The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel
Webster, by Daniel Webster, et al


This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net





Title: The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster

Author: Daniel Webster

Release Date: June 13, 2004  [eBook #12606]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1


***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT SPEECHES AND ORATIONS OF
DANIEL WEBSTER***


E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Linda Cantoni, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team



THE GREAT SPEECHES AND ORATIONS OF DANIEL WEBSTER

With an Essay on Daniel Webster as a Master of English Style

By

Edwin P. Whipple

1923






[Illustration]





PREFACE.


The object of the present volume is not to supersede the standard
edition of Daniel Webster's Works, in six octavo volumes, edited by
Edward Everett, and originally issued in the year 1851, by the
publishers of this volume of Selections. It is rather the purpose of the
present publication to call attention anew to the genius and character
of Daniel Webster, as a lawyer, statesman, diplomatist, patriot, and,
citizen, and, by republishing some of his prominent orations and
speeches of universally acknowledged excellence, to revive public
interest in the great body of his works. In the task of selection, it
has been impossible to do full justice to his powers; for among the
speeches omitted in this collection are to be found passages of
superlative eloquence, maxims of political and moral wisdom which might
be taken as mottoes for elaborate treatises on the philosophy of law and
legislation, and important facts and principles which no student of
history of the United States can overlook without betraying an ignorance
of the great forces which influenced the legislation of the two Houses
of Congress, from the time Mr. Webster first entered public life to the
day of his death.

It is to be supposed that, when Mr. Everett consented to edit the six
volumes of his works, Mr. Webster indicated to him the orations,
speeches, and diplomatic despatches which he really thought might be of
service to the public, and that he intended them as a kind of legacy,--a
bequest to his countrymen.

The publishers of this volume believe that a study of Mr. Webster's
mind, heart, and character, as exhibited in the selections contained in
the present volume, will inevitably direct all sympathetic readers to
the great body of Mr. Webster's works. Among the eminent men who have
influenced legislative assemblies in Great Britain and the United
States, during the past hundred and twenty years, it is curious that
only two have established themselves as men of the first class in
English and American literature. These two men are Edmund Burke and
Daniel Webster; and it is only by the complete study of every thing
which they authorized to be published under their names, that we can
adequately comprehend either their position among the political forces
of their time, or their rank among the great masters of English
eloquence and style.




CONTENTS.


DANIEL WEBSTER AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE

THE DARTMOUTH COLLEGE CASE

Argument before the Supreme Court of the United States, at Washington,
on the 10th of March, 1818.

FIRST SETTLEMENT OF NEW ENGLAND

A Discourse delivered at Plymouth, on the 22d of December, 1820.

DEFENCE OF JUDGE JAMES PRESCOTT

The closing Appeal to the Senate of Massachusetts, in Mr. Webster's
"Argument on the Impeachment of James Prescott," April 24th, 1821.

THE REVOLUTION IN GREECE

A Speech delivered in the House of Representatives of the United States,
on the 19th of January, 1824.

THE TARIFF

A Speech delivered in the House of Representatives of the United States,
on the 1st and 2d of April, 1824.

THE CASE OF GIBBONS AND OGDEN

An Argument made in the Case of Gibbons and Ogden, in the Supreme Court
of the United States, February Term, 1824.

THE BUNKER HILL MONUMENT

An Address delivered at the Laying of the Corner-Stone of the Bunker
Hill Monument at Charlestown, Massachusetts, on the 17th of June, 1825.

THE COMPLETION OF THE BUNKER HILL MONUMENT

An Address delivered on Bunker Hill, on the 17th of June, 1843, on
Occasion of the Completion of the Monument.

OUR RELATIONS TO THE SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS

Extracts from the Speech on "The Panama Mission," delivered in the House
of Representatives of the United States, on the 14th of April, 1826.

ADAMS AND JEFFERSON

A Discourse in Commemoration of the Lives and Services of John Adams and
Thomas Jefferson, delivered in Faneuil Hall, Boston, on the 2d of
August, 1826.

THE CASE OF OGDEN AND SAUNDERS

An Argument made in the Case of Ogden and Saunders, in the Supreme Court
of the United States, January Term, 1827.

THE MURDER OF CAPTAIN JOSEPH WHITE

An Argument on the Trial of John Francis Knapp, for the Murder of Joseph
White, of Salem, in Essex County, Massachusetts, on the Night of the 6th
of April, 1830.

THE REPLY TO HAYNE

Second Speech on "Foot's Resolution," delivered in the Senate of the
United States, on the 26th and 27th of January, 1830.

THE CONSTITUTION NOT A COMPACT BETWEEN SOVEREIGN STATES

A Speech delivered in the Senate of the United States, on the 16th of
February, 1833, in Reply to Mr. Calhoun's Speech on the Bill "Further to
Provide for the Collection of Duties on Imports."

PUBLIC DINNER AT NEW YORK

A Speech delivered at a Public Dinner given by a large Number of
Citizens of New York, in Honor of Mr. Webster, on March 10th, 1831.

THE PRESIDENTIAL VETO OF THE UNITED STATES BANK BILL

A Speech delivered in the Senate of the United States, on the 11th of
July, 1832, on the President's Veto of the Bank Bill.

THE CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON

A Speech delivered at a Public Dinner in the City of Washington, on the
22d of February, 1832, the Centennial Anniversary of Washington's
Birthday.

EXECUTIVE PATRONAGE AND REMOVALS FROM OFFICE

From a Speech delivered at the National Republican Convention, held at
Worcester (Mass.), on the 12th of October, 1832.

EXECUTIVE USURPATION

From the same Speech at Worcester.

THE NATURAL HATRED OF THE POOR TO THE RICH

From a Speech in the Senate of the United States, January 31st, 1834, on
"The Removal of the Deposits."

A REDEEMABLE PAPER CURRENCY

From a Speech delivered in the Senate of the United States, on the 22d
of February, 1834.

THE PRESIDENTIAL PROTEST

A Speech delivered in the Senate of the United States, on the 7th of
May, 1834, on the subject of the President's Protest against the
Resolution of the Senate of the 28th of March.

THE APPOINTING AND REMOVING POWER

Delivered in the Senate of the United States, on the 16th of February,
1835, on the Passage of the Bill entitled "An Act to Repeal the First
and Second Sections of the Act to limit the Term of Service of certain
Officers therein named."

ON THE LOSS OF THE FORTIFICATION BILL IN 1835

A Speech delivered in the Senate of the United States, on the 14th of
January, 1836, on Mr. Benton's Resolutions for Appropriating the Surplus
Revenue to National Defence.

RECEPTION AT NEW YORK

A Speech delivered at Niblo's Saloon, in New York, on the 15th of March,
1837.

SLAVERY IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

Remarks made in the Senate of the United States, on the 10th of January,
1838, upon a Resolution moved by Mr. Clay as a Substitute for the
Resolution offered by Mr. Calhoun on the Subject of Slavery in the
District of Columbia.

THE CREDIT SYSTEM AND THE LABOR OF THE UNITED STATES

From the Second Speech on the Sub-Treasury, delivered in the Senate of
the United States, on the 12th of March, 1838.

REMARKS ON THE POLITICAL COURSE OF MR. CALHOUN, IN 1838

From the same Speech.

REPLY TO MR. CALHOUN

A Speech delivered in the Senate of the United States, on the 22d of
March, 1838, in Answer to Mr. Calhoun.

A UNIFORM SYSTEM OF BANKRUPTCY

From a Speech delivered in the Senate of the United States, on the 18th
of May, 1840, on the proposed Amendment to the Bill establishing a
Uniform System of Bankruptcy.

"THE LOG CABIN CANDIDATE"

From a Speech delivered at the great Mass Meeting at Saratoga, New York,
on the 12th of August, 1840.

ADDRESS TO THE LADIES OF RICHMOND

Remarks at a Public Reception by the Ladies of Richmond, Virginia, on
the 5th of October, 1840.

RECEPTION AT BOSTON

A Speech made in Faneuil Hall, on the 30th of September, 1842, at a
Public Reception given to Mr. Webster, on his Return to Boston, after
the Negotiation of the Treaty of Washington.

THE LANDING AT PLYMOUTH

A Speech delivered on the 22d of December, 1843, at the Public Dinner of
the New England Society of New York, in Commemoration of the Landing of
the Pilgrims.


THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY AND THE RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION OF THE YOUNG

A Speech delivered in the Supreme Court at Washington, on the 20th of
February, 1844, in the Girard Will Case.

MR. JUSTICE STORY

THE RHODE ISLAND GOVERNMENT

An Argument made in the Supreme Court of the United States, on the 27th
of January, 1848, in the Dorr Rebellion Cases.

OBJECTS OF THE MEXICAN WAR

A Speech delivered in the Senate of the United States, on the 23d of
March, 1848, on the Bill from the House of Representatives for raising a
Loan of Sixteen Millions of Dollars.

EXCLUSION OF SLAVERY FROM THE TERRITORIES

Remarks made in the Senate of the United States, on the 12th of August,
1848.

SPEECH AT MARSHFIELD

Delivered at a Meeting of the Citizens of Marshfield, Mass., on the 1st
of September, 1848.

JEREMIAH MASON

KOSSUTH

From a Speech delivered in Boston, on the 7th of November, 1849, at a
Festival of the Natives of New Hampshire established in Massachusetts.

THE CONSTITUTION AND THE UNION

A Speech delivered in the Senate of the United States, on the 7th of
March, 1850.

RECEPTION AT BUFFALO

A Speech delivered before a large Assembly of the Citizens of Buffalo
and the County of Erie, at a Public Reception, on the 22d of May, 1851.

THE ADDITION TO THE CAPITOL

An Address delivered at the Laying of the Corner-Stone of the Addition
to the Capitol, on the 4th of July, 1851.

APPENDIX.

IMPRESSMENT

THE RIGHT OF SEARCH

LETTERS TO GENERAL CASS ON THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON

THE HÜLSEMANN LETTER




DANIEL WEBSTER AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE.


From my own experience and observation I should say that every boy, who
is ready enough in spelling, grammar, geography, and arithmetic, is
appalled when he is commanded to write what is termed "a composition."
When he enters college the same fear follows him and the Professor of
Rhetoric is a more terrible personage to his imagination than the
Professors of Greek, Latin, Mathematics, and Moral and Intellectual
Philosophy. Both boys at school and young men in college show no lack of
power in speaking their native language with a vehemence and fluency
which almost stuns the ears of their seniors. Why, then, should they
find such difficulty in writing it? When you listen to the animated talk
of a bright school-boy or college student, full of a subject which
really interests him, you say at once that such command of racy and
idiomatic English words must of course be exhibited in his
"compositions" or his "themes"; but when the latter are examined, they
are commonly found to be feeble and lifeless, with hardly a thought or a
word which bears any stamp of freshness or originality, and which are so
inferior to his ordinary conversation, that we can hardly believe they
came from the same mind.

The first quality which strikes an examiner of these exercises in
English composition is their _falseness_. No boy or youth writes what he
personally thinks and feels, but writes what a good boy or youth is
expected to think or feel. This hypocrisy vitiates his writing from
first to last, and is not absent in his "Class Oration," or in his
"Speech at Commencement." I have a vivid memory of the first time the
boys of my class, in a public school, were called upon to write
"composition." The themes selected were the prominent moral virtues or
vices. How we poor innocent urchins were tormented by the task imposed
upon us! How we put more ink on our hands and faces than we shed upon
the white paper on our desks! Our conclusions generally agreed with
those announced by the greatest moralists of the world. Socrates and
Plato, Cicero and Seneca, Cudworth and Butler, could not have been more
austerely moral than were we little rogues, as we relieved the immense
exertion involved in completing a single short baby-like sentence, by
shying at one companion a rule, or hurling at another a paper pellet
intended to light plump on his forehead or nose. Our custom was to begin
every composition with the proposition that such or such a virtue "was
one of the greatest blessings we enjoy"; and this triumph of accurate
statement was not discovered by our teacher to be purely mechanical,
until one juvenile thinker, having avarice to deal with, declared it to
be "one of the greatest evils we enjoy." The whole thing was such a
piece of monstrous hypocrisy, that I once timidly suggested to the
schoolmaster that it would be well to allow me to select my own subject.
The request was granted; and, as narrative is the natural form of
composition which a boy adopts when he has his own way, I filled, in
less than half the time heretofore consumed in writing a quarter of a
page, four pages of letter-paper with an account of my being in a ship
taken by a pirate; of the heroic defiance I launched at the pirate
captain; and the sagacity I evinced in escaping the fate of my
fellow-passengers, in not being ordered to "walk the plank." The story,
though trashy enough, was so much better than any of the moral essays of
the other pupils, that the teacher commanded me to read it before the
whole school, as an evidence of the rapid strides I had made in the art
of "composition."

This falseness of thought and feeling is but too apt to characterize the
writing of the student, after he has passed from the common school to
the academy or the college. The term "Sophomorical" is used to describe
speeches which are full of emotion which the speaker does not feel, full
of words in four or five syllables that mean nothing, and, in respect to
imagery and illustrations, blazing with the cheap jewelry of
rhetoric,--with those rubies and diamonds that can be purchased for a
few pennies an ounce. The danger is that this "Sophomorical" style may
continue to afflict the student after he has become a clergyman, a
lawyer, or a legislator.

Practical men who may not be "college educated" still have the great
virtue of using the few words they employ as identical with facts. When
they meet a man who has half the dictionary at his disposal, and yet
gives no evidence of apprehending the real import and meaning of one
word among the many thousands he glibly pours forth, they naturally
distrust him, as a person who does not know the vital connection of all
good words with the real things they represent. Indeed, the best rule
that a Professor of Rhetoric could adopt would be to insist that no
student under his care should use an unusual word until he had _earned
the right to use it_ by making it the verbal sign of some new advance in
his thinking, in his acquirements, or in his feelings. Shakspeare, the
greatest of English writers, and perhaps the greatest of all writers,
required fifteen thousand words to embody all that his vast exceptional
intelligence acquired, thought, imagined, and discovered; and he had
earned the right to use every one of them. Milton found that eight
thousand words could fairly and fully represent all the power, grandeur,
and creativeness of his almost seraphic soul, when he attempted to
express his whole nature in a literary form. All the words used by
Shakspeare and Milton are _alive_; "cut them and they will _bleed_." But
it is ridiculous for a college student to claim that he has the mighty
resources of the English language at his supreme disposal, when he has
not verified, by his own thought, knowledge, and experience, one in a
hundred of the words he presumptuously employs.

Now Daniel Webster passed safely through all the stages of the
"Sophomoric" disease of the mind, as he passed safely through the
measles, the chicken-pox, and other eruptive maladies incident to
childhood and youth. The process, however, by which he purified his
style from this taint, and made his diction at last as robust and as
manly, as simple and as majestic, as the nature it expressed, will
reward a little study.

The mature style of Webster is perfect of its kind, being in words the
express image of his mind and character,--plain, terse, clear, forcible;
and rising from the level of lucid statement and argument into passages
of superlative eloquence only when his whole nature is stirred by some
grand sentiment of freedom, patriotism, justice, humanity, or religion,
which absolutely lifts him, by its own inherent force and inspiration,
to a region above that in which his mind habitually lives and moves. At
the same time it will be observed that these thrilling passages, which
the boys of two generations have ever been delighted to declaim in their
shrillest tones, are strictly illustrative of the main purpose of the
speech in which they appear. They are not mere purple patches of
rhetoric, loosely stitched on the homespun gray of the reasoning, but
they seem to be inwoven with it and to be a vital part of it. Indeed we
can hardly decide, in reading these magnificent bursts of eloquence in
connection with what precedes and follows them, whether the effect is
due to the logic of the orator becoming suddenly morally impassioned, or
to his moral passion becoming suddenly logical. What gave Webster his
immense influence over the opinions of the people of New England was,
first, his power of so "putting things" that everybody could understand
his statements; secondly, his power of so framing his arguments that all
the steps, from one point to another, in a logical series, could be
clearly apprehended by every intelligent farmer or mechanic who had a
thoughtful interest in the affairs of the country; and thirdly, his
power of inflaming the sentiment of patriotism in all honest and
well-intentioned men by overwhelming appeals to that sentiment, so that,
after convincing their understandings, he clinched the matter by
sweeping away their wills.

Perhaps to these sources of influence may be added another which many
eminent statesmen have lacked. With all his great superiority to average
men in force and breadth of mind, he had a genuine respect for the
intellect, as well as for the manhood, of average men. He disdained the
ignoble office of misleading the voters he aimed to instruct; and the
farmers and mechanics who read his speeches felt ennobled when they
found that the greatest statesman of the country frankly addressed them,
as man to man, without pluming himself on his exceptional talents and
accomplishments. Up to the crisis of 1850, he succeeded in domesticating
himself at most of the pious, moral, and intelligent firesides of New
England. Through his speeches he seemed to be almost bodily present
wherever the family, gathered in the evening around the blazing hearth,
discussed the questions of the day. It was not the great Mr. Webster,
"the godlike Daniel," who had a seat by the fire. It was a person who
talked _to_ them, and argued _with_ them, as though he was "one of the
folks,"--a neighbor dropping in to make an evening call; there was not
the slightest trace of assumption in his manner; but suddenly, after the
discussion had become a little tiresome, certain fiery words would leap
from his lips and make the whole household spring to their feet, ready
to sacrifice life and property for "the Constitution and the Union."
That Webster was thus a kind of invisible presence in thousands of homes
where his face was never seen, shows that his rhetoric had caught an
element of power from his early recollections of the independent,
hard-headed farmers whom he met when a boy in his father's house. The
bodies of these men had become tough and strong in their constant
struggle to force scanty harvests from an unfruitful soil, which only
persistent toil could compel to yield any thing; and their brains,
though forcible and clear, were still not stored with the important
facts and principles which it was his delight to state and expound. In
truth, he ran a race with the demagogues of his time in an attempt to
capture such men as these, thinking them the very backbone of the
country. Whether he succeeded or failed, it would be vain to hunt
through his works to find a single epithet in which he mentioned them
with contempt. He was as incapable of insulting one member of this
landed democracy,--sterile as most of their acres were,--as of insulting
the memory of his father, who belonged to this class.

The late Mr. Peter Harvey used to tell with much zest a story
illustrating the hold which these early associations retained on
Webster's mind throughout his life. Some months after his removal from
Portsmouth to Boston, a servant knocked at his chamber door late in an
April afternoon in the year 1817, with the announcement that three men
were in the drawing-room who insisted on seeing him. Webster was
overwhelmed with fatigue, the result of his Congressional labors and his
attendance on courts of law; and he had determined, after a night's
sleep, to steal a vacation in order to recruit his energies by a
fortnight's fishing and hunting. He suspected that the persons below
were expectant clients; and he resolved, in descending the stairs, not
to accept their offer. He found in the parlor three plain, country-bred,
honest-looking men, who were believers in the innocence of Levi and
Laban Kenniston, accused of robbing a certain Major Goodridge on the
highway, and whose trial would take place at Ipswich the next day. They
could find, they said, no member of the Essex bar who would undertake
the defence of the Kennistons, and they had come to Boston to engage the
services of Mr. Webster. Would he go down to Ipswich and defend the
accused? Mr. Webster stated that he could not and would not go. He had
made arrangements for an excursion to the sea-side; the state of his
health absolutely demanded a short withdrawal from all business cares;
and that no fee could tempt him to abandon his purpose. "Well," was the
reply of one of the delegation, "it isn't the fee that we think of at
all, though we are willing to pay what you may charge; but it's justice.
Here are two New Hampshire men who are believed in Exeter, and Newbury,
and Newburyport, and Salem to be rascals; but we in Newmarket believe,
in spite of all evidence against them, that they are the victims of some
conspiracy. We think you are the man to unravel it, though it seems a
good deal tangled even to us. Still we suppose that men whom we know to
have been honest all their lives can't have become such desperate rogues
all of a sudden." "But I cannot take the case," persisted Mr. Webster;
"I am worn to death with over-work. I have not had any real sleep for
forty-eight hours. Besides, I know nothing of the case." "It's hard, I
can see," continued the leader of the delegation; "but you're a New
Hampshire man, and the _neighbors_ thought that you would not allow two
innocent New Hampshire men, however humble they may be in their
circumstances, to suffer for lack of your skill in exposing the wiles of
this scoundrel Goodridge. The _neighbors_ all desire you to take the
case." That phrase "the neighbors" settled the question. No resident of
a city knows what the phrase means. But Webster knew it in all the
intense significance of its meaning. His imagination flew back to the
scattered homesteads of a New England village, where mutual sympathy and
assistance are the necessities, as they are the commonplaces, of village
life. The phrase remotely meant to him the combination of neighbors to
resist an assault of Indian savages, or to send volunteers to the war
which wrought the independence of the nation. It specially meant to him
the help of neighbor to neighbor, in times of sickness, distress,
sorrow, and calamity. In his childhood and boyhood the Christian
question, "Who is my neighbor?" was instantly solved the moment a matron
in good health heard that the wife of Farmer A, or Farmer B, was
stricken down by fever, and needed a friendly nurse to sit by her
bedside all night, though she had herself been toiling hard all day.
Every thing philanthropists mean when they talk of brotherhood and
sisterhood among men and women was condensed in that homely phrase, "the
neighbors." "Oh!" said Webster, ruefully, "if the neighbors think I may
be of service, of course I must go";--and, with his three companions, he
was soon seated in the stage for Ipswich, where he arrived at about
midnight. The court met the next morning; and his management of the case
is still considered one of his masterpieces of legal acumen and
eloquence. His cross-examination of Goodridge rivalled, in mental
torture, every thing martyrologists tell us of the physical agony
endured by the victim of the inquisitor, when roasted before slow fires
or stretched upon the rack. Still it seemed impossible to assign any
motive for the self-robbery and the self-maiming of Goodridge, which any
judge or jury would accept as reasonable. The real motive has never been
discovered. Webster argued that the motive might have originated in a
desire to escape from the payment of his debts, or in a whimsical
ambition to have his name sounded all over Maine and Massachusetts as
the heroic tradesman who had parted with his money only when overpowered
by superior force. It is impossible to say what motives may impel men
who are half-crazed by vanity, or half-demonized by malice. Coleridge
describes Iago's hatred of Othello as the hatred which a base nature
instinctively feels for a noble one, and his assignment of motives for
his acts as the mere "motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity."

Whatever may have been Goodridge's motive in his attempt to ruin the
innocent men he falsely accused, it is certain that Webster saved these
men from the unjust punishment of an imputed crime. Only the skeleton of
his argument before the jury has been preserved; but what we have of it
evidently passed under his revision. He knew that the plot of Goodridge
had been so cunningly contrived, that every man of the twelve before
him, whose verdict was to determine the fate of his clients, was
inwardly persuaded of their guilt. Some small marked portions of the
money which Goodridge swore he had on his person on the night of the
pretended robbery were found in their house. Circumstantial evidence
brought their guilt with a seemingly irresistible force literally "home"
to them. It was the conviction of the leaders of the Essex bar that no
respectable lawyer could appear in their defence without becoming, in
some degree, their accomplice. But Webster, after damaging the character
of the prosecutor by his stern cross-examination, addressed the jury,
not as an advocate bearing down upon them with his arguments and
appeals, but rather as a thirteenth juryman, who had cosily introduced
himself into their company, and was arguing the case with them after
they had retired for consultation among themselves. The simplicity of
the language employed is not more notable than the power evinced in
seizing the main points on which the question of guilt or innocence
turned. At every quiet but deadly stab aimed at the theory of the
prosecution, he is careful to remark, that "it is for the jury to say
under their oaths" whether such inconsistencies or improbabilities
should have any effect on their minds. Every strong argument closes with
the ever-recurring phrase, "It is for the jury to say"; and, at the end,
the jury, thoroughly convinced, said, "Not guilty." The Kennistons were
vindicated; and the public, which had been almost unanimous in declaring
them fit tenants for the State prison, soon blamed the infatuation which
had made them the accomplices of a villain in hunting down two
unoffending citizens, and of denouncing every lawyer who should
undertake their defence as a legal rogue.

The detected scoundrel fled from the place where his rascality had been
exposed, to seek some other locality, where the mingled jeers and curses
of his dupes would be unheard. Some twenty years after the trial, Mr.
Webster, while travelling in Western New York, stopped at an obscure
village tavern to get a glass of water. The hand of the man behind the
bar, who gave it to him, trembled violently; and Webster, wondering at
the cause, looked the fellow steadily in the eye. He recognized
Goodridge, and understood at once that Goodridge had just before
recognized _him_. Not a word passed between the felon and the intrepid
advocate who had stripped his villany of all its plausible disguises;
but what immense meaning must there have been in the swift interchange
of feeling as their eyes met! Mr. Webster entered his carriage and
proceeded on his journey; but Goodridge,--who has since ever heard of
him?

This story is a slight digression, but it illustrates that hold on
reality, that truth to fact, which was one of the sources of the force
and simplicity of Mr. Webster's mature style. He, however, only obtained
these good qualities of rhetoric by long struggles with constant
temptations, in his early life, to use resounding expressions and
flaring images which he had not earned the right to use. His Fourth of
July oration at Hanover, when he was only eighteen, and his college
addresses, must have been very bad in their diction if we can judge of
them by the style of his private correspondence at the time. The verses
he incorporates in his letters are deformed by all the faults of false
thinking and borrowed expression which characterized contemporary
American imitators of English imitators of Pope and Gray. Think of the
future orator, lawyer, and senator writing, even at the age of twenty,
such balderdash as this!

    "And Heaven grant me, whatever luck betide,
    Be fame or fortune given or denied,
    Some cordial friend to meet my warm desire,
    Honest as John and good as Nehemiah."

In reading such couplets we are reminded of the noted local poet of New
Hampshire (or was it Maine?) who wrote "The Shepherd's Songs," and some
of whose rustic lines still linger in the memory to be laughed at, such,
for instance, as these:--

    "This child who perished in the fire,--
    His father's name was Nehemiah."

Or these:--

    "Napoleon, that great ex_ile_,
    Who scoured all Europe like a file."

And Webster's prose was then almost as bad as his verse, though it was
modelled on what was considered fine writing at the opening of the
present century. He writes to his dearest student friends in a style
which is profoundly insincere, though the thoughts are often good, and
the fact of his love for his friends cannot be doubted. He had committed
to memory Fisher Ames's noble speech on the British Treaty, and had
probably read some of Burke's great pamphlets on the French Revolution.
The stripling statesman aimed to talk in their high tone and in their
richly ornamented language, before he had earned the right even to mimic
their style of expression. There is a certain swell in some of his long
sentences, and a kind of good sense in some of his short ones, which
suggest that the writer is a youth endowed with elevation as well as
strength of nature, and is only making a fool of himself because he
thinks he must make a fool of himself in order that he may impress his
correspondents with the idea that he is a master of the horrible jargon
which all bright young fellows at that time innocently supposed to
constitute eloquence. Thus, in February, 1800, he writes thus to his
friend Bingham: "In my melancholy moments I presage the most dire
calamities. I already see in my imagination the time when the banner of
civil war shall be unfurled; when Discord's hydra form shall set up her
hideous yell, and from her hundred mouths shall howl destruction through
our empire; and when American blood shall be made to flow in rivers by
American swords! But propitious Heaven prevent such dreadful calamities!
Internally secure, we have nothing to fear. Let Europe pour her
embattled millions around us, let her thronged cohorts cover our shores,
from St. Lawrence to St. Marie's, yet United Columbia shall stand
unmoved; the manes of her deceased Washington shall guard the liberties
of his country, and direct the sword of freedom in the day of battle."
And think of this, not in a Fourth of July oration, but in a private
letter to an intimate acquaintance! The bones of Daniel Webster might be
supposed to have moved in their coffin at the thought that this
miserable trash--so regretted and so amply atoned for--should have ever
seen the light; but it is from such youthful follies that we measure the
vigor of the man who outgrows them.

It was fortunate that Webster, after he was admitted to the bar, came
into constant collision, in the courts of New Hampshire, with one of the
greatest masters of the common law that the country has ever produced,
Jeremiah Mason. It has been said that Mr. Mason educated Webster into a
lawyer by opposing him. He did more than this; he cured Webster of all
the florid foolery of his early rhetorical style. Of all men that ever
appeared before a jury, Mason was the most pitiless realist, the most
terrible enemy of what is--in a slang term as vile almost as
itself--called "Hifalutin"; and woe to the opposing lawyer who indulged
in it! He relentlessly pricked all rhetorical bubbles, reducing them at
once to the small amount of ignominious suds, which the orator's breath
had converted into colored globes, having some appearance of stability
as well as splendor. Six feet and seven inches high, and corpulent in
proportion, this inexorable representative of good sense and sound law
stood, while he was arguing a case, "quite near to the jury," says
Webster,--"so near that he might have laid his finger on the foreman's
nose; and then he talked to them in a plain conversational way, in short
sentences, and using no word that was not level to the comprehension of
the least educated man on the panel. This led me," he adds, "to examine
my own style, and I set about reforming it altogether."

Mr. Mason was what the lawyers call a "cause-getting man," like Sir
James Scarlett, Brougham's great opponent at the English bar. It was
said of Scarlett, that he gained his verdicts because there were twelve
Scarletts in the jury-box; and Mason so contrived to blend his stronger
mind with the minds of the jurymen, that his thoughts appeared to be
theirs, expressed in the same simple words and quaint illustrations
which they would have used if asked to give their opinions on the case.
It is to be added, that Mason's almost cynical disregard of ornament in
his addresses to the jury gave to an opponent like Webster the advantage
of availing himself of those real ornaments of speech which spring
directly from a great heart and imagination. Webster, without ever
becoming so supremely plain and simple in style as Mason, still strove
to emulate, in his legal statements and arguments, the homely, robust
common-sense of his antagonist; but, wherever the case allowed of it, he
brought into the discussion an element of _un_-common sense, the gift of
his own genius and individuality, which Mason could hardly comprehend
sufficiently to controvert, but which was surely not without its effect
in deciding the verdicts of juries.

It is probable that Webster was one of the few lawyers and statesmen
that Mason respected. Mason's curt, sharp, "vitriolic" sarcasms on many
men who enjoyed a national reputation, and who were popularly considered
the lights of their time, still remain in the memories of his surviving
associates, as things which may be quoted in conversation, but which it
would be cruel to put into print. Of Webster, however, he never seems to
have spoken a contemptuous word. Indeed, Mason, though fourteen years
older than Webster, and fighting him at the Portsmouth bar with all the
formidable force of his logic and learning, was from the first his
cordial friend. That friendship, early established between strong
natures so opposite in character, was never disturbed by any collision
in the courts. In a letter written, I think, a few weeks after he had
made that "Reply to Hayne" which is conceded to be one of the great
masterpieces of eloquence in the recorded oratory of the world, Webster
wrote jocularly to Mason: "I have been written to, to go to New
Hampshire, to try a cause against you next August.... If it were an easy
and plain case on our side, I might be willing to go; but I have some of
your _pounding in my bones yet_, and I don't care about any more till
that wears out."

It may be said that Webster's argument in the celebrated "Dartmouth
College Case," before the Supreme Court of the United States, placed
him, at the age of thirty-six, in the foremost rank of the
constitutional lawyers of the country. For the main points of the
reasoning, and for the exhaustive citation of authorities by which the
reasoning was sustained, he was probably indebted to Mason, who had
previously argued the case before the Superior Court of New Hampshire;
but his superiority to Mason was shown in the eloquence, the moral
power, he infused into his reasoning, so as to make the dullest citation
of legal authority _tell_ on the minds he addressed.

There is one incident connected with this speech which proves what
immense force is given to simple words when a great man--great in his
emotional nature as well as great in logical power--is behind the words.
"It is, sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet there are those
who love it." At this point the orator's lips quivered, his voice
choked, his eyes filled with tears,--all the memories of sacrifices
endured by his father and mother, his brothers and sisters, in order
that he might enjoy its rather scanty advantages of a liberal education,
and by means of which he was there to plead its cause before the supreme
tribunal of the nation, rushed suddenly upon his mind in an overwhelming
flood. The justices of the Supreme Court--great lawyers, tried and
toughened by experience into a certain obdurate sense of justice, and
insensible to any common appeal to their hearts--melted into unwonted
tenderness, as, in broken words, the advocate proceeded to state his own
indebtedness to the "small college," whose rights and privileges he was
there to defend. Chief Justice Marshall's eyes were filled with tears;
and the eyes of the other justices were suffused with a moisture similar
to that which afflicted the eyes of the Chief. As the orator gradually
recovered his accustomed stern composure of manner, he turned to the
counsel on the other side,--one of whom, at least, was a graduate of
Dartmouth,--and in his deepest and most thrilling tones, thus concluded
his argument: "Sir, I know not how others may feel; but for myself, when
I see my Alma Mater surrounded, like Caesar in the senate-house, by
those who are reiterating stab after stab, I would not, for this right
hand, have her turn to me and say, _Et tu quoque, mi fili!_--And thou
too, my son." The effect was overwhelming; yet by what simple means was
it produced, and with what small expenditure of words! The eloquence was
plainly "in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion," but most
emphatically was it in the MAN.

Webster's extreme solicitude to make his style thoroughly
_Websterian_--a style unimitated because it is in itself inimitable--is
observable in the care he took in revising all his speeches and
addresses which were published under his own authority. His great
Plymouth oration of 1820 did not appear in a pamphlet form until a year
after its delivery. The chief reason of this delay was probably due to
his desire of stating the main political idea of the oration, that
government is founded on property, so clearly that it could not be
misconceived by any honest mind, and could only be perverted from its
plain democratic meaning by the ingenious malignity of such minds as are
deliberately dishonest, and consider lying as justifiable when lying
will serve a party purpose. It is probable that Webster would have been
President of the United States had it not been for one short sentence in
this oration,--"Government is founded on property." It was of no use for
his political friends to prove that he founded on this general
proposition the most democratic views as to the distribution of
property, and advised the enactment of laws calculated to frustrate the
accumulation of large fortunes in a few hands. There were the words,
words horrible to the democratic imagination, and Webster was proclaimed
an aristocrat, and an enemy to the common people. But the delay in the
publication of the oration may also be supposed to have been due to his
desire to prune all its grand passages of eloquence of every epithet and
image which should not be rigorously exact as expressions of his genuine
sentiments and principles. It is probable that the Plymouth oration, as
we possess it in print, is a better oration, in respect to composition,
than that which was heard by the applauding crowd before which it was
originally delivered. It is certain that the largeness, the grandeur,
the weight of Webster's whole nature, were first made manifest to the
intelligent portion of his countrymen by this noble commemorative
address.

Yet it is also certain that he was not himself altogether satisfied with
this oration; and his dissatisfaction with some succeeding popular
speeches, memorable in the annals of American eloquence, was expressed
privately to his friends in the most emphatic terms. On the day he
completed his magnificent Bunker Hill oration, delivered on the 17th of
June, 1825, he wrote to Mr. George Ticknor: "I did the deed this
morning, i.e. I finished my speech; and I am pretty well persuaded that
it will _finish_ me as far as reputation is concerned. There is no more
tone in it than in the weather in which it has been written; it is
perpetual dissolution and thaw." Every critic will understand the force
of that word "tone." He seemed to feel that it had not enough robust
manliness,--that the ribs and backbone, the facts, thoughts, and real
substance of the address, were not sufficiently prominent, owing to the
frequency of those outbursts of magnetic eloquence, which made the
immense audience that listened to it half crazy with the vehemence of
their applause. On the morning after he had delivered his eulogy on
Adams and Jefferson, he entered his office with his manuscript in his
hand, and threw it down on the desk of a young student at law whom he
specially esteemed, with the request, "There, Tom, please to take that
discourse, and weed out all the Latin words."

Webster's liking for the Saxon element of our composite language was,
however, subordinate to his main purpose of self-expression. Every word
was good, whether of Saxon or Latin derivation, which aided him to
embody the mood of mind dominant at the time he was speaking or writing.
No man had less of what has been called "the ceremonial cleanliness of
academical pharisees;" and the purity of expression he aimed at was to
put into a form, at once intelligible and tasteful, his exact thoughts
and emotions. He tormented reporters, proof-readers, and the printers
who had the misfortune to be engaged in putting one of his performances
into type, not because this or that word was or was not Saxon or Latin,
but because it was inadequate to convey perfectly his meaning. Mr.
Kemble, a great Anglo-Saxon scholar, once, in a company of educated
gentlemen, defied anybody present to mention a single Latin phrase
in our language for which he could not furnish a more forcible
Saxon equivalent. "The impenetrability of matter" was suggested;
and Kemble, after half a minute's reflection, answered, "The
un-thorough-fareableness of stuff." Still, no English writer would think
of discarding such an abstract, but convenient and accurate, term as
"impenetrability," for the coarsely concrete and terribly ponderous word
which declares that there is no possible thoroughfare, no road, by which
we can penetrate that substance which we call "matter," and which our
Saxon forefathers called "stuff." Wherever the Latin element in our
language comes in to express ideas and sentiments which were absent from
the Anglo-Saxon mind, Webster uses it without stint; and some of the
most resounding passages of his eloquence owe to it their strange power
to suggest a certain vastness in his intellect and sensibility, which
the quaint, idiomatic, homely prose of his friend, Mason, would have
been utterly incompetent to convey. Still, he preferred a plain, plump,
simple verb or noun to any learned phrase, whenever he could employ it
without limiting his opulent nature to a meagre vocabulary, incompetent
fully to express it.

Yet he never departed from simplicity; that is, he rigidly confined
himself to the use of such words as he had earned the right to use.
Whenever the report of one of his extemporaneous speeches came before
him for revision, he had an instinctive sagacity in detecting every word
that had slipped unguardedly from his tongue, which he felt, on
reflection, did not belong to _him_. Among the reporters of his
speeches, he had a particular esteem for Henry J. Raymond, afterwards so
well known as the editor of the New York Times. Mr. Raymond told me
that, after he had made a report of one of Webster's speeches, and had
presented it to him for revision, his conversation with him was always a
lesson in rhetoric. "Did I use that phrase? I hope not. At any rate,
substitute for it this more accurate definition." And then again: "That
word does not express my meaning. Wait a moment, and I will give you a
better one. That sentence is slovenly,--that image is imperfect and
confused. I believe, my young friend, that you have a remarkable power
of reporting what I say; but, if I said that, and that, and that, it
must have been owing to the fact that I caught, in the hurry of the
moment, such expressions as I could command at the moment; and you see
they do not accurately represent the idea that was in my mind." And
thus, Mr. Raymond said, the orator's criticism upon his own speech would
go on,--correction following correction,--until the reporter feared he
would not have it ready for the morning edition of his journal.

