Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

French and Neapolitan indemnities by an advance from the treasury.

I have voted with great satisfaction for the restoration of du ties on goods destroyed in the great conflagration in this city.

I have voted for a deposit with the states of the surplus which may be in the treasury at the end of the year.. All these measures have failed; and it is for you, and for our fellow-citizens throughout the country, to decide whether the public interest would, or would not, have been promoted by their success.

But I find, gentlemen, that I am committing an unpardonable trespass on your indulgent patience. I will pursue these remarks no further. And yet I cannot persuade myself to take leave of you without reminding you, with the utmost deference and respect, of the important part assigned to you in the political concerns of your country, and of the great influence of your opinions, your example, and your efforts upon the general prosperity and happiness.

Whigs of New York! Patriotic citizens of this great me tropolis! Lovers of constitutional liberty, bound by interest. and by affection to the institutions of your country, Americans in heart and in principle! —you are ready, I am sure, to fulfill all the duties imposed upon you by your situation, and demanded of you by your country. You have a central position; your city is the point from which intelligence emanates, and spreads in all directions over the whole land. Every hour carries reports of your sentiments and opinions to the verge of the Union. You cannot escape the responsibility which cir cumstances have thrown upon you. You must live and act, on a broad and conspicuous theater, either for good or for evil to your country. You cannot shrink away from your publie duties; you cannot obscure yourselves, nor bury your talent. In the common welfare, in the common prosperity, in the common glory of Americans, you have a stake of value not to

be calculated. You have an interest in the preservation of the Union, of the constitution, and of the true principles of the government, which no man can estimate. You act for yourselves, and for the generations that are to come after you; and those who ages hence shall bear your names, and partake your blood, will feel, in their political and social condition, the consequences of the manner in which you discharge your political duties.

Having fulfilled, then, on your part and on mine, though feebly and imperfectly on mine, the offices of kindness and mutual regard required by this occasion, shall we not use it to a higher and nobler purpose? Shall we not, by this friendly meeting, refresh our patriotism, rekindle our love of constitutional liberty, and strengthen our resolutions of public duty? Shall we not, in all honesty and sincerity, with pure and disinterested love of country, as Americans, looking back to the renown of our ancestors, and looking forward to the interests of our posterity, here, to-night, pledge our mutual faith to hold on to the last to our professed principles, to the doctrines of true liberty, and to the constitution of the country, let who will prove true, or who will prove recreant? Whigs of New York! I meet you in advance, and give you my pledge for my own performance of these duties, without qualification, and without reserve. Whether in public life or in private life, in the capitol or at home, I mean never to desert them. I mean never to forget that I have a country, to which I am bound by a thousand ties; and the stone which is to lie on the ground that shall cover me, shall not bear the name of a son ungrate ful to his native land.

WEBSTER'S MASTER-PIECE

AS

AN OFFICIAL LETTER-WRITER.

LETTER ON IMPRESSMENT.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

MR. WEBSTER'S letter to Lord Ashburton, on Impressment, written in 1842, at the age of sixty, is a master-piece of its kind, not only for the bold positions it assumes, and the strong arguments it advances, but for the very classic style of the performance, which is scarcely excelled in the language as a piece of English composition. It may be taken as a specimen of his written style, when the subject admitted of the use of the higher elements of his peculiar diction.

« AnteriorContinuar »