishonor these ensigns of the power of the Government and the harmony of that Union, which is every day felt among us with so much joy and gratitude. What is to become of the army? What is to become of the navy? What is to become of the public lands? How is any one of the thirty States to defend itself?

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.

184. ON MR. CLAY'S RESOLUTIONS, MARCH 7, 1850.-Webster.

AND now, Mr. President, instead of speaking of the possibility or utility of secession, instead of dwelling in these caverns of darkness, instead of groping with those ideas so full of all that is horrid and horrible, let us come out into the light of day; let us enjoy the fresh air of Liberty and Union; let us cherish those hopes which belong to us; let us devote ourselves to those great objects that are fit for our

consideration and our action; let us raise our conceptions to the magnitude and the importance of the duties that devolve upon us; let our comprehension be as broad as the country for which we act, our aspirations as high as its certain destiny; let us not be pigmies in a case that calls for men. Never did there devolve on any generation of men higher trusts than now devolve upon us, for the preservation of this Constitution, and the harmony and peace of all who are destined to live under it. Let us make our generation one of the strongest and brightest links in that golden chain, which is destined, I fondly believe, to grapple the People of all the States to this Constitution for ages to

come.

We have a great, popular, constitutional Government, guarded by law and by judicature, and defended by the whole affections of the People. No monarchical throne presses these States together; no iron chain of military power encircles them; they live and stand upon a Government popular in its form, representative in its character, founded upon principles of equality, and so constructed, we hope, as to last forever. In all its history it has been beneficent; it has trodden down no man's liberty,—it has crushed no State. Its daily respiration is liberty and patriotism; its yet youthful veins are full of enterprise, courage, and honorable love of glory and renown. Large before, the country has now, by recent events, become vastly larger. This Republic now extends, with a vast breadth, across the whole Continent. The two great seas of the world wash the one and the other shore. We realize, on a mighty scale, the beautiful description of the ornamental edging of the buckler of Achilles,

"Now the broad shield complete, the artist crowned
With his last hand, and poured the ocean round :

In living silver seemed the waves to roll,

And beat the buckler's verge, and bound the whole.”~

185. JUSTICE TO THE WHOLE COUNTRY, JULY 17, 1850.- Webster.

I THINK, Sir, the country calls upon us loudly and imperatively to settle this question. I think that the whole world is looking to see whether this great popular Government can get through such a crisis. We are the observed of all observers. It is not to be disputed or doubted, that the eyes of all Christendom are upon us. We have stood through many trials. Can we stand through this, which takes so much the character of a sectional controversy? Can we stand that? There is no inquiring man in all Europe who does not ask himself that question every day, when he reads the intelligence of the morning. Can this country, with one set of interests at the South, and another set of interests at the North,-these interests supposed, but falsely supposed, to be at variance, can this People see, what is so evident to the whole world beside, that this Union is their main hope and greatest benefit, and that their interests are entirely compatible? Can they see, and will they feel, that their prosperity, their respectability among

the Nations of the earth, and their happiness at home, depend upon the maintenance of their Union and their Constitution? That is the question. I agree that local divisions are apt to overturn the understandings of men, and to excite a belligerent feeling between section. and section. It is natural, in times of irritation, for one part of the country to say, if you do that I will do this, and so get up a feeling of hostility and defiance. Then comes belligerent legislation, and then an appeal to arms. The question is, whether we have the true patriotism, the Americanism, necessary to carry us through such a trial. The whole world is looking towards us, with extreme anxiety.

For myself, I propose, Sir, to abide by the principles and the purposes which I have avowed. I shall stand by the Union, and by all who stand by it. I shall do justice to the whole country, according to the best of my ability, in all I say, and act for the good of the whole country in all I do. 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 defence of the liberties and Constitution of his country!

186. MATCHES AND OVER-MATCHES, 1830. -Webster.

The following passage, and others by Mr. Webster which succeed it in this Department, are from his speeches in reply to Mr. Hayne, of South Carolina, in the Senate of the United States, January, 1830. This celebrated intellectual combat, between these distinguished men, grew out of a Resolution offered by Mr. Foote, directing the committee on Public Lands to inquire into the quantity of the public lands remaining unsold, and other matters connected therewith. This resolution afforded a text for a very irrelevant debate. Of the irrelevancy of Mr. Hayne's remarks, Mr. Webster said: "He has spoken of everything but the public lands. They have escaped his notice. To that subject, in all his excursions, he has not even paid the cold respect of a passing glance."

I AM not one of those, Sir, who esteem any tribute of regard, whether light and occasional, or more serious and deliberate, which may be bestowed on others, as so much unjustly withholden from themselves. But the tone and manner of the gentleman's question forbid me thus to interpret it. I am not at liberty to consider it as nothing more than a civility to his friend. It had an air of taunt and disparagement, a little of the loftiness of asserted superiority, which does not allow me to pass it over without notice. It was put as a question for me to answer, and so put as if it were difficult for me to answer, whether I deemed the member from Missouri an over-match for myself in debate here. It seems to me, Sir, that this is extraordinary language, and an extraordinary tone, for the discussions of this body.

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