Webster had so much confidence in Raymond's power of reporting him
accurately, that, when he intended to make an important speech in the
Senate, he would send a note to him, asking him to come to Washington as
a personal favor; for he knew that the accomplished editor had a rare
power of apprehending a long train of reasoning, and of so reporting it
that the separate thoughts would not only be exactly stated, but the
relations of the thoughts to each other--a much more difficult
task--would be preserved throughout, and that the argument would be
presented in the symmetrical form in which it existed in the speaker's
mind. Then would follow, as of old, the severe scrutiny of the
phraseology of the speech; and Webster would give, as of old, a new
lesson in rhetoric to the accomplished reporter who was so capable of
following the processes of his mind.

The great difficulty with speakers who may be sufficiently clear in
statement and cogent in argument is that turn in their discourse when
their language labors to become figurative. Imagery makes palpable to
the bodily eye the abstract thought seen only by the eye of the mind;
and all orators aim at giving vividness to their thinking by thus making
their thoughts _visible_. The investigation of the process of
imagination by which this end is reached is an interesting study. Woe to
the speaker who is ambitious to rise into the region of imagination
without possessing the faculty! Everybody remembers the remark of
Sheridan, when Tierney, the prosaic Whig leader of the English House of
Commons, ventured to bring in, as an illustration of his argument, the
fabulous but favorite bird of untrained orators, the phoenix, which is
supposed always to spring up alive out of its own ashes. "It was," said
Sheridan, "a poulterer's description of a phoenix." That is, Tierney,
from defect of imagination, could not lift his poetic bird above the
rank of a common hen or chicken.

The test that may be most easily applied to all efforts of the
imagination is sincerity; for, like other qualities of the mind, it acts
strictly within the limits of a man's character and experience. The
meaning of the word "experience," however, must not be confined to what
he has personally seen and felt, but is also to be extended to every
thing he has seen and felt through vital sympathy with facts, scenes,
events, and characters, which he has learned by conversation with other
men and through books. Webster laid great emphasis on conversation as
one of the most important sources of imagery as well as of positive
knowledge. "In my education," he once remarked to Charles Sumner, "I
have found that conversation with the intelligent men I have had the
good fortune to meet has done more for me than books ever did; for I
learn more from them in a talk of half an hour than I could possibly
learn from their books. Their minds, in conversation, come into intimate
contact with my own mind; and I absorb certain secrets of their power,
whatever may be its quality, which I could not have detected in their
works. Converse, _converse_, CONVERSE with living men, face to face, and
mind to mind,--that is one of the best sources of knowledge."

But my present object is simply to give what may be called the natural
history of metaphor, comparison, image, trope, and the like, whether
imagery be employed by an uneducated husbandman, or by a great orator
and writer. Many readers may recollect the anecdote of the New Hampshire
farmer, who was once complimented on the extremely handsome appearance
of a horse which he was somewhat sullenly urging on to perform its work.
"Yaas," was the churlish reply, "the critter looks well enough, but then
he is as slow as--as--as--well, as slow as cold molasses." This
perfectly answers to Bacon's definition of imagination, as "thought
immersed in matter." The comparison is exactly on a level with the
experience of the person who used it. He had seen his good wife, on so
many bitter winter mornings, when he was eager for his breakfast, turn
the molasses-jug upside down, and had noted so often the reluctance of
the congealed sweetness to assume its liquid nature, that the thing had
become to him the visible image of the abstract notion of slowness of
movement. An imaginative dramatist or novelist, priding himself on the
exactness with which he represented character, could not have invented a
more appropriate comparison to be put into the mouth of an imagined New
England farmer.

The only objection to such rustic poets is, that a comparatively few
images serve them for a lifetime; and one tires of such "originals"
after a few days' conversation has shown the extremely limited number of
apt illustrations they have added to the homely poetry of agricultural
life. The only person, belonging to this class, that I ever met, who
possessed an imagination which was continually creative in quaint
images, was a farmer by the name of Knowlton, who had spent fifty years
in forcing some few acres of the rocky soil of Cape Ann to produce
grass, oats, potatoes, and, it may be added, those ugly stone walls
which carefully distinguish, at the cape, one patch of miserable sterile
land from another. He was equal, in quickness of imaginative
illustration, to the whole crowd of clergymen, lawyers, poets, and
artists, who filled the boarding-houses of "Pigeon Cove"; and he was
absolutely inexhaustible in fresh and original imagery. On one hot
summer day, the continuation of fourteen hot summer days, when there was
fear all over Cape Ann that the usual scanty crops would be withered up
by the intense heat, and the prayer for rain was in almost every
farmer's heart, I met Mr. Knowlton, as he was looking philosophically
over one of his own sun-smitten fields of grass. Thinking that I was in
full sympathy with his own feeling at the dolorous prospect before his
eyes, I said, in accosting him, that it was bad weather for the farmers.
He paused for half a minute; and then his mind flashed back on an
incident of his weekly experience,--that of his wife "ironing" the
somewhat damp clothes of the Monday's "washing,"--and he replied: "I see
you've been talking with our farmers, who are too stupid to know what's
for their good. Ye see the spring here was uncommonly rainy, and the
ground became wet and cold; but now, for the last fortnight, _God has
been putting his flat-iron over it_, and 'twill all come out right in
the end."

Thus Mr. Knowlton went on, year after year, speaking poetry without
knowing it, as Molière's Monsieur Jourdain found he had been speaking
prose all his life without knowing it. But the conception of the sun as
God's flat-iron, smoothing out and warming the moist earth, as a
housewife smooths and warms the yet damp shirts, stockings, and
bed-linen brought into the house from the clothes-lines in the yard, is
an astounding illustration of that "familiar grasp of things divine,"
which obtains in so many of our rustic households. Dante or Chaucer, two
of the greatest poets of the world, would, had they happened to be
"uneducated" men, have seized on just such an image to express their
idea of the Divine beneficence.

This natural, this instinctive operation of the imaginative faculty, is
often observed in children. Numberless are the stories told by fond
mothers of the wonderful things uttered by their babies, shortly after
they have left their cradles. The most striking peculiarity running
through them all is the astonishing audacity with which the child treats
the most sacred things. He or she seems to have no sense of awe. All
children are taught to believe that God resides above them in the sky;
and I shall never forget the shock of surprise I felt at the answer of a
boy of five years--whom I found glorying over the treasures of his first
paint-box--to my question: "Which color do you like best?" "Oh," he
carelessly replied, "I like best sky-blue,--God's color." And the little
rogue went on, daubing the paper before him with a mixture of all
colors, utterly unconscious that he had said any thing remarkable; and
yet what Mrs. Browning specially distinguishes as the characteristic of
the first and one of the greatest of English poets, Chaucer, namely, his
"familiar grasp of things Divine," could not have found a more
appropriate illustration than in this chance remark of a mere child,
expressing the fearlessness of his faith in the Almighty Father above
him.

Now in all these instinctive operations of the imagination, whether in
the mind of a child or in that of a grown man, it is easy to discern the
mark of sincerity. If the child is petted, and urged by his mother to
display his brightness before a company of other mothers and other
babies, he is in danger of learning early that trick of falsehood, which
clings to him when he goes to school, when he leaves the school for the
college, and when he leaves the college for the pursuits of professional
life. The farmer or mechanic, not endowed with "college larnin'," is
sure to become a bad declaimer, perhaps a demagogue, when he abandons
those natural illustrations and ornaments of his speech which spring
from his individual experience, and strives to emulate the
grandiloquence of those graduates of colleges who have the heathen
mythology at the ends of their fingers and tongues, and can refer to
Jove, Juno, Minerva, Diana, Venus, Vulcan, and Neptune, as though they
were resident deities and deesses of the college halls. The trouble with
most "uneducated" orators is, that they become enamored of these shining
gods and goddesses, after they have lost, through repetition, all of
their old power to give point or force to any good sentence of modern
oratory. During the times when, to be a speaker at Abolitionist
meetings, the speaker ran the risk of being pelted with rotten eggs, I
happened to be present, as one of a small antislavery audience, gathered
in an equally small hall. Among the speakers was an honest,
strong-minded, warm-hearted young mechanic, who, as long as he was true
to his theme, spoke earnestly, manfully, and well; but alas! he thought
he could not close without calling in some god or goddess to give
emphasis--after the method of college students--to his previous
statements. He selected, of course, that unfortunate phantom whom he
called the Goddess of Liberty. "Here, in Boston," he thundered, "where
she was cradled in Faneuil Hall, can it be that Liberty should be
trampled under foot, when, after two generations have passed,--yes, sir,
have elapsed,--she has grown--yes, sir, I repeat it, has grown--grown
up, sir, into a great man?" The change in sex was, in this case, more
violent than usual; but how many instances occur to everybody's
recollection, where that poor Goddess has been almost equally outraged,
through a puerile ambition on the part of the orator to endow her with
an exceptional distinction by senseless rhodomontade, manufactured by
the word-machine which he presumes to call his imagination! All
imitative imagery is the grave of common-sense.

Now let us pass to an imagination which is, perhaps, the grandest in
American oratory, but which was as perfectly natural as that of the
"cold molasses," or "God's flat-iron," of the New England farmer,--as
natural, indeed, as the "sky-blue, God's color," of the New England boy.
Daniel Webster, standing on the heights of Quebec at an early hour of a
summer morning, heard the ordinary morning drum-beat which called the
garrison to their duty. Knowing that the British possessions belted the
globe, the thought occurred to him that the morning drum would go on
beating in some English post to the time when it would sound again in
Quebec. Afterwards, in a speech on President Jackson's Protest, he dwelt
on the fact that our Revolutionary forefathers engaged in a war with
Great Britain on a strict question of principle, "while actual suffering
was still afar off." How could he give most effect to this statement? It
would have been easy for him to have presented statistical tables,
showing the wealth, population, and resources of England, followed by an
enumeration of her colonies and military stations, all going to prove
the enormous strength of the nation against which the United American
colonies raised their improvised flag. But the thought which had
heretofore occurred to him at Quebec happily recurred to his mind the
moment it was needed; and he flashed on the imagination an image of
British power which no statistics could have conveyed to the
understanding,--"a Power," he said, "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 with one continuous and unbroken strain of the
martial airs of England." Perhaps a mere rhetorician might consider
superfluous the word "whole," as applied to "globe," and "unbroken," as
following "continuous"; yet they really add to the force and majesty of
the expression. It is curious that, in Great Britain, this magnificent
impersonation of the power of England is so little known. It is certain
that it is unrivalled in British patriotic oratory. Not Chatham, not
even Burke, ever approached it in the noblest passages in which they
celebrated the greatness and glory of their country. Webster, it is to
be noted, introduced it in his speech, not for the purpose of exalting
England, but of exalting our Revolutionary forefathers, whose victory,
after a seven years' war of terrible severity, waged in vindication of a
principle, was made all the more glorious from having been won over an
adversary so formidable and so vast.

It is reported that, at the conclusion of this speech on the President's
Protest, John Sergeant, of Philadelphia, came up to the orator, and,
after cordially shaking hands with him, eagerly asked, "Where, Webster,
did you get that idea of the morning drum-beat?" Like other public men,
accustomed to address legislative assemblies, he was naturally desirous
of knowing the place, if place there was, where such images and
illustrations were to be found. The truth was that, if Webster had ever
read Goethe's Faust,--which he of course never had done,--he might have
referred his old friend to that passage where Faust, gazing at the
setting sun, aches to follow it in its course for ever. "See," he
exclaims, "how the green-girt cottages shimmer in the setting sun. He
bends and sinks,--the day is outlived. Yonder he hurries off, and
quickens other life. Oh, that I have no wing to lift me from the ground,
to struggle after--for ever after--him! I should see, in everlasting
evening beams, the stilly world at my feet, every height on fire, every
vale in repose, the silver brook flowing into golden streams. The rugged
mountain, with all its dark defiles, would not then break my godlike
course. Already the sea, with its heated bays, opens on my enraptured
sight. Yet the god seems at last to sink away. But the new impulse
wakes. I hurry on to drink his everlasting light,--_the day before me
and the night behind_,--and under me the waves." In Faust, the wings of
the mind follow the setting sun; in Webster, they follow the rising sun;
but the thought of each circumnavigates the globe, in joyous
companionship with the same centre of life, light, and heat,--though the
suggestion which prompts the sublime idea is widely different. The
sentiment of Webster, calmly meditating on the heights of Quebec,
contrasts strangely with the fiery feeling of Faust, raging against the
limitations of his mortal existence. A humorist, Charles Dickens, who
never read either Goethe or Webster, has oddly seized on the same
general idea: "The British empire," as he says, in one of his
novels,--"on which the sun never sets, and where the tax-gatherer never
goes to bed."

This celebrated image of the British "drum-beat" is here cited simply to
indicate the natural way in which all the faculties of Webster are
brought into harmonious co-operation, whenever he seriously discusses
any great question. His understanding and imagination, when both are
roused into action, always cordially join hands. His statement of facts
is so combined with the argument founded on them, that they are
interchangeable; his statement having the force of argument, and his
argument having the "substantiality" which properly belongs to
statement; and to these he commonly adds an imaginative illustration,
which gives increased reality to both statement and argument. In rapidly
turning over the leaves of the six volumes of his Works, one can easily
find numerous instances of this instinctive operation of his mind. In
his first Bunker Hill oration, he announces that "the _principle_ of
free governments adheres to the American soil. It is bedded in it,
immovable as its mountains." Again he says: "A call for the
representative system, wherever it is not enjoyed, and where there is
already intelligence enough to estimate its value, is perseveringly
made. Where men may speak out, they demand it where the bayonet is at
their throats, they pray for it." And yet again: "If the true spark of
religious and civil liberty be kindled, it will burn. Human agency
cannot extinguish it. Like the earth's central fire, it may be smothered
for a time; the ocean may overwhelm it; mountains may press it down; but
its inherent and unconquerable force will heave both the ocean and the
land, and at some time or other, in some place or other, the volcano
will break out, and flame up to heaven." It would be difficult to find
in any European literature a similar embodiment of an elemental
sentiment of humanity, in an image which is as elemental as the
sentiment to which it gives vivid expression.

And then with what majesty, with what energy, and with what simplicity,
can he denounce a political transaction which, had it not attracted his
ire, would hardly have survived in the memory of his countrymen! Thus,
in his Protest against Mr. Benton's Expunging Resolution, speaking for
himself and his Senatorial colleague, he says: "We rescue our own names,
character, and honor from all participation in this matter; and,
whatever the wayward character of the times, the headlong and plunging
spirit of party devotion, or the fear or the love of power, may have
been able to bring about elsewhere, we desire to thank God that they
have not, as yet, overcome the love of liberty, fidelity to true
republican principles, and a sacred regard for the Constitution in that
State whose soil was drenched to a mire by the first and best blood of
the Revolution." Perhaps the peculiar power of Webster in condemning a
measure by a felicitous epithet, such as that he employs in describing
"the _plunging_ spirit of party devotion," was never more happily
exercised. In that word "plunging," he intended to condense all his
horror and hatred of a transaction which he supposed calculated to throw
the true principles of constitutional government into a bottomless abyss
of personal government, where right constitutional principles would
cease to have existence, as well as cease to have authority.

There is one passage in his oration at the completion of the Bunker Hill
Monument, which may be quoted as an illustration of his power of compact
statement, and which, at the same time, may save readers from the
trouble of reading many excellent histories of the origin and progress
of the Spanish dominion in America, condensing, as it does, all which
such histories can tell us in a few smiting sentences. "Spain," he says,
"stooped on South America, like a vulture on its prey. Every thing was
force. Territories were acquired by fire and sword. Cities were
destroyed by fire and sword. Hundreds of thousands of human beings fell
by fire and sword. Even conversion to Christianity was attempted by fire
and sword." One is reminded, in this passage, of Macaulay's method of
giving vividness to his confident generalization of facts by emphatic
repetitions of the same form of words. The repetition of "fire and
sword," in this series of short, sharp sentences, ends in forcing the
reality of what the words mean on the dullest imagination; and the
climax is capped by affirming that "fire and sword" were the means by
which the religion of peace was recommended to idolaters, whose
heathenism was more benignant, and more intrinsically Christian, than
the military Christianity which was forced upon them.

And then, again, how easily Webster's imagination slips in, at the end
of a comparatively bald enumeration of the benefits of a good
government, to vitalize the statements of his understanding!
"Everywhere," he says, "there is order, everywhere there is security.
Everywhere the law reaches to the highest, and reaches to the lowest, to
protect all in their rights, and to restrain all from wrong; and over
all hovers liberty,--that liberty for which our fathers fought and fell
on this very spot, with her eye ever watchful, and her eagle wing ever
wide outspread." There is something astonishing in the dignity given in
the last clause of this sentence to the American eagle,--a bird so
degraded by the rhodomontade of fifth-rate declaimers, that it seemed
impossible that the highest genius and patriotism could restore it to
its primacy among the inhabitants of the air, and its just eminence as a
symbol of American liberty. It is also to be noted, that Webster here
alludes to "the bird of freedom" only as it appears on the American
silver dollar that passes daily from hand to hand, where the watchful
eye and the outspread wing are so inartistically represented that the
critic is puzzled to account for the grandeur of the image which the
orator contrived to evolve from the barbaric picture on the ugliest and
clumsiest of civilized coins.

The compactness of Webster's statements occasionally reminds us of the
epigrammatic point which characterizes so many of the statements of
Burke. Thus, in presenting a memorial to Congress, signed by many
prominent men of business, against President Jackson's system of
finance, he saw at once that the Democrats would denounce it as another
manifesto of the "moneyed aristocracy." Accordingly Webster introduced
the paper to the attention of the Senate, with the preliminary remark:
"The memorialists are not unaware, that, if rights are attacked,
attempts will be made to render odious those whose rights are violated.
Power always seeks such subjects on which to try its experiments." It is
difficult to resist the impression that Webster must have been indebted
to Burke for this maxim. Again, we are deluded into the belief that we
must be reading Burke, when Webster refers to the _minimum_ principle as
the right one to be followed in imposing duties on certain manufactures.
"It lays the impost," he says, "exactly where it will do good, and
leaves the rest free. It is an intelligent, discerning, discriminating
principle; not a blind, headlong, generalizing, uncalculating operation.
Simplicity undoubtedly, is a great beauty in acts of legislation, as
well as in the works of art; but in both it must be a simplicity
resulting from congruity of parts and adaptation to the end designed;
not a rude generalization, which either leaves the particular object
unaccomplished, or, in accomplishing it, accomplishes a dozen others
also, which were not desired. It is a simplicity wrought out by
knowledge and skill; not the rough product of an undistinguishing,
sweeping general principle."

An ingenuous reader, who has not learned from his historical studies
that men generally act, not from arguments addressed to their
understandings, but from vehement appeals which rouse their passions to
defend their seeming interests, cannot comprehend why Webster's
arguments against Nullification and Secession, which were apparently
unanswerable, and which were certainly unanswered either by Hayne or
Calhoun, should not have settled the question in debate between the
North and the South. Such a reader, after patiently following all the
turns and twists of the logic, all the processes of the reasoning
employed on both sides of the intellectual contest, would naturally
conclude that the party defeated in the conflict would gracefully
acknowledge the fact of its defeat; and, as human beings, gifted with
the faculty of reason, would cheerfully admit the demonstrated results
of its exercise. He would find it difficult to comprehend why the men
who were overcome in a fair gladiatorial strife in the open arena of
debate, with brain pitted against brain, and manhood against manhood,
should resort to the rough logic of "blood and iron," when the nobler
kind of logic, that which is developed in the struggle of mind with
mind, had failed to accomplish the purposes which their hearts and
wills, independent of their understandings, were bent on accomplishing.

It may be considered certain that so wise a statesman as Webster--a
statesman whose foresight was so palpably the consequence of his
insight, and whose piercing intellect was so admirably adapted to read
events in their principles--never indulged in such illusions as those
which cheered so many of his own adherents, when they supposed his
triumph in argumentation was to settle a matter which was really based
on organic differences in the institutions of the two sections of the
Union. He knew perfectly well that, while the Webster men were glorying
in his victory over Calhoun, the Calhoun men were equally jubilant in
celebrating Calhoun's victory over him. Which of them had the better in
the argument was of little importance in comparison with the terrible
fact that the people of the Southern States were widening, year by year,
the distance which separated them from the people of the Northern
States. We have no means of judging whether Webster clearly foresaw the
frightful civil war between the two sections, which followed so soon
after his own death. We only know that, to him, it was a conflict
constantly impending, and which could be averted for the time only by
compromises, concessions, and other temporary expedients. If he allowed
his mind to pass from the pressing questions of the hour, and to
consider the radical division between the two sections of the country
which were only formally united, it would seem that he must have felt,
as long as the institution of negro slavery existed, that he was only
laboring to postpone a conflict which it was impossible for him to
prevent.

But my present purpose is simply to indicate the felicity of Webster's
intrepid assault on the principles which the Southern disunionists put
forward in justification of their acts. Mr. Calhoun's favorite idea was
this,--that Nullification was a conservative principle, to be exercised
within the Union, and in accordance with a just interpretation of the
Constitution. "To begin with nullification," Webster retorted, "with the
avowed intent, nevertheless, not to proceed to secession, dismemberment,
and general revolution, is as if one were to take the plunge of Niagara,
and cry out that he would stop half-way down. In the one case, as in the
other, the rash adventurer must go to the bottom of the dark abyss
below, were it not that the abyss has no discovered bottom."

How admirable also is his exposure of the distinction attempted to be
drawn between secession, as a State right to be exercised under the
provisions of what was called "the Constitutional Compact," and
revolution. "Secession," he says, "as a revolutionary right, is
intelligible; as a right to be proclaimed in the midst of civil
commotions, and asserted at the head of armies, I can understand it. But
as a practical right, existing under the Constitution, and in conformity
with its provisions, it seems to me nothing but a plain absurdity; for
it supposes resistance to government, under the authority of government
itself; it supposes dismemberment, without violating the principles of
union; it supposes opposition to law, without crime, it supposes the
total overthrow of government, without revolution."

After putting some pertinent interrogatories--which are arguments in
themselves--relating to the inevitable results of secession, he adds,
that "every man must see that these are all questions which can arise
only after a revolution. They presuppose the breaking up of the
government. While the Constitution lasts, they are repressed";--and
then, with that felicitous use of the imagination as a handmaid of the
understanding, which is the peculiar characteristic of his eloquence, he
closes the sentence by saying, that "they spring up to annoy and startle
us only from its grave." A mere reasoner would have stopped at the word
"repressed"; the instantaneous conversion of "questions" into spectres,
affrighting and annoying us as they spring up from the grave of the
Constitution,--which is also by implication impersonated,--is the work
of Webster's ready imagination; and it thoroughly vitalizes the
statements which precede it.

A great test of the sincerity of a statesman's style is his moderation.
Now, if we take the whole body of Mr. Webster's speeches, whether
delivered in the Senate or before popular assemblies, during the period
of his opposition to President Jackson's administration, we may well be
surprised at their moderation of tone and statement. Everybody old
enough to recollect the singular virulence of political speech at that
period must remember it as disgraceful equally to the national
conscience and the national understanding. The spirit of party, always
sufficiently fierce and unreasonable, was then stimulated into a fury
resembling madness. Almost every speaker, Democrat or Whig, was in that
state of passion which is represented by the physical sign of "foaming
at the mouth." Few mouths then opened that did not immediately begin to
"foam." So many fortunes were suddenly wrecked by President Jackson's
financial policy, and the business of the country was so disastrously
disturbed, that, whether the policy was right or wrong, those who
assailed and those who defended it seemed to be equally devoid of common
intellectual honesty. "I do well to be angry," appears to have been the
maxim which inspired Democratic and Whig orators alike; and what reason
there was on either side was submerged in the lies and libels, in the
calumnies and caricatures, in the defamations and execrations, which
accompanied the citation of facts and the affirmation of principles.
Webster, during all this time, was selected as a shining mark, at which
every puny writer or speaker who opposed him hurled his small or large
contribution of verbal rotten eggs; and yet Webster was almost the only
Whig statesman who preserved sanity of understanding during the whole
progress of that political riot, in which the passions of men became the
masters of their understandings. Pious Whig fathers, who worshipped the
"godlike Daniel," went almost to the extent of teaching their children
to curse Jackson in their prayers; equally pious Democratic fathers
brought up their sons and daughters to anathematize the fiend-like
Daniel as the enemy of human rights; and yet, in reading Webster's
speeches, covering the whole space between 1832 and 1836, we can hardly
find a statement which an historian of our day would not admit as a
candid generalization of facts, or an argument which would not stand the
test of logical examination. Such an historian might entirely disagree
with the opinions of Webster; but he would certainly award to him the
praise of being an honest reasoner and an honest rhetorician, in a time
when reason was used merely as a tool of party passion, and when
rhetoric rushed madly into the worst excesses of rhodomontade.

It is also to be said that Webster rarely indulged in personalities.
When we consider how great were his powers of sarcasm and invective, how
constant were the provocations to exercise them furnished by his
political enemies, and how atrociously and meanly allusions to his
private affairs were brought into discussions which should have been
confined to refuting his reasoning, his moderation in this matter is to
be ranked as a great virtue. He could not take a glass of wine without
the trivial fact being announced all over the country as indisputable
proof that he was an habitual drunkard, though the most remarkable
characteristic of his speeches is their temperance,--their "total
abstinence" from all the intoxicating moral and mental "drinks" which
confuse the understanding and mislead the conscience. He could not
borrow money on his note of hand, like any other citizen, without the
circumstance being trumpeted abroad as incontrovertible evidence that
Nick Biddle had paid him that sum to defend his diabolical Bank in the
Senate of the United States. The plain fact that his speeches were
confined strictly to the exposition and defence of sound opinions on
trade and finance, and that it was difficult to answer them, only
confirmed his opponents in the conviction that old Nick was at the
bottom of it all. His great intellect was admitted; but on the high,
broad brow, which was its manifestation to the eye, his enemies pasted
the words, "To be let," or, "For sale." The more impersonal he became in
his statements and arguments, the more truculently was he assailed by
the personalities of the political gossip and scandal-monger. Indeed,
from the time he first came to the front as a great lawyer, statesman,
and patriot, he was fixed upon by the whole crew of party libellers as a
man whose arguments could be answered most efficiently by staining his
character. He passed through life with his head enveloped "in a cloud of
poisonous flies"; and the head was the grandest-looking head that had
ever been seen on the American continent. It was so pre-eminently noble
and impressive, and promised so much more than it could possibly
perform, that only one felicitous sarcasm of party malice, among many
thousands of bad jokes, has escaped oblivion; and that was stolen from
Charles Fox's remark on Lord Chancellor Thurlow, as Fox once viewed him
sitting on the wool-sack, frowning on the English House of Lords, which
he dominated by the terror of his countenance, and by the fear that he
might, at any moment, burst forth in one of his short bullying,
thundering retorts, should any comparatively weak baron, earl, marquis,
or duke dare to oppose him. "Thurlow," said Fox, "must be an impostor,
for nobody can be as wise as he looks." The American version of this
was, "Webster must be a charlatan, for no one can be as great as he
looks."

But during all the time that his antagonists attempted to elude the
force of his arguments by hunting up the evidences of his debts, and by
trying to show that the most considerate, the most accurate, and the
most temperate of his lucid statements were the products of physical
stimulants, Webster steadily kept in haughty reserve his power of
retaliation. In his speech in reply to Hayne he hinted that, if he were
imperatively called upon to meet blows with blows, he might be found
fully equal to his antagonists in that ignoble province of intellectual
pugilism; but that he preferred the more civilized struggle of brain
with brain, in a contest which was to decide questions of principle. In
the Senate, where he could meet his political opponents face to face,
few dared to venture to degrade the subject in debate from the
discussion of principles to the miserable subterfuge of imputing bad
motives as a sufficient answer to good arguments; but still many of
these dignified gentlemen smiled approval on the efforts of the
low-minded, small-minded caucus-speakers of their party, when they
declared that Webster's logic was unworthy of consideration, because he
was bought by the Bank, or bought by the manufacturers of Massachusetts,
or bought by some other combination of persons who were supposed to be
the deadly enemies of the laboring men of the country. On some rare
occasions Webster's wrath broke out in such smiting words that his
adversaries were cowed into silence, and cursed the infatuation which
had led them to overlook the fact that the "logic-machine" had in it
invectives more terrible than its reasonings. But generally he refrained
from using the giant's power "like a giant"; and it is almost pathetic
to remember that, when Mr. Everett undertook to edit, in 1851, the
standard edition of his works, Webster gave directions to expunge all
personalities from his speeches, even when those personalities were the
just punishment of unprovoked attacks on his integrity as a man. Readers
will look in vain, in this edition of his works, for some of the most
pungent passages which originally attracted their attention in the first
report of the Defence of the Treaty of Washington. At the time these
directions were given, Webster was himself the object of innumerable
personalities, which were the natural, the inevitable results of his
speech of the 7th of March, 1850.

It seems to be a law, that the fame of all public men shall be "half
disfame." We are specially warned to beware of the man of whom all men
speak well. Burke, complimenting his friend Fox for risking every thing,
even his "darling popularity," on the success of the East India Bill,
nobly says: "He is traduced and abused for his supposed motives. He will
remember, that obloquy is a necessary ingredient in all true glory; he
will remember, that it was not only in the Roman customs, but it is in
the nature of human things, that calumny and abuse are essential parts
of triumph."

It may be said, however, that Webster's virtue in this general
abstinence from personalities is to be offset by the fact that he could
throw into a glance of his eye, a contortion of his face, a tone of his
voice, or a simple gesture of his hand, more scorn, contempt, and hatred
than ordinary debaters could express by the profuse use of all the
scurrilous terms in the English language. Probably many a sentence,
which we now read with an even pulse, was, as originally delivered,
accompanied by such pointing of the finger, or such flashing of the eye,
or such raising of the voice, that the seemingly innocent words were
poisoned arrows that festered in the souls of those against whom they
were directed, and made deadly enemies of a number of persons whom he
seems, in his printed speeches, never to have mentioned without the
respect due from one Senator to another. In his speech in defence of the
Treaty of Washington, he had to repel Mr. Ingersoll's indecent attack on
his integrity, and his dreadful retort is described by those who heard
it as coming within the rules which condemn cruelty to animals. But the
"noble rage" which prompted him to indulge in such unwonted invective
subsided with the occasion that called it forth, and he was careful to
have it expunged when the speech was reprinted. An eminent judge of the
Supreme Court of Massachusetts, in commending the general dignity and
courtesy which characterized Webster's conduct of a case in a court of
law, noted one exception. "When," he said, "the opposite counsel had got
him into a corner, the way he 'trampled out' was something frightful to
behold. The court itself could hardly restrain him in his gigantic
efforts to extricate himself from the consequences of a blunder or an
oversight."

Great writers and orators are commonly economists in the use of words.
They compel common words to bear a burden of thought and emotion, which
mere rhetoricians, with all the resources of the language at their
disposal, would never dream of imposing upon them. But it is also to be
observed, that some writers have the power of giving a new and special
significance to a common word, by impressing on it a wealth of meaning
which it cannot claim for itself. Three obvious examples of this
peculiar power may be cited. Among poets, Chaucer infused into the
simple word "green" a poetic ecstasy which no succeeding English poet,
not even Wordsworth, has ever rivalled, in describing an English
landscape in the month of May. Jonathan Edwards fixed upon the term
"sweetness" as best conveying his loftiest conception of the bliss which
the soul of the saint can attain to on earth, or expect to be blessed
with in heaven; but not one of his theological successors has ever
caught the secret of using "sweetness" in the sense attached to it by
him. Dr. Barrow gave to the word "rest," as embodying his idea of the
spiritual repose of the soul fit for heaven, a significance which it
bears in the works of no other great English divine. To descend a
little, Webster was fond of certain words, commonplace enough in
themselves, to which he insisted on imparting a more than ordinary
import. Two of these, which meet us continually in reading his speeches,
are "interesting" and "respectable." The first of these appears to him
competent to express that rapture of attention called forth by a thing,
an event, or a person, which other writers convey by such a term as
"absorbing," or its numerous equivalents. If we should select one
passage from his works which, more than any other, indicates his power
of seeing and feeling, through a process of purely imaginative vision
and sympathy, it is that portion of his Plymouth oration, where he
places himself and his audience as spectators on the barren shore, when
the _Mayflower_ came into view. He speaks of "the _interesting_ group
upon the deck" of the little vessel. The very word suggests that we are
to have a very commonplace account of the landing, and the circumstances
which followed it. In an instant, however, we are made to "feel the cold
which benumbed, and listen to the winds which pierced" this
"interesting" group; and immediately after, the picture is flashed upon
the imagination of "chilled and shivering childhood, houseless, but for
a mother's arms, couchless, but for a mother's breast,"--an image which
shows that the orator had not only transported himself into a spectator
of the scene, but had felt his own blood "almost freeze" in intense
sympathy with the physical sufferings of the shelterless mothers and
children.

There is no word which the novelists, satirists, philanthropic
reformers, and Bohemians of our day have done so much to discredit, and
make dis-respectable to the heart and the imagination, as the word
"respectable." Webster always uses it as a term of eulogy. A respectable
man is, to his mind, a person who performs all his duties to his family,
his country, and his God; a person who is not only virtuous, but who has
a clear perception of the relation which connects one virtue with
another by "the golden thread" of moderation, and who, whether he be a
man of genius, or a business man of average talent, or an intelligent
mechanic, or a farmer of sound moral and mental character, is to be
considered "respectable" because he is one of those citizens whose
intelligence and integrity constitute the foundation on which the
Republic rests. As late as 1843, in his noble oration on the completion
of the Bunker Hill Monument, he declared that if our American
institutions had done nothing more than to produce the character of
Washington, that alone would entitle them to the respect of mankind.
"Washington is all our own!... I would cheerfully put the question
to-day to the intelligence of Europe and the world, what character of
the century, upon the whole, stands out in the relief of history, most
pure, most _respectable_, most sublime; and I doubt not, that, by a
suffrage approaching to unanimity, the answer would be Washington!" It
is needless to quote other instances of the peculiar meaning he put into
the word "respectable," when we thus find him challenging the Europe of
the eighteenth century to name a match for Washington, and placing "most
respectable" after "most pure," and immediately preceding "most
sublime," in his enumeration of the three qualities in which Washington
surpassed all men of his century.

It has been often remarked that Webster adapted his style, even his
habits of mind and modes of reasoning, to the particular auditors he
desired to influence; but that, whether he addressed an unorganized
crowd of people, or a jury, or a bench of judges, or the Senate of the
United States, he ever proved himself an orator of the first class.

His admirers commonly confine themselves to the admirable sagacity with
which he discriminated between the kind of reasoning proper to be
employed when he addressed courts and juries, and the kind of reasoning
which is most effective in a legislative assembly. The lawyer and the
statesman were, in Webster, kept distinct, except so far as he was a
lawyer who had argued before the Supreme Court questions of
constitutional law. An amusing instance of this abnegation of the
lawyer, while incidentally bringing in a lawyer's knowledge of judicial
decisions, occurs in a little episode in his debate with Mr. Calhoun, in
1849, as to the relation of Congress to the Territories. Mr. Calhoun
said that he had been told that the Supreme Court of the United States
had decided, in _one_ case, that the Constitution did not extend to the
Territories, but that he was "incredulous of the fact." "Oh!" replied
Mr. Webster, "I can remove the gentleman's incredulity very easily, for
I can assure him that the same thing has been decided by the United
States courts over and over again for the last thirty years." It will be
observed, however, that Mr. Webster, after communicating this important
item of information, proceeded to discuss the question as if the Supreme
Court had no existence, and bases his argument on the plain terms of the
Constitution, and the plain facts recorded in the history of the
government established by it.

Macaulay, in his lively way, has shown the difficulty of manufacturing
English statesmen out of English lawyers, though, as lawyers, their rank
in the profession may be very high. "Their arguments," he says, "are
intellectual prodigies, abounding with the happiest analogies and the
most refined distinctions. The principles of their arbitrary science
being once admitted, the statute-books and the reports being once
assumed as the foundations of reasoning, these men must be allowed to be
perfect masters of logic. But if a question arises as to the postulates
on which their whole system rests, if they are called upon to vindicate
the fundamental maxims of that system which they have passed their lives
in studying, these very men often talk the language of savages or of
children. Those who have listened to a man of this class in his own
court, and who have witnessed the skill with which he analyzes and
digests a vast mass of evidence, or reconciles a crowd of precedents
which at first sight seem contradictory, scarcely know him again when, a
few hours later, they hear him speaking on the other side of Westminster
Hall in his capacity of legislator. They can scarcely believe that the
paltry quirks which are faintly heard through a storm of coughing, and
which do not impose on the plainest country gentleman, can proceed from
the same sharp and vigorous intellect which had excited their admiration
under the same roof, and on the same day." And to this keen distinction
between an English lawyer, and an English lawyer as a member of the
House of Commons, may be added the peculiar kind of sturdy manliness
which is demanded in any person who aims to take a leading part in
Parliamentary debates. Erskine, probably the greatest advocate who ever
appeared in the English courts of law, made but a comparatively poor
figure in the House of Commons, as a member of the Whig opposition. "The
truth is, Erskine," Sheridan once said to him, "you are afraid of Pitt,
and that is the flabby part of your character."

But Macaulay, in another article, makes a point against the leaders of
party themselves. His definition of Parliamentary government is
"government by speaking"; and he declares that the most effective
speakers are commonly ill-informed, shallow in thought, devoid of large
ideas of legislation, hazarding the loosest speculations with the utmost
intellectual impudence, and depending for success on volubility of
speech, rather than on accuracy of knowledge or penetration of
intelligence. "The tendency of institutions like those of England," he
adds, "is to encourage readiness in public men, at the expense both of
fulness and of exactness. The keenest and most vigorous minds of every
generation, minds often admirably fitted for the investigation of truth,
are habitually employed in producing arguments such as no man of sense
would ever put into a treatise intended for publication, arguments which
are just good enough to be used once, when aided by fluent delivery and
pointed language." And he despairingly closes with the remark, that he
"would sooner expect a great original work on political science, such a
work, for example, as the Wealth of Nations, from an apothecary in a
country town, or from a minister in the Hebrides, than from a statesman
who, ever since he was one-and-twenty, had been a distinguished debater
in the House of Commons."

Now it is plain that neither of these contemptuous judgments applies to
Webster. He was a great lawyer; but as a legislator the precedents of
the lawyer did not control the action or supersede the principles of the
statesman. He was one of the most formidable debaters that ever appeared
in a legislative assembly; and yet those who most resolutely grappled
with him in the duel of debate would be the last to impute to him
inaccuracy of knowledge or shallowness of thought. He carried into the
Senate of the United States a trained mind, disciplined by the sternest
culture of his faculties, disdaining any plaudits which were not the
honest reward of robust reasoning on generalized facts, and
"gravitating" in the direction of truth, whether he hit or missed it. In
his case, at least, there was nothing in his legal experience, or in his
legislative experience, which would have unfitted him for producing a
work on the science of politics. The best speeches in the House of
Commons of Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell appear very weak
indeed, as compared with the Reply to Hayne, or the speech on "The
Constitution not a Compact between Sovereign States," or the speech on
the President's Protest.

In this connection it may be said, when we remember the hot contests
between the two men, that there is something plaintive in Calhoun's
dying testimony to Webster's austere intellectual conscientiousness. Mr.
Venables, who attended the South Carolina statesman in his dying hours,
wrote to Webster: "When your name was mentioned he remarked that 'Mr.
Webster has as high a standard of truth as any statesman I have met in
debate. Convince him, and he cannot reply; he is silenced; he cannot
look truth in the face and oppose it by argument. I think that it can be
readily perceived by his manner when he felt the unanswerable force of a
reply.' He often spoke of you in my presence, and always kindly and most
respectfully." Now it must be considered that, in debate, the minds of
Webster and Calhoun had come into actual contact and collision. Each
really felt the force of the other. An ordinary duel might be ranked
among idle pastimes when compared with the stress and strain and pain of
their encounters in the duel of debate. A sword-cut or pistol-bullet,
maiming the body, was as nothing in comparison with the wounds they
mutually inflicted on that substance which was immortal in both. It was
a duel, or series of duels, in which mind was opposed to mind, and will
to will, and where the object appeared to be to inflict moral and mental
annihilation on one of the combatants. There never passed a word between
them on which the most ingenious Southern jurists, in their
interpretations of the "code" of honor, could have found matter for a
personal quarrel; and yet these two proud and strong personalities knew
that they were engaged in a mortal contest, in which neither gave
quarter nor expected quarter. Mr. Calhoun's intellectual egotism was as
great as his intellectual ability. He always supposed that he was the
victor in every close logical wrestle with any mind to which his own was
opposed. He never wrestled with a mind, until he met Webster's, which in
tenacity, grasp, and power was a match for his own. He, of course,
thought his antagonist was beaten by his superior strength and amplitude
of argumentation; but it is still to be noted that he, the most
redoubtable opponent that Webster ever encountered, testified, though in
equivocal terms, to Webster's intellectual honesty. When he crept, half
dead, into the Senate-Chamber to hear Webster's speech of the 7th of
March, 1850, he objected emphatically at the end to Webster's
declaration that the Union could not be dissolved. After declaring that
Calhoun's supposed case of justifiable resistance came within the
definition of the ultimate right of revolution, which is lodged in all
oppressed communities, Webster added that he did not at that time wish
to go into a discussion of the nature of the United States government.
"The honorable gentleman and myself," he said, "have broken lances
sufficiently often before on that subject." "I have no desire to do it
now," replied Calhoun; and Webster blandly retorted, "I presume the
gentleman has not, and I have quite as little." One is reminded here of
Dr. Johnson's remark, when he was stretched on a sick-bed, with his
gladiatorial powers of argument suspended by physical exhaustion. "If
that fellow Burke were now present," the Doctor humorously murmured, "he
would certainly kill me."

But to Webster's eminence as a lawyer and a statesman, it is proper to
add, that he has never been excelled as a writer of state papers among
the public men of the United States. Mr. Emerson has a phrase which is
exactly applicable to these efforts of Webster's mind. That phrase is,
"superb propriety." Throughout his despatches, he always seems to feel
that he impersonates his country; and the gravity and weight of his
style are as admirable as its simplicity and majestic ease. "Daniel
Webster, his mark," is indelibly stamped on them all. When the Treaty of
Washington was criticised by the Whigs in the English Parliament,
Macaulay specially noticed the difference in the style of the two
negotiators. Lord Ashburton, he said, had compromised the honor of his
country by "the humble, caressing, wheedling tone" of his letters, a
tone which contrasted strangely with "the firm, resolute, vigilant, and
unyielding manner" of the American Secretary of State. It is to be
noticed that no other opponent of Sir Robert Peel's administration, not
even Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell, struck at the essential
weakness of Lord Ashburton's despatches with the force and sagacity
which characterized Macaulay's assault on the treaty. Indeed, a
rhetorician and critic less skilful than Macaulay can easily detect that
"America" is represented fully in Webster's despatches, while
"Britannia" has a very amiable, but not very forcible, representative in
Lord Ashburton. Had Palmerston been the British plenipotentiary, we can
easily imagine how different would have been the task imposed on
Webster. As the American Secretary was generally in the right in every
position he assumed, he would probably have triumphed even over
Palmerston; but the letters of the "pluckiest" of English statesmen
would, we may be sure, have never been criticised in the House of
Commons as "humble, wheedling, and caressing."

In addition, however, to his legal arguments, his senatorial speeches,
and his state papers, Webster is to be considered as the greatest orator
our country has produced in his addresses before miscellaneous
assemblages of the people. In saying this we do not confine the remark
to such noble orations as those on the "First Settlement of New
England," "The Bunker Hill Monument," and "Adams and Jefferson," but
extend it so as to include speeches before great masses of people who
could be hardly distinguished from a mob, and who were under no
restraint but that imposed by their own self-respect and their respect
for the orator. On these occasions he was uniformly successful. It is
impossible to detect, in any reports of these popular addresses, that he
ever stooped to employ a style of speech or mode of argument commonly
supposed appropriate to a speaker on the "stump"; and yet he was the
greatest "stump" orator that our country has ever seen. He seemed to
delight in addressing five, or ten, or even twenty thousand people, in
the open air, trusting that the penetrating tones of his voice would
reach even the ears of those who were on the ragged edges of the swaying
crowd before him; and he would thus speak to the sovereign people, in
their unorganized state as a collection of uneasy and somewhat
belligerent individuals, with a dignity and majesty similar to the
dignity and majesty which characterized his arguments before the Senate
of the United States, or before a bench of judges. A large portion of
his published works consist of such speeches, and they rank only second
among the remarkable productions of his mind.

The question arises, How could he hold the attention of such audiences
without condescending to flatter their prejudices, or without
occasionally acting the part of the sophist and the buffoon? Much may be
said, in accounting for this phenomenon, about his widely extended
reputation, his imposing presence, the vulgar curiosity to see a man
whom even the smallest country newspaper thought of sufficient
importance to defame, his power of giving vitality to simple words which
the most ignorant of his auditors could easily understand, and the
instinctive respect which the rudest kind of men feel for a grand
specimen of robust manhood. But the real, the substantial source of his
power over such audiences proceeded from his respect for _them_; and
their respect for him was more or less consciously founded on the
perception of this fact.

Indeed, a close scrutiny of his speeches will show how conscientiously
he regards the rights of other minds, however inferior they may be to
his own; and this virtue, for it is a virtue, is never more apparent
than in his arguments and appeals addressed to popular assemblies. No
working-man, whether farmer, mechanic, factory "hand," or day-laborer,
ever deemed himself insulted by a word from the lips of Daniel Webster;
he felt himself rather exalted in his own esteem, for the time, by
coming in contact with that beneficent and comprehensive intelligence,
which cherished among its favorite ideas a scheme for lifting up the
American laborer to a height of comfort and respectability which the
European laborer could hardly hope to attain. Prominent politicians, men
of wealth and influence, statesmen of high social and political rank,
may, at times, have considered Webster as arrogant and bad-tempered, and
may, at times, have felt disposed to fasten a quarrel upon him; even in
Massachusetts this disposition broke out in conventions of the party to
which he belonged; but it would be in vain to find a single
laboring-man, whether he met Webster in private, or half pushed and half
fought his way into a mass meeting, in order to get his ears into
communication with the orator's voice, who ever heard a word from him
which did not exalt the dignity of labor, or which was not full of
sympathy for the laborer's occasional sorrows and privations. Webster
seemed to have ever present to his mind the poverty of the humble home
of his youth. His father, his brothers, he himself, had all been brought
up to consider manual toil a dignified occupation, and as consistent
with the exercise of all the virtues which flourish under the domestic
roof. More than this, it may be said that, with the exception of a few
intimate friends, his sympathies to the last were most warmly with
common laborers. Indeed, if we closely study the private correspondence
of this statesman, who was necessarily brought into relations, more or
less friendly, with the conventionally great men of the world, European
as well as American, we shall find that, after all, he took more real
interest in Seth Peterson, and John Taylor, and Porter Wright, men
connected with him in fishing and farming, than he did in the
ambassadors of foreign states whom he met as Senator or as Secretary of
State, or in all the members of the polite society of Washington, New
York, and Boston. He was very near to Nature himself; and the nearer a
man was to Nature, the more he esteemed him. Thus persons who
superintended his farms and cattle, or who pulled an oar in his boat
when he ventured out in search of cod and halibut, thought "Squire
Webster" a man who realized their ideal and perfection of
good-fellowship while it may confidently be said that many of his
closest friends among men of culture, including lawyers, men of letters,
and statesmen of the first rank, must have occasionally resented the
"anfractuosities" of his mood and temper. But Seth Peterson, and Porter
Wright, and John Taylor, never complained of these "anfractuosities."
Webster, in fact, is one of the few public men of the country in whose
championship of the rights and sympathy with the wrongs of labor there
is not the slightest trace of the arts of the demagogue; and in this
fact we may find the reason why even the "roughs," who are present in
every mass meeting, always treated him with respect. Perhaps it would
not be out of place to remark here, that, in his Speech of the 7th of
March, he missed a grand opportunity to vindicate Northern labor, in the
reference he made to a foolish tirade of a Senator from Louisiana, who
"took pains to run a contrast between the slaves of the South and the
laboring people of the North, giving the preference, in all points of
condition, of comfort, and happiness, to the slaves of the South."
Webster made a complete reply to this aspersion on Northern labor; but,
as his purpose was to conciliate, he did not blast the libeller by
quoting the most eminent example that could be named demonstrating the
falsehood of the slave-holding Senator's assertion. Without deviating
from the conciliatory attitude he had assumed, one could easily imagine
him as lifting his large frame to its full height, flashing from his
rebuking eyes a glance of scorn at the "amiable Senator," and simply
saying, "_I_ belong to the class which the Senator from Louisiana
stigmatizes as more degraded than the slaves of the South." There was
not at the time any Senator from the South, except Mr. Calhoun, that the
most prejudiced Southern man would have thought of comparing with
Webster in respect to intellectual eminence; and, if Webster had then
and there placed himself squarely on his position as the son of a
Northern laborer, we should have been spared all the rhetoric about
Northern "mud-sills," with which the Senate was afterwards afflicted.
Webster was our man of men; and it would seem that he should have
crushed such talk at the outset, by proudly assuming that Northern labor
was embodied and impersonated in him,--that HE had sprung from its
ranks, and was proud of his ancestry.

An ingenious and powerful, but paradoxical thinker, once told me that I
was mistaken in calling Jonathan Edwards and Daniel Webster great
reasoners. "They were bad reasoners," he added, "but great poets."
Without questioning the right of the author of "An Enquiry into the
Modern Prevailing Notion of that Freedom of the Will, which is supposed
to be Essential to Moral Agency," to be ranked among the most eminent of
modern logicians, I could still understand why he was classed among
poets; for whether Edwards paints the torments of hell or the bliss of
heaven, his imagination almost rivals that of Dante in intensity of
realization. But it was at first puzzling to comprehend why Webster
should be depressed as a reasoner in order to be exalted as a poet. The
images and metaphors scattered over his speeches are so evidently
brought in to illustrate and enforce his statements and arguments, that,
grand as they often are, the imagination displayed in them is still a
faculty strictly subsidiary to the reasoning power. It was only after
reflecting patiently for some time on the seeming paradox that I caught
a glimpse of my friend's meaning; and it led me at once to consider an
entirely novel question, not heretofore mooted by any of Webster's
critics, whether friendly or unfriendly, in their endeavors to explain
the reason of his influence over the best minds of the generation to
which he belonged. In declaring that, as a poet, he far exceeded any
capacity he evinced as a reasoner, my paradoxical friend must have meant
that Webster had the poet's power of so _organizing_ a speech, that it
stood out to the eye of the mind as a palpable intellectual product and
fact, possessing, not merely that vague reality which comes from
erecting a plausible mental structure of deductive argumentation, based
on strictly limited premises, but a positive reality, akin to the
products of Nature herself, when she tries her hand in constructing a
ledge of rocks or rearing a chain of hills.

In illustration, it may be well to cite the example of poets with whom
Webster, of course, cannot be compared. Among the great mental facts,
palpable to the eyes of all men interested in literature, are such
creations as the Iliad, the Divine Comedy, the great Shakspearian
dramas, the Paradise Lost, and Faust. The commentaries and criticisms on
these are numerous enough to occupy the shelves of a large library; some
of them attempt to show that Homer, Dante, Shakspeare, Milton, and
Goethe were all wrong in their methods of creation; but they still
cannot obscure, to ordinary vision, the lustre of these luminaries as
they placidly shine in the intellectual firmament, which is literally
_over_ our heads. They are as palpable, to the eye of the mind, as
Sirius, Arcturus, the Southern Cross, and the planets Venus, Mars,
Jupiter, and Saturn, are to the bodily sense. M. Taine has recently
assailed the Paradise Lost with the happiest of French epigrams; he
tries to prove that, in construction, it is the most ridiculously
inartistic monstrosity that the imagination of a great mind ever framed
out of chaos; but, after we have thoroughly enjoyed the play of his wit,
there the Paradise Lost remains, an undisturbed object in the
intellectual heavens, disdaining to justify its right to exist on any
other grounds than the mere fact of its existence; and, certainly, not
more ridiculous than Saturn himself, as we look at him through a great
equatorial telescope, swinging through space encumbered with his clumsy
ring, and his wrangling family of satellites, but still, in spite of
peculiarities on which M. Taine might exercise his wit until doomsday,
one of the most beautiful and sublime objects which the astronomer can
behold in the whole phenomena of the heavens.

Indeed, in reading criticisms on such durable poetic creations and
organizations as we have named, one is reminded of Sydney Smith's
delicious chaffing of his friend Jeffrey, on account of Jeffrey's
sensitiveness of literary taste, and his inward rage that events, men,
and books, outside of him, do not correspond to the exacting rules which
are the products of his own subjective and somewhat peevish
intelligence. "I like," says Sydney, "to tell you these things, because
you never do so well as when you are humbled and frightened, and, if
_you could be alarmed into the semblance of modesty_, you would charm
everybody; but remember my joke against you about the moon: 'D--n the
solar system! bad light--planets too distant--pestered with
comets--feeble contrivance; could make a better with great ease.'"

Now when a man, in whatever department or direction of thought his
activity is engaged, succeeds in organizing, or even welding together,
the materials on which he works, so that the product, as a whole, is
_visible_ to the mental eye, as a new creation or construction, he has
an immense advantage over all critics of his performance. Refined
reasonings are impotent to overthrow it; epigrams glance off from it, as
rifle-bullets rebound when aimed at a granite wall; and it stands erect
long after the reasonings and the epigrams are forgotten. Even when its
symmetry is destroyed by a long and destructive siege, a pile of stones
still remains, as at Fort Sumter, to attest what power of resistance it
opposed to all the resources of modern artillery.

If we look at Webster's greatest speeches, as, for instance, "The Reply
to Hayne," "The Constitution not a Compact between Sovereign States,"
"The President's Protest," and others that might be mentioned, we shall
find that they partake of the character of organic formations, or at
least of skilful engineering or architectural constructions. Even Mr.
Calhoun never approached him in this art of giving objective reality to
a speech, which, after all, is found, on analysis, to consist only of a
happy collocation and combination of words, but in Webster the words are
either all alive with the creative spirit of the poet, or, at the worst,
resemble the blocks of granite or marble which the artisan piles, one on
the other, and the result of which, though it may represent a poor style
of architecture, is still a rude specimen of a Gothic edifice. The
artist and artificer are both observable in Webster's work; but the
reality and solidity of the construction cannot be questioned. At the
present time, an educated reader would be specially interested in the
mental processes by which Webster thus succeeded in giving objective
existence and validity to the operations of his mind, and, whether
sympathizing with his opinions or not, would as little think of refusing
to read them because of their Whiggism, as he would think of refusing to
read Homer because of his heathenism, or Dante because of his
Catholicism, or Milton because of his compound of Arianism and
Calvinism, or Goethe because of his Pantheism. The fact which would most
interest such a reader would be, that Webster had, in some mysterious
way, translated and transformed his abstract propositions into concrete
substance and form. The form might offend his reason, his taste, or his
conscience; but he could not avoid admitting that it _had_ a form, while
most speeches, even those made by able men, are comparatively formless,
however lucid they may be in the array of facts, and plausible in the
order and connection of arguments.

In trying to explain this power, the most obvious comparison which would
arise in the mind of an intelligent reader would be, that Webster, as a
rhetorician, resembled Vauban and Cohorn as military engineers. In the
war of debate, he so _fortified_ the propositions he maintained, that
they could not be carried by direct assault, but must be patiently
besieged. The words he employed were simple enough, and fell short of
including the vocabulary of even fifth-rate declaimers; but he had the
art of so disposing them that, to an honest reasoner, the position he
took appeared to be impregnable. To assail it by the ordinary method of
passionate protest and illogical reasoning, was as futile as a dash of
light cavalry would have been against the defences of such cities as
Namur and Lille. Indeed, in his speech, "The Constitution not a Compact
between Sovereign States," he erected a whole Torres Vedras line of
fortifications, on which legislative Massenas dashed themselves in vain,
and, however strong in numbers in respect to the power of voting him
down, recoiled defeated in every attempt to reason him down.

In further illustration of this peculiar power of Webster, the Speech of
the 7th of March, 1850, may be cited, for its delivery is to be ranked
with the most important historical events. For some years it was the
object of the extremes of panegyric and the extremes of execration. But
this effort is really the most loosely constructed of all the great
productions of Webster's mind. In force, compactness, and completeness,
in closeness of thought to things, in closeness of imagery to the
reasoning it illustrates, and in general intellectual fibre, muscle, and
bone, it cannot be compared to such an oration as that on the "First
Settlement of New England," or such a speech as that which had for its
theme, "The Constitution not a Compact between Sovereign States"; but,
after all deductions have been made, it was still a speech which frowned
upon its opponents as a kind of verbal fortress constructed both for the
purpose of defence and aggression. Its fame is due, in a great degree,
to its resistance to a storm of assaults, such as had rarely before been
concentrated on any speech delivered in either branch of the Congress of
the United States. Indeed, a very large portion of the intellect, the
moral sentiment, and the moral passion of the free States was directed
against it. There was not a weapon in the armory of the dialectician or
the rhetorician which was not employed with the intent of demolishing
it. Contempt of Webster was vehemently taught as the beginning of
political wisdom. That a speech, thus assailed, should survive the
attacks made upon it, appeared to be impossible. And yet it did survive,
and is alive now, while better speeches, or what the present writer
thought, at the time, to be more convincing speeches, have not retained
individual existence, however deeply they may have influenced that
public opinion which, in the end, determines political events. "I still
live," was Webster's declaration on his death-bed, when the friends
gathered around it imagined he had breathed his last; and the same words
might be uttered by the Speech of the 7th of March, could it possess the
vocal organ which announces personal existence. Between the time it was
originally delivered and the present year there runs a great and broad
stream of blood, shed from the veins of Northern and Southern men alike;
the whole political and moral constitution of the country has
practically suffered an abrupt change; new problems engage the attention
of thoughtful statesmen; much is forgotten which was once considered of
the first importance; but the 7th of March Speech, battered as it is by
innumerable attacks, is still remembered at least as one which called
forth more power than it embodied in itself. This persistence of life is
due to the fact that it was "organized."

Is this power of organization common among orators? It seems to me
that, on the contrary, it is very rare. In some of Burke's speeches, in
which his sensibility and imagination were thoroughly under the control
of his judgment, as, for instance, his speech on Conciliation with
America, that on Economical Reform, and that to the Electors of Bristol,
we find the orator to be a consummate master of the art of so
constructing a speech that it serves the immediate object which prompted
its delivery, while at the same time it has in it a principle of
vitality which makes it survive the occasion that called it forth. But
the greatest of Burke's speeches, if we look merely at the richness and
variety of mental power and the force and depth of moral passion
displayed in it, is his speech on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts. No speech
ever delivered before any assembly, legislative, judicial, or popular,
can rank with this in respect to the abundance of its facts, reasonings,
and imagery, and the ferocity of its moral wrath. It resembles the El
Dorado that Voltaire's Candide visited, where the boys played with
precious stones of inestimable value, as our boys play with ordinary
marbles; for to the inhabitants of El Dorado diamonds and pearls were as
common as pebbles are with us.

But the defect of this speech, which must still be considered, on the
whole, the most inspired product of Burke's great nature, was this,--
that it did not strike its hearers or readers as having _reality_ for
its basis or the superstructure raised upon it. Englishmen could not
believe then, and most of them probably do not believe now, that it had
any solid foundation in incontrovertible facts. It did not "fit in" to
their ordinary modes of thought; and it has never been ranked with
Burke's "organized" orations; it has never come home to what Bacon
called the "business and bosoms" of his countrymen. They have generally
dismissed it from their imaginations as "a phantasmagoria and a hideous
dream" created by Burke under the impulse of the intense hatred he felt
for the administration which succeeded the overthrow of the government,
which was founded on the coalition of Fox and North.

Now, in simple truth, the speech is the most masterly statement of
facts, relating to the oppression of millions of the people of India,
which was ever forced on the attention of the House of Commons,--a
legislative assembly which, it may be incidentally remarked, was
practically responsible for the just government of the immense Indian
empire of Great Britain. It is curious that the main facts on which the
argument of Burke rests have been confirmed by James Mill, the
coldest-blooded historian that ever narrated the enormous crimes which
attended the rise and progress of the British power in Hindostan, and a
man who also had a strong intellectual antipathy to the mind of Burke.
In making the speech, Burke had documentary evidence of a large portion
of the transactions he denounced, and had _divined_ the rest. Mill
supports him both as regards the facts of which Burke had positive
knowledge, and the facts which he deductively inferred from the facts he
knew. Having thus a strong foundation for his argument, he exerted every
faculty of his mind, and every impulse of his moral sentiment and moral
passion, to overwhelm the leading members of the administration of Pitt,
by attempting to make them accomplices in crimes which would disgrace
even slave-traders on the Guinea coast. The merely intellectual force of
his reasoning is crushing; his analysis seems to be sharpened by his
hatred; and there is no device of contempt, scorn, derision, and direct
personal attack, which he does not unsparingly use. In the midst of all
this mental tumult, inestimable maxims of moral and political wisdom are
shot forth in short sentences, which have so much of the sting and
brilliancy of epigram, that at first we do not appreciate their depth of
thought; and through all there burns such a pitiless fierceness of moral
reprobation of cruelty, injustice, and wrong, that all the accredited
courtesies of debate are violated, once, at least, in every five
minutes. In any American legislative assembly he would have been called
to order at least once in five minutes. The images which the orator
brings in to give vividness to his argument are sometimes coarse; but,
coarse as they are, they admirably reflect the moral turpitude of the
men against whom he inveighs. Among these is the image with which he
covers Dundas, the special friend of Pitt, with a ridicule which
promises to be immortal. Dundas, on the occasion when Fox and Burke
called for papers by the aid of which they proposed to demonstrate the
iniquity of the scheme by which the ministry proposed to settle the
debts of the Nabob of Arcot, pretended that the production of such
papers would be indelicate,--"that this inquiry is of a delicate nature,
and that the state will suffer detriment by the exposure of this
transaction." As Dundas had previously brought out six volumes of
Reports, generally confirming Burke's own views of the corruption and
oppression which marked the administration of affairs in India, he laid
himself open to Burke's celebrated assault. Dundas and delicacy, he
said, were "a rare and singular coalition." And then follows an image of
colossal coarseness, such as might be supposed capable of rousing
thunder-peals of laughter from a company of festive giants,--an image
which Lord Brougham declared offended _his_ sensitive taste,--the
sensitive taste of one of the most formidable legal and legislative
bullies that ever appeared before the juries or Parliament of Great
Britain, and who never hesitated to use any illustration, however
vulgar, which he thought would be effective to degrade his opponents.

But whatever may be thought of the indelicacy of Burke's image, it was
one eminently adapted to penetrate through the thick hide of the
minister of state at whom it was aimed, and it shamed him as far as a
profligate politician like Dundas was capable of feeling the sensation
of shame. But there are also flashes, or rather flames, of impassioned
imagination, in the same speech, which rush up from the main body of its
statements and arguments, and remind us of nothing so much as of those
jets of incandescent gas which, we are told by astronomers, occasionally
leap, from the extreme outer covering of the sun, to the height of a
hundred or a hundred and sixty thousand miles, and testify to the
terrible forces raging within it. After reading this speech for the
fiftieth time, the critic cannot free himself from the rapture of
admiration and amazement which he experienced in his first fresh
acquaintance with it. Yet its delivery in the House of Commons (February
28, 1785) produced an effect so slight, that Pitt, after a few minutes'
consultation with Grenville, concluded that it was not worth the trouble
of being answered; and the House of Commons, obedient to the Prime
Minister's direction, negatived, by a large majority, the motion in
advocating which Burke poured out the wonderful treasures of his
intellect and imagination. To be sure, the House was tired to death with
the discussion, was probably very sleepy, and the orator spoke five
hours after the members had already shouted, "Question! Question!"

The truth is, that this speech, unmatched though it is in the literature
of eloquence, had not, as has been previously stated, the air of
reality. It struck the House as a magnificent Oriental dream, as an
Arabian Nights' Entertainment, as a tale told by an inspired madman,
"full of sound and fury, signifying nothing"; and the evident partisan
intention of the orator to blast Pitt's administration by exhibiting its
complicity in one of the most enormous frauds recorded in history,
confirmed the dandies, the cockneys, the bankers, and the country
gentlemen, who, as members of the House of Commons, stood by Pitt with
all the combined force of their levity, their venality, and their
stupidity, in the propriety of voting Burke down. And even now, when the
substantial truth of all the facts he alleged is established on evidence
which convinces historians, the admiring reader can understand why it
failed to convince Burke's contemporaries, and why it still appears to
lack the characteristics of a speech thoroughly organized. Indeed, the
mind of Burke, when it was delivered, can only be compared to a volcanic
mountain in eruption;--not merely a volcano like that of Vesuvius,
visited by scientists and amateurs in crowds, when it deigns to pour
forth its flames and lava for the entertainment of the multitude; but a
lonely volcano, like that of Etna, rising far above Vesuvius in height,
far removed from all the vulgar curiosity of a body of tourists, but
rending the earth on which it stands with the mighty earthquake throes
of its fiery centre and heart. The moral passion,--perhaps it would be
more just to say the moral fury,--displayed in the speech, is elemental,
and can be compared to nothing less intense than the earth's interior
fire and heat.

Now in Webster's great legislative efforts, his mind is never exhibited
in a state of eruption. In the most excited debates in which he bore a
prominent part, nothing strikes us more than the admirable
self-possession, than the majestic inward calm, which presides over all
the operations of his mind and the impulses of his sensibility, so that,
in building up the fabric of his speech, he has his reason, imagination,
and passion under full control,--using each faculty and feeling as the
occasion may demand, but never allowing himself to be used _by_ it,--and
always therefore conveying the impression of power in reserve, while he
may, in fact, be exercising all the power he has to the utmost. In
laboriously erecting his edifice of reasoning he also studiously regards
the intellects and the passions of ordinary men; strives to bring his
mind into cordial relations with theirs; employs every faculty he
possesses to give reality, to give even visibility, to his thoughts; and
though he never made a speech which rivals that of Burke on the Nabob of
Arcot's Debts, in respect to grasp of understanding, astounding wealth
of imagination and depth of moral passion, he always so contrived to
organize his materials into a complete whole, that the result stood out
clearly to the sight of the mind, as a structure resting on strong
foundations, and reared to due height by the mingled skill of the
artisan and the artist. When he does little more than weld his materials
together, he is still an artificer of the old school of giant workmen,
the school that dates its pedigree from Tubal Cain.

After all this wearisome detail and dilution of the idea attempted to be
expressed, it may be that I have failed to convey an adequate impression
of what constitutes Webster's distinction among orators, as far as
orators have left speeches which are considered an invaluable addition
to the literature of the language in which they were originally
delivered. Everybody understands why any one of the great sermons of
Jeremy Taylor, or the sermon of Dr. South on "Man created in the Image
of God," or the sermon of Dr. Barrow on "Heavenly Rest," differs from
the millions on millions of doubtless edifying sermons that have been
preached and printed during the last two centuries and a half; but
everybody does not understand the distinction between one brilliant
oration and another, when both made a great sensation at the time, while
only one survived in literature. Probably Charles James Fox was a more
effective speaker in the House of Commons than Edmund Burke, probably
Henry Clay was a more effective speaker in Congress than Daniel Webster;
but when the occasions on which their speeches were made are found
gradually to fade from the memory of men, why is it that the speeches of
Fox and Clay have no recognized position in literature, while those of
Burke and Webster are ranked with literary productions of the first
class? The reason is as really obvious as that which explains the
exceptional value of some of the efforts of the great orators of the
pulpit. Jeremy Taylor, Dr. South, and Dr. Barrow, different as they were
in temper and disposition, succeeded in "organizing" some masterpieces
in their special department of intellectual and moral activity; and the
same is true of Burke and Webster in the departments of legislation and
political science. The "occasion" was merely an opportunity for the
consolidation into a speech of the rare powers and attainments, the
large personality and affluent thought, which were the spiritual
possessions of the man who made it,--a speech which represented the
whole intellectual manhood of the speaker,--a manhood in which
knowledge, reason, imagination, and sensibility were all consolidated
under the directing power of will.

A pertinent example of the difference we have attempted to indicate may
be easily found in contrasting Fox's closing speech on the East India
Bill with Burke's on the same subject. For immediate effect on the House
of Commons, it ranks with the most masterly of Fox's Parliamentary
efforts. The hits on his opponents were all "telling." The _argumentum
ad hominem_, embodied in short, sharp statements, or startling
interrogatories, was never employed with more brilliant success. The
reasoning was rapid, compact, encumbered by no long enumeration of
facts, and, though somewhat unscrupulous here and there, was driven home
upon his adversaries with a skill that equalled its audacity. It may be
said that there is not a sentence in the whole speech which was not
calculated to sting a sleepy audience into attention, or to give
delight to a fatigued audience which still managed to keep its eyes and
minds wide open. Even in respect to the principles of liberty and
justice, which were the animating life of the bill, Fox's terse
sentences contrast strangely with the somewhat more lumbering and
elaborate paragraphs of Burke. "What," he exclaims, putting his argument
in his favorite interrogative form,--"what is the most odious species of
tyranny? Precisely that which this bill is meant to annihilate. That a
handful of men, free themselves, should exercise the most base and
abominable despotism over millions of their fellow-creatures; that
innocence should be the victim of oppression; that industry should toil
for rapine; that the harmless laborer should sweat, not for his own
benefit, but for the luxury and rapacity of tyrannic depredation;--in a
word, that thirty millions of men, gifted by Providence with the
ordinary endowments of humanity, should groan under a system of
despotism unmatched in all the histories of the world? What is the end
of all government? Certainly, the happiness of the governed. Others may
hold different opinions; but this is mine, and I proclaim it. What,
then, are we to think of a government whose good fortune is supposed to
spring from the calamities of its subjects, whose aggrandizement grows
out of the miseries of mankind? This is the kind of government exercised
under the East Indian Company upon the natives of Hindostan; and the
subversion of that infamous government is the main object of the bill in
question." And afterwards he says, with admirable point and pungency of
statement: "Every line in both the bills which I have had the honor to
introduce, presumes the possibility of bad administration; for every
word breathes suspicion. This bill supposes that men are but men. It
confides in no integrity; it trusts no character; it inculcates the
wisdom of a jealousy of power, and annexes responsibility, not only to
every _action_, but even to the _inaction_ of those who are to dispense
it. The necessity of these provisions must be evident, when it is known
that the different misfortunes of the company have resulted not more
from what their servants _did_, than from what the _masters did not_."

There is a directness in such sentences as these which we do not find in
Burke's speech on the East India Bill; but Burke's remains as a part of
English literature, and in form and substance, especially in substance,
is so immensely superior to that of Fox, that, in quoting sentences from
the latter, one may almost be supposed to rescue them from that neglect
which attends all speeches which do not reach beyond the occasion which
calls them forth. In Bacon's phrase, the speech of Fox shows "small
matter, and infinite agitation of wit"; in Burke's, we discern large
matter with an abundance of "wit" proper to the discussion of the
matter, but nothing which suggests the idea of mere "agitation." Fox, in
his speeches, subordinated every thing to the immediate impression he
might make on the House of Commons. He deliberately gave it as his
opinion, that a speech that read well must be a bad speech; and, in a
literary sense, the House of Commons, which he entered before he was
twenty, may be called both the cradle and the grave of his fame. It has
been said that he was a debater whose speeches should be studied by
every man who wishes "to learn the science of logical defence"; that he
alone, among English orators, resembles Demosthenes, inasmuch as his
reasoning is "penetrated and made red-hot by passion"; and that nothing
could excel the effect of his delivery when "he was in the full paroxysm
of inspiration, foaming, screaming, choked by the rushing multitude of
his words." But not one of his speeches, not even that on the East India
Bill, or on the Westminster Scrutiny, or on the Russian Armament, or on
Parliamentary Reform, or on Mr. Pitt's Rejection of Bonaparte's
Overtures for Peace, has obtained an abiding place in the literature of
Great Britain. It would be no disparagement to an educated man, if it
were said that he had never read these speeches; but it would be a
serious bar to his claim to be considered an English scholar, if he
confessed to be ignorant of the great speeches of Burke; for such a
confession would be like admitting that he had never read the first book
of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, Bacon's Essays and Advancement of
Learning, Milton's Areopagitica, Butler's Analogy, and Adam Smith's
Wealth of Nations.

When we reflect on the enormous number of American speeches which, when
they were first delivered, were confidently predicted, by appreciating
friends, to insure to the orators a fame which would be immortal, one
wonders a little at the quiet persistence of the speeches of Webster in
refusing to die with the abrupt suddenness of other orations, which, at
the time of their delivery, seemed to have an equal chance of renown.
The lifeless remains of such unfortunate failures are now entombed in
that dreariest of all mausoleums, the dingy quarto volumes, hateful to
all human eyes, which are lettered on the back with the title of
"Congressional Debates,"--a collection of printed matter which members
of Congress are wont to send to a favored few among their constituents,
and which are immediately consigned to the dust-barrel or sold to
pedlers in waste paper, according as the rage of the recipients takes a
scornful or an economical direction. It would seem that the speeches of
Webster are saved from this fate, by the fact that, in them, the mental
and moral life of a great man, and of a great master of the English
language, are organized in a palpable intellectual form. The reader
feels that they have some of the substantial qualities which he
recognizes in looking at the gigantic constructions of the master
workmen among the crowd of the world's engineers and architects, in
looking at the organic products of Nature herself, and in surveying,
through the eye of his imagination, those novel reproductions of Nature
which great poets have embodied in works which are indelibly stamped
with the character of deathlessness.

But Webster is even more obviously a poet--subordinating "the shows of
things to the desires of the mind"--in his magnificent idealization, or
idolization, of the Constitution and the Union. By the magic of his
imagination and sensibility he contrived to impress on the minds of a
majority of the people of the free States a vague, grand idea that the
Constitution was a sacred instrument of government,--a holy shrine of
fundamental law, which no unhallowed hands could touch without
profanation,--a digested system of rights and duties, resembling those
institutes which were, in early times, devised by the immortal gods for
the guidance of infirm mortal man; and the mysterious creatures, half
divine and half human, who framed this remarkable document, were always
reverently referred to as "the Fathers,"--as persons who excelled all
succeeding generations in sagacity and wisdom; as inspired prophets, who
were specially selected by Divine Providence to frame the political
scriptures on which our political faith was to be based, and by which
our political reason was to be limited. The splendor of the glamour thus
cast over the imaginations and sentiments of the people was all the more
effective because it was an effluence from the mind of a statesman who,
of all other statesmen of the country, was deemed the most practical,
and the least deluded by any misguiding lights of fancy and abstract
speculation.

There can be little doubt that Webster's impressive idealization of the
Constitution gave a certain narrowness to American thinking on
constitutional government and the science of politics and legislation.
Foreigners, of the most liberal views, could not sometimes restrain an
expression of wonder, when they found that our most intelligent men,
even our jurists and publicists, hardly condescended to notice the
eminent European thinkers on the philosophy of government, so absorbed
were they in the contemplation of the perfection of their own. When the
great civil war broke out, hundreds of thousands of American citizens
marched to the battle-field with the grand passages of Webster glowing
in their hearts. They met death cheerfully in the cause of the
"Constitution and Union," as by him expounded and idealized; and if they
were so unfortunate as not to be killed, but to be taken captive, they
still rotted to death in Southern prisons, sustained by sentences of
Webster's speeches which they had declaimed as boys in their country
schools. Of all the triumphs of Webster as a leader of public opinion,
the most remarkable was his infusing into the minds of the people of the
free States the belief that the Constitution as it existed in his time
was an organic fact, springing from the intelligence, hearts, and wills
of the people of the United States, and not, as it really was, an
ingenious mechanical contrivance of wise men, to which the people, at
the time, gave their assent.

The constitutions of the separate States of the Union were doubtless
rooted in the habits, sentiments, and ideas of their inhabitants. But
the Constitution of the United States could not possess this advantage,
however felicitously it may have been framed for the purpose of keeping,
for a considerable period, peace between the different sections of the
country. As long, therefore, as the institution of negro slavery lasted,
it could not be called a Constitution of States organically "United";
for it lacked the principle of _growth_, which characterizes all
constitutions of government which are really adapted to the progressive
needs of a people, if the people have in them any impulse which
stimulates them to advance. The unwritten constitution of Great Britain
has this advantage, that a decree of Parliament can alter the whole
representative system, annihilating by a vote of the two houses all laws
which the Parliament had enacted in former years. In Great Britain,
therefore, a measure which any Imperial Parliament passes becomes at
once the supreme law of the land, though it may nullify a great number
of laws which previous Parliaments had passed under different conditions
of the sentiment of the nation. Our Constitution, on the other hand,
provides for the contingencies of growth in the public sentiment only by
amendments to the Constitution. These amendments require more than a
majority of all the political forces represented in Congress; and Mr.
Calhoun, foreseeing that a collision must eventually occur between the
two sections, carried with him, not only the South, but a considerable
minority of the North, in resisting any attempt to limit the _extension_
of slavery. On this point the passions and principles of the people of
the slave-holding and the majority of the people of the
non-slave-holding States came into violent opposition; and there was no
possibility that any amendment to the Constitution could be ratified,
which would represent either the growth of the Southern people in their
ever-increasing belief that negro slavery was not only a good in itself,
but a good which ought to be extended, or the growth of the Northern
people in their ever-increasing hostility both to slavery and its
extension. Thus two principles, each organic in its nature, and
demanding indefinite development, came into deadly conflict under the
mechanical forms of a Constitution which was not organic.

A considerable portion of the speeches in this volume is devoted to
denunciations of violations of the Constitution perpetrated by Webster's
political opponents. These violations, again, would seem to prove that
written constitutions follow practically the same law of development
which marks the progress of the unwritten. By a strained system of
Congressional interpretation, the Constitution has been repeatedly
compelled to yield to the necessities of the party dominant, for the
time, in the government; and has, if we may believe Webster, been
repeatedly changed without being constitutionally "amended." The causes
which led to the most terrible civil war recorded in history were
silently working beneath the forms of the Constitution,--both parties,
by the way, appealing to its provisions,--while Webster was idealizing
it as the utmost which humanity could come to in the way of civil
government. In 1848, when nearly all Europe was in insurrection against
its rulers, he proudly said that our Constitution promised to be the
_oldest_, as well as the best, in civilized states. Meanwhile the
institution of negro slavery was undermining the whole fabric of the
Union. The moral division between the South and North was widening into
a division between the religion of the two sections. The Southern
statesmen, economists, jurists, publicists, and ethical writers had
adapted their opinions to the demands which the defenders of the
institution of slavery imposed on the action of the human intellect and
conscience; but it was rather startling to discover that the Christian
religion, as taught in the Southern States, was a religion which had no
vital connection with the Christianity taught in the Northern States.
There is nothing more astounding, to a patient explorer of the causes
which led to the final explosion, than this opposition of religions. The
mere form of the dogmas common to the religion of both sections might be
verbally identical; but a volume of sermons by a Southern doctor of
divinity, as far as he touched on the matter of slavery, was as
different from one published by his Northern brother, in the essential
moral and humane elements of Christianity, as though they were divided
from each other by a gulf as wide as that which yawns between a Druid
priest and a Christian clergyman.

The politicians of the South, whether they were the mouthpieces of the
ideas and passions of their constituents, or were, as Webster probably
thought, more or less responsible for their foolishness and bitterness,
were ever eager to precipitate a conflict, which Webster was as eager to
prevent, or at least to postpone. It was fortunate for the North, that
the inevitable conflict did not come in 1850, when the free States were
unprepared for it. Ten years of discussion and preparation were allowed;
when the war broke out, it found the North in a position to meet and
eventually to overcome the enemies of the Union; and the Constitution,
not as it _was_, but as it _is_, now represents a form of government
which promises to be permanent; for after passing through its baptism of
fire and blood, the Constitution contains nothing which is not in
harmony with any State government founded on the principle of equal
rights which it guarantees, and is proof against all attacks but those
which may proceed from the extremes of human folly and wickedness. But
that, before the civil war, it was preserved so long under conditions
which constantly threatened it with destruction, is due in a
considerable degree to the circumstance that it found in Daniel Webster
its poet as well as its "expounder."

In conclusion it may be said that the style of Webster is pre-eminently
distinguished by manliness. Nothing little, weak, whining, or
sentimental can be detected in any page of the six volumes of his works.
A certain strength and grandeur of personality is prominent in all his
speeches. When he says "I," or "my," he never appears to indulge in the
bravado of self-assertion, because the words are felt to express a
positive, stalwart, almost colossal manhood, which had already been
implied in the close-knit sentences in which he embodied his statements
and arguments. He is an eminent instance of the power which character
communicates to style. Though evidently proud, self-respecting, and
high-spirited, he is ever above mere vanity and egotism. Whenever he
gives emphasis to the personal pronoun the reader feels that he had as
much earned the right to make his opinion an authority, as he had earned
the right to use the words he employs to express his ideas and
sentiments. Thus, in the celebrated _Smith Will_ trial, his antagonist,
Mr. Choate, quoted a decision of Lord Chancellor Camden. In his reply,
Webster argued against its validity as though it were merely a
proposition laid down by Mr. Choate. "But it is not mine, it is Lord
Camden's" was the instant retort. Webster paused for half a minute, and
then, with his eye fixed on the presiding judge, he replied: "Lord
Camden was a great judge; he is respected by every American, for he was
on our side in the Revolution; but, may it please your honor, _I_ differ
from my Lord Camden." There was hardly a lawyer in the United States who
could have made such a statement without exposing himself to ridicule;
but it did not seem at all ridiculous, when the "I" stood for Daniel
Webster. In his early career as a lawyer, his mode of reasoning was such
as to make him practically a thirteenth juror in the panel; when his
fame was fully established, he contrived, in some mysterious way, to
seat himself by the side of the judges on the bench, and appear to be
consulting with them as a jurist, rather than addressing them as an
advocate. The personality of the man was always suppressed until there
seemed to be need of asserting it; and then it was proudly pushed into
prominence, though rarely passing beyond the limits which his
acknowledged eminence as a statesman and lawyer did not justify him in
asserting it. Among the selections in the present volume where his
individuality becomes somewhat aggressive, and breaks loose from the
restraints ordinarily self-imposed on it, may be mentioned his speech on
his Reception at Boston (1842), his Marshfield Speech (1848), and his
speech at his Reception at Buffalo (1851). Whatever may be thought of
the course of argument pursued in these, they are at least thoroughly
penetrated with a manly spirit,--a manliness somewhat haughty and
defiant, but still consciously strong in its power to return blow for
blow, from whatever quarter the assault may come.

But the real intellectual and moral manliness of Webster underlies all
his great orations and speeches, even those where the animating life
which gives them the power to persuade, convince, and uplift the
reader's mind, seems to be altogether impersonal; and this plain force
of manhood, this sturdy grapple with every question that comes before
his understanding for settlement, leads him contemptuously to reject all
the meretricious aids and ornaments of mere rhetoric, and is prominent,
among the many exceptional qualities of his large nature, which have
given him a high position among the prose-writers of his country as a
consummate master of English style.





THE GREAT ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

OF

DANIEL WEBSTER.




THE DARTMOUTH COLLEGE CASE.

ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES, AT WASHINGTON,
ON THE 10TH OF MARCH, 1818.


[The action, The Trustees of Dartmouth College v. William H. Woodward,
was commenced in the Court of Common Pleas, Grafton County, State of New
Hampshire, February term, 1817. The declaration was trover for the books
of record, original charter, common seal, and other corporate property
of the College. The conversion was alleged to have been made on the 7th
day of October, 1816. The proper pleas were filed, and by consent the
cause was carried directly to the Superior Court of New Hampshire, by
appeal, and entered at the May term, 1817. The general issue was pleaded
by the defendant, and joined by the plaintiffs. The facts in the case
were then agreed upon by the parties, and drawn up in the form of a
special verdict, reciting the charter of the College and the acts of the
legislature of the State, passed June and December, 1816, by which the
said corporation of Dartmouth College was _enlarged_ and _improved_, and
the said charter _amended_.

The question made in the case was, whether those acts of the legislature
were valid and binding upon the corporation, without their acceptance or
assent, and not repugnant to the Constitution of the United States. If
so, the verdict found for the defendants; otherwise, it found for the
plaintiffs.

The cause was continued to the September term of the court in Rockingham
County, where it was argued; and at the November term of the same year,
in Grafton County, the opinion of the court was delivered by Chief
Justice Richardson, in favor of the validity and constitutionality of
the acts of the legislature; and judgment was accordingly entered for
the defendant on the special verdict.

Thereupon a writ of error was sued out by the original plaintiffs, to
remove the cause to the Supreme Court of the United States; where it was
entered at the term of the court holden at Washington on the first
Monday of February, 1818.

The cause came on for argument on the 10th day of March, 1818, before
all the judges. It was argued by Mr. Webster and Mr. Hopkinson for the
plaintiffs in error, and by Mr. Holmes and the Attorney-General (Wirt)
for the defendant in error.

At the term of the court holden in February, 1819, the opinion of the
judges was delivered by Chief Justice Marshall, declaring the acts of
the legislature unconstitutional and invalid, and reversing the judgment
of the State Court. The court, with the exception of Mr. Justice Duvall,
were unanimous.

The following was the argument of Mr. Webster for the plaintiffs in
error.]

The general question is, whether the acts of the legislature of New
Hampshire of the 27th of June, and of the 18th and 26th of December,
1816, are valid and binding on the plaintiffs, _without their acceptance
or assent_.

The charter of 1769 created and established a corporation, to consist of
twelve persons, and no more; to be called the "Trustees of Dartmouth
College." The preamble to the charter recites, that it is granted on the
application and request of the Rev. Eleazer Wheelock: That Dr. Wheelock,
about the year 1754, established a charity school, at his own expense,
and on his own estate and plantation: That for several years, through
the assistance of well-disposed persons in America, granted at his
solicitation, he had clothed, maintained, and educated a number of
native Indians, and employed them afterwards as missionaries and
schoolmasters among the savage tribes: That, his design promising to be
useful, he had constituted the Rev. Mr. Whitaker to be his attorney,
with power to solicit contributions, in England, for the further
extension and carrying on of his undertaking; and that he had requested
the Earl of Dartmouth, Baron Smith, Mr. Thornton, and other gentlemen,
to receive such sums as might be contributed, in England, towards
supporting his school, and to be trustees thereof, for his charity;
which these persons had agreed to do: That thereupon Dr. Wheelock had
executed to them a deed of trust, in pursuance of such agreement between
him and them, and, for divers good reasons, had referred it to these
persons to determine the place in which the school should be finally
established: And, to enable them to form a proper decision on this
subject, had laid before them the several offers which had been made to
him by the several governments in America, in order to induce him to
settle and establish his school within the limits of such governments
for their own emolument, and the increase of learning in their
respective places, as well as for the furtherance of his general
original design: And inasmuch as a number of the proprietors of lands in
New Hampshire, animated by the example of the Governor himself and
others, and in consideration that, without any impediment to its
original design, the school might be enlarged and improved, to promote
learning among the English, and to supply ministers to the people of
that Province, had promised large tracts of land, provided the school
should be established in that Province, the persons before mentioned,
having weighed the reasons in favor of the several places proposed, had
given the preference to this Province, and these offers: That Dr.
Wheelock therefore represented the necessity of a legal incorporation,
and proposed that certain gentlemen in America, whom he had already
named and appointed in his will to be trustees of his charity after his
decease, should compose the corporation. Upon this recital, and in
consideration of the laudable original design of Dr. Wheelock, and
willing that the best means of education be established in New
Hampshire, for the benefit of the Province, the king granted the
charter, by the advice of his Provincial Council.

The substance of the facts thus recited is, that Dr. Wheelock had
founded a charity, on funds owned and procured by himself; that he was
at that time the sole dispenser and sole administrator, as well as the
legal owner, of these funds; that he had made his will, devising this
property in trust, to continue the existence and uses of the school, and
appointed trustees; that, in this state of things, he had been invited
to fix his school permanently in New Hampshire, and to extend the design
of it to the education of the youth of that Province; that before he
removed his school, or accepted this invitation, which his friends in
England had advised him to accept, he applied for a charter, to be
granted, not to whomsoever the king or government of the Province should
please, but to such persons as he named and appointed, namely, the
persons whom he had already appointed to be the future trustees of his
charity by his will.

The charter, or letters patent, then proceed to create such a
corporation, and to appoint twelve persons to constitute it, by the name
of the "Trustees of Dartmouth College"; to have perpetual existence as
such corporation, and with power to hold and dispose of lands and goods,
for the use of the college, with all the ordinary powers of
corporations. They are in their discretion to apply the funds and
property of the college to the support of the president, tutors,
ministers, and other officers of the college, and such missionaries and
schoolmasters as they may see fit to employ among the Indians. There are
to be twelve trustees for ever, _and no more_; and they are to have the
right of filling vacancies occurring in their own body. The Rev. Mr.
Wheelock is declared to be the founder of the college, and is, by the
charter, appointed first president, with power to appoint a successor by
his last will. All proper powers of government, superintendence, and
visitation are vested in the trustees. They are to appoint and remove
all officers at their discretion; to fix their salaries, and assign
their duties; and to make all ordinances, orders, and laws for the
government of the students. To the end that the persons who had acted as
depositaries of the contributions in England, and who had also been
contributors themselves, might be satisfied of the good use of their
contributions, the president was annually, or when required, to transmit
to them an account of the progress of the institution and the
disbursements of its funds, so long as they should continue to act in
that trust. These letters patent are to be good and effectual, in law,
_against the king, his heirs and successors for ever_, without further
grant or confirmation; and the trustees are to hold all and singular
these privileges, advantages, liberties, and immunities to them and to
their successors for ever.

No funds are given to the college by this charter. A corporate existence
and capacity are given to the trustees, with the privileges and
immunities which have been mentioned, to enable the founder and his
associates the better to manage the funds which they themselves had
contributed, and such others as they might afterwards obtain.

After the institution thus created and constituted had existed,
uninterruptedly and usefully, nearly fifty years, the legislature of New
Hampshire passed the acts in question.

The first act makes the twelve trustees under the charter, and nine
other individuals, to be appointed by the Governor and Council, a
corporation, by a new name; and to this new corporation transfers all
the _property, rights, powers, liberties, and privileges_ of the old
corporation; with further power to establish new colleges and an
institute, and to apply all or any part of the funds to these purposes;
subject to the power and control of a board of twenty-five overseers, to
be appointed by the Governor and Council.

The second act makes further provisions for executing the objects of the
first, and the last act authorizes the defendant, the treasurer of the
plaintiffs, to retain and hold their property, against their will.

If these acts are valid, the old corporation is abolished, and a new one
created. The first act does, in fact, if it can have any effect, create
a new corporation, and transfer to it all the property and franchises of
the old. The two corporations are not the same in anything which
essentially belongs to the existence of a corporation. They have
different names, and different powers, rights, and duties. Their
organization is wholly different. The powers of the corporation are not
vested in the same, or similar hands. In one, the trustees are twelve,
and no more. In the other, they are twenty-one. In one, the power is in
a single board. In the other, it is divided between two boards. Although
the act professes to include the old trustees in the new corporation,
yet that was without their assent, and against their remonstrance; and
no person can be compelled to be a member of such a corporation against
his will. It was neither expected nor intended that they should be
members of the new corporation. The act itself treats the old
corporation as at an end, and, going on the ground that all its
functions have ceased, it provides for the first meeting and
organization of the new corporation. It expressly provides, also, that
the new corporation shall have and hold all the property of the old; a
provision which would be quite unnecessary upon any other ground, than
that the old corporation was dissolved. But if it could be contended
that the effect of these acts was not entirely to abolish the old
corporation, yet it is manifest that they impair and invade the rights,
property, and powers of the trustees under the charter, as a
corporation, and the legal rights, privileges, and immunities which
belong to them, as individual members of the corporation.

The twelve trustees were the _sole_ legal owners of all the property
acquired under the charter. By the acts, others are admitted, against
_their_ will, to be joint owners. The twelve individuals who are
trustees were possessed of all the franchises and immunities conferred
by the charter. By the acts, _nine_ other trustees and _twenty-five_
overseers are admitted, against their will, to divide these franchises
and immunities with them.

If, either as a corporation or as individuals, they have any legal
rights, this forcible intrusion of others violates those rights, as
manifestly as an entire and complete ouster and dispossession. These
acts alter the whole constitution of the corporation. They affect the
rights of the whole body as a corporation, and the rights of the
individuals who compose it. They revoke corporate powers and franchises.
They alienate and transfer the property of the college to others. By the
charter, the trustees had a right to fill vacancies in their own number.
This is now taken away. They were to consist of twelve, and, by express
provision, of no more. This is altered. They and their successors,
appointed by themselves, were for ever to hold the property. The
legislature has found successors for them, before their seats are
vacant. The powers and privileges which the twelve were to exercise
exclusively, are now to be exercised by others. By one of the acts, they
are subjected to heavy penalties if they exercise their offices, or any
of those powers and privileges granted them by charter, and which they
had exercised for fifty years. They are to be punished for not accepting
the new grant and taking its benefits. This, it must be confessed, is
rather a summary mode of settling a question of constitutional right.
Not only are new trustees forced into the corporation, but new trusts
and uses are created. The college is turned into a university. Power is
given to create new colleges, and, to authorize any diversion of the
funds which may be agreeable to the new boards, sufficient latitude is
given by the undefined power of establishing an institute. To these new
colleges, and this institute, the funds contributed by the founder, Dr.
Wheelock, and by the original donors, the Earl of Dartmouth and others,
are to be applied, in plain and manifest disregard of the uses to which
they were given.

The president, one of the old trustees, had a right to his office,
salary, and emoluments, subject to the twelve trustees alone. His title
to these is now changed, and he is made accountable to new masters. So
also all the professors and tutors. If the legislature can at pleasure
make these alterations and changes in the rights and privileges of the
plaintiffs, it may, with equal propriety, abolish these rights and
privileges altogether. The same power which can do any part of this work
can accomplish the whole. And, indeed, the argument on which these acts
have been hitherto defended goes altogether on the ground, that this is
such a corporation as the legislature may abolish at pleasure; and that
its members have no _rights, liberties, franchises, property, or
privileges_, which the legislature may not revoke, annul, alienate, or
transfer to others, whenever it sees fit.

It will be contended by the plaintiffs, that these acts are not valid
and binding on them without their assent,--

1. Because they are against common right, and the Constitution of New
Hampshire.

2. Because they are repugnant to the Constitution of the United States.

I am aware of the limits which bound the jurisdiction of the court in
this case, and that on this record nothing can be decided but the single
question, whether these acts are repugnant to the Constitution of the
United States. Yet it may assist in forming an opinion of their true
nature and character to compare them with those fundamental principles
introduced into the State governments for the purpose of limiting the
exercise of the legislative power, and which the Constitution of New
Hampshire expresses with great fulness and accuracy.

It is not too much to assert, that the legislature of New Hampshire
would not have been competent to pass the acts in question, and to make
them binding on the plaintiffs without their assent, even if there had
been, in the Constitution of New Hampshire, or of the United States, no
special restriction on their power, because these acts are not the
exercise of a power properly legislative.[1] Their effect and object are
to take away, from one, rights, property, and franchises, and to grant
them to another. This is not the exercise of a legislative power. To
justify the taking away of vested rights there must be a forfeiture, to
adjudge upon and declare which is the proper province of the judiciary.
Attainder and confiscation are acts of sovereign power, not acts of
legislation. The British Parliament, among other unlimited powers,
claims that of altering and vacating charters; not as an act of ordinary
legislation, but of uncontrolled authority. It is theoretically
omnipotent. Yet, in modern times, it has very rarely attempted the
exercise of this power. In a celebrated instance, those who asserted
this power in Parliament vindicated its exercise only in a case in which
it could be shown, 1st. That the charter in question was a charter of
political power; 2d. That there was a great and overruling state
necessity, justifying the violation of the charter; 3d. That the charter
had been abused and justly forfeited.[2] The bill affecting this charter
did not pass. Its history is well known. The act which afterwards did
pass, passed _with the assent of the corporation_. Even in the worst
times, this power of Parliament to repeal and rescind charters has not
often been exercised. The illegal proceedings in the reign of Charles
the Second were under color of law. Judgments of forfeiture were
obtained in the courts. Such was the case of the _quo warranto_ against
the city of London, and the proceedings by which the charter of
Massachusetts was vacated.

The legislature of New Hampshire has no more power over the rights of
the plaintiffs than existed somewhere, in some department of government,
before the Revolution. The British Parliament could not have annulled or
revoked this grant as an act of ordinary legislation. If it had done it
at all, it could only have been in virtue of that sovereign power,
called omnipotent, which does not belong to any legislature in the
United States. The legislature of New Hampshire has the same power over
this charter which belonged to the king who granted it, and no more. By
the law of England, the power to create corporations is a part of the
royal prerogative.[3] By the Revolution, this power may be considered as
having devolved on the legislature of the State, and it has accordingly
been exercised by the legislature. But the king cannot abolish a
corporation, or new-model it, or alter its powers, without its assent.
This is the acknowledged and well-known doctrine of the common law.
"Whatever might have been the notion in former times," says Lord
Mansfield, "it is most certain now that the corporations of the
universities are lay corporations; and that the crown cannot take away
from them any rights that have been formerly subsisting in them under
old charters or prescriptive usage."[4] After forfeiture duly found, the
king may re-grant the franchises; but a grant of franchises already
granted, and of which no forfeiture has been found, is void.

Corporate franchises can only be forfeited by trial and judgment.[5] In
case of a new charter or grant to an existing corporation, it may accept
or reject it as it pleases.[6] It may accept such part of the grant as
it chooses, and reject the rest.[7] In the very nature of things, a
charter cannot be forced upon any body. No one can be compelled to
accept a grant; and without acceptance the grant is necessarily void.[8]
It cannot be pretended that the legislature, as successor to the king in
this part of his prerogative, has any power to revoke, vacate, or alter
this charter. If, therefore, the legislature has not this power by any
specific grant contained in the Constitution; nor as included in its
ordinary legislative powers; nor by reason of its succession to the
prerogatives of the crown in this particular, on what ground would the
authority to pass these acts rest, even if there were no prohibitory
clauses in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights?

But there _are_ prohibitions in the Constitution and Bill of Rights of
New Hampshire, introduced for the purpose of limiting the legislative
power and protecting the rights and property of the citizens. One
prohibition is, "that no person shall be deprived of his property,
immunities, or privileges, put out of the protection of the law, or
deprived of his life, liberty, or estate, but by judgment of his peers
or the law of the land."

In the opinion, however, which was given in the court below, it is
denied that the trustees under the charter had any property, immunity,
liberty, or privilege in this corporation, within the meaning of this
prohibition in the Bill of Rights. It is said that it is a public
corporation and public property; that the trustees have no greater
interest in it than any other individuals; that it is not private
property, which they can sell or transmit to their heirs, and that
therefore they have no interest in it; that their office is a public
trust, like that of the Governor or a judge, and that they have no more
concern in the property of the college than the Governor in the property
of the State, or than the judges in the fines which they impose on the
culprits at their bar; that it is nothing to them whether their powers
shall be extended or lessened, any more than it is to their honors
whether their jurisdiction shall be enlarged or diminished. It is
necessary, therefore, to inquire into the true nature and character of
the corporation which was created by the charter of 1769.

There are divers sorts of corporations; and it may be safely admitted
that the legislature has more power over some than others.[9] Some
corporations are for government and political arrangement; such, for
example, as cities, counties, and towns in New England. These may be
changed and modified as public convenience may require, due regard being
always had to the rights of property. Of such corporations, all who live
within the limits are of course obliged to be members, and to submit to
the duties which the law imposes on them as such. Other civil
corporations are for the advancement of trade and business, such as
banks, insurance companies, and the like. These are created, not by
general law, but usually by grant. Their constitution is special. It is
such as the legislature sees fit to give, and the grantees to accept.

The corporation in question is not a civil, although it is a lay
corporation. It is an eleemosynary corporation. It is a private charity,
originally founded and endowed by an individual, with a charter obtained
for it at his request, for the better administration of his charity.
"The eleemosynary sort of corporations are such as are constituted for
the perpetual distributions of the free alms or bounty of the founder of
them, to such persons as he has directed. Of this are all hospitals for
the maintenance of the poor, sick, and impotent; and all colleges both
in our universities and out of them."[10] Eleemosynary corporations are
for the management of private property, according to the will of the
donors. They are private corporations. A college is as much a private
corporation as a hospital; especially a college founded, as this was, by
private bounty. A college is a charity. "The establishment of learning,"
says Lord Hardwicke, "is a charity, and so considered in the statute of
Elizabeth. A devise to a college, for their benefit, is a laudable
charity, and deserves encouragement."[11]

The legal signification of _a charity_ is derived chiefly from the
statute 43 Eliz. ch. 4. "Those purposes," says Sir William Grant, "are
considered _charitable_ which that statute enumerates."[12] Colleges are
enumerated as charities in that statute. The government, in these cases,
lends its aid to perpetuate the beneficent intention of the donor, by
granting a charter under which his private charity shall continue to be
dispensed after his death. This is done either by incorporating the
objects of the charity, as, for instance, the scholars in a college or
the poor in a hospital, or by incorporating those who are to be
governors or trustees of the charity.[13] In cases of the first sort,
the founder is, by the common law, visitor. In early times it became a
maxim, that he who gave the property might regulate it in future. "Cujus
est dare, ejus est disponere." This right of visitation descended from
the founder to his heir as a right of property, and precisely as his
other property went to his heir; and in default of heirs it went to the
king, as all other property goes to the king for the want of heirs. The
right of visitation arises from the property. It grows out of the
endowment. The founder may, if he please, part with it at the time when
he establishes the charity, and may vest it in others. Therefore, if he
chooses that governors, trustees, or overseers should be appointed in
the charter, he may cause it to be done, and his power of visitation may
be transferred to them, instead of descending to his heirs. The persons
thus assigned or appointed by the founder will be visitors, with all the
powers of the founder, in exclusion of his heir.[14] The right of
visitation, then, accrues to them, as a matter of property, by the gift,
transfer, or appointment of the founder. This is a private right, which
they can assert in all legal modes, and in which they have the same
protection of the law as in all other rights. As visitors they may make
rules, ordinances, and statutes, and alter and repeal them, as far as
permitted so to do by the charter.[15] Although the charter proceeds
from the crown or the government, it is considered as the will of the
donor. It is obtained at his request. He imposes it as the rule which is
to prevail in the dispensation of his bounty in all future times. The
king or government which grants the charter is not thereby the founder,
but he who furnishes the funds. The gift of the revenues is the
foundation.[16]

The leading case on this subject is _Phillips v. Bury_.[17] This was an
ejectment brought to recover the rectory-house, &c. of Exeter College in
Oxford. The question was whether the plaintiff or defendant was legal
rector. Exeter College was founded by an individual, and incorporated by
a charter granted by Queen Elizabeth. The controversy turned upon the
power of the visitor, and, in the discussion of the cause, the nature of
college charters and corporations was very fully considered. Lord Holt's
judgment, copied from his own manuscript, is found in 2 Term Reports.
346. The following is an extract:--

     "That we may the better apprehend the nature of a visitor, we are
     to consider that there are in law two sorts of corporations
     aggregate; such as are for public government, and such as are for
     private charity. Those that are for the public government of a
     town, city, mystery, or the like, being for public advantage, are
     to be governed according to the laws of the land. If they make any
     particular private laws and constitutions, the validity and justice
     of them is examinable in the king's courts. Of these there are no
     particular private founders, and consequently no particular
     visitor; there are no patrons of these; therefore, if no provision
     be in the charter how the succession shall continue, the law
     supplieth the defect of that constitution, and saith it shall be by
     election; as mayor, aldermen, common council, and the like. But
     _private_ and particular corporations for charity, founded and
     endowed by private persons, are subject to the private government
     of those who erect them; and therefore, if there be no visitor
     appointed by the founder, the law appoints the founder and his
     heirs to be visitors, who are to act and proceed according to the
     particular laws and constitutions assigned them by the founder. It
     is now admitted on all hands that the founder is patron, and, as
     founder, is visitor, if no particular visitor be assigned; so that
     patronage and visitation are necessary consequents one upon
     another. For this visitatorial power was not introduced by any
     canons or constitutions ecclesiastical (as was said by a learned
     gentleman whom I have in my eye, in his argument of this case); it
     is an appointment of law. It ariseth from the property which the
     founder had in the lands assigned to support the charity; and as he
     is the author of the charity, the law gives him and his heirs a
     visitatorial power, that is, an authority to inspect the actions
     and regulate the behavior of the members that partake of the
     charity. For it is fit the members that are endowed, and that have
     the charity bestowed upon them, should not be left to themselves,
     but pursue the intent and design of him that bestowed it upon them.
     _Now, indeed, where the poor, or those that receive the charity,
     are not incorporated, but there are certain trustees who dispose of
     the charity, there is no visitor, because the interest of the
     revenue is not vested in the poor that have the benefit of the
     charity, but they are subject to the orders and directions of the
     trustees._ But where they who are to enjoy the benefit of the
     charity are incorporated, there to prevent all perverting of the
     charity, or to compose differences that may happen among them,
     there is by law a visitatorial power; and it being a creature of
     the founder's own, it is reason that he and his heirs should have
     that power, unless by the founder it is vested in some other. Now
     there is no manner of difference between a college and a hospital,
     except only in degree. A hospital is for those that are poor, and
     mean, and low, and sickly; a college is for another sort of
     indigent persons; but it hath another intent, to study in and breed
     up persons in the world that have no otherwise to live; but still
     it is as much within the reasons as hospitals. And if in a hospital
     the master and poor are incorporated, it is a college having a
     common seal to act by, although it hath not the name of a college
     (which always supposeth a corporation), because it is of an
     inferior degree; and in the one case and in the other there must be
     a visitor, either the founder and his heirs or one appointed by
     him; and both are eleemosynary."

Lord Holt concludes his whole argument by again repeating, that that
college was a _private corporation_, and that the founder had a right to
appoint a visitor, and to give him such power as he saw fit.[18]

The learned Bishop Stillingfleet's argument in the same cause, as a
member of the House of Lords, when it was there heard, exhibits very
clearly the nature of colleges and similar corporations. It is to the
following effect: "That this absolute and conclusive power of visitors
is no more than the law hath appointed in other cases, upon commissions
of charitable uses: that the common law, and not any ecclesiastical
canons, do place the power of visitation in the founder and his heirs,
_unless he settle it upon others_: that although corporations for public
government be subject to the courts of Westminster Hall, which have no
particular or special visitors, yet corporations for charity, founded
and endowed by private persons, are subject to the rule and government
of those that erect them; but where the persons to whom the charity is
given are not incorporated, there is no such visitatorial power, because
the interest of the revenue is not invested in them; but where they are,
the right of visitation ariseth from the foundation, and the founder may
convey _it to whom and in what manner he pleases; and the visitor acts
as founder, and by the same authority which he had, and consequently is
no more accountable than he had been_: that the king by his charter can
make a society to be incorporated so as to have the rights belonging to
persons, as to legal capacities: that colleges, although founded by
private persons, are yet incorporated by the king's charter; but
although the kings by their charter made the colleges to be such in law,
that is, to be legal corporations, yet they left to the particular
founders authority to appoint what statutes they thought fit for the
regulation of them. And not only the statutes, but the appointment of
visitors, was left to them, and the manner of government, and the
several conditions on which any persons were to be made or continue
partakers of their bounty."[19]

These opinions received the sanction of the House of Lords, and they
seem to be settled and undoubted law. Where there is a charter, vesting
proper powers in trustees, or governors, they are visitors; and there is
no control in any body else; except only that the courts of equity or of
law will interfere so far as to preserve the revenues and prevent the
perversion of the funds, and to keep the visitors within their
prescribed bounds. "If there be a charter with proper powers, the
charity must be regulated in the manner prescribed by the charter. There
is no ground for the controlling interposition of the courts of
chancery. The interposition of the courts, therefore, in those instances
in which the charities were founded on charters or by act of Parliament,
and a visitor or governor and trustees appointed, must be referred to
the general jurisdiction of the courts in all cases in which a trust
conferred appears to have been abused, and not to an original right to
direct the management of the charity, or the conduct of the governors or
trustees."[20] "The original of all _visitatorial_ power is the property
of the donor, and the power every one has to dispose, direct, and
regulate his own property; like the case of patronage; _cujus est dare_,
&c. Therefore, if either the crown or the subject creates an
eleemosynary foundation, and vests the charity in the persons who are to
receive the benefit of it, since a contest might arise about the
government of it, the law allows the founder or his heirs, or the person
specially appointed by him to be visitor, to determine concerning his
own creature. If the charity is not vested in the persons who are to
partake, but in trustees for their benefit, no visitor can arise by
implication, but the trustees have that power."[21]

"There is nothing better established," says Lord Commissioner Eyre,
"than that this court does not entertain a general jurisdiction, or
regulate and control charities _established by charter_. There the
establishment is fixed and determined; and the court has no power to
vary it. If the governors established for the regulation of it are not
those who have the management of the revenue, this court has no
jurisdiction, and if it is ever so much abused, as far as it respects
the jurisdiction of this court it is without remedy; but if those
established as governors have also the management of the revenues, this
court does assume a jurisdiction of necessity, so far as they are to be
considered as trustees of the revenue."[22]

"The foundations of colleges," says Lord Mansfield, "are to be
considered in two views; namely, as they are _corporations_ and as they
are _eleemosynary_. As eleemosynary, they are the creatures of the
founder; he may delegate his power, either generally or specially; he
may prescribe particular modes and manners, as to the exercise of part
of it. If he makes a general visitor (as by the general words _visitator
sit_), the person so constituted has all incidental power; but he may be
restrained as to particular instances. The founder may appoint a special
visitor for a particular purpose, and no further. The founder may make a
general visitor; and yet appoint an inferior particular power, to be
executed without going to the visitor in the first instance."[23] And
even if the king be founder, if he grant a charter, incorporating
trustees and governors, _they are visitors_, and the king cannot
visit.[24] A subsequent donation, or ingrafted fellowship, falls under
the same general visitatorial power, if not otherwise specially
provided.[25]

In New England, and perhaps throughout the United States, eleemosynary
corporations have been generally established in the latter mode; that
is, by incorporating governors, or trustees, and vesting in them the
right of visitation. Small variations may have been in some instances
adopted; as in the case of Harvard College, where some power of
inspection is given to the overseers, but not, strictly speaking, a
visitatorial power, which still belongs, it is apprehended, to the
fellows or members of the corporation. In general, there are many
donors. A charter is obtained, comprising them all, or some of them, and
such others as they choose to include, with the right of appointing
successors. They are thus the visitors of their own charity, and appoint
others, such as they may see fit, to exercise the same office in time to
come. All such corporations are private. The case before the court is
clearly that of an eleemosynary corporation. It is, in the strictest
legal sense, a private charity. In King v. St. Catherine's Hall,[26]
that college is called a private eleemosynary lay corporation. It was
endowed by a private founder, and incorporated by letters patent. And in
the same manner was Dartmouth College founded and incorporated. Dr.
Wheelock is declared by the charter to be its founder. It was
established by him, on funds contributed and collected by himself.

As such founder, he had a right of visitation, which he assigned to the
trustees, and they received it by his consent and appointment, and held
it under the charter.[27] He appointed these trustees visitors, and in
that respect to take place of his heir; as he might have appointed
devisees, to take his estate instead of his heir. Little, probably, did
he think, at that time, that the legislature would ever take away this
property and these privileges, and give them to others. Little did he
suppose that this charter secured to him and his successors no legal
rights. Little did the other donors think so. If they had, the college
would have been, what the university is now, a thing upon paper,
existing only in name.

The numerous academies in New England have been established
substantially in the same manner. They hold their property by the same
tenure, and no other. Nor has Harvard College any surer title than
Dartmouth College. It may to-day have more friends; but to-morrow it may
have more enemies. Its legal rights are the same. So also of Yale
College; and, indeed, of all the others. When the legislature gives to
these institutions, it may and does accompany its grants with such
conditions as it pleases. The grant of lands by the legislature of New
Hampshire to Dartmouth College, in 1789, was accompanied with various
conditions. When donations are made, by the legislature or others, to a
charity already existing, without any condition, or the specification of
any new use, the donation follows the nature of the charity. Hence the
doctrine, that all eleemosynary corporations are private bodies. They
are founded by private persons, and on private property. The public
cannot be charitable in these institutions. It is not the money of the
public, but of private persons, which is dispensed. It may be public,
that is general, in its uses and advantages; and the State may very
laudably add contributions of its own to the funds; but it is still
private in the tenure of the property, and in the right of administering
the funds.

If the doctrine laid down by Lord Holt, and the House of Lords, in
_Phillips v. Bury_, and recognized and established in all the other
cases, be correct, the property of this college was private property; it
was vested in the trustees by the charter, and to be administered by
them, according to the will of the founder and donors, as expressed in
the charter. They were also visitors of the charity, in the most ample
sense. They had, therefore, as they contend, privileges, property, and
immunities, within the true meaning of the Bill of Rights. They had
rights, and still have them, which they can assert against the
legislature, as well as against other wrong-doers. It makes no
difference, that the estate is holden for certain trusts. The legal
estate is still theirs. They have a right in the property, and they
have a right of visiting and superintending the trust; and this is an
object of legal protection, as much as any other right. The charter
declares that the powers conferred on the trustees are "privileges,
advantages, liberties, and immunities"; and that they shall be for ever
holden by them and their successors. The New Hampshire Bill of Rights
declares that no one shall be deprived of his "property, privileges, or
immunities," but by judgment of his peers, or the law of the land. The
argument on the other side is, that, although these terms may mean
something in the Bill of Rights, they mean nothing in this charter. But
they are terms of legal signification, and very properly used in the
charter. They are equivalent with _franchises_. Blackstone says that
_franchise_ and _liberty_ are used as synonymous terms. And after
enumerating other liberties and franchises, he says: "It is likewise a
franchise for a number of persons to be incorporated and subsist as a
body politic, with a power to maintain perpetual succession and do other
corporate acts; and each individual member of such a corporation is also
said to have a franchise or freedom."[28]

_Liberties_ is the term used in Magna Charta as including franchises,
privileges, immunities, and all the rights which belong to that class.
Professor Sullivan says, the term signifies the "_privileges_ that some
of the subjects, whether single persons or bodies corporate, have above
others by the lawful grant of the king; as the chattels of felons or
outlaws, and the lands _and privileges of corporations_."[29]

The privilege, then, of being a member of a corporation, under a lawful
grant, and of exercising the rights and powers of such member, is such a
privilege, _liberty_, or _franchise_, as has been the object of legal
protection, and the subject of a legal interest, from the time of Magna
Charta to the present moment. The plaintiffs have such an interest in
this corporation, individually, as they could assert and maintain in a
court of law, not as agents of the public, but in their own right. Each
trustee has a _franchise_, and if he be disturbed in the enjoyment of
it, he would have redress, on appealing to the law, as promptly as for
any other injury. If the other trustees should conspire against any one
of them to prevent his equal right and voice in the appointment of a
president or professor, or in the passing of any statute or ordinance of
the college, he would be entitled to his action, for depriving him of
his franchise. It makes no difference, that this property is to be
holden and administered, and these franchises exercised, for the purpose
of diffusing learning. No principle and no case establishes any such
distinction. The public may be benefited by the use of this property.
But this does not change the nature of the property, or the rights of
the owners. The object of the charter may be public good; so it is in
all other corporations; and this would as well justify the resumption or
violation of the grant in any other case as in this. In the case of an
advowson, the use is public, and the right cannot be turned to any
private benefit or emolument. It is nevertheless a legal private right,
and the _property_ of the owner, as emphatically as his freehold. The
rights and privileges of trustees, visitors, or governors of
incorporated colleges, stand on the same foundation. They are so
considered, both by Lord Holt and Lord Hardwicke.[30]

To contend that the rights of the plaintiffs may be taken away, because
they derive from them no pecuniary benefit or private emolument, or
because they cannot be transmitted to their heirs, or would not be
assets to pay their debts, is taking an extremely narrow view of the
subject. According to this notion, the case would be different, if, in
the charter, they had stipulated for a commission on the disbursement
of the funds; and they have ceased to have any interest in the
property, because they have undertaken to administer it gratuitously.

It cannot be necessary to say much in refutation of the idea, that there
cannot be a legal interest, or ownership, in any thing which does not
yield a pecuniary profit; as if the law regarded no rights but the
rights of money, and of visible, tangible property. Of what nature are
all rights of suffrage? No elector has a particular personal interest;
but each has a legal right, to be exercised at his own discretion, and
it cannot be taken away from him. The exercise of this right directly
and very materially affects the public; much more so than the exercise
of the privileges of a trustee of this college. Consequences of the
utmost magnitude may sometimes depend on the exercise of the right of
suffrage by one or a few electors. Nobody was ever yet heard to contend,
however, that on that account the public might take away the right, or
impair it. This notion appears to be borrowed from no better source than
the repudiated doctrine of the three judges in the Aylesbury case.[31]
That was an action against a returning officer for refusing the
plaintiff's vote, in the election of a member of Parliament. Three of
the judges of the King's Bench held, that the action could not be
maintained, because, among other objections, "it was not any matter of
profit, either _in presenti_, or _in futuro_." It would not enrich the
plaintiff _in presenti_, nor would it _in futuro_ go to his heirs, or
answer to pay his debts. But Lord Holt and the House of Lords were of
another opinion. The judgment of the three judges was reversed, and the
doctrine they held, having been exploded for a century, seems now for
the first time to be revived.

Individuals have a right to use their own property for purposes of
benevolence, either towards the public, or towards other individuals.
They have a right to exercise this benevolence in such lawful manner as
they may choose; and when the government has induced and excited it, by
contracting to give perpetuity to the stipulated manner of exercising
it, it is not law, but violence, to rescind this contract, and seize on
the property. Whether the State will grant these franchises, and under
what conditions it will grant them, it decides for itself. But when once
granted, the constitution holds them to be sacred, till forfeited for
just cause.

That all property, of which the use may be beneficial to the public,
belongs therefore to the public, is quite a new doctrine. It has no
precedent, and is supported by no known principle. Dr. Wheelock might
have answered his purposes, in this case, by executing a private deed of
trust. He might have conveyed his property to trustees, for precisely
such uses as are described in this charter. Indeed, it appears that he
had contemplated the establishing of his school in that manner, and had
made his will, and devised the property to the same persons who were
afterwards appointed trustees in the charter. Many literary and other
charitable institutions are founded in that manner, and the trust is
renewed, and conferred on other persons, from time to time, as occasion
may require. In such a case, no lawyer would or could say, that the
legislature might divest the trustees, constituted by deed or will,
seize upon the property, and give it to other persons, for other
purposes. And does the granting of a charter, which is only done to
perpetuate the trust in a more convenient manner, make any difference?
Does or can this change the nature of the charity, and turn it into a
public political corporation? Happily, we are not without authority on
this point. It has been considered and adjudged. Lord Hardwicke says, in
so many words, "The charter of the crown cannot make a charity more or
less public, but only more permanent than it would otherwise be."[32]

The granting of the corporation is but making the trust perpetual, and
does not alter the nature of the charity. The very object sought in
obtaining such charter, and in giving property to such a corporation, is
to make and keep it private property, and to clothe it with all the
security and inviolability of private property. The intent is, that
there shall be a legal private ownership, and that the legal owners
shall maintain and protect the property, for the benefit of those for
whose use it was designed. Who ever endowed the public? Who ever
appointed a legislature to administer his charity? Or who ever heard,
before, that a gift to a college, or a hospital, or an asylum, was, in
reality, nothing but a gift to the State?

The State of Vermont is a principal donor to Dartmouth College. The
lands given lie in that State. This appears in the special verdict. Is
Vermont to be considered as having intended a gift to the State of New
Hampshire in this case, as, it has been said, is to be the reasonable
construction of all donations to the college? The legislature of New
Hampshire affects to represent the public, and therefore claims a right
to control all property destined to public use. What hinders Vermont
from considering herself equally the representative of the public, and
from resuming her grants, at her own pleasure? Her right to do so is
less doubtful than the power of New Hampshire to pass the laws in
question.

In _University v. Foy_,[33] the Supreme Court of North Carolina
pronounced unconstitutional and void a law repealing a grant to the
University of North Carolina, although that university was originally
erected and endowed by a statute of the State. That case was a grant of
lands, and the court decided that it could not be resumed. This is the
grant of a power and capacity to hold lands. Where is the difference of
the cases, upon principle?

In _Terrett v. Taylor_,[34] this court decided that a legislative grant
or confirmation of lands, for the purposes of moral and religious
instruction, could no more be rescinded than other grants. The nature of
the use was not holden to make any difference. A grant to a parish or
church, for the purposes which have been mentioned, cannot be
distinguished, in respect to the title it confers, from a grant to a
college for the promotion of piety and learning. To the same purpose may
be cited the case of _Pawlett v. Clark_. The State of Vermont, by
statute, in 1794, granted to the respective towns in that State certain
glebe lands lying within those towns for the sole use and support of
religious worship. In 1799, an act was passed to repeal the act of 1794;
but this court declared, that the act of 1794, "so far as it granted the
glebes to the towns, could not afterwards be repealed by the
legislature, so as to divest the rights of the towns under the
grant."[35]

It will be for the other side to show that the nature of the use decides
the question whether the legislature has power to resume its grants. It
will be for those who maintain such a doctrine to show the principles
and cases upon which it rests. It will be for them also to fix the
limits and boundaries of their doctrine, and to show what are and what
are not such uses as to give the legislature this power of resumption
and revocation. And to furnish an answer to the cases cited, it will be
for them further to show that a grant for the use and support of
religious worship stands on other ground than a grant for the promotion
of piety and learning.

I hope enough has been said to show that the trustees possessed vested
liberties, privileges, and immunities, under this charter; and that such
liberties, privileges, and immunities, being once lawfully obtained and
vested, are as inviolable as any vested rights of property whatever.
Rights to do certain acts, such, for instance, as the visitation and
superintendence of a college and the appointment of its officers, may
surely be vested rights, to all legal intents, as completely as the
right to possess property. A late learned judge of this court has said,
"When I say that a _right_ is vested in a citizen, I mean that he has
the power to do _certain actions_, or to possess _certain things_,
according to the law of the land."[36]

If such be the true nature of the plaintiffs' interests under this
charter, what are the articles in the New Hampshire Bill of Rights which
these acts infringe?

They infringe the second article; which says, that the citizens of the
State have a right to hold and possess property. The plaintiffs had a
legal property in this charter; and they had acquired property under it.
The acts deprive them of both. They impair and take away the charter;
and they appropriate the property to new uses, against their consent.
The plaintiffs cannot now hold the property acquired by themselves, and
which this article says they have a right to hold.

They infringe the twentieth article. By that article it is declared
that, in questions of property, there is a right to trial. The
plaintiffs are divested, without trial or judgment.

They infringe the twenty-third article. It is therein declared that no
retrospective laws shall be passed. This article bears directly on the
case. These acts must be deemed to be retrospective, within the settled
construction of that term. What a retrospective law is, has been
decided, on the construction of this very article, in the Circuit Court
for the First Circuit. The learned judge of that circuit says: "Every
statute which takes away or impairs vested rights, acquired under
existing laws, must be deemed retrospective."[37] That all such laws are
retrospective was decided also in the case of _Dash v. Van Kleek_,[38]
where a most learned judge quotes this article from the constitution of
New Hampshire, with manifest approbation, as a plain and clear
expression of those fundamental and unalterable principles of justice,
which must lie at the foundation of every free and just system of laws.
Can any man deny that the plaintiffs had rights, under the charter,
which were legally vested, and that by these acts those rights are
impaired?

"It is a principle in the English law," says Chief Justice Kent, in the
case last cited, "as ancient as the law itself, that a statute, even of
its omnipotent Parliament, is not to have a retrospective effect. 'Nova
constitutio futuris formam imponere debet, et non praeteritis.'[39] The
maxim in Bracton was taken from the civil law, for we find in that
system the same principle, expressed substantially in the same words,
that the lawgiver cannot alter his mind to the prejudice of a vested
right. 'Nemo potest mutare concilium suum in alterius injuriam.'[40]
This maxim of Papinian is general in its terms, but Dr. Taylor[41]
applies it directly as a restriction upon the lawgiver, and a
declaration in the Code leaves no doubt as to the sense of the civil
law. 'Leges et constitutiones futuris certum est dare formam negotiis,
non ad facta praeterita revocari, nisi nominatim, et de praeterito
tempore, et adhuc pendentibus negotiis cautum sit.'[42] This passage,
according to the best interpretation of the civilians, relates not
merely to future suits, but to future, as contradistinguished from past,
contracts and vested rights.[43] It is indeed admitted that the prince
may enact a retrospective law, provided it be done _expressly_; for the
will of the prince under the despotism of the Roman emperors was
paramount to every obligation. Great latitude was anciently allowed to
legislative expositions of statutes; for the separation of the judicial
from the legislative power was not then distinctly known or prescribed.
The prince was in the habit of interpreting his own laws for particular
occasions. This was called the 'Interlocutio Principis'; and this,
according to Huber's definition, was, 'quando principes inter partes
loquuntur et jus dicunt.'[44] No correct civilian, and especially no
proud admirer of the ancient republic (if any such then existed), could
have reflected on this interference with private rights and pending
suits without disgust and indignation; and we are rather surprised to
find that, under the violent and arbitrary genius of the Roman
government, the principle before us should have been acknowledged and
obeyed to the extent in which we find it. The fact shows that it must be
founded in the clearest justice. Our case is happily very different from
that of the subjects of Justinian. With us the power of the lawgiver is
limited and defined; the judicial is regarded as a distinct, independent
power; private rights are better understood and more exalted in public
estimation, as well as secured by provisions dictated by the spirit of
freedom, and unknown to the civil law. Our constitutions do not admit
the power assumed by the Roman prince, and the principle we are
considering is now to be regarded as sacred."

These acts infringe also the thirty-seventh article of the constitution
of New Hampshire; which says, that the powers of government shall be
kept separate. By these acts, the legislature assumes to exercise a
judicial power. It declares a forfeiture, and resumes franchises, once
granted, without trial or hearing.

If the constitution be not altogether waste-paper, it has restrained the
power of the legislature in these particulars. If it has any meaning, it
is that the legislature shall pass no act directly and manifestly
impairing private property and private privileges. It shall not judge by
act. It shall not decide by act. It shall not deprive by act. But it
shall leave all these things to be tried and adjudged by the law of the
land.

The fifteenth article has been referred to before. It declares that no
one shall be "deprived of his property, immunities, or privileges, but
by the judgment of his peers or the law of the land." Notwithstanding
the light in which the learned judges in New Hampshire viewed the rights
of the plaintiffs under the charter, and which has been before adverted
to, it is found to be admitted in their opinion, that those rights are
privileges within the meaning of this fifteenth article of the Bill of
Rights. Having quoted that article, they say: "That the right to manage
the affairs of this college is a privilege, within the meaning of this
clause of the Bill of Rights, is not to be doubted." In my humble
opinion, this surrenders the point. To resist the effect of this
admission, however, the learned judges add: "But how a privilege can be
protected from the operation of the law of the land by a clause in the
constitution, declaring that it shall not be taken away but by the law
of the land, is not very easily understood." This answer goes on the
ground, that the acts in question are laws of the land, within the
meaning of the constitution. If they be so, the argument drawn from this
article is fully answered. If they be not so, it being admitted that the
plaintiffs' rights are "privileges," within the meaning of the article,
the argument is not answered, and the article is infringed by the acts.

Are, then, these acts of the legislature, which affect only particular
persons and their particular privileges, laws of the land? Let this
question be answered by the text of Blackstone. "And first it (i.e. law)
is a _rule_: not a transient, sudden order from a superior to or
concerning a particular person; but something permanent, uniform, and
universal. Therefore a particular act of the legislature to confiscate
the goods of Titius, or to attaint him of high treason, does not enter
into the idea of a municipal law; for the operation of this act is spent
upon Titius only, and has no relation to the community in general; it is
rather a sentence than a law."[45] Lord Coke is equally decisive and
emphatic. Citing and commenting on the celebrated twenty-ninth chapter
of Magna Charta, he says: "No man shall be disseized, &c., unless it be
by the lawful judgment, that is, verdict of equals, or by the law of
the land, that is (to speak it once for all), by the due course and
process of law."[46] Have the plaintiffs lost their franchises by "due
course and process of law"? On the contrary, are not these acts
"particular acts of the legislature, which have no relation to the
community in general, and which are rather sentences than laws"?

By the law of the land is most clearly intended the general law; a law
which hears before it condemns; which proceeds upon inquiry, and renders
judgment only after trial. The meaning is, that every citizen shall hold
his life, liberty, property, and immunities under the protection of the
general rules which govern society. Every thing which may pass under the
form of an enactment is not therefore to be considered the law of the
land. If this were so, acts of attainder, bills of pains and penalties,
acts of confiscation, acts reversing judgments, and acts directly
transferring one man's estate to another, legislative judgments,
decrees, and forfeitures in all possible forms, would be the law of the
land.

Such a strange construction would render constitutional provisions of
the highest importance completely inoperative and void. It would tend
directly to establish the union of all powers in the legislature. There
would be no general, permanent law for courts to administer or men to
live under. The administration of justice would be an empty form, an
idle ceremony. Judges would sit to execute legislative judgments and
decrees; not to declare the law or to administer the justice of the
country. "Is that the law of the land," said Mr. Burke, "upon which, if
a man go to Westminster Hall, and ask counsel by what title or tenure he
holds his privilege or estate _according to the law of the land_, he
should be told, that the law of the land is not yet known; that no
decision or decree has been made in his case; that when a decree shall
be passed, he will then know _what the law of the land is_? Will this be
said to be the law of the land, by any lawyer who has a rag of a gown
left upon his back, or a wig with one tie upon his head?"

That the power of electing and appointing the officers of this college
is not only a right of the trustees as a corporation, generally, and in
the aggregate, but that each individual trustee has also his own
individual franchise in such right of election and appointment, is
according to the language of all the authorities. Lord Holt says: "It is
agreeable to reason and the rules of law, that a franchise should be
vested in the corporation aggregate, and yet the benefit of it to
redound to the particular members, and to be enjoyed by them in their
private capacity. Where the privilege of election is used by particular
persons, _it is a particular right, vested in every particular
man_."[47]

It is also to be considered, that the president and professors of this
college have rights to be affected by these acts. Their interest is
similar to that of fellows in the English colleges; because they derive
their living, wholly or in part, from the founders' bounty. The
president is one of the trustees or corporators. The professors are not
necessarily members of the corporation; but they are appointed by the
trustees, are removable only by them, and have fixed salaries payable
out of the general funds of the college. Both president and professors
have freeholds in their offices; subject only to be removed by the
trustees, as their legal visitors, for good cause. All the authorities
speak of fellowships in colleges as freeholds, notwithstanding the
fellows may be liable to be suspended or removed, for misbehavior, by
their constituted visitors.

Nothing could have been less expected, in this age, than that there
should have been an attempt, by acts of the legislature, to take away
these college livings, the inadequate but the only support of literary
men who have devoted their lives to the instruction of youth. The
president and professors were appointed by the twelve trustees. They
were accountable to nobody else, and could be removed by nobody else.
They accepted their offices on this tenure. Yet the legislature has
appointed other persons, with power to remove these officers and to
deprive them of their livings; and those other persons have exercised
that power. No description of private property has been regarded as more
sacred than college livings. They are the estates and freeholds of a
most deserving class of men; of scholars who have consented to forego
the advantages of professional and public employments, and to devote
themselves to science and literature and the instruction of youth in the
quiet retreats of academic life. Whether to dispossess and oust them; to
deprive them of their office, and to turn them out of their livings; to
do this, not by the power of their legal visitors or governors, but by
acts of the legislature, and to do it without forfeiture and without
fault; whether all this be not in the highest degree an indefensible and
arbitrary proceeding, is a question of which there would seem to be but
one side fit for a lawyer or a scholar to espouse.

Of all the attempts of James the Second to overturn the law, and the
rights of his subjects, none was esteemed more arbitrary or tyrannical
than his attack on Magdalen College, Oxford; and yet that attempt was
nothing but to put out one president and put in another. The president
of that college, according to the charter and statutes, is to be chosen
by the fellows, who are the corporators. There being a vacancy, the king
chose to take the appointment out of the hands of the fellows, the legal
electors of a president, into his own hands. He therefore sent down his
mandate, commanding the fellows to admit for president a person of his
nomination; and, inasmuch as this was directly against the charter and
constitution of the college, he was pleased to add a _non obstante_
clause of sufficiently comprehensive import. The fellows were commanded
to admit the person mentioned in the mandate, "any statute, custom, or
constitution to the contrary notwithstanding, wherewith we are
graciously pleased to dispense, in this behalf." The fellows refused
obedience to this mandate, and Dr. Hough, a man of independence and
character, was chosen president by the fellows, according to the charter
and statutes. The king then assumed the power, in virtue of his
prerogative, to send down certain commissioners to turn him out; which
was done accordingly; and Parker, a creature suited to the times, put in
his place. Because the president, who was rightfully and legally
elected, _would not deliver the keys, the doors were broken open_. "The
nation as well as the university," says Bishop Burnet,[48] "looked on
all these proceedings with just indignation. It was thought an open
piece of robbery and burglary when men, authorized by no legal
commission, came and forcibly turned men out of their possession and
freehold." Mr. Hume, although a man of different temper, and of other
sentiments, in some respects, than Dr. Burnet, speaks of this arbitrary
attempt of prerogative in terms not less decisive. "The president, and
all the fellows," says he, "except two, who complied, were expelled the
college, and Parker was put in possession of the office. This act of
violence, of all those which were committed during the reign of James,
is perhaps the most illegal and arbitrary. When the dispensing power was
the most strenuously insisted on by court lawyers, it had still been
allowed that the statutes which regard private property could not
legally be infringed by that prerogative. Yet, in this instance, it
appeared that even these were not now secure from invasion. The
privileges of a college are attacked; men are illegally dispossessed of
their property for adhering to their duty, to their oaths, and to their
religion."

This measure King James lived to repent, after repentance was too late.
When the charter of London was restored, and other measures of violence
were retracted, to avert the impending revolution, the expelled
president and fellows of Magdalen College were permitted to resume their
rights. It is evident that this was regarded as an arbitrary
interference with private property. Yet private property was no
otherwise attacked than as a person was appointed to administer and
enjoy the revenues of a college in a manner and by persons not
authorized by the constitution of the college. A majority of the members
of the corporation would not comply with the king's wishes. A minority
would. The object was therefore to make this minority a majority. To
this end the king's commissioners were directed to interfere in the
case, and they united with the two complying fellows, and expelled the
rest; and thus effected a change in the government of the college. The
language in which Mr. Hume and all other writers speak of this abortive
attempt of oppression, shows that colleges were esteemed to be, as they
truly are, private corporations, and the property and privileges which
belong to them _private_ property and _private_ privileges. Court
lawyers were found to justify the king in dispensing with the laws; that
is, in assuming and exercising a legislative authority. But no lawyer,
not even a court lawyer, in the reign of King James the Second, as far
as appears, was found to say that, even by this high authority, he could
infringe the franchises of the fellows of a college, and take away their
livings. Mr. Hume gives the reason; it is, that such franchises were
regarded, in a most emphatic sense, as _private property_.[49]

If it could be made to appear that the trustees and the president and
professors held their offices and franchises during the pleasure of the
legislature, and that the property holden belonged to the State, then
indeed the legislature have done no more than they had a right to do.
But this is not so. The charter is a charter of privileges and
immunities; and these are holden by the trustees expressly against the
State for ever.

It is admitted that the State, by its courts of law, can enforce the
will of the donor, and compel a faithful execution of the trust. The
plaintiffs claim no exemption from legal responsibility. They hold
themselves at all times answerable to the law of the land, for their
conduct in the trust committed to them. They ask only to hold the
property of which they are owners, and the franchises which belong to
them, until they shall be found, by due course and process of law, to
have forfeited them.

It can make no difference whether the legislature exercise the power it
has assumed by removing the trustees and the president and professors,
directly and by name, or by appointing others to expel them. The
principle is the same, and in point of fact the result has been the
same. If the entire franchise cannot be taken away, neither can it be
essentially impaired. If the trustees are legal owners of the property,
they are sole owners. If they are visitors, they are sole visitors. No
one will be found to say, that, if the legislature may do what it has
done, it may not do any thing and every thing which it may choose to do,
relative to the property of the corporation, and the privileges of its
members and officers.

If the view which has been taken of this question be at all correct,
this was an eleemosynary corporation, a private charity. The property
was private property. The trustees were visitors, and the right to hold
the charter, administer the funds, and visit and govern the college, was
a franchise and privilege, solemnly granted to them. The use being
public in no way diminishes their legal estate in the property, or their
title to the franchise. There is no principle, nor any case, which
declares that a gift to such a corporation is a gift to the public. The
acts in question violate property. They take away privileges,
immunities, and franchises. They deny to the trustees the protection of
the law; and they are retrospective in their operation. In all which
respects they are against the constitution of New Hampshire.

The plaintiffs contend, in the second place, that the acts in question
are repugnant to the tenth section of the first article of the
Constitution of the United States. The material words of that section
are: "No State shall pass any bill of attainder, _ex post facto_ law, or
law impairing the obligation of contacts."

The object of these most important provisions in the national
constitution has often been discussed, both here and elsewhere. It is
exhibited with great clearness and force by one of the distinguished
persons who framed that instrument. "Bills of attainder, _ex post facto_
laws, and laws impairing the obligation of contracts, are contrary to
the first principles of the social compact, and to every principle of
sound legislation. The two former are expressly prohibited by the
declarations prefixed to some of the State constitutions, and all of
them are prohibited by the spirit and scope of these fundamental
charters. Our own experience has taught us, nevertheless, that
additional fences against these dangers ought not to be omitted. Very
properly, therefore, have the convention added this constitutional
bulwark, in favor of personal security and private rights; and I am much
deceived, if they have not, in so doing, as faithfully consulted the
genuine sentiments as the undoubted interests of their constituents. The
sober people of America are weary of the fluctuating policy which has
directed the public councils. They have seen with regret, and with
indignation, that sudden changes, and legislative interferences in cases
affecting personal rights, become jobs in the hands of enterprising and
influential speculators, and snares to the more industrious and less
informed part of the community. They have seen, too, that one
legislative interference is but the link of a long chain of repetitions;
every subsequent interference being naturally produced by the effects of
the preceding."[50]

It has already been decided in this court, that a _grant_ is a contract,
within the meaning of this provision; and that a grant by a State is
also a contract, as much as the grant of an individual. In the case of
_Fletcher v. Peck_[51] this court says: "A contract is a compact between
two or more parties, and is either executory or executed. An executory
contract is one in which a party binds himself to do, or not to do, a
particular thing; such was the law under which the conveyance was made
by the government. A contract executed is one in which the object of
contract is performed; and this, says Blackstone, differs in nothing
from a grant. The contract between Georgia and the purchasers was
executed by the grant. A contract executed, as well as one which is
executory, contains obligations binding on the parties. A grant, in its
own nature, amounts to an extinguishment of the right of the grantor,
and implies a contract not to reassert that right. If, under a fair
construction of the Constitution, grants are comprehended under the term
contracts, is a grant from the State excluded from the operation of the
provision? Is the clause to be considered as inhibiting the State from
impairing the obligation of contracts between two individuals, but as
excluding from that inhibition contracts made with itself? The words
themselves contain no such distinction. They are general, and are
applicable to contracts of every description. If contracts made with the
State are to be exempted from their operation, the exception must arise
from the character of the contracting party, not from the words which
are employed. Whatever respect might have been felt for the State
sovereignties, it is not to be disguised that the framers of the
Constitution viewed with some apprehension the violent acts which might
grow out of the feelings of the moment; and that the people of the
United States, in adopting that instrument, have manifested a
determination to shield themselves and their property from the effects
of those sudden and strong passions to which men are exposed. The
restrictions on the legislative power of the States are obviously
founded in this sentiment; and the Constitution of the United States
contains what may be deemed a bill of rights for the people of each
State."

It has also been decided, that a grant by a State before the Revolution
is as much to be protected as a grant since.[52] But the case of
_Terrett v. Taylor_, before cited, is of all others most pertinent to
the present argument. Indeed, the judgment of the court in that case
seems to leave little to be argued or decided in this. "A private
corporation," say the court, "created by the legislature, may lose its
franchises by a _misuser_ or a _nonuser_ of them; and they may be
resumed by the government under a judicial judgment upon a _quo
warranto_ to ascertain and enforce the forfeiture. This is the common
law of the land, and is a tacit condition annexed to the creation of
every such corporation. Upon a change of government, too, it may be
admitted, that such exclusive privileges attached to a private
corporation as are inconsistent with the new government may be
abolished. In respect, also, to _public_ corporations which exist only
for public purposes, such as counties, towns, cities, and so forth, the
legislature may, under proper limitations, have a right to change,
modify, enlarge, or restrain them, securing, however, the property for
the uses of those for whom and at whose expense it was originally
purchased. But that the legislature can repeal statutes creating private
corporations, or confirming to them property already acquired under the
faith of previous laws, and by such repeal can vest the property of such
corporations exclusively in the State, or dispose of the same to such
purposes as they please, without the consent or default of the
corporators, we are not prepared to admit; and we think ourselves
standing upon the principles of natural justice, upon the fundamental
laws of every free government, upon the spirit and letter of the
Constitution of the United States, and upon the decisions of most
respectable judicial tribunals, in resisting such a doctrine."

This court, then, does not admit the doctrine, that a legislature can
repeal statutes creating private corporations. If it cannot repeal them
altogether, of course it cannot repeal any part of them, or impair them,
or essentially alter them, without the consent of the corporators. If,
therefore, it has been shown that this college is to be regarded as a
private charity, this case is embraced within the very terms of that
decision. A grant of corporate powers and privileges is as much a
contract as a grant of land. What proves all charters of this sort to be
contracts is, that they must be accepted to give them force and effect.
If they are not accepted, they are void. And in the case of an existing
corporation, if a new charter is given it, it may even accept part and
reject the rest. In _Rex v. Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge_,[53] Lord
Mansfield says: "There is a vast deal of difference between a new
charter granted to a new corporation, (who must take it as it is given,)
and a new charter given to a corporation already in being, and acting
either under a former charter or under prescriptive usage. The latter, a
corporation already existing, are not obliged to accept the new charter
_in toto_, and to receive either all or none of it; they may act partly
under it, and partly under their old charter or prescription. The
validity of these new charters must turn upon the acceptance of them."
In the same case Mr. Justice Wilmot says: "It is the concurrence and
acceptance of the university that gives the force to the charter of the
crown." In the _King v. Pasmore_,[54] Lord Kenyon observes: "Some things
are clear: when a corporation exists capable of discharging its
functions, the crown cannot obtrude another charter upon them; they may
either accept or reject it."[55]

In all cases relative to charters, the acceptance of them is uniformly
alleged in the pleadings. This shows the general understanding of the
law, that they are grants or contracts; and that parties are necessary
to give them force and validity. In _King v. Dr. Askew_,[56] it is said:
"The crown cannot oblige a man to be a corporator, without his consent;
he shall not be subject to the inconveniences of it, without accepting
it and assenting to it." These terms, "acceptance" and "assent," are the
very language of contract. In _Ellis v. Marshall_,[57] it was expressly
adjudged that the naming of the defendant among others, in an act of
incorporation, did not of itself make him a corporator; and that his
assent was necessary to that end. The court speak of the act of
incorporation as a grant, and observe: "That a man may refuse a grant,
whether from the government or an individual, seems to be a principle
too clear to require the support of authorities." But Justice Buller, in
_King v. Pasmore_, furnishes, if possible, a still more direct and
explicit authority. Speaking of a corporation for government, he says:
"I do not know how to reason on this point better than in the manner
urged by one of the relator's counsel; who considered the grant of
incorporation to be a compact between the crown and a certain number of
the subjects, the latter of whom undertake, in consideration of the
privileges which are bestowed, to exert themselves for the good
government of the place." This language applies with peculiar propriety
and force to the case before the court. It was in consequence of the
"privileges bestowed," that Dr. Wheelock and his associates undertook to
exert themselves for the instruction and education of youth in this
college; and it was on the same consideration that the founder endowed
it with his property.

And because charters of incorporation are of the nature of contracts,
they cannot be altered or varied but by consent of the original parties.
If a charter be granted by the king, it may be altered by a new charter
granted by the king, and accepted by the corporators. But if the first
charter be granted by Parliament, the consent of Parliament must be
obtained to any alteration. In _King v. Miller_,[58] Lord Kenyon says:
"Where a corporation takes its rise from the king's charter, the king by
granting, and the corporation by accepting another charter, may alter
it, because it is done with the consent of all the parties who are
competent to consent to the alteration."[59]

There are, in this case, all the essential constituent parts of a
contract. There is something to be contracted about, there are parties,
and there are plain terms in which the agreement of the parties on the
subject of the contract is expressed. There are mutual considerations
and inducements. The charter recites, that the founder, on his part, has
agreed to establish his seminary in New Hampshire, and to enlarge it
beyond its original design, among other things, for the benefit of that
Province; and thereupon a charter is given to him and his associates,
designated by himself, promising and assuring to them, under the
plighted faith of the State, the right of governing the college and
administering its concerns in the manner provided in the charter. There
is a complete and perfect grant to them of all the power of
superintendence, visitation, and government. Is not this a contract? If
lands or money had been granted to him and his associates, for the same
purposes, such grant could not be rescinded. And is there any
difference, in legal contemplation, between a grant of corporate
franchises and a grant of tangible property? No such difference is
recognized in any decided case, nor does it exist in the common
apprehension of mankind.

It is therefore contended, that this case falls within the true meaning
of this provision of the Constitution, as expounded in the decisions of
this court; that the charter of 1769 is a contract, a stipulation or
agreement, mutual in its considerations, express and formal in its
terms, and of a most binding and solemn nature. That the acts in
question impair this contract, has already been sufficiently shown. They
repeal and abrogate its most essential parts.

A single observation may not be improper on the opinion of the court of
New Hampshire, which has been published. The learned judges who
delivered that opinion have viewed this question in a very different
light from that in which the plaintiffs have endeavored to exhibit it.
After some general remarks, they assume that this college is a public
corporation; and on this basis their judgment rests. Whether all
colleges are not regarded as private and eleemosynary corporations, by
all law writers and all judicial decisions; whether this college was not
founded by Dr. Wheelock; whether the charter was not granted at his
request, the better to execute a trust, which he had already created;
whether he and his associates did not become visitors, by the charter;
and whether Dartmouth College be not, therefore, in the strictest sense,
a private charity, are questions which the learned judges do not appear
to have discussed.

It is admitted in that opinion, that, if it be a private corporation,
its rights stand on the same ground as those of an individual. The great
question, therefore, to be decided is, To which class of corporations do
colleges thus founded belong? And the plaintiffs have endeavored to
satisfy the court, that, according to the well-settled principles and
uniform decisions of law, they are private, eleemosynary corporations.

Much has heretofore been said on the necessity of admitting such a power
in the legislature as has been assumed in this case. Many cases of
possible evil have been imagined, which might otherwise be without
remedy. Abuses, it is contended, might arise in the management of such
institutions, which the ordinary courts of law would be unable to
correct. But this is only another instance of that habit of supposing
extreme cases, and then of reasoning from them, which is the constant
refuge of those who are obliged to defend a cause, which, upon its
merits, is indefensible. It would be sufficient to say in answer, that
it is not pretended that there was here any such case of necessity. But
a still more satisfactory answer is, that the apprehension of danger is
groundless, and therefore the whole argument fails. Experience has not
taught us that there is danger of great evils or of great inconvenience
from this source. Hitherto, neither in our own country nor elsewhere
have such cases of necessity occurred. The judicial establishments of
the State are presumed to be competent to prevent abuses and violations
of trust, in cases of this kind, as well as in all others. If they be
not, they are imperfect, and their amendment would be a most proper
subject for legislative wisdom. Under the government and protection of
the general laws of the land, these institutions have always been found
safe, as well as useful. They go on, with the progress of society,
accommodating themselves easily, without sudden change or violence, to
the alterations which take place in its condition, and in the knowledge,
the habits, and pursuits of men. The English colleges were founded in
Catholic ages. Their religion was reformed with the general reformation
of the nation; and they are suited perfectly well to the purpose of
educating the Protestant youth of modern times. Dartmouth College was
established under a charter granted by the Provincial government; but a
better constitution for a college, or one more adapted to the condition
of things under the present government, in all material respects, could
not now be framed. Nothing in it was found to need alteration at the
Revolution. The wise men of that day saw in it one of the best hopes of
future times, and commended it as it was, with parental care, to the
protection and guardianship of the government of the State. A charter of
more liberal sentiments, of wiser provisions, drawn with more care, or
in a better spirit, could not be expected at any time or from any
source. The college needed no change in its organization or government.
That which it did need was the kindness, the patronage, the bounty of
the legislature; not a mock elevation to the character of a university,
without the solid benefit of a shilling's donation to sustain the
character; not the swelling and empty authority of establishing
institutes and other colleges. This unsubstantial pageantry would seem
to have been in derision of the scanty endowment and limited means of an
unobtrusive, but useful and growing seminary. Least of all was there a
necessity, or pretence of necessity, to infringe its legal rights,
violate its franchises and privileges, and pour upon it these
overwhelming streams of litigation.

But this argument from necessity would equally apply in all other cases.
If it be well founded, it would prove, that, whenever any inconvenience
or evil is experienced from the restrictions imposed on the legislature
by the Constitution, these restrictions ought to be disregarded. It is
enough to say, that the people have thought otherwise. They have, most
wisely, chosen to take the risk of occasional inconvenience from the
want of power, in order that there might be a settled limit to its
exercise, and a permanent security against its abuse. They have imposed
prohibitions and restraints; and they have not rendered these altogether
vain and nugatory by conferring the power of dispensation. If
inconvenience should arise which the legislature cannot remedy under the
power conferred upon it, it is not answerable for such inconvenience.
That which it cannot do within the limits prescribed to it, it cannot do
at all. No legislature in this country is able, and may the time never
come when it shall be able, to apply to itself the memorable expression
of a Roman pontiff: "Licet hoc _de jure_ non possumus, volumus tamen _de
plenitudine potestatis_."

The case before the court is not of ordinary importance, nor of
every-day occurrence. It affects not this college only, but every
college, and all the literary institutions of the country. They have
nourished hitherto, and have become in a high degree respectable and
useful to the community. They have all a common principle of existence,
the inviolability of their charters. It will be a dangerous, a most
dangerous experiment, to hold these institutions subject to the rise and
fall of popular parties, and the fluctuations of political opinions. If
the franchise may be at any time taken away, or impaired, the property
also may be taken away, or its use perverted. Benefactors will have no
certainty of effecting the object of their bounty; and learned men will
be deterred from devoting themselves to the service of such
institutions, from the precarious title of their offices. Colleges and
halls will be deserted by all better spirits, and become a theatre for
the contentions of politics. Party and faction will be cherished in the
places consecrated to piety and learning. These consequences are neither
remote nor possible only. They are certain and immediate.

When the court in North Carolina declared the law of the State, which
repealed a grant to its university, unconstitutional and void, the
legislature had the candor and the wisdom to repeal the law. This
example, so honorable to the State which exhibited it, is most fit to be
followed on this occasion. And there is good reason to hope that a
State, which has hitherto been so much distinguished for temperate
counsels, cautious legislation, and regard to law, will not fail to
adopt a course which will accord with her highest and best interests,
and in no small degree elevate her reputation.

It was for many and obvious reasons most anxiously desired that the
question of the power of the legislature over this charter should have
been finally decided in the State court. An earnest hope was
entertained that the judges of the court might have viewed the case in a
light favorable to the rights of the trustees. That hope has failed. It
is here that those rights are now to be maintained, or they are
prostrated for ever. "Omnia alia perfugia bonorum, subsidia, consilia,
auxilia, jura ceciderunt. Quem enim alium appellem? quem obtester? quem
implorem? Nisi hoc loco, nisi apud vos, nisi per vos, judices, salutem
nostram, quae spe exigua extremaque pendet, tenuerimus; nihil est
praeterea quo confugere possimus."


[Footnote 1: Calder et ux. v. Bull, 3 Dallas, 386.]

[Footnote 2: Annual Register, 1784, p. 160; Parl. Reg. 1783; Mr. Burke's
Speech on Mr. Fox's East India Bill, Burke's Works, Vol. II. pp. 414,
417, 467, 468, 486.]

[Footnote 3: 1 Black. 472, 473.]

[Footnote 4: 3 Burr. 1656.]

[Footnote 5: King v. Pasmore, 3 Term Rep. 244.]

[Footnote 6: King v. Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge, 3 Burr. 1656; 3 Term
Rep. 240,--Lord Kenyon.]

[Footnote 7: 3 Burr. 1661, and King v. Pasmore, _ubi supra_.]

[Footnote 8: Ellis v. Marshall, 2 Mass. Rep. 277; 1 Kyd on Corporations,
65, 66.]

[Footnote 9: 1 Wooddeson, 474; 1 Black. 467.]

[Footnote 10: 1 Black. 471.]

[Footnote 11: Ves. 537.]

[Footnote 12: 9 Ves. Jun. 405.]

[Footnote 13: 1 Wood. 474.]

[Footnote 14: 1 Black. 471.]

[Footnote 15: 2 Term Rep. 350, 351.]

[Footnote 16: 1 Black. 480.]

[Footnote 17: 1 Lord Raymond, 5; Comb. 265; Holt, 715; 1 Shower. 360; 4
Mod. 106; Skinn. 447.]

[Footnote 18: 1 Lord Raymond, 9.]

[Footnote 19: 1 Burn's Eccles. Law, 443, Appendix No. 3]

[Footnote 20: 2 Forb. 205, 206.]

[Footnote 21: Green v. Rutherforth, 1 Ves. 472, per Lord Hardwicke.]

[Footnote 22: Attorney-General v. Foundling Hospital, 2 Ves. Jun. 47.
See also 2 Kyd on Corporations, 195; Cooper's Equity Pleading, 292.]

[Footnote 23: St. John's College, Cambridge, v. Todington, 1 Burr. 200.]

[Footnote 24: Attorney-General v. Middleton, 2 Ves. 328.]

[Footnote 25: Green v. Rutherforth, _ubi supra_; St. John's College v.
Todington, _ubi supra_.]

[Footnote 26: 4 Term Rep. 233.]

[Footnote 27: Black., _ubi supra_.]

[Footnote 28: 2 Black. Com. 37.]

[Footnote 29: Sull. 41st Lect.]

[Footnote 30: Phillips v. Bury, and Green v. Rutherforth, _ubi supra_.
See also 2 Black. 21.]

[Footnote 31: Ashby v. White, 2 Lord Raymond, 938.]

[Footnote 32: Attorney-General v. Pearce, 2 Atk. 87.]

[Footnote 33: 2 Haywood's Rep.]

[Footnote 34: 9 Cranch, 43.]

[Footnote 35: 9 Cranch. 292.]

[Footnote 36: 3 Dallas, 394.]

[Footnote 37: Society v. Wheeler, 2 Gal. 103.]

[Footnote 38: 7 Johnson's Rep. 477.]

[Footnote 39: Bracton, Lib. 4, fol. 228. 2 Inst. 292.]

[Footnote 40: Dig. 50. 17. 75.]

[Footnote 41: Elements of the Civil Law, p. 168.]

[Footnote 42: Cod. 1. 14. 7.]

[Footnote 43: Perezii Praelect. h. t.]

[Footnote 44: Praelect. Juris. Civ., Vol. II. p. 545.]

[Footnote 45: 1 Black. Com. 44.]

[Footnote 46: Coke, 2 Inst. 46.]

[Footnote 47: Lord Raymond, 952.]

[Footnote 48: History of his own Times, Vol. III. p. 119.]

[Footnote 49: See a full account of this case in State Trials, 4th ed.,
Vol. IV. p. 262.]

[Footnote 50: The Federalist, No. 44, by Mr. Madison.]

[Footnote 51: 6 Cranch, 87.]

[Footnote 52: New Jersey v. Wilson, 7 Cranch, 164.]

[Footnote 53: 3 Burr. 1656.]

[Footnote 54: 3 Term Rep. 240.]

[Footnote 55: See also 1 Kyd on Corp. 65.]

[Footnote 56: 4 Burr. 2200.]

[Footnote 57: 2 Mass. Rep. 269.]

[Footnote 58: 6 Term Rep. 277.]

[Footnote 59: See also Ex parte Bolton School, 2 Brown's Ch. Rep. 662.]




FIRST SETTLEMENT OF NEW ENGLAND.

A DISCOURSE DELIVERED AT PLYMOUTH, ON THE 22D OF DECEMBER, 1820.


[The first public anniversary celebration of the landing of the Pilgrims
at Plymouth took place under the auspices of the "Old Colony Club," of
whose formation an account may be found in the interesting little work
of William S. Russell, Esq., entitled "Guide to Plymouth and
Recollections of the Pilgrims."

This club was formed for general purposes of social intercourse, in
1769; but its members determined, by a vote passed on Monday, the 18th
of December, of that year, "to keep" Friday, the 22d, in commemoration
of the landing of the fathers. A particular account of the simple
festivities of this first public celebration of the landing of the
Pilgrims will be found at page 220 of Mr. Russell's work.

The following year, the anniversary was celebrated much in the same
manner as in 1769, with the addition of a short address, pronounced
"with modest and decent firmness, by a member of the club, Edward
Winslow, Jr., Esq.," being the first address ever delivered on this
occasion.

In 1771, it was suggested by Rev. Chandler Robbins, pastor of the First
Church at Plymouth, in a letter addressed to the club, "whether it would
not be agreeable, for the entertainment and instruction of the rising
generation on these anniversaries, to have a sermon in public, some part
of the day, peculiarly adapted to the occasion." This recommendation
prevailed, and an appropriate discourse was delivered the following year
by the Rev. Dr. Robbins.

In 1773 the Old Colony Club was dissolved, in consequence of the
conflicting opinions of its members on the great political questions
then agitated. Notwithstanding this event, the anniversary celebrations
of the 22d of December continued without interruption till 1780, when
they were suspended. After an interval of fourteen years, a public
discourse was again delivered by the Rev. Dr. Robbins. Private
celebrations took place the four following years, and from that time
till the year 1819, with one or two exceptions, the day was annually
commemorated, and public addresses were delivered by distinguished
clergymen and laymen of Massachusetts.

In 1820 the "Pilgrim Society" was formed by the citizens of Plymouth and
the descendants of the Pilgrims in other places, desirous of uniting "to
commemorate the landing, and to honor the memory of the intrepid men who
first set foot on Plymouth rock." The foundation of this society gave a
new impulse to the anniversary celebrations of this great event. The
Hon. Daniel Webster was requested to deliver the public address on the
22d of December of that year, and the following discourse was pronounced
by him on the ever-memorable occasion. Great public expectation was
awakened by the fame of the orator; an immense concourse assembled at
Plymouth to unite in the celebration; and it may be safely anticipated,
that some portion of the powerful effect of the following address on the
minds of those who were so fortunate as to hear it, will be perpetuated
by the press to the latest posterity.

From 1820 to the present day, with occasional interruptions, the 22d of
December has been celebrated by the Pilgrim Society. A list of all those
by whom anniversary discourses have been delivered since the first
organization of the Old Colony Club, in 1769, may be found in Mr.
Russell's work.

Nor has the notice of the day been confined to New England. Public
celebrations of the landing of the Pilgrims have been frequent in other
parts of the country, particularly in New York. The New England Society
of that city has rarely permitted the day to pass without appropriate
honors. Similar societies have been formed at Philadelphia, Charleston,
S.C., and Cincinnati, and the day has been publicly commemorated in
several other parts of the country.]

Let us rejoice that we behold this day. Let us be thankful that we have
lived to see the bright and happy breaking of the auspicious morn, which
commences the third century of the history of New England. Auspicious,
indeed,--bringing a happiness beyond the common allotment of Providence
to men,--full of present joy, and gilding with bright beams the prospect
of futurity, is the dawn that awakens us to the commemoration of the
landing of the Pilgrims.

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. For ever honored be this, the place of our
fathers' refuge! For ever remembered the day which saw them, weary and
distressed, broken in every thing 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!

It is a noble faculty of our nature which enables us to connect our
thoughts, our sympathies, and our happiness with what is distant in
place or time; and, looking before and after, to hold communion at once
with our ancestors and our posterity. Human and mortal although we are,
we are nevertheless not mere insulated beings, without relation to the
past or the future. Neither the point of time, nor the spot of earth, in
which we physically live, bounds our rational and intellectual
enjoyments. We live in the past by a knowledge of its history; and in
the future, by hope and anticipation. By ascending to an association
with our ancestors; by contemplating their example and studying their
character; by partaking their sentiments, and imbibing their spirit; by
accompanying them in their toils, by sympathizing in their sufferings,
and rejoicing in their successes and their triumphs; we seem to belong
to their age, and to mingle our own existence with theirs. We become
their contemporaries, live the lives which they lived, endure what they
endured, and partake in the rewards which they enjoyed. And in like
manner, by running along the line of future time, by contemplating the
probable fortunes of those who are coming after us, by attempting
something which may promote their happiness, and leave some not
dishonorable memorial of ourselves for their regard, when we shall sleep
with the fathers, we protract our own earthly being, and seem to crowd
whatever is future, as well as all that is past, into the narrow compass
of our earthly existence. As it is not a vain and false, but an exalted
and religious imagination, which leads us to raise our thoughts from the
orb, which, amidst this universe of worlds, the Creator has given us to
inhabit, and to send them with something of the feeling which nature
prompts, and teaches to be proper among children of the same Eternal
Parent, to the contemplation of the myriads of fellow-beings with which
his goodness has peopled the infinite of space; so neither is it false
or vain to consider ourselves as interested and connected with our whole
race, through all time; allied to our ancestors; allied to our
posterity; closely compacted on all sides with others; ourselves being
but links in the great chain of being, which begins with the origin of
our race, runs onward through its successive generations, binding
together the past, the present, and the future, and terminating at last,
with the consummation of all things earthly, at the throne of God.

There may be, and there often is, indeed, a regard for ancestry, which
nourishes only a weak pride; as there is also a care for posterity,
which only disguises an habitual avarice, or hides the workings of a low
and grovelling vanity. But there is also a moral and philosophical
respect for our ancestors, which elevates the character and improves the
heart. Next to the sense of religious duty and moral feeling, I hardly
know what should bear with stronger obligation on a liberal and
enlightened mind, than a consciousness of alliance with excellence which
is departed; and a consciousness, too, that in its acts and conduct, and
even in its sentiments and thoughts, it may be actively operating on the
happiness of those who come after it. Poetry is found to have few
stronger conceptions, by which it would affect or overwhelm the mind,
than those in which it presents the moving and speaking image of the
departed dead to the senses of the living. This belongs to poetry, only
because it is congenial to our nature. Poetry is, in this respect, but
the handmaid of true philosophy and morality; it deals with us as human
beings, naturally reverencing those whose visible connection with this
state of existence is severed, and who may yet exercise we know not what
sympathy with ourselves; and when it carries us forward, also, and shows
us the long continued result of all the good we do, in the prosperity of
those who follow us, till it bears us from ourselves, and absorbs us in
an intense interest for what shall happen to the generations after us,
it speaks only in the language of our nature, and affects us with
sentiments which belong to us as human beings.

Standing in this relation to our ancestors and our posterity, we are
assembled on this memorable spot, to perform the duties which that
relation and the present occasion impose upon us. We have come to this
Rock, to record here our homage for our Pilgrim Fathers; our sympathy in
their sufferings; our gratitude for their labors; our admiration of
their virtues; our veneration for their piety; and our attachment to
those principles of civil and religious liberty, which they encountered
the dangers of the ocean, the storms of heaven, the violence of savages,
disease, exile, and famine, to enjoy and to establish. And we would
leave here, also, for the generations which are rising up rapidly to
fill our places, some proof that we have endeavored to transmit the
great inheritance unimpaired; that in our estimate of public principles
and private virtue, in our veneration of religion and piety, in our
devotion to civil and religious liberty, in our regard for whatever
advances human knowledge or improves human happiness, we are not
altogether unworthy of our origin.

There is a local feeling connected with this occasion, too strong to be
resisted; a sort of _genius of the place_, which inspires and awes us.
We feel that we are on the spot where the first scene of our history was
laid; where the hearths and altars of New England were first placed;
where Christianity, and civilization, and letters made their first
lodgement, in a vast extent of country, covered with a wilderness, and
peopled by roving barbarians. We are here, at the season of the year at
which the event took place. The imagination irresistibly and rapidly
draws around us the principal features and the leading characters in the
original scene. We cast our eyes abroad on the ocean, and we see where
the little bark, with the interesting group upon its deck, made its slow
progress to the shore. We look around us, and behold the hills and
promontories where the anxious eyes of our fathers first saw the places
of habitation and of rest. We feel the cold which benumbed, and listen
to the winds which pierced them. Beneath us is the Rock,[1] on which New
England received the feet of the Pilgrims. We seem even to behold them,
as they struggle with the elements, and, with toilsome efforts, gain the
shore. We listen to the chiefs in council; we see the unexampled
exhibition of female fortitude and resignation; we hear the whisperings
of youthful impatience, and we see, what a painter of our own has also
represented by his pencil,[2] chilled and shivering childhood,
houseless, but for a mother's arms, couchless, but for a mother's
breast, till our own blood almost freezes. The mild dignity of Carver
and of Bradford; the decisive and soldier-like air and manner of
Standish; the devout Brewster; the enterprising Allerton;[3] the general
firmness and thoughtfulness of the whole band; their conscious joy for
dangers escaped; their deep solicitude about dangers to come; their
trust in Heaven; their high religious faith, full of confidence and
anticipation; all of these seem to belong to this place, and to be
present upon this occasion, to fill us with reverence and admiration.

The settlement of New England by the colony which landed here[4] on the
twenty-second[5] of December, sixteen hundred and twenty, although not
the first European establishment in what now constitutes the United
States, was yet so peculiar in its causes and character, and has been
followed and must still be followed by such consequences, as to give it
a high claim to lasting commemoration. On these causes and consequences,
more than on its immediately attendant circumstances, its importance, as
an historical event, depends. Great actions and striking occurrences,
having excited a temporary admiration, often pass away and are
forgotten, because they leave no lasting results, affecting the
prosperity and happiness of communities. Such is frequently the fortune
of the most brilliant military achievements. Of the ten thousand battles
which have been fought, of all the fields fertilized with carnage, of
the banners which have been bathed in blood, of the warriors who have
hoped that they had risen from the field of conquest to a glory as
bright and as durable as the stars, how few that continue long to
interest mankind! The victory of yesterday is reversed by the defeat of
to-day; the star of military glory, rising like a meteor, like a meteor
has fallen; disgrace and disaster hang on the heels of conquest and
renown; victor and vanquished presently pass away to oblivion, and the
world goes on in its course, with the loss only of so many lives and so
much treasure.

But if this be frequently, or generally, the fortune of military
achievements, it is not always so. There are enterprises, military as
well as civil, which sometimes check the current of events, give a new
turn to human affairs, and transmit their consequences through ages. We
see their importance in their results, and call them great, because
great things follow. There have been battles which have fixed the fate
of nations. These come down to us in history with a solid and permanent
interest, not created by a display of glittering armor, the rush of
adverse battalions, the sinking and rising of pennons, the flight, the
pursuit, and the victory; but by their effect in advancing or retarding
human knowledge, in overthrowing or establishing despotism, in extending
or destroying human happiness. When the traveller pauses on the plain of
Marathon, what are the emotions which most strongly agitate his breast?
What is that glorious recollection, which thrills through his frame, and
suffuses his eyes? Not, I imagine, that Grecian skill and Grecian valor
were here most signally displayed; but that Greece herself was saved. It
is because to this spot, and to the event which has rendered it
immortal, he refers all the succeeding glories of the republic. It is
because, if that day had gone otherwise, Greece had perished. It is
because he perceives that her philosophers and orators, her poets and
painters, her sculptors and architects, her governments and free
institutions, point backward to Marathon, and that their future
existence seems to have been suspended on the contingency, whether the
Persian or the Grecian banner should wave victorious in the beams of
that day's setting sun. And, as his imagination kindles at the
retrospect, he is transported back to the interesting moment; he counts
the fearful odds of the contending hosts; his interest for the result
overwhelms him; he trembles, as if it were still uncertain, and seems to
doubt whether he may consider Socrates and Plato, Demosthenes,
Sophocles, and Phidias, as secure, yet, to himself and to the world.

"If we conquer," said the Athenian commander on the approach of that
decisive day, "if we conquer, we shall make Athens the greatest city of
Greece."[6] A prophecy how well fulfilled! "If God prosper us," might
have been the more appropriate language of our fathers, when they landed
upon this Rock, "if God prosper us, we shall here begin a work which
shall last for ages; we shall plant here a new society, in the
principles of the fullest liberty and the purest religion; we shall
subdue this wilderness which is before us; we shall fill this region of
the great continent, which stretches almost from pole to pole, with
civilization and Christianity; the temples of the true God shall rise,
where now ascends the smoke of idolatrous sacrifice; fields and gardens,
the flowers of summer, and the waving and golden harvest of autumn,
shall spread over a thousand hills, and stretch along a thousand
valleys, never yet, since the creation, reclaimed to the use of
civilized man. We shall whiten this coast with the canvas of a
prosperous commerce; we shall stud the long and winding shore with a
hundred cities. That which we sow in weakness shall be raised in
strength. From our sincere, but houseless worship, there shall spring
splendid temples to record God's goodness; from the simplicity of our
social union, there shall arise wise and politic constitutions of
government, full of the liberty which we ourselves bring and breathe;
from our zeal for learning, institutions shall spring which shall
scatter the light of knowledge throughout the land, and, in time, paying
back where they have borrowed, shall contribute their part to the great
aggregate of human knowledge; and our descendants, through all
generations, shall look back to this spot, and to this hour, with
unabated affection and regard."

A brief remembrance of the causes which led to the settlement of this
place; some account of the peculiarities and characteristic qualities of
that settlement, as distinguished from other instances of colonization;
a short notice of the progress of New England in the great interests of
society, during the century which is now elapsed; with a few
observations on the principles upon which society and government are
established in this country; comprise all that can be attempted, and
much more than can be satisfactorily performed, on the present occasion.

Of the motives which influenced the first settlers to a voluntary exile,
induced them to relinquish their native country, and to seek an asylum
in this then unexplored wilderness, the first and principal, no doubt,
were connected with religion. They sought to enjoy a higher degree of
religious freedom, and what they esteemed a purer form of religious
worship, than was allowed to their choice, or presented to their
imitation, in the Old World. The love of religious liberty is a stronger
sentiment, when fully excited, than an attachment to civil or political
freedom. That freedom which the conscience demands, and which men feel
bound by their hope of salvation to contend for, can hardly fail to be
attained. Conscience, in the cause of religion and the worship of the
Deity, prepares the mind to act and to suffer beyond almost all other
causes. It sometimes gives an impulse so irresistible, that no fetters
of power or of opinion can withstand it. History instructs us that this
love of religious liberty, a compound sentiment in the breast of man,
made up of the clearest sense of right and the highest conviction of
duty, is able to look the sternest despotism in the face, and, with
means apparently most inadequate, to shake principalities and powers.
There is a boldness, a spirit of daring, in religious reformers, not to
be measured by the general rules which control men's purposes and
actions. If the hand of power be laid upon it, this only seems to
augment its force and its elasticity, and to cause its action to be more
formidable and violent. Human invention has devised nothing, human
power has compassed nothing, that can forcibly restrain it, when it
breaks forth. Nothing can stop it, but to give way to it; nothing can
check it, but indulgence. It loses its power only when it has gained its
object. The principle of toleration, to which the world has come so
slowly, is at once the most just and the most wise of all principles.
Even when religious feeling takes a character of extravagance and
enthusiasm, and seems to threaten the order of society and shake the
columns of the social edifice, its principal danger is in its restraint.
If it be allowed indulgence and expansion, like the elemental fires, it
only agitates, and perhaps purifies, the atmosphere; while its efforts
to throw off restraint would burst the world asunder.

It is certain, that, although many of them were republicans in
principle, we have no evidence that our New England ancestors would have
emigrated, as they did, from their own native country, would have become
wanderers in Europe, and finally would have undertaken the establishment
of a colony here, merely from their dislike of the political systems of
Europe. They fled not so much from the civil government, as from the
hierarchy, and the laws which enforced conformity to the church
establishment. Mr. Robinson had left England as early as 1608, on
account of the persecutions for non-conformity, and had retired to
Holland. He left England from no disappointed ambition in affairs of
state, from no regrets at the want of preferment in the church, nor from
any motive of distinction or of gain. Uniformity in matters of religion
was pressed with such extreme rigor, that a voluntary exile seemed the
most eligible mode of escaping from the penalties of non-compliance. The
accession of Elizabeth had, it is true, quenched the fires of
Smithfield, and put an end to the easy acquisition of the crown of
martyrdom. Her long reign had established the Reformation, but
toleration was a virtue beyond her conception, and beyond the age. She
left no example of it to her successor; and he was not of a character
which rendered a sentiment either so wise or so liberal would originate
with him. At the present period it seems incredible that the learned,
accomplished, unassuming, and inoffensive Robinson should neither be
tolerated in his peaceable mode of worship in his own country, nor
suffered quietly to depart from it. Yet such was the fact. He left his
country by stealth, that he might elsewhere enjoy those rights which
ought to belong to men in all countries. The departure of the Pilgrims
for Holland is deeply interesting, from its circumstances, and also as
it marks the character of the times, independently of its connection
with names now incorporated with the history of empire. The embarkation
was intended to be made in such a manner that it might escape the notice
of the officers of government. Great pains had been taken to secure
boats, which should come undiscovered to the shore, and receive the
fugitives; and frequent disappointments had been experienced in this
respect.

At length the appointed time came, bringing with it unusual severity of
cold and rain. An unfrequented and barren heath, on the shores of
Lincolnshire, was the selected spot, where the feet of the Pilgrims were
to tread, for the last time, the land of their fathers. The vessel which
was to receive them did not come until the next day, and in the mean
time the little band was collected, and men and women and children and
baggage were crowded together, in melancholy and distressed confusion.
The sea was rough, and the women and children were already sick, from
their passage down the river to the place of embarkation on the sea. At
length the wished-for boat silently and fearfully approaches the shore,
and men and women and children, shaking with fear and with cold, as many
as the small vessel could bear, venture off on a dangerous sea.
Immediately the advance of horses is heard from behind, armed men
appear, and those not yet embarked are seized and taken into custody. In
the hurry of the moment, the first parties had been sent on board
without any attempt to keep members of the same family together, and on
account of the appearance of the horsemen, the boat never returned for
the residue. Those who had got away, and those who had not, were in
equal distress. A storm, of great violence and long duration, arose at
sea, which not only protracted the voyage, rendered distressing by the
want of all those accommodations which the interruption of the
embarkation had occasioned, but also forced the vessel out of her
course, and menaced immediate shipwreck; while those on shore, when they
were dismissed from the custody of the officers of justice, having no
longer homes or houses to retire to, and their friends and protectors
being already gone, became objects of necessary charity, as well as of
deep commiseration.

As this scene passes before us, we can hardly forbear asking whether
this be a band of malefactors and felons flying from justice. What are
their crimes, that they hide themselves in darkness? To what punishment
are they exposed, that, to avoid it, men, and women, and children, thus
encounter the surf of the North Sea and the terrors of a night storm?
What induces this armed pursuit, and this arrest of fugitives, of all
ages and both sexes? Truth does not allow us to answer these inquiries
in a manner that does credit to the wisdom or the justice of the times.
This was not the flight of guilt, but of virtue. It was an humble and
peaceable religion, flying from causeless oppression. It was conscience,
attempting to escape from the arbitrary rule of the Stuarts. It was
Robinson and Brewster, leading off their little band from their native
soil, at first to find shelter on the shore of the neighboring
continent, but ultimately to come hither; and having surmounted all
difficulties and braved a thousand dangers, to find here a place of
refuge and of rest. Thanks be to God, that this spot was honored as the
asylum of religious liberty! May its standard, reared here, remain for
ever! May it rise up as high as heaven, till its banner shall fan the
air of both continents, and wave as a glorious ensign of peace and
security to the nations!

The peculiar character, condition, and circumstances of the colonies
which introduced civilization and an English race into New England,
afford a most interesting and extensive topic of discussion. On these,
much of our subsequent character and fortune has depended. Their
influence has essentially affected our whole history, through the two
centuries which have elapsed; and as they have become intimately
connected with government, laws, and property, as well as with our
opinions on the subjects of religion and civil liberty, that influence
is likely to continue to be felt through the centuries which shall
succeed. Emigration from one region to another, and the emission of
colonies to people countries more or less distant from the residence of
the parent stock, are common incidents in the history of mankind; but it
has not often, perhaps never, happened, that the establishment of
colonies should be attempted under circumstances, however beset with
present difficulties and dangers, yet so favorable to ultimate success,
and so conducive to magnificent results, as those which attended the
first settlements on this part of the American continent. In other
instances, emigration has proceeded from a less exalted purpose, in
periods of less general intelligence, or more without plan and by
accident; or under circumstances, physical and moral, less favorable to
the expectation of laying a foundation for great public prosperity and
future empire.

A great resemblance exists, obviously, between all the English colonies
established within the present limits of the United States; but the
occasion attracts our attention more immediately to those which took
possession of New England, and the peculiarities of these furnish a
strong contrast with most other instances of colonization.

Among the ancient nations, the Greeks, no doubt, sent forth from their
territories the greatest number of colonies. So numerous, indeed, were
they, and so great the extent of space over which they were spread, that
the parent country fondly and naturally persuaded herself, that by
means of them she had laid a sure foundation for the universal
civilization of the world. These establishments, from obvious causes,
were most numerous in places most contiguous; yet they were found on the
coasts of France, on the shores of the Euxine Sea, in Africa, and even,
as is alleged, on the borders of India. These emigrations appear to have
been sometimes voluntary and sometimes compulsory; arising from the
spontaneous enterprise of individuals, or the order and regulation of
government. It was a common opinion with ancient writers, that they were
undertaken in religious obedience to the commands of oracles, and it is
probable that impressions of this sort might have had more or less
influence; but it is probable, also, that on these occasions the oracles
did not speak a language dissonant from the views and purposes of the
state.

Political science among the Greeks seems never to have extended to the
comprehension of a system, which should be adequate to the government of
a great nation upon principles of liberty. They were accustomed only to
the contemplation of small republics, and were led to consider an
augmented population as incompatible with free institutions. The desire
of a remedy for this supposed evil, and the wish to establish marts for
trade, led the governments often to undertake the establishment of
colonies as an affair of state expediency. Colonization and commerce,
indeed, would naturally become objects of interest to an ingenious and
enterprising people, inhabiting a territory closely circumscribed in its
limits, and in no small part mountainous and sterile; while the islands
of the adjacent seas, and the promontories and coasts of the neighboring
continents, by their mere proximity, strongly solicited the excited
spirit of emigration. Such was this proximity, in many instances, that
the new settlements appeared rather to be the mere extension of
population over contiguous territory, than the establishment of distant
colonies. In proportion as they were near to the parent state, they
would be under its authority, and partake of its fortunes. The colony at
Marseilles might perceive lightly, or not at all, the sway of Phocis;
while the islands in the Aegean Sea could hardly attain to independence
of their Athenian origin. Many of these establishments took place at an
early age; and if there were defects in the governments of the parent
states, the colonists did not possess philosophy or experience
sufficient to correct such evils in their own institutions, even if they
had not been, by other causes, deprived of the power. An immediate
necessity, connected with the support of life, was the main and direct
inducement to these undertakings, and there could hardly exist more than
the hope of a successful imitation of institutions with which they were
already acquainted, and of holding an equality with their neighbors in
the course of improvement. The laws and customs, both political and
municipal, as well as the religious worship of the parent city, were
transferred to the colony; and the parent city herself, with all such of
her colonies as were not too far remote for frequent intercourse and
common sentiments, would appear like a family of cities, more or less
dependent, and more or less connected. We know how imperfect this system
was, as a system of general politics, and what scope it gave to those
mutual dissensions and conflicts which proved so fatal to Greece.

But it is more pertinent to our present purpose to observe, that nothing
existed in the character of Grecian emigrations, or in the spirit and
intelligence of the emigrants, likely to give a new and important
direction to human affairs, or a new impulse to the human mind. Their
motives were not high enough, their views were not sufficiently large
and prospective. They went not forth, like our ancestors, to erect
systems of more perfect civil liberty, or to enjoy a higher degree of
religious freedom. Above all, there was nothing in the religion and
learning of the age, that could either inspire high purposes, or give
the ability to execute them. Whatever restraints on civil liberty, or
whatever abuses in religious worship, existed at the time of our
fathers' emigration, yet even then all was light in the moral and mental
world, in comparison with its condition in most periods of the ancient
states. The settlement of a new continent, in an age of progressive
knowledge and improvement, could not but do more than merely enlarge the
natural boundaries of the habitable world. It could not but do much more
even than extend commerce and increase wealth among the human race. We
see how this event has acted, how it must have acted, and wonder only
why it did not act sooner, in the production of moral effects, on the
state of human knowledge, the general tone of human sentiments, and the
prospects of human happiness. It gave to civilized man not only a new
continent to be inhabited and cultivated, and new seas to be explored;
but it gave him also a new range for his thoughts, new objects for
curiosity, and new excitements to knowledge and improvement.

Roman colonization resembled, far less than that of the Greeks, the
original settlements of this country. Power and dominion were the
objects of Rome, even in her colonial establishments. Her whole exterior
aspect was for centuries hostile and terrific. She grasped at dominion,
from India to Britain, and her measures of colonization partook of the
character of her general system. Her policy was military, because her
objects were power, ascendency, and subjugation. Detachments of
emigrants from Rome incorporated themselves with, and governed, the
original inhabitants of conquered countries. She sent citizens where she
had first sent soldiers; her law followed her sword. Her colonies were a
sort of military establishment; so many advanced posts in the career of
her dominion. A governor from Rome ruled the new colony with absolute
sway, and often with unbounded rapacity. In Sicily, in Gaul, in Spain,
and in Asia, the power of Rome prevailed, not nominally only, but really
and effectually. Those who immediately exercised it were Roman; the tone
and tendency of its administration, Roman. Rome herself continued to be
the heart and centre of the great system which she had established.
Extortion and rapacity, finding a wide and often rich field of action in
the provinces, looked nevertheless to the banks of the Tiber, as the
scene in which their ill-gotten treasures should be displayed; or, if a
spirit of more honest acquisition prevailed, the object, nevertheless,
was ultimate enjoyment in Rome itself. If our own history and our own
times did not sufficiently expose the inherent and incurable evils of
provincial government, we might see them portrayed, to our amazement, in
the desolated and ruined provinces of the Roman empire. We might hear
them, in a voice that terrifies us, in those strains of complaint and
accusation, which the advocates of the provinces poured forth in the
Roman Forum:--"Quas res luxuries in flagitiis, crudelitas in suppliciis,
avaritia in rapinis, superbia in contumeliis, efficere potuisset, eas
omnes sese pertulisse."

As was to be expected, the Roman Provinces partook of the fortunes, as
well as of the sentiments and general character, of the seat of empire.
They lived together with her, they flourished with her, and fell with
her. The branches were lopped away even before the vast and venerable
trunk itself fell prostrate to the earth. Nothing had proceeded from her
which could support itself, and bear up the name of its origin, when her
own sustaining arm should be enfeebled or withdrawn. It was not given to
Rome to see, either at her zenith or in her decline, a child of her own,
distant, indeed, and independent of her control, yet speaking her
language and inheriting her blood, springing forward to a competition
with her own power, and a comparison with her own great renown. She saw
not a vast region of the earth peopled from her stock, full of states
and political communities, improving upon the models of her
institutions, and breathing in fuller measure the spirit which she had
breathed in the best periods of her existence; enjoying and extending
her arts and her literature; rising rapidly from political childhood to
manly strength and independence; her offspring, yet now her equal;
unconnected with the causes which might affect the duration of her own
power and greatness; of common origin, but not linked to a common fate;
giving ample pledge, that her name should not be forgotten, that her
language should not cease to be used among men; that whatsoever she had
done for human knowledge and human happiness should be treasured up and
preserved; that the record of her existence and her achievements should
not be obscured, although, in the inscrutable purposes of Providence, it
might be her destiny to fall from opulence and splendor; although the
time might come, when darkness should settle on all her hills; when
foreign or domestic violence should overturn her altars and her temples;
when ignorance and despotism should fill the places where Laws, and
Arts, and Liberty had flourished; when the feet of barbarism should
trample on the tombs of her consuls, and the walls of her senate-house
and forum echo only to the voice of savage triumph. She saw not this
glorious vision, to inspire and fortify her against the possible decay
or downfall of her power. Happy are they who in our day may behold it,
if they shall contemplate it with the sentiments which it ought to
inspire!

The New England Colonies differ quite as widely from the Asiatic
establishments of the modern European nations, as from the models of the
ancient states. The sole object of those establishments was originally
trade; although we have seen, in one of them, the anomaly of a mere
trading company attaining a political character, disbursing revenues,
and maintaining armies and fortresses, until it has extended its control
over seventy millions of people. Differing from these, and still more
from the New England and North American Colonies, are the European
settlements in the West India Islands. It is not strange, that, when
men's minds were turned to the settlement of America, different objects
should be proposed by those who emigrated to the different regions of so
vast a country. Climate, soil, and condition were not all equally
favorable to all pursuits. In the West Indies, the purpose of those who
went thither was to engage in that species of agriculture, suited to the
soil and climate, which seems to bear more resemblance to commerce than
to the hard and plain tillage of New England. The great staples of these
countries, being partly an agricultural and partly a manufactured
product, and not being of the necessaries of life, become the object of
calculation, with respect to a profitable investment of capital, like
any other enterprise of trade or manufacture. The more especially, as,
requiring, by necessity or habit, slave labor for their production, the
capital necessary to carry on the work of this production is very
considerable. The West Indies are resorted to, therefore, rather for the
investment of capital than for the purpose of sustaining life by
personal labor. Such as possess a considerable amount of capital, or
such as choose to adventure in commercial speculations without capital,
can alone be fitted to be emigrants to the islands. The agriculture of
these regions, as before observed, is a sort of commerce; and it is a
species of employment in which labor seems to form an inconsiderable
ingredient in the productive causes, since the portion of white labor is
exceedingly small, and slave labor is rather more like profit on stock
or capital than _labor_ properly so called. The individual who
undertakes an establishment of this kind takes into the account the cost
of the necessary number of slaves, in the same manner as he calculates
the cost of the land. The uncertainty, too, of this species of
employment, affords another ground of resemblance to commerce. Although
gainful on the whole, and in a series of years, it is often very
disastrous for a single year, and, as the capital is not readily
invested in other pursuits, bad crops or bad markets not only affect the
profits, but the capital itself. Hence the sudden depressions which take
place in the value of such estates.

But the great and leading observation, relative to these establishments,
remains to be made. It is, that the owners of the soil and of the
capital seldom consider themselves _at home_ in the colony. A very
great portion of the soil itself is usually owned in the mother country;
a still greater is mortgaged for capital obtained there; and, in
general, those who are to derive an interest from the products look to
the parent country as the place for enjoyment of their wealth. The
population is therefore constantly fluctuating. Nobody comes but to
return. A constant succession of owners, agents, and factors takes
place. Whatsoever the soil, forced by the unmitigated toil of slavery,
can yield, is sent home to defray rents, and interest, and agencies, or
to give the means of living in a better society. In such a state, it is
evident that no spirit of permanent improvement is likely to spring up.
Profits will not be invested with a distant view of benefiting
posterity. Roads and canals will hardly be built; schools will not be
founded; colleges will not be endowed. There will be few fixtures in
society; no principles of utility or of elegance, planted now, with the
hope of being developed and expanded hereafter. Profit, immediate
profit, must be the principal active spring in the social system. There
may be many particular exceptions to these general remarks, but the
outline of the whole is such as is here drawn.

Another most important consequence of such a state of things is, that no
idea of independence of the parent country is likely to arise; unless,
indeed, it should spring up in a form that would threaten universal
desolation. The inhabitants have no strong attachment to the place which
they inhabit. The hope of a great portion of them is to leave it; and
their great desire, to leave it soon. However useful they may be to the
parent state, how much soever they may add to the conveniences and
luxuries of life, these colonies are not favored spots for the expansion
of the human mind, for the progress of permanent improvement, or for
sowing the seeds of future independent empire.

Different, indeed, most widely different, from all these instances of
emigration and plantation, were the condition, the purposes, and the
prospects of our fathers, when they established their infant colony upon
this spot. They came hither to a land from which they were never to
return. Hither they had brought, and here they were to fix, their hopes,
their attachments, and their objects in life. Some natural tears they
shed, as they left the pleasant abodes of their fathers, and some
emotions they suppressed, when the white cliffs of their native country,
now seen for the last time, grew dim to their sight. They were acting,
however, upon a resolution not to be daunted. With whatever stifled
regrets, with whatever occasional hesitation, with whatever appalling
apprehensions, which might sometimes arise with force to shake the
firmest purpose, they had yet committed themselves to Heaven and the
elements; and a thousand leagues of water soon interposed to separate
them for ever from the region which gave them birth. A new existence
awaited them here; and when they saw these shores, rough, cold,
barbarous, and barren, as then they were, they beheld their country.
That mixed and strong feeling, which we call love of country, and which
is, in general, never extinguished in the heart of man, grasped and
embraced its proper object here. Whatever constitutes _country_, except
the earth and the sun, all the moral causes of affection and attachment
which operate upon the heart, they had brought with them to their new
abode. Here were now their families and friends, their homes, and their
property. Before they reached the shore, they had established the
elements of a social system,[7] and at a much earlier period had settled
their forms of religious worship. At the moment of their landing,
therefore, they possessed institutions of government, and institutions
of religion: and friends and families, and social and religious
institutions, framed by consent, founded on choice and preference, how
nearly do these fill up our whole idea of country! The morning that
beamed on the first night of their repose saw the Pilgrims already _at
home_ in their country. There were political institutions, and civil
liberty, and religious worship. Poetry has fancied nothing, in the
wanderings of heroes, so distinct and characteristic. Here was man,
indeed, unprotected, and unprovided for, on the shore of a rude and
fearful wilderness; but it was politic, intelligent, and educated man.
Every thing was civilized but the physical world. Institutions,
containing in substance all that ages had done for human government,
were organized in a forest. Cultivated mind was to act on uncultivated
nature; and, more than all, a government and a country were to commence,
with the very first foundations laid under the divine light of the
Christian religion. Happy auspices of a happy futurity! Who would wish
that his country's existence had otherwise begun? Who would desire the
power of going back to the ages of fable? Who would wish for an origin
obscured in the darkness of antiquity? Who would wish for other
emblazoning of his country's heraldry, or other ornaments of her
genealogy, than to be able to say, that her first existence was with
intelligence, her first breath the inspiration of liberty, her first
principle the truth of divine religion?

Local attachments and sympathies would ere long spring up in the breasts
of our ancestors, endearing to them the place of their refuge. Whatever
natural objects are associated with interesting scenes and high efforts
obtain a hold on human feeling, and demand from the heart a sort of
recognition and regard. This Rock soon became hallowed in the esteem of
the Pilgrims,[8] and these hills grateful to their sight. Neither they
nor their children were again to till the soil of England, nor again to
traverse the seas which surround her.[9] But here was a new sea, now
open to their enterprise, and a new soil, which had not failed to
respond gratefully to their laborious industry, and which was already
assuming a robe of verdure. Hardly had they provided shelter for the
living, ere they were summoned to erect sepulchres for the dead. The
ground had become sacred, by enclosing the remains of some of their
companions and connections. A parent, a child, a husband, or a wife, had
gone the way of all flesh, and mingled with the dust of New England. We
naturally look with strong emotions to the spot, though it be a
wilderness, where the ashes of those we have loved repose. Where the
heart has laid down what it loved most, there it is desirous of laying
itself down. No sculptured marble, no enduring monument, no honorable
inscription, no ever-burning taper that would drive away the darkness of
the tomb, can soften our sense of the reality of death, and hallow to
our feelings the ground which is to cover us, like the consciousness
that we shall sleep, dust to dust, with the objects of our affections.

In a short time other causes sprung up to bind the Pilgrims with new
cords to their chosen land. Children were born, and the hopes of future
generations arose, in the spot of their new habitation. The second
generation found this the land of their nativity, and saw that they were
bound to its fortunes. They beheld their fathers' graves around them,
and while they read the memorials of their toils and labors, they
rejoiced in the inheritance which they found bequeathed to them.

Under the influence of these causes, it was to be expected that an
interest and a feeling should arise here, entirely different from the
interest and feeling of mere Englishmen; and all the subsequent history
of the Colonies proves this to have actually and gradually taken place.
With a general acknowledgment of the supremacy of the British crown,
there was, from the first, a repugnance to an entire submission to the
control of British legislation. The Colonies stood upon their charters,
which, as they contended, exempted them from the ordinary power of the
British Parliament, and authorized them to conduct their own concerns by
their own counsels. They utterly resisted the notion that they were to
be ruled by the mere authority of the government at home, and would not
endure even that their own charter governments should be established on
the other side of the Atlantic. It was not a controlling or protecting
board in England, but a government of their own, and existing
immediately within their limits, which could satisfy their wishes. It
was easy to foresee, what we know also to have happened, that the first
great cause of collision and jealousy would be, under the notion of
political economy then and still prevalent in Europe, an attempt on the
part of the mother country to monopolize the trade of the Colonies.
Whoever has looked deeply into the causes which produced our Revolution
has found, if I mistake not, the original principle far back in this
claim, on the part of England, to monopolize our trade, and a continued
effort on the part of the Colonies to resist or evade that monopoly; if,
indeed, it be not still more just and philosophical to go farther back,
and to consider it decided, that an independent government must arise
here, the moment it was ascertained that an English colony, such as
landed in this place, could sustain itself against the dangers which
surrounded it, and, with other similar establishments, overspread the
land with an English population. Accidental causes retarded at times,
and at times accelerated, the progress of the controversy. The Colonies
wanted strength, and time gave it to them. They required measures of
strong and palpable injustice, on the part of the mother country, to
justify resistance; the early part of the late king's reign furnished
them. They needed spirits of high order, of great daring, of long
foresight, and of commanding power, to seize the favoring occasion to
strike a blow, which should sever, for all time, the tie of colonial
dependence; and these spirits were found, in all the extent which that
or any crisis could demand, in Otis, Adams, Hancock, and the other
immediate authors of our independence.

Still, it is true that, for a century, causes had been in operation
tending to prepare things for this great result. In the year 1660 the
English Act of Navigation was passed; the first and grand object of
which seems to have been, to secure to England the whole trade with her
plantations.[10] It was provided by that act, that none but English
ships should transport American produce over the ocean, and that the
principal articles of that produce should be allowed to be sold only in
the markets of the mother country. Three years afterwards another law
was passed, which enacted, that such commodities as the Colonies might
wish to purchase should be bought only in the markets of the mother
country. Severe rules were prescribed to enforce the provisions of these
laws, and heavy penalties imposed on all who should violate them. In the
subsequent years of the same reign, other statutes were enacted to
re-enforce these statutes, and other rules prescribed to secure a
compliance with these rules. In this manner was the trade to and from
the Colonies restricted, almost to the exclusive advantage of the parent
country. But laws, which rendered the interest of a whole people
subordinate to that of another people, were not likely to execute
themselves, nor was it easy to find many on the spot, who could be
depended upon for carrying them into execution. In fact, these laws were
more or less evaded or resisted, in all the Colonies. To enforce them
was the constant endeavor of the government at home; to prevent or elude
their operation, the perpetual object here. "The laws of navigation,"
says a living British writer, "were nowhere so openly disobeyed and
contemned as in New England." "The people of Massachusetts Bay," he
adds, "were from the first disposed to act as if independent of the
mother country, and having a governor and magistrates of their own
choice, it was difficult to enforce any regulation which came from the
English Parliament, adverse to their interests." To provide more
effectually for the execution of these laws, we know that courts of
admiralty were afterwards established by the crown, with power to try
revenue causes, as questions of admiralty, upon the construction given
by the crown lawyers to an act of Parliament; a great departure from the
ordinary principles of English jurisprudence, but which has been
maintained, nevertheless, by the force of habit and precedent, and is
adopted in our own existing systems of government.

"There lie," says another English writer, whose connection with the
Board of Trade has enabled him to ascertain many facts connected with
Colonial history, "There lie among the documents in the board of trade
and state-paper office, the most satisfactory proofs, from the epoch of
the English Revolution in 1688, throughout every reign, and during every
administration, of the settled purpose of the Colonies to acquire direct
independence and positive sovereignty." Perhaps this may be stated
somewhat too strongly; but it cannot be denied, that, from the very
nature of the establishments here, and from the general character of the
measures respecting their concerns early adopted and steadily pursued by
the English government, a division of the empire was the natural and
necessary result to which every thing tended.[11]

I have dwelt on this topic, because it seems to me, that the peculiar
original character of the New England Colonies, and certain causes
coeval with their existence, have had a strong and decided influence on
all their subsequent history, and especially on the great event of the
Revolution. Whoever would write our history, and would understand and
explain early transactions, should comprehend the nature and force of
the feeling which I have endeavored to describe. As a son, leaving the
house of his father for his own, finds, by the order of nature, and the
very law of his being, nearer and dearer objects around which his
affections circle, while his attachment to the parental roof becomes
moderated, by degrees, to a composed regard and an affectionate
remembrance; so our ancestors, leaving their native land, not without
some violence to the feelings of nature and affection, yet, in time,
found here a new circle of engagements, interests, and affections; a
feeling, which more and more encroached upon the old, till an undivided
sentiment, _that this was their country_, occupied the heart; and
patriotism, shutting out from its embraces the parent realm, became
_local_ to America.

Some retrospect of the century which has now elapsed is among the duties
of the occasion. It must, however, necessarily be imperfect, to be
compressed within the limits of a single discourse. I shall content
myself, therefore, with taking notice of a few of the leading and most
important occurrences which have distinguished the period.

When the first century closed, the progress of the country appeared to
have been considerable; notwithstanding that, in comparison with its
subsequent advancement, it now seems otherwise. A broad and lasting
foundation had been laid; excellent institutions had been established;
many of the prejudices of former times had been removed; a more liberal
and catholic spirit on subjects of religious concern had begun to extend
itself, and many things conspired to give promise of increasing future
prosperity. Great men had arisen in public life, and the liberal
professions. The Mathers, father and son, were then sinking low in the
western horizon; Leverett, the learned, the accomplished, the excellent
Leverett, was about to withdraw his brilliant and useful light. In
Pemberton great hopes had been suddenly extinguished, but Prince and
Colman were in our sky; and along the east had begun to flash the
crepuscular light of a great luminary which was about to appear, and
which was to stamp the age with his own name, as the age of Franklin.

The bloody Indian wars, which harassed the people for a part of the
first century; the restrictions on the trade of the Colonies, added to
the discouragements inherently belonging to all forms of colonial
government; the distance from Europe, and the small hope of immediate
profit to adventurers, are among the causes which had contributed to
retard the progress of population. Perhaps it may be added, also, that
during the period of the civil wars in England, and the reign of
Cromwell, many persons, whose religious opinions and religious temper
might, under other circumstances, have induced them to join the New
England colonists, found reasons to remain in England; either on account
of active occupation in the scenes which were passing, or of an
anticipation of the enjoyment, in their own country, of a form of
government, civil and religious, accommodated to their views and
principles. The violent measures, too, pursued against the Colonies in
the reign of Charles the Second, the mockery of a trial, and the
forfeiture of the charters, were serious evils. And during the open
violences of the short reign of James the Second, and the tyranny of
Andros, as the venerable historian of Connecticut observes, "All the
motives to great actions, to industry, economy, enterprise, wealth, and
population, were in a manner annihilated. A general inactivity and
languishment pervaded the public body. Liberty, property, and every
thing which ought to be dear to men, every day grew more and more
insecure."

With the Revolution in England, a better prospect had opened on this
country, as well as on that. The joy had been as great at that event,
and far more universal, in New than in Old England. A new charter had
been granted to Massachusetts, which, although it did not confirm to her
inhabitants all their former privileges, yet relieved them from great
evils and embarrassments, and promised future security. More than all,
perhaps, the Revolution in England had done good to the general cause of
liberty and justice. A blow had been struck in favor of the rights and
liberties, not of England alone, but of descendants and kinsmen of
England all over the world. Great political truths had been established.
The champions of liberty had been successful in a fearful and perilous
conflict. Somers, and Cavendish, and Jekyl, and Howard, had triumphed in
one of the most noble causes ever undertaken by men. A revolution had
been made upon principle. A monarch had been dethroned for violating the
original compact between king and people. The rights of the people to
partake in the government, and to limit the monarch by fundamental rules
of government, had been maintained; and however unjust the government of
England might afterwards be towards other governments or towards her
colonies, she had ceased to be governed herself by the arbitrary maxims
of the Stuarts.

New England had submitted to the violence of James the Second not longer
than Old England. Not only was it reserved to Massachusetts, that on her
soil should be acted the first scene of that great revolutionary drama,
which was to take place near a century afterwards, but the English
Revolution itself, as far as the Colonies were concerned, commenced in
Boston. The seizure and imprisonment of Andros, in April, 1689, were
acts of direct and forcible resistance to the authority of James the
Second. The pulse of liberty beat as high in the extremities as at the
heart. The vigorous feeling of the Colony burst out before it was known
how the parent country would finally conduct herself. The king's
representative, Sir Edmund Andros, was a prisoner in the castle at
Boston, before it was or could be known that the king himself had ceased
to exercise his full dominion on the English throne.

Before it was known here whether the invasion of the Prince of Orange
would or could prove successful, as soon as it was known that it had
been undertaken, the people of Massachusetts, at the imminent hazard of
their lives and fortunes, had accomplished the Revolution as far as
respected themselves. It is probable that, reasoning on general
principles and the known attachment of the English people to their
constitution and liberties, and their deep and fixed dislike of the
king's religion and politics, the people of New England expected a
catastrophe fatal to the power of the reigning prince. Yet it was
neither certain enough, nor near enough, to come to their aid against
the authority of the crown, in that crisis which had arrived, and in
which they trusted to put themselves, relying on God and their own
courage. There were spirits in Massachusetts congenial with the spirits
of the distinguished friends of the Revolution in England. There were
those who were fit to associate with the boldest asserters of civil
liberty; and Mather himself, then in England, was not unworthy to be
ranked with those sons of the Church, whose firmness and spirit in
resisting kingly encroachments in matters of religion, entitled them to
the gratitude of their own and succeeding ages.

The second century opened upon New England under circumstances which
evinced that much had already been accomplished, and that still better
prospects and brighter hopes were before her. She had laid, deep and
strong, the foundations of her society. Her religious principles were
firm, and her moral habits exemplary. Her public schools had begun to
diffuse widely the elements of knowledge; and the College, under the
excellent and acceptable administration of Leverett, had been raised to
a high degree of credit and usefulness.

The commercial character of the country, notwithstanding all
discouragements, had begun to display itself, and _five hundred
vessels_, then belonging to Massachusetts, placed her, in relation to
commerce, thus early at the head of the Colonies. An author who wrote
very near the close of the first century says:--"New England is almost
deserving that _noble name_, so mightily hath it increased; and from a
small settlement at first, is now become a _very populous_ and
_flourishing_ government. The _capital city_, Boston, is a place of
_great wealth and trade_; and by much the largest of any in the English
empire of America; and not exceeded but by few cities, perhaps two or
three, in all the American world."

But if our ancestors at the close of the first century could look back
with joy and even admiration, at the progress of the country, what
emotions must we not feel, when, from the point on which we stand, we
also look back and run along the events of the century which has now
closed! The country which then, as we have seen, was thought deserving
of a "noble name,"--which then had "mightily increased," and become
"very populous,"--what was it, in comparison with what our eyes behold
it? At that period, a very great proportion of its inhabitants lived in
the eastern section of Massachusetts proper, and in Plymouth Colony. In
Connecticut, there were towns along the coast, some of them respectable,
but in the interior all was a wilderness beyond Hartford. On Connecticut
River, settlements had proceeded as far up as Deerfield, and Fort Dummer
had been built near where is now the south line of New Hampshire. In New
Hampshire no settlement was then begun thirty miles from the mouth of
Piscataqua River, and in what is now Maine the inhabitants were confined
to the coast. The aggregate of the whole population of New England did
not exceed one hundred and sixty thousand. Its present amount (1820) is
probably one million seven hundred thousand. Instead of being confined
to its former limits, her population has rolled backward, and filled up
the spaces included within her actual local boundaries. Not this only,
but it has overflowed those boundaries, and the waves of emigration have
pressed farther and farther toward the West. The Alleghany has not
checked it; the banks of the Ohio have been covered with it. New England
farms, houses, villages, and churches spread over and adorn the immense
extent from the Ohio to Lake Erie, and stretch along from the Alleghany
onwards, beyond the Miamis, and toward the Falls of St. Anthony. Two
thousand miles westward from the rock where their fathers landed, may
now be found the sons of the Pilgrims, cultivating smiling fields,
rearing towns and villages, and cherishing, we trust, the patrimonial
blessings of wise institutions, of liberty, and religion. The world has
seen nothing like this. Regions large enough to be empires, and which,
half a century ago, were known only as remote and unexplored
wildernesses, are now teeming with population, and prosperous in all the
great concerns of life; in good governments, the means of subsistence,
and social happiness. It may be safely asserted, that there are now more
than a million of people, descendants of New England ancestry, living,
free and happy, in regions which scarce sixty years ago were tracts of
unpenetrated forest. Nor do rivers, or mountains, or seas resist the
progress of industry and enterprise. Erelong, the sons of the Pilgrims
will be on the shores of the Pacific.[12] The imagination hardly keeps
pace with the progress of population, improvement, and civilization.

It is now five-and-forty years since the growth and rising glory of
America were portrayed in the English Parliament, with inimitable
beauty, by the most consummate orator of modern times. Going back
somewhat more than half a century, and describing our progress as
foreseen from that point by his amiable friend Lord Bathurst, then
living, he spoke of the wonderful progress which America had made during
the period of a single human life. There is no American heart, I
imagine, that does not glow, both with conscious, patriotic pride, and
admiration for one of the happiest efforts of eloquence, so often as the
vision of "that little speck, scarce visible in the mass of national
interest, a small seminal principle, rather than a formed body," and the
progress of its astonishing development and growth, are recalled to the
recollection. But a stronger feeling might be produced, if we were able
to take up this prophetic description where he left it, and, placing
ourselves at the point of time in which he was speaking, to set forth
with equal felicity the subsequent progress of the country. There is yet
among the living a most distinguished and venerable name, a descendant
of the Pilgrims; one who has been attended through life by a great and
fortunate genius; a man illustrious by his own great merits, and favored
of Heaven in the long continuation of his years.[13] The time when the
English orator was thus speaking of America preceded but by a few days
the actual opening of the revolutionary drama at Lexington. He to whom I
have alluded, then at the age of forty, was among the most zealous and
able defenders of the violated rights of his country. He seemed already
to have filled a full measure of public service, and attained an
honorable fame. The moment was full of difficulty and danger, and big
with events of immeasurable importance. The country was on the very
brink of a civil war, of which no man could foretell the duration or the
result. Something more than a courageous hope, or characteristic ardor,
would have been necessary to impress the glorious prospect on his
belief, if, at that moment, before the sound of the first shock of
actual war had reached his ears, some attendant spirit had opened to him
the vision of the future;--if it had said to him, "The blow is struck,
and America is severed from England for ever!"--if it had informed him,
that he himself, during the next annual revolution of the sun, should
put his own hand to the great instrument of independence, and write his
name where all nations should behold it and all time should not efface
it; that erelong he himself should maintain the interests and represent
the sovereignty of his newborn country in the proudest courts of Europe;
that he should one day exercise her supreme magistracy; that he should
yet live to behold ten millions of fellow-citizens paying him the homage
of their deepest gratitude and kindest affections; that he should see
distinguished talent and high public trust resting where his name
rested; that he should even see with his own unclouded eyes the close of
the second century of New England, who had begun life almost with its
commencement, and lived through nearly half the whole history of his
country; and that on the morning of this auspicious day he should be
found in the political councils of his native State, revising, by the
light of experience, that system of government which forty years before
he had assisted to frame and establish; and, great and happy as he
should then behold his country, there should be nothing in prospect to
cloud the scene, nothing to check the ardor of that confident and
patriotic hope which should glow in his bosom to the end of his long
protracted and happy life.

It would far exceed the limits of this discourse even to mention the
principal events in the civil and political history of New England
during the century; the more so, as for the last half of the period that
history has, most happily, been closely interwoven with the general
history of the United States. New England bore an honorable part in the
wars which took place between England and France. The capture of
Louisburg gave her a character for military achievement; and in the war
which terminated with the peace of 1763, her exertions on the frontiers
wore of most essential service, as well to the mother country as to all
the Colonies.

In New England the war of the Revolution commenced. I address those who
remember the memorable 19th of April, 1775; who shortly after saw the
burning spires of Charlestown; who beheld the deeds of Prescott, and
heard the voice of Putnam amidst the storm of war, and saw the generous
Warren fall, the first distinguished victim in the cause of liberty. It
would be superfluous to say, that no portion of the country did more
than the States of New England to bring the Revolutionary struggle to a
successful issue. It is scarcely less to her credit, that she saw early
the necessity of a closer union of the States, and gave an efficient and
indispensable aid to the establishment and organization of the Federal
government.

Perhaps we might safely say, that a new spirit and a new excitement
began to exist here about the middle of the last century. To whatever
causes it may be imputed, there seems then to have commenced a more
rapid improvement. The Colonies had attracted more of the attention of
the mother country, and some renown in arms had been acquired. Lord
Chatham was the first English minister who attached high importance to
these possessions of the crown, and who foresaw any thing of their
future growth and extension. His opinion was, that the great rival of
England was chiefly to be feared as a maritime and commercial power, and
to drive her out of North America and deprive her of her West Indian
possessions was a leading object in his policy. He dwelt often on the
fisheries, as nurseries for British seamen, and the colonial trade, as
furnishing them employment. The war, conducted by him with so much
vigor, terminated in a peace, by which Canada was ceded to England. The
effect of this was immediately visible in the New England Colonies; for,
the fear of Indian hostilities on the frontiers being now happily
removed, settlements went on with an activity before that time
altogether unprecedented, and public affairs wore a new and encouraging
aspect. Shortly after this fortunate termination of the French war, the
interesting topics connected with the taxation of America by the British
Parliament began to be discussed, and the attention and all the
faculties of the people drawn towards them. There is perhaps no portion
of our history more full of interest than the period from 1760 to the
actual commencement of the war. The progress of opinion in this period,
though less known, is not less important than the progress of arms
afterwards. Nothing deserves more consideration than those events and
discussions which affected the public sentiment and settled the
Revolution in men's minds, before hostilities openly broke out.

Internal improvement followed the establishment and prosperous
commencement of the present government. More has been done for roads,
canals, and other public works, within the last thirty years, than in
all our former history. In the first of these particulars, few countries
excel the New England States. The astonishing increase of their
navigation and trade is known to every one, and now belongs to the
history of our national wealth.

We may flatter ourselves, too, that literature and taste have not been
stationary, and that some advancement has been made in the elegant, as
well as in the useful arts.

The nature and constitution of society and government in this country
are interesting topics, to which I would devote what remains of the time
allowed to this occasion. Of our system of government the first thing to
be said is, that it is really and practically a free system. It
originates entirely with the people, and rests on no other foundation
than their assent. To judge of its actual operation, it is not enough to
look merely at the form of its construction. The practical character of
government depends often on a variety of considerations, besides the
abstract frame of its constitutional organization. Among these are the
condition and tenure of property; the laws regulating its alienation and
descent; the presence or absence of a military power; an armed or
unarmed yeomanry; the spirit of the age, and the degree of general
intelligence. In these respects it cannot be denied that the
circumstances of this country are most favorable to the hope of
maintaining the government of a great nation on principles entirely
popular. In the absence of military power, the nature of government must
essentially depend on the manner in which property is holden and
distributed. There is a natural influence belonging to property, whether
it exists in many hands or few; and it is on the rights of property that
both despotism and unrestrained popular violence ordinarily commence
their attacks. Our ancestors began their system of government here under
a condition of comparative equality in regard to wealth, and their early
laws were of a nature to favor and continue this equality.

A republican form of government rests not more on political
constitutions, than on those laws which regulate the descent and
transmission of property. Governments like ours could not have been
maintained, where property was holden according to the principles of the
feudal system; nor, on the other hand, could the feudal constitution
possibly exist with us. Our New England ancestors brought hither no
great capitals from Europe; and if they had, there was nothing
productive in which they could have been invested. They left behind them
the whole feudal policy of the other continent. They broke away at once
from the system of military service established in the Dark Ages, and
which continues, down even to the present time, more or less to affect
the condition of property all over Europe. They came to a new country.
There were, as yet, no lands yielding rent, and no tenants rendering
service. The whole soil was unreclaimed from barbarism. They were
themselves, either from their original condition, or from the necessity
of their common interest, nearly on a general level in respect to
property. Their situation demanded a parcelling out and division of the
lands, and it may be fairly said, that this necessary act _fixed the
future frame and form of their government_. The character of their
political institutions was determined by the fundamental laws respecting
property. The laws rendered estates divisible among sons and daughters.
The right of primogeniture, at first limited and curtailed, was
afterwards abolished. The property was all freehold. The entailment of
estates, long trusts, and the other processes for fettering and tying up
inheritances, were not applicable to the condition of society, and
seldom made use of. On the contrary, alienation of the land was every
way facilitated, even to the subjecting of it to every species of debt.
The establishment of public registries, and the simplicity of our forms
of conveyance, have greatly facilitated the change of real estate from
one proprietor to another. The consequence of all these causes has been
a great subdivision of the soil, and a great equality of condition; the
true basis, most certainly, of a popular government. "If the people,"
says Harrington, "hold three parts in four of the territory, it is plain
there can neither be any single person nor nobility able to dispute the
government with them; in this case, therefore, _except force be
interposed_, they govern themselves."

The history of other nations may teach us how favorable to public
liberty are the division of the soil into small freeholds, and a system
of laws, of which the tendency is, without violence or injustice, to
produce and to preserve a degree of equality of property. It has been
estimated, if I mistake not, that about the time of Henry the Seventh
four fifths of the land in England was holden by the great barons and
ecclesiastics. The effects of a growing commerce soon afterwards began
to break in on this state of things, and before the Revolution, in 1688,
a vast change had been wrought. It may be thought probable, that, for
the last half-century, the process of subdivision in England has been
retarded, if not reversed; that the great weight of taxation has
compelled many of the lesser freeholders to dispose of their estates,
and to seek employment in the army and navy, in the professions of civil
life, in commerce, or in the colonies. The effect of this on the British
constitution cannot but be most unfavorable. A few large estates grow
larger; but the number of those who have no estates also increases; and
there may be danger, lest the inequality of property become so great,
that those who possess it may be dispossessed by force; in other words,
that the government may be overturned.

A most interesting experiment of the effect of a subdivision of property
on government is now making in France. It is understood, that the law
regulating the transmission of property in that country, now divides it,
real and personal, among all the children equally, both sons and
daughters; and that there is, also, a very great restraint on the power
of making dispositions of property by will. It has been supposed, that
the effects of this might probably be, in time, to break up the soil
into such small subdivisions, that the proprietors would be too poor to
resist the encroachments of executive power. I think far otherwise. What
is lost in individual wealth will be more than gained in numbers, in
intelligence, and in a sympathy of sentiment. If, indeed, only one or a
few landholders were to resist the crown, like the barons of England,
they must, of course, be great and powerful landholders, with multitudes
of retainers, to promise success. But if the proprietors of a given
extent of territory are summoned to resistance, there is no reason to
believe that such resistance would be less forcible, or less successful,
because the number of such proprietors happened to be great. Each would
perceive his own importance, and his own interest, and would feel that
natural elevation of character which the consciousness of property
inspires. A common sentiment would unite all, and numbers would not only
add strength, but excite enthusiasm. It is true, that France possesses
a vast military force, under the direction of an hereditary executive
government; and military power, it is possible, may overthrow any
government. It is in vain, however, in this period of the world, to look
for security against military power to the arm of the great landholders.
That notion is derived from a state of things long since past; a state
in which a feudal baron, with his retainers, might stand against the
sovereign and his retainers, himself but the greatest baron. But at
present, what could the richest landholder do, against one regiment of
disciplined troops? Other securities, therefore, against the prevalence
of military power must be provided. Happily for us, we are not so
situated as that any purpose of national defence requires, ordinarily
and constantly, such a military force as might seriously endanger our
liberties.

In respect, however, to the recent law of succession in France, to which
I have alluded, I would, presumptuously perhaps, hazard a conjecture,
that, if the government do not change the law, the law in half a century
will change the government; and that this change will be, not in favor
of the power of the crown, as some European writers have supposed, but
against it. Those writers only reason upon what they think correct
general principles, in relation to this subject. They acknowledge a want
of experience. Here we have had that experience; and we know that a
multitude of small proprietors, acting with intelligence, and that
enthusiasm which a common cause inspires, constitute not only a
formidable, but an invincible power.[14]

The true principle of a free and popular government would seem to be, so
to construct it as to give to all, or at least to a very great majority,
an interest in its preservation; to found it, as other things are
founded, on men's interest. The stability of government demands that
those who desire its continuance should be more powerful than those who
desire its dissolution. This power, of course, is not always to be
measured by mere numbers. Education, wealth, talents, are all parts and
elements of the general aggregate of power; but numbers, nevertheless,
constitute ordinarily the most important consideration, unless, indeed,
there be _a military force_ in the hands of the few, by which they can
control the many. In this country we have actually existing systems of
government, in the maintenance of which, it should seem, a great
majority, both in numbers and in other means of power and influence,
must see their interest. But this state of things is not brought about
solely by written political constitutions, or the mere manner of
organizing the government; but also by the laws which regulate the
descent and transmission of property. The freest government, if it could
exist, would not be long acceptable, if the tendency of the laws were to
create a rapid accumulation of property in few hands, and to render the
great mass of the population dependent and penniless. In such a case,
the popular power would be likely to break in upon the rights of
property, or else the influence of property to limit and control the
exercise of popular power. Universal suffrage, for example, could not
long exist in a community where there was great inequality of property.
The holders of estates would be obliged, in such case, in some way to
restrain the right of suffrage, or else such right of suffrage would,
before long, divide the property. In the nature of things, those who
have not property, and see their neighbors possess much more than they
think them to need, cannot be favorable to laws made for the protection
of property. When this class becomes numerous, it grows clamorous. It
looks on property as its prey and plunder, and is naturally ready, at
all times, for violence and revolution.

It would seem, then, to be the part of political wisdom to found
government on property; and to establish such distribution of property,
by the laws which regulate its transmission and alienation, as to
interest the great majority of society in the support of the government.
This is, I imagine, the true theory and the actual practice of our
republican institutions. With property divided as we have it, no other
government than that of a republic could be maintained, even were we
foolish enough to desire it. There is reason, therefore, to expect a
long continuance of our system. Party and passion, doubtless, may
prevail at times, and much temporary mischief be done. Even modes and
forms may be changed, and perhaps for the worse. But a great revolution
in regard to property must take place, before our governments can be
moved from their republican basis, unless they be violently struck off
by military power. The people possess the property, more emphatically
than it could ever be said of the people of any other country, and they
can have no interest to overturn a government which protects that
property by equal laws.

Let it not be supposed, that this state of things possesses too strong
tendencies towards the production of a dead and uninteresting level in
society. Such tendencies are sufficiently counteracted by the infinite
diversities in the characters and fortunes of individuals. Talent,
activity, industry, and enterprise tend at all times to produce
inequality and distinction; and there is room still for the accumulation
of wealth, with its great advantages, to all reasonable and useful
extent. It has been often urged against the state of society in America,
that it furnishes no class of men of fortune and leisure. This may be
partly true, but it is not entirely so, and the evil, if it be one,
would affect rather the progress of taste and literature, than the
general prosperity of the people. But the promotion of taste and
literature cannot be primary objects of political institutions; and if
they could, it might be doubted whether, in the long course of things,
as much is not gained by a wide diffusion of general knowledge, as is
lost by diminishing the number of those who are enabled by fortune and
leisure to devote themselves exclusively to scientific and literary
pursuits. However this may be, it is to be considered that it is the
spirit of our system to be equal and general, and if there be particular
disadvantages incident to this, they are far more than counterbalanced
by the benefits which weigh against them. The important concerns of
society are generally conducted, in all countries, by the men of
business and practical ability; and even in matters of taste and
literature, the advantages of mere leisure are liable to be overrated.
If there exist adequate means of education and a love of letters be
excited, that love will find its way to the object of its desire,
through the crowd and pressure of the most busy society.

Connected with this division of property, and the consequent
participation of the great mass of people in its possession and
enjoyments, is the system of representation, which is admirably
accommodated to our condition, better understood among us, and more
familiarly and extensively practised, in the higher and in the lower
departments of government, than it has been by any other people. Great
facility has been given to this in New England by the early division of
the country into townships or small districts, in which all concerns of
local police are regulated, and in which representatives to the
legislature are elected. Nothing can exceed the utility of these little
bodies. They are so many councils or parliaments, in which common
interests are discussed, and useful knowledge acquired and communicated.

The division of governments into departments, and the division, again,
of the legislative department into two chambers, are essential
provisions in our system. This last, although not new in itself, yet
seems to be new in its application to governments wholly popular. The
Grecian republics, it is plain, knew nothing of it; and in Rome, the
check and balance of legislative power, such as it was, lay between the
people and the senate. Indeed, few things are more difficult than to
ascertain accurately the true nature and construction of the Roman
commonwealth. The relative power of the senate and the people, of the
consuls and the tribunes, appears not to have been at all times the
same, nor at any time accurately defined or strictly observed. Cicero,
indeed, describes to us an admirable arrangement of political power, and
a balance of the constitution, in that beautiful passage, in which he
compares the democracies of Greece with the Roman commonwealth. "O morem
preclarum, disciplinamque, quam a majoribus accepimus, si quidem
teneremus! sed nescio quo pacto jam de manibus elabitur. Nullam enim
illi nostri sapientissimi et sanctissimi viri vim concionis esse
voluerunt, quae scisseret plebs, aut quae populus juberet; summota
concione, distributis partibus, tributim et centuriatim descriptis
ordinibus, classibus, aetatibus, auditis auctoribus, re multos dies
promulgata et cognita, juberi vetarique voluerunt. Graecorum autem totae
respublicae sedentis concionis temeritate administrantur."[15]

But at what time this wise system existed in this perfection at Rome, no
proofs remain to show. Her constitution, originally framed for a
monarchy, never seemed to be adjusted in its several parts after the
expulsion of the kings. Liberty there was, but it was a disputatious, an
uncertain, an ill-secured liberty. The patrician and plebeian orders,
instead of being matched and joined, each in its just place and
proportion, to sustain the fabric of the state, were rather like hostile
powers, in perpetual conflict. With us, an attempt has been made, and so
far not without success, to divide representation into chambers, and, by
difference of age, character, qualification, or mode of election, to
establish salutary checks, in governments altogether elective.

Having detained you so long with these observations, I must yet advert
to another most interesting topic,--the Free Schools. In this
particular, New England may be allowed to claim, I think, a merit of a
peculiar character. She early adopted, and has constantly maintained the
principle, that it is the undoubted right and the bounden duty of
government to provide for the instruction of all youth. That which is
elsewhere left to chance or to charity, we secure by law.[16] For the
purpose of public instruction, we hold every man subject to taxation in
proportion to his property, and we look not to the question, whether he
himself have, or have not, children to be benefited by the education for
which he pays. We regard it as a wise and liberal system of police, by
which property, and life, and the peace of society are secured. We seek
to prevent in some measure the extension of the penal code, by inspiring
a salutary and conservative principle of virtue and of knowledge in an
early age. We strive to excite a feeling of respectability, and a sense
of character, by enlarging the capacity and increasing the sphere of
intellectual enjoyment. By general instruction, we seek, as far as
possible, to purify the whole moral atmosphere; to keep good sentiments
uppermost, and to turn the strong current of feeling and opinion, as
well as the censures of the law and the denunciations of religion,
against immorality and crime. We hope for a security beyond the law, and
above the law, in the prevalence of an enlightened and well-principled
moral sentiment. We hope to continue and prolong the time, when, in the
villages and farm-houses of New England, there may be undisturbed sleep
within unbarred doors. And knowing that our government rests directly on
the public will, in order that we may preserve it we endeavor to give a
safe and proper direction to that public will. We do not, indeed,
expect all men to be philosophers or statesmen; but we confidently
trust, and our expectation of the duration of our system of government
rests on that trust, that, by the diffusion of general knowledge and
good and virtuous sentiments, the political fabric may be secure, as
well against open violence and overthrow, as against the slow, but sure,
undermining of licentiousness.

We know that, at the present time, an attempt is making in the English
Parliament to provide by law for the education of the poor, and that a
gentleman of distinguished character (Mr. Brougham) has taken the lead
in presenting a plan to government for carrying that purpose into
effect. And yet, although the representatives of the three kingdoms
listened to him with astonishment as well as delight, we hear no
principles with which we ourselves have not been familiar from youth; we
see nothing in the plan but an approach towards that system which has
been established in New England for more than a century and a half. It
is said that in England not more than _one child in fifteen_ possesses
the means of being taught to read and write; in Wales, _one in twenty_;
in France, until lately, when some improvement was made, not more than
_one in thirty-five_. Now, it is hardly too strong to say, that in New
England _every child possesses_ such means. It would be difficult to
find an instance to the contrary, unless where it should be owing to the
negligence of the parent; and, in truth, the means are actually used and
enjoyed by nearly every one. A youth of fifteen, of either sex, who
cannot both read and write, is very seldom to be found. Who can make
this comparison, or contemplate this spectacle, without delight and a
feeling of just pride? Does any history show property more beneficently
applied? Did any government ever subject the property of those who have
estates to a burden, for a purpose more favorable to the poor, or more
useful to the whole community?

A conviction of the importance of public instruction was one of the
earliest sentiments of our ancestors. No lawgiver of ancient or modern
times has expressed more just opinions, or adopted wiser measures, than
the early records of the Colony of Plymouth show to have prevailed here.
Assembled on this very spot, a hundred and fifty-three years ago, the
legislature of this Colony declared, "Forasmuch as the maintenance of
good literature doth much tend to the advancement of the weal and
flourishing state of societies and republics, this Court doth therefore
order, that in whatever township in this government, consisting of fifty
families or upwards, any meet man shall be obtained to teach a grammar
school, such township shall allow at least twelve pounds, to be raised
by rate on all the inhabitants."

Having provided that all youth should be instructed in the elements of
learning by the institution of free schools, our ancestors had yet
another duty to perform. Men were to be educated for the professions and
the public. For this purpose they founded the University, and with
incredible zeal and perseverance they cherished and supported it,
through all trials and discouragements.[17] On the subject of the
University, it is not possible for a son of New England to think without
pleasure, or to speak without emotion. Nothing confers more honor on the
State where it is established, or more utility on the country at large.
A respectable university is an establishment which must be the work of
time. If pecuniary means were not wanting, no new institution could
possess character and respectability at once. We owe deep obligation to
our ancestors, who began, almost on the moment of their arrival, the
work of building up this institution.

Although established in a different government, the Colony of Plymouth
manifested warm friendship for Harvard College. At an early period, its
government took measures to promote a general subscription throughout
all the towns in this Colony, in aid of its small funds. Other colleges
were subsequently founded and endowed, in other places, as the ability
of the people allowed; and we may flatter ourselves, that the means of
education at present enjoyed in New England are not only adequate to the
diffusion of the elements of knowledge among all classes, but sufficient
also for respectable attainments in literature and the sciences.

Lastly, our ancestors established their system of government on morality
and religious sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be
trusted on any other foundation than religious principle, nor any
government be secure which is not supported by moral habits. Living
under the heavenly light of revelation, they hoped to find all the
social dispositions, all the duties which men owe to each other and to
society, enforced and performed. Whatever makes men good Christians,
makes them good citizens. Our fathers came here to enjoy their religion
free and unmolested; and, at the end of two centuries, there is nothing
upon which we can pronounce more confidently, nothing of which we can
express a more deep and earnest conviction, than of the inestimable
importance of that religion to man, both in regard to this life and that
which is to come.

If the blessings of our political and social condition have not been too
highly estimated, we cannot well overrate the responsibility and duty
which they impose upon us. We hold these institutions of government,
religion, and learning, to be transmitted, as well as enjoyed. We are in
the line of conveyance, through which whatever has been obtained by the
spirit and efforts of our ancestors is to be communicated to our
children.

We are bound to maintain public liberty, and, by the example of our own
systems, to convince the world that order and law, religion and
morality, the rights of conscience, the rights of persons, and the
rights of property, may all be preserved and secured, in the most
perfect manner, by a government entirely and purely elective. If we fail
in this, our disaster will be signal, and will furnish an argument,
stronger than has yet been found, in support of those opinions which
maintain that government can rest safely on nothing but power and
coercion. As far as experience may show errors in our establishments, we
are bound to correct them; and if any practices exist contrary to the
principles of justice and humanity within the reach of our laws or our
influence, we are inexcusable if we do not exert ourselves to restrain
and abolish them.

I deem it my duty on this occasion to suggest, that the land is not yet
wholly free from the contamination of a traffic, at which every feeling
of humanity must for ever revolt,--I mean the African slave-trade.[18]
Neither public sentiment, nor the law, has hitherto been able entirely
to put an end to this odious and abominable trade. At the moment when
God in his mercy has blessed the Christian world with a universal peace,
there is reason to fear, that, to the disgrace of the Christian name and
character, new efforts are making for the extension of this trade by
subjects and citizens of Christian states, in whose hearts there dwell
no sentiments of humanity or of justice, and over whom neither the fear
of God nor the fear of man exercises a control. In the sight of our law,
the African slave-trader is a pirate and a felon; and in the sight of
Heaven, an offender far beyond the ordinary depth of human guilt. There
is no brighter page of our history, than that which records the measures
which have been adopted by the government at an early day, and at
different times since, for the suppression of this traffic; and I would
call on all the true sons of New England to co-operate with the laws of
man, and the justice of Heaven. If there be, within the extent of our
knowledge or influence, any participation in this traffic, let us
pledge ourselves here, upon the rock of Plymouth, to extirpate and
destroy it. It is not fit that the land of the Pilgrims should bear the
shame longer. I hear the sound of the hammer, I see the smoke of the
furnaces where manacles and fetters are still forged for human limbs. I
see the visages of those who by stealth and at midnight labor in this
work of hell, foul and dark, as may become the artificers of such
instruments of misery and torture. Let that spot be purified, or let it
cease to be of New England. Let it be purified, or let it be set aside
from the Christian world; let it be put out of the circle of human
sympathies and human regards, and let civilized man henceforth have no
communion with it.

I would invoke those who fill the seats of justice, and all who minister
at her altar, that they execute the wholesome and necessary severity of
the law. I invoke the ministers of our religion, that they proclaim its
denunciation of these crimes, and add its solemn sanctions to the
authority of human laws. If the pulpit be silent whenever or wherever
there may be a sinner bloody with this guilt within the hearing of its
voice, the pulpit is false to its trust. I call on the fair merchant,
who has reaped his harvest upon the seas, that he assist in scourging
from those seas the worst pirates that ever infested them. That ocean,
which seems to wave with a gentle magnificence to waft the burden of an
honest commerce, and to roll along its treasures with a conscious
pride,--that ocean, which hardy industry regards, even when the winds
have ruffled its surface, as a field of grateful toil,--what is it to
the victim of this oppression, when he is brought to its shores, and
looks forth upon it, for the first time, loaded with chains, and
bleeding with stripes? What is it to him but a wide-spread prospect of
suffering, anguish, and death? Nor do the skies smile longer, nor is the
air longer fragrant to him. The sun is cast down from heaven. An inhuman
and accursed traffic has cut him off in his manhood, or in his youth,
from every enjoyment belonging to his being, and every blessing which
his Creator intended for him.

The Christian communities send forth their emissaries of religion and
letters, who stop, here and there, along the coast of the vast continent
of Africa, and with painful and tedious efforts make some almost
imperceptible progress in the communication of knowledge, and in the
general improvement of the natives who are immediately about them. Not
thus slow and imperceptible is the transmission of the vices and bad
passions which the subjects of Christian states carry to the land. The
slave-trade having touched the coast, its influence and its evils
spread, like a pestilence, over the whole continent, making savage wars
more savage and more frequent, and adding new and fierce passions to the
contests of barbarians.

I pursue this topic no further, except again to say, that all
Christendom, being now blessed with peace, is bound by every thing which
belongs to its character, and to the character of the present age, to
put a stop to this inhuman and disgraceful traffic.

We are bound, not only to maintain the general principles of public
liberty, but to support also those existing forms of government which
have so well secured its enjoyment, and so highly promoted the public
prosperity. It is now more than thirty years that these States have been
united under the Federal Constitution, and whatever fortune may await
them hereafter, it is impossible that this period of their history
should not be regarded as distinguished by signal prosperity and
success. They must be sanguine indeed, who can hope for benefit from
change. Whatever division of the public judgment may have existed in
relation to particular measures of the government, all must agree, one
should think, in the opinion, that in its general course it has been
eminently productive of public happiness. Its most ardent friends could
not well have hoped from it more than it has accomplished; and those who
disbelieved or doubted ought to feel less concern about predictions
which the event has not verified, than pleasure in the good which has
been obtained. Whoever shall hereafter write this part of our history,
although he may see occasional errors or defects, will be able to record
no great failure in the ends and objects of government. Still less will
he be able to record any series of lawless and despotic acts, or any
successful usurpation. His page will contain no exhibition of provinces
depopulated, of civil authority habitually trampled down by military
power, or of a community crushed by the burden of taxation. He will
speak, rather, of public liberty protected, and public happiness
advanced; of increased revenue, and population augmented beyond all
example; of the growth of commerce, manufactures, and the arts; and of
that happy condition, in which the restraint and coercion of government
are almost invisible and imperceptible, and its influence felt only in
the benefits which it confers. We can entertain no better wish for our
country, than that this government may be preserved; nor have a clearer
duty than to maintain and support it in the full exercise of all its
just constitutional powers.

The cause of science and literature also imposes upon us an important
and delicate trust. The wealth and population of the country are now so
far advanced, as to authorize the expectation of a correct literature
and a well formed taste, as well as respectable progress in the abstruse
sciences. The country has risen from a state of colonial subjection; it
has established an independent government, and is now in the undisturbed
enjoyment of peace and political security. The elements of knowledge are
universally diffused, and the reading portion of the community is large.
Let us hope that the present may be an auspicious era of literature. If,
almost on the day of their landing, our ancestors founded schools and
endowed colleges, what obligations do not rest upon us, living under
circumstances so much more favorable both for providing and for using
the means of education? Literature becomes free institutions. It is the
graceful ornament of civil liberty, and a happy restraint on the
asperities which political controversies sometimes occasion. Just taste
is not only an embellishment of society, but it rises almost to the rank
of the virtues, and diffuses positive good throughout the whole extent
of its influence. There is a connection between right feeling and right
principles, and truth in taste is allied with truth in morality. With
nothing in our past history to discourage us, and with something in our
present condition and prospects to animate us, let us hope, that, as it
is our fortune to live in an age when we may behold a wonderful
advancement of the country in all its other great interests, we may see
also equal progress and success attend the cause of letters.

Finally, let us not forget the religious character of our origin. Our
fathers were brought hither by their high veneration for the Christian
religion. They journeyed by its light, and labored in its hope. They
sought to incorporate its principles with the elements of their society,
and to diffuse its influence through all their institutions, civil,
political, or literary. Let us cherish these sentiments, and extend this
influence still more widely; in the full conviction, that that is the
happiest society which partakes in the highest degree of the mild and
peaceful spirit of Christianity.

The hours of this day are rapidly flying, and this occasion will soon be
passed. Neither we nor our children can expect to behold its return.
They are in the distant regions of futurity, they exist only in the
all-creating power of God, who shall stand here a hundred years hence,
to trace, through us, their descent from the Pilgrims, and to survey, as
we have now surveyed, the progress of their country, during the lapse of
a century. We would anticipate their concurrence with us in our
sentiments of deep regard for our common ancestors. We would anticipate
and partake the pleasure with which they will then recount the steps of
New England's advancement. On the morning of that day, although it will
not disturb us in our repose, the voice of acclamation and gratitude,
commencing on the Rock of Plymouth, shall be transmitted through
millions of the sons of the Pilgrims, till it lose itself in the murmurs
of the Pacific seas.

We would leave for the consideration of those who shall then occupy our
places, some proof that we hold the blessings transmitted from our
fathers in just estimation; some proof of our attachment to the cause of
good government, and of civil and religious liberty; some proof of a
sincere and ardent desire to promote every thing which may enlarge the
understandings and improve the hearts of men. And when, from the long
distance of a hundred years, they shall look back upon us, they shall
know, at least, that we possessed affections, which, running backward
and warming with gratitude for what our ancestors have done for our
happiness, run forward also to our posterity, and meet them with cordial
salutation, ere yet they have arrived on the shore of being.

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!

       *       *       *       *       *

NOTES.

NOTE A.--PAGE 27.

The allusion in the Discourse is to the large historical painting of the
Landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, executed by Henry Sargent, Esq., of
Boston, and, with great liberality, presented by him to the Pilgrim
Society. It appeared in their hall (of which it forms the chief
ornament) for the first time at the celebration of 1824. It represents
the principal personages of the company at the moment of landing, with
the Indian Samoset, who approaches them with a friendly welcome. A very
competent judge, himself a distinguished artist, the late venerable
Colonel Trumbull, has pronounced that this painting has great merit. An
interesting account of it will be found in Dr. Thacher's History of
Plymouth, pp. 249 and 257.

An historical painting, by Robert N. Weir, Esq., of the largest size,
representing the embarkation of the Pilgrims from Delft-Haven, in
Holland, and executed by order of Congress, fills one of the panels of
the Rotunda of the Capitol at Washington. The moment chosen by the
artist for the action of the picture is that in which the venerable
pastor Robinson, with tears, and benedictions, and prayers to Heaven,
dismisses the beloved members of his little flock to the perils and the
hopes of their great enterprise. The characters of the personages
introduced are indicated with discrimination and power, and the
accessories of the work marked with much taste and skill. It is a
painting of distinguished historical interest and of great artistic
merit.

The "Landing of the Pilgrims" has also been made the subject of a very
interesting painting by Mr. Flagg, intended to represent the deep
religious feeling which so strikingly characterized the first settlers
of New England. With this object in view, the central figure is that of
Elder Brewster. It is a picture of cabinet size, and is in possession of
a gentleman of New Haven, descended from Elder Brewster, and of that
name.


NOTE B.--PAGE 45.

As the opinion of contemporaneous thinkers on this important subject
cannot fail to interest the general reader, it is deemed proper to
insert here the following extract from a letter, written in 1849, to
show how powerfully the truths uttered in 1820, in the spirit of
prophecy, as it were, impressed themselves upon certain minds, and how
closely the verification of the prediction has been watched.

     "I do not remember any political prophecy, founded on the spirit of
     a wide and far-reaching statesmanship, that has been so remarkably
     fulfilled as the one made by Mr. Webster, in his Discourse
     delivered at Plymouth in 1820, on the effect which the laws of
     succession to property in France, then in operation, would be
     likely to produce on the forms and working of the French
     government. But to understand what he said, and what he foresaw, I
     must explain a little what had been the course of legislation in
     France on which his predictions were founded.

     "Before the Revolution of 1789, there had been a great accumulation
     of the landed property of the country, and, indeed, of all its
     property,--by means of laws of entail, _majorats_, and other legal
     contrivances,--in the hands of the privileged classes; chiefly in
     those of the nobility and the clergy. The injury and injustice done
     by long continued legislation in this direction were obviously
     great; and it was not, perhaps, unnatural, that the opposite course
     to that which had brought on the mischief should be deemed the best
     one to cure it. At any rate, such was the course taken.

     "In 1791 a law was passed, preventing any man from having any
     interest beyond the period of his own life in any of his property,
     real, personal, or mixed, and distributing all his possessions for
     him, immediately after his death, among his children, in equal
     shares, or if he left no children, then among his next of kin, on
     the same principle. This law, with a slight modification, made
     under the influence of Robespierre, was in force till 1800. But the
     period was entirely revolutionary, and probably quite as much
     property changed hands from violence and the consequences of
     violence, during the nine years it continued, as was transmitted by
     the laws that directly controlled its succession.

     "With the coming in of Bonaparte, however, there was established a
     new order of things, which has continued, with little modification,
     ever since, and has had its full share in working out the great
     changes in French society which we now witness. A few experiments
     were first made, and then the great Civil Code, often called the
     _Code Napoleon_, was adopted. This was in 1804. By this remarkable
     code, which is still in force, a man, if he has but one child, can
     give away by his last will, as he pleases, half of his
     property,--the law insuring the other half to the child; if he has
     two children, then he can so give away only one third,--the law
     requiring the other two thirds to be given equally to the two
     children; if three, then only one fourth under similar conditions;
     but if he has a greater number, it restricts the rights of the
     parent more and more, and makes it more and more difficult for him
     to distribute his property according to his own judgment; the
     restrictions embarrassing him even in his lifetime.

     "The consequences of such laws are, from their nature, very slowly
     developed. When Mr. Webster spoke in 1820, the French code had been
     in operation sixteen years, and similar principles had prevailed
     for nearly a generation. But still its wide results were not even
     suspected. Those who had treated the subject at all supposed that
     the tendency was to break up the great estates in France, and make
     the larger number of the holders of small estates more accessible
     to the influence of the government, then a limited monarchy, and so
     render it stronger and more despotic.

     "Mr. Webster held a different opinion. He said, 'In respect,
     however, to the recent law of succession in France, to which I have
     alluded, _I would, presumptuously perhaps, hazard a conjecture,
     that, if the government do not change the law, the law in half a
     century will change the government; and that this change will be,
     not in favor of the power of the crown, as some European writers
     have supposed, but against it_. Those writers only reason upon what
     they think correct general principles, in relation to this subject.
     They acknowledge a want of experience. Here we have had that
     experience; and we know that a multitude of small proprietors,
     acting with intelligence, and that enthusiasm which a common cause
     inspires, constitute not only a formidable, but an invincible
     power.'

     "In less than six years after Mr. Webster uttered this remarkable
     prediction, the king of France himself, at the opening of the
     Legislative Chambers, thus strangely echoed it:--'Legislation ought
     to provide, by successive improvements, for all the wants of
     society. The progressive partitioning of landed estates,
     essentially contrary to the spirit of a monarchical government,
     would enfeeble the guaranties which the charter has given to my
     throne and to my subjects. Measures will be proposed to you,
     gentlemen, to establish the consistency which ought to exist
     between the political law and the civil law, and to preserve the
     patrimony of families, without restricting the liberty of disposing
     of one's property. The preservation of families is connected with,
     and affords a guaranty to, political stability, which is the first
     want of states, and which is especially that of France, after so
     many vicissitudes.'

     "Still, the results to which such subdivision and comminution of
     property tended were not foreseen even in France. The Revolution of
     1830 came, and revealed a part of them; for that revolution was
     made by the influence of men possessing very moderate estates, who
     believed that the guaranties of a government like that of the elder
     branch of the Bourbons were not sufficient for their safety. But
     when the revolution was made, and the younger branch of the
     Bourbons reigned instead of the elder, the laws for the descent of
     property continued to be the same, and the subdivision went on as
     if it were an admitted benefit to society.

     "In consequence of this, in 1844 it was found that there were in
     France at least five millions and a half of families, or about
     twenty-seven millions of souls, who were proprietary families, and
     that of these about four millions of families had each less than
     nine English acres to the family on the average. Of course, a vast
     majority of these twenty-seven millions of persons, though they
     might be interested in some small portion of the soil, were really
     poor, and multitudes of them were dependent.

     "Now, therefore, the results began to appear in a practical form.
     One third of all the rental of France was discovered to be
     absolutely mortgaged, and another third was swallowed up by other
     encumbrances, leaving but one third free for the use and benefit of
     its owners. In other words, a great proportion of the people of
     France were embarrassed and poor, and a great proportion of the
     remainder were fast becoming so.

     "Such a state of things produced, of course, a wide-spread social
     uneasiness. Part of this uneasiness was directed against the
     existing government; another and more formidable portion was
     directed against _all_ government, and against the very institution
     of property. The convulsion of 1848 followed; France is still
     unsettled; and Mr. Webster's prophecy seems still to be in the
     course of a portentous fulfilment."

In the London Quarterly Review for 1846 there is an interesting
discussion on so much of the matter as relates to the subdivision of
real estate for agricultural purposes in France, as far as it had then
advanced, and from which many of the facts here alluded to are taken.


[Footnote 1: An interesting account of the Rock may be found in Dr.
Thacher's History of the Town of Plymouth, pp. 29, 198, 199.]

[Footnote 2: See Note A, at the end of the Discourse.]

[Footnote 3: For notices of Carver, Bradford, Standish, Brewster, and
Allerton, see Young's Chronicles of Plymouth and Massachusetts; Morton's
Memorial, p. 126; Belknap's American Biography, Vol. II.; Hutchinson's
History, Vol. II., App., pp. 456 _et seq._; Collections of the
Massachusetts Historical Society; Winthrop's Journal; and Thacher's
History.]

[Footnote 4: For the original name of what is now Plymouth, see Lives of
American Governors, p. 38, note, a work prepared with great care by J.B.
Moore, Esq.]

[Footnote 5: The twenty-first is now acknowledged to be the true
anniversary. See the Report of the Pilgrim Society on the subject.]

[Footnote 6: Herodot. VI. § 109.]

[Footnote 7: For the compact to which reference is made in the text,
signed on board the Mayflower, see Hutchinson's History, Vol. II.,
Appendix, No. I. For an eloquent description of the manner in which the
first Christian Sabbath was passed on board the Mayflower, at Plymouth,
see Barne's Discourse at Worcester.]

[Footnote 8: The names of the passengers in the Mayflower, with some
account of them, may be found in the New England Genealogical Register,
Vol. I. p. 47, and a narration of some of the incidents of the voyage,
Vol. II. p. 186. For an account of Mrs. White, the mother of the first
child born in New England, see Baylies's History of Plymouth, Vol. II.
p. 18, and for a notice of her son Peregrine, see Moore's Lives of
American Governors, Vol. I. p. 31, note.]

[Footnote 9: See the admirable letter written on board the Arbella, in
Hutchinson's History, Vol. I. Appendix, No. I.]

[Footnote 10: In reference to the British policy respecting Colonial
manufactures, see Representations of the Board of Trade to the House of
Lords, 23d Jan., 1734; also, 8th June, 1749. For an able vindication of
the British Colonial policy, see "Political Essays concerning the
Present State of the British Empire." London. 1772.]

[Footnote 11: Many interesting papers, illustrating the early history of
the Colony, may be found in Hutchinson's "Collection of Original Papers
relating to the History of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay."]

[Footnote 12: In reference to the fulfilment of this prediction, see Mr.
Webster's Address at the Celebration of the New England Society of New
York, on the 23d of December, 1850.]

[Footnote 13: John Adams, second President of the United States.]

[Footnote 14: See note B, at the end of the Discourse.]

[Footnote 15: Oratio pro Flacco, § 7.]

[Footnote 16: The first free school established by law in the Plymouth
Colony was in 1670-72. One of the early teachers in Boston taught school
more than _seventy_ years. See Cotton Mather's "Funeral Sermon upon Mr.
Ezekiel Cheever, the ancient and honorable Master of the Free School in
Boston."

For the impression made upon the mind of an intelligent foreigner by the
general attention to popular education, as characteristic of the
American polity, see Mackay's Western World, Vol. III. p. 225 _et seq._
Also, Edinburgh Review, No. 186.]

[Footnote 17: By a law of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, passed as
early as 1647, it was ordered, that, "when any town shall increase to
the number of one hundred families or householders, they shall set up a
grammar school, the master thereof being able to instruct youth so far
as they may be fitted for the University."]

[Footnote 18: In reference to the opposition of the Colonies to the
slave-trade, see a representation of the Board of Trade to the House of
Lords, 23d January, 1733-4.]




DEFENCE OF JUDGE JAMES PRESCOTT.

THE CLOSING APPEAL TO THE SENATE OF MASSACHUSETTS, IN MR. WEBSTER'S
"ARGUMENT ON THE IMPEACHMENT OF JAMES PRESCOTT," APRIL 24TH, 1821.


Mr. President, the case is closed! The fate of the respondent is in your
hands. It is for you now to say, whether, from the law and the facts as
they have appeared before you, you will proceed to disgrace and
disfranchise him. If your duty calls on you to convict him, let justice
be done, and convict him; but, I adjure you, let it be a clear,
undoubted case. Let it be so for his sake, for you are robbing him of
that for which, with all your high powers, you can yield him no
compensation; let it be so for your own sakes, for the responsibility of
this day's judgment is one which you must carry with you through life.
For myself, I am willing here to relinquish the character of an
advocate, and to express opinions by which I am prepared to be bound as
a citizen and a man. And I say upon my honor and conscience, that I see
not how, with the law and constitution for your guides, you can
pronounce the respondent guilty. I declare that I have seen no case of
wilful and corrupt official misconduct, set forth according to the
requisitions of the constitution, and proved according to the common
rules of evidence. I see many things imprudent and ill-judged; many
things that I could wish had been otherwise; but corruption and crime I
do not see.

Sir, the prejudices of the day will soon be forgotten; the passions, if
any there be, which have excited or favored this prosecution will
subside; but the consequence of the judgment you are about to render
will outlive both them and you. The respondent is now brought, a single,
unprotected individual, to this formidable bar of judgment, to stand
against the power and authority of the State. I know you can crush him,
as he stands before you, and clothed as you are with the sovereignty of
the State. You have the power "to change his countenance and to send him
away." Nor do I remind you, that your judgment is to be rejudged by the
community; and, as you have summoned him for trial to this high
tribunal, that you are soon to descend yourselves from these seats of
justice, and stand before the higher tribunal of the world. I would not
fail so much in respect to this honorable court as to hint that it could
pronounce a sentence which the community will reverse. No, Sir, it is
not the world's revision which I would call on you to regard; but that
of your own consciences, when years have gone by and you shall look back
on the sentence you are about to render. If you send away the
respondent, condemned and sentenced, from your bar, you are yet to meet
him in the world on which you cast him out. You will be called to behold
him a disgrace to his family, a sorrow and a shame to his children, a
living fountain of grief and agony to himself.

If you shall then be able to behold him only as an unjust judge, whom
vengeance has overtaken and justice has blasted, you will be able to
look upon him, not without pity, but yet without remorse. But if, on the
other hand, you shall see, whenever and wherever you meet him, a victim
of prejudice or of passion, a sacrifice to a transient excitement; if
you shall see in him a man for whose condemnation any provision of the
constitution has been violated or any principle of law broken down, then
will he be able, humble and low as may be his condition, then will he be
able to turn the current of compassion backward, and to look with pity
on those who have been his judges. If you are about to visit this
respondent with a judgment which shall blast his house; if the bosoms of
the innocent and the amiable are to be made to bleed under your
infliction, I beseech you to be able to state clear and strong grounds
for your proceeding. Prejudice and excitement are transitory, and will
pass away. Political expediency, in matters of judicature, is a false
and hollow principle, and will never satisfy the conscience of him who
is fearful that he may have given a hasty judgment. I earnestly entreat
you, for your own sakes, to possess yourselves of solid reasons, founded
in truth and justice, for the judgment you pronounce, which you can
carry with you till you go down into your graves; reasons which it will
require no argument to revive, no sophistry, no excitement, no regard to
popular favor, to render satisfactory to your consciences; reasons which
you can appeal to in every crisis of your lives, and which shall be able
to assure you, in your own great extremity, that you have not judged a
fellow-creature without mercy.

Sir, I have done with the case of this individual, and now leave it in
your hands. But I would yet once more appeal to you as public men; as
statesmen; as men of enlightened minds, capable of a large view of
things, and of foreseeing the remote consequences of important
transactions; and, as such, I would most earnestly implore you to
consider fully of the judgment you may pronounce. You are about to give
a construction to constitutional provisions which may adhere to that
instrument for ages, either for good or evil. I may perhaps overrate the
importance of this occasion to the public welfare; but I confess it does
appear to me that, if this body give its sanction to some of the
principles which have been advanced on this occasion, then there is a
power in the State above the constitution and the law; a power
essentially arbitrary and despotic, the exercise of which may be most
dangerous. If impeachment be not under the rule of the constitution and
the laws, then may we tremble, not only for those who may be impeached,
but for all others. If the full benefit of every constitutional
provision be not extended to the respondent, his case becomes the case
of all the people of the Commonwealth. The constitution is their
constitution. They have made it for their own protection, and for his
among the rest. They are not eager for his conviction. They desire not
his ruin. If he be condemned, without having his offences set forth in
the manner which they, by their constitution, have prescribed, and in
the manner which they, by their laws, have ordained, then not only is he
condemned unjustly, but the rights of the whole people are disregarded.
For the sake of the people themselves, therefore, I would resist all
attempts to convict by straining the laws or getting over their
prohibitions. I hold up before him the broad shield of the
constitution; if through that he be pierced and fall, he will be but one
sufferer in a common catastrophe.




THE REVOLUTION IN GREECE.

A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES,
ON THE 19TH OF JANUARY, 1824.


[The rise and progress of the revolution in Greece attracted great
attention in the United States. Many obvious causes contributed to this
effect, and their influence was seconded by the direct appeal made to
the people of America, by the first political body organized in Greece
after the breaking out of the revolution, viz. "The Messenian Senate of
Calamata." A formal address was made by that body to the people of the
United States, and forwarded by their committee (of which the celebrated
Koray was chairman), to a friend and correspondent in this country. This
address was translated and widely circulated; but it was not to be
expected that any great degree of confidence should be at once generally
felt in a movement undertaken against such formidable odds.

The progress of events, however, in 1822 and 1823, was such as to create
an impression that the revolution in Greece had a substantial foundation
in the state of affairs, in the awakened spirit of that country, and in
the condition of public opinion throughout Christendom. The interest
felt in the struggle rapidly increased in the United States. Local
committees were formed, animated appeals were made, and funds collected,
with a view to the relief of the victims of the war.

On the assembling of Congress, in December, 1823, President Monroe made
the revolution in Greece the subject of a paragraph in his annual
message, and on the 8th of December Mr. Webster moved the following
resolution in the House of Representatives:--

"_Resolved_, That provision ought to be made, by law, for defraying the
expense incident to the appointment of an Agent or Commissioner to
Greece, whenever the President shall deem it expedient to make such
appointment."

These, it is believed, are the first official expressions favorable to
the independence of Greece uttered by any of the governments of
Christendom, and no doubt contributed powerfully towards the creation of
that feeling throughout the civilized world which eventually led to the
battle of Navarino, and the liberation of a portion of Greece from the
Turkish yoke.

The House of Representatives having, on the 19th of January, resolved
itself into a committee of the whole, and this resolution being taken
into consideration, Mr. Webster spoke to the following effect.]

I am afraid, Mr. Chairman, that, so far as my part in this discussion is
concerned, those expectations which the public excitement existing on
the subject, and certain associations easily suggested by it, have
conspired to raise, may be disappointed. An occasion which calls the
attention to a spot so distinguished, so connected with interesting
recollections, as Greece, may naturally create something of warmth and
enthusiasm. In a grave, political discussion, however, it is necessary
that those feelings should be chastised. I shall endeavor properly to
repress them, although it is impossible that they should be altogether
extinguished. We must, indeed, fly beyond the civilized world; we must
pass the dominion of law and the boundaries of knowledge; we must, more
especially, withdraw ourselves from this place, and the scenes and
objects which here surround us,--if we would separate ourselves entirely
from the influence of all those memorials of herself which ancient
Greece has transmitted for the admiration and the benefit of mankind.
This free form of government, this popular assembly, the common council
held for the common good,--where have we contemplated its earliest
models? This practice of free debate and public discussion, the contest
of mind with mind, and that popular eloquence, which, if it were now
here, on a subject like this, would move the stones of the
Capitol,--whose was the language in which all these were first
exhibited? Even the edifice in which we assemble, these proportioned
columns, this ornamented architecture, all remind us that Greece has
existed, and that we, like the rest of mankind, are greatly her
debtors.[1]

But I have not introduced this motion in the vain hope of discharging
any thing of this accumulated debt of centuries. I have not acted upon
the expectation, that we who have inherited this obligation from our
ancestors should now attempt to pay it to those who may seem to have
inherited from _their_ ancestors a right to receive payment. My object
is nearer and more immediate. I wish to take occasion of the struggle of
an interesting and gallant people, in the cause of liberty and
Christianity, to draw the attention of the House to the circumstances
which have accompanied that struggle, and to the principles which appear
to have governed the conduct of the great states of Europe in regard to
it; and to the effects and consequences of these principles upon the
independence of nations, and especially upon the institutions of free
governments. What I have to say of Greece, therefore, concerns the
modern, not the ancient; the living, and not the dead. It regards her,
not as she exists in history, triumphant over time, and tyranny, and
ignorance; but as she now is, contending, against fearful odds, for
being, and for the common privileges of human nature.

As it is never difficult to recite commonplace remarks and trite
aphorisms, so it may be easy, I am aware, on this occasion, to remind me
of the wisdom which dictates to men a care of their own affairs, and
admonishes them, instead of searching for adventures abroad, to leave
other men's concerns in their own hands. It may be easy to call this
resolution _Quixotic_, the emanation of a crusading or propagandist
spirit. All this, and more, may be readily said; but all this, and more,
will not be allowed to fix a character upon this proceeding, until that
is proved which it takes for granted. Let it first be shown, that in
this question there is nothing which can affect the interest, the
character, or the duty of this country. Let it be proved, that we are
not called upon, by either of these considerations, to express an
opinion on the subject to which the resolution relates. Let this be
proved, and then it will indeed be made out, that neither ought this
resolution to pass, nor ought the subject of it to have been mentioned
in the communication of the President to us. But, in my opinion, this
cannot be shown. In my judgment, the subject is interesting to the
people and the government of this country, and we are called upon, by
considerations of great weight and moment, to express our opinions upon
it. These considerations, I think, spring from a sense of our own duty,
our character, and our own interest. I wish to treat the subject on such
grounds, exclusively, as are truly _American_; but then, in considering
it as an American question, I cannot forget the age in which we live,
the prevailing spirit of the age, the interesting questions which
agitate it, and our own peculiar relation in regard to these interesting
questions. Let this be, then, and as far as I am concerned I hope it
will be, purely an American discussion; but let it embrace,
nevertheless, every thing that fairly concerns America. Let it
comprehend, not merely her present advantage, but her permanent
interest, her elevated character as one of the free states of the world,
and her duty towards those great principles which have hitherto
maintained the relative independence of nations, and which have, more
especially, made her what she is.

At the commencement of the session, the President, in the discharge of
the high duties of his office, called our attention to the subject to
which this resolution refers. "A strong hope," says that communication,
"has been long entertained, founded on the heroic struggle of the
Greeks, that they would succeed in their contest, and resume their equal
station among the nations of the earth. It is believed that the whole
civilized world takes a deep interest in their welfare. Although no
power has declared in their favor, yet none, according to our
information, has taken part against them. Their cause and their name
have protected them from dangers which might ere this have overwhelmed
any other people. The ordinary calculations of interest, and of
acquisition with a view to aggrandizement, which mingle so much in the
transactions of nations, seem to have had no effect in regard to them.
From the facts which have come to our knowledge, there is good cause to
believe that their enemy has lost for ever all dominion over them; that
Greece will become again an independent nation."

It has appeared to me that the House should adopt some resolution
reciprocating these sentiments, so far as it shall approve them. More
than twenty years have elapsed since Congress first ceased to receive
such a communication from the President as could properly be made the
subject of a general answer. I do not mean to find fault with this
relinquishment of a former and an ancient practice. It may have been
attended with inconveniences which justified its abolition. But,
certainly, there was one advantage belonging to it; and that is, that it
furnished a fit opportunity for the expression of the opinion of the
Houses of Congress upon those topics in the executive communication
which were not expected to be made the immediate subjects of direct
legislation. Since, therefore, the President's message does not now
receive a general answer, it has seemed to me to be proper that, in some
mode, agreeable to our own usual form of proceeding, we should express
our sentiments upon the important and interesting topics on which it
treats.

If the sentiments of the message in respect to Greece be proper, it is
equally proper that this House should reciprocate those sentiments. The
present resolution is designed to have that extent, and no more. If it
pass, it will leave any future proceeding where it now is, in the
discretion of the executive government. It is but an expression, under
those forms in which the House is accustomed to act, of the satisfaction
of the House with the general sentiments expressed in regard to this
subject in the message, and of its readiness to defray the expense
incident to any inquiry for the purpose of further information, or any
other agency which the President, in his discretion, shall see fit, in
whatever manner and at whatever time, to institute. The whole matter is
still left in his judgment, and this resolution can in no way restrain
its unlimited exercise.

I might well, Mr. Chairman, avoid the responsibility of this measure, if
it had, in my judgment, any tendency to change the policy of the
country. With the general course of that policy I am quite satisfied.
The nation is prosperous, peaceful, and happy; and I should very
reluctantly put its peace, prosperity, or happiness at risk. It appears
to me, however, that this resolution is strictly conformable to our
general policy, and not only consistent with our interests, but even
demanded by a large and liberal view of those interests.

It is certainly true that the just policy of this country is, in the
first place, a peaceful policy. No nation ever had less to expect from
forcible aggrandizement. The mighty agents which are working out our
greatness are time, industry, and the arts. Our augmentation is by
growth, not by acquisition; by internal development, not by external
accession. No schemes can be suggested to us so magnificent as the
prospects which a sober contemplation of our own condition, unaided by
projects, uninfluenced by ambition, fairly spreads before us. A country
of such vast extent, with such varieties of soil and climate, with so
much public spirit and private enterprise, with a population increasing
so much beyond former example, with capacities of improvement not only
unapplied or unexhausted, but even, in a great measure, as yet
unexplored,--so free in its institutions, so mild in its laws, so secure
in the title it confers on every man to his own acquisitions,--needs
nothing but time and peace to carry it forward to almost any point of
advancement.

In the next place, I take it for granted that the policy of this
country, springing from the nature of our government and the spirit of
all our institutions, is, so far as it respects the interesting
questions which agitate the present age, on the side of liberal and
enlightened sentiments. The age is extraordinary; the spirit that
actuates it is peculiar and marked; and our own relation to the times we
live in, and to the questions which interest them, is equally marked and
peculiar. We are placed, by our good fortune and the wisdom and valor of
our ancestors, in a condition in which we _can_ act no obscure part. Be
it for honor, or be it for dishonor, whatever we do is sure to attract
the observation of the world. As one of the free states among the
nations, as a great and rapidly rising republic, it would be impossible
for us, if we were so disposed, to prevent our principles, our
sentiments, and our example from producing some effect upon the opinions
and hopes of society throughout the civilized world. It rests probably
with ourselves to determine whether the influence of these shall be
salutary or pernicious.

It cannot be denied that the great political question of this age is
that between absolute and regulated governments. The substance of the
controversy is whether society shall have any part in its own
government. Whether the form of government shall be that of limited
monarchy, with more or less mixture of hereditary power, or wholly
elective or representative, may perhaps be considered as subordinate.
The main controversy is between that absolute rule, which, while it
promises to govern well, means, nevertheless, to govern without control,
and that constitutional system which restrains sovereign discretion, and
asserts that society may claim as matter of right some effective power
in the establishment of the laws which are to regulate it. The spirit of
the times sets with a most powerful current in favor of these
last-mentioned opinions. It is opposed, however, whenever and wherever
it shows itself, by certain of the great potentates of Europe; and it is
opposed on grounds as applicable in one civilized nation as in another,
and which would justify such opposition in relation to the United
States, as well as in relation to any other state or nation, if time and
circumstances should render such opposition expedient.

What part it becomes this country to take on a question of this sort, so
far as it is called upon to take any part, cannot be doubtful. Our side
of this question is settled for us, even without our own volition. Our
history, our situation, our character, necessarily decide our position
and our course, before we have even time to ask whether we have an
option. Our place is on the side of free institutions. From the earliest
settlement of these States, their inhabitants were accustomed, in a
greater or less degree, to the enjoyment of the powers of
self-government; and for the last half-century they have sustained
systems of government entirely representative, yielding to themselves
the greatest possible prosperity, and not leaving them without
distinction and respect among the nations of the earth. This system we
are not likely to abandon; and while we shall no farther recommend its
adoption to other nations, in whole or in part, than it may recommend
itself by its visible influence on our own growth and prosperity, we
are, nevertheless, interested to resist the establishment of doctrines
which deny the legality of its foundations. We stand as an equal among
nations, claiming the full benefit of the established international law;
and it is our duty to oppose, from the earliest to the latest moment,
any innovations upon that code which shall bring into doubt or question
our own equal and independent rights.

I will now, Mr. Chairman, advert to those pretensions put forth by the
allied sovereigns of Continental Europe, which seem to me calculated, if
unresisted, to bring into disrepute the principles of our government,
and, indeed, to be wholly incompatible with any degree of national
independence. I do not introduce these considerations for the sake of
topics. I am not about to declaim against crowned heads, nor to quarrel
with any country for preferring a form of government different from our
own. The right of choice that we exercise for ourselves, I am quite
willing to leave also to others. But it appears to me that the
pretensions to which I have alluded are wholly inconsistent with the
independence of nations generally, without regard to the question
whether their governments be absolute, monarchical and limited, or
purely popular and representative. I have a most deep and thorough
conviction, that a new era has arisen in the world, that new and
dangerous combinations are taking place, promulgating doctrines and
fraught with consequences wholly subversive in their tendency of the
public law of nations and of the general liberties of mankind. Whether
this be so, or not, is the question which I now propose to examine, upon
such grounds of information as are afforded by the common and public
means of knowledge.

Everybody knows that, since the final restoration of the Bourbons to the
throne of France, the Continental powers have entered into sundry
alliances, which have been made public, and have held several meetings
or congresses, at which the principles of their political conduct have
been declared. These things must necessarily have an effect upon the
international law of the states of the world. If that effect be good,
and according to the principles of that law, they deserve to be
applauded. If, on the contrary, their effect and tendency be most
dangerous, their principles wholly inadmissible, their pretensions such
as would abolish every degree of national independence, then they are to
be resisted.

I begin, Mr. Chairman, by drawing your attention to the treaty concluded
at Paris in September, 1815, between Russia, Prussia, and Austria,
commonly called the Holy Alliance. This singular alliance appears to
have originated with the Emperor of Russia; for we are informed that a
draft of it was exhibited by him, personally, to a plenipotentiary of
one of the great powers of Europe, before it was presented to the other
sovereigns who ultimately signed it.[2] This instrument professes
nothing, certainly, which is not extremely commendable and praiseworthy.
It promises only that the contracting parties, both in relation to other
states, and in regard to their own subjects, will observe the rules of
justice and Christianity. In confirmation of these promises, it makes
the most solemn and devout religious invocations. Now, although such an
alliance is a novelty in European history, the world seems to have
received this treaty, upon its first promulgation, with general charity.
It was commonly understood as little or nothing more than an expression
of thanks for the successful termination of the momentous contest in
which those sovereigns had been engaged. It still seems somewhat
unaccountable, however, that these good resolutions should require to be
confirmed by treaty. Who doubted that these august sovereigns would
treat each other with justice, and rule their own subjects in mercy? And
what necessity was there for a solemn stipulation by treaty, to insure
the performance of that which is no more than the ordinary duty of every
government? It would hardly be admitted by these sovereigns, that by
this compact they consider themselves bound to introduce an entire
change, or any change in the course of their own conduct. Nothing
substantially new, certainly, can be supposed to have been intended.
What principle, or what practice, therefore, called for this solemn
declaration of the intention of the parties to observe the rules of
religion and justice?

It is not a little remarkable, that a writer of reputation upon the
Public Law, described, many years ago, not inaccurately, the character
of this alliance. I allude to Puffendorf. "It seems useless," says he,
"to frame any pacts or leagues, barely for the defence and support of
universal peace; for by such a league nothing is superadded to the
obligation of natural law, and no agreement is made for the performance
of any thing which the parties were not previously bound to perform; nor
is the original obligation rendered firmer or stronger by such an
addition. Men of any tolerable culture and civilization might well be
ashamed of entering into any such compact, the conditions of which imply
only that the parties concerned shall not offend in any clear point of
duty. Besides, we should be guilty of great irreverence towards God,
should we suppose that his injunctions had not already laid a sufficient
obligation upon us to act justly, unless we ourselves voluntarily
consented to the same engagement; as if our obligation to obey his will
depended upon our own pleasure.

"If one engage to serve another, he does not set it down expressly and
particularly among the terms and conditions of the bargain, that he will
not betray nor murder him, nor pillage nor burn his house. For the same
reason, that would be a dishonorable engagement in which men should bind
themselves to act properly and decently, and not break the peace."[3]

Such were the sentiments of that eminent writer. How nearly he had
anticipated the case of the Holy Alliance will appear from the preamble
to that alliance. After stating that the allied sovereigns had become
persuaded, by the events of the last three years, that "their relations
with each other ought to be regulated exclusively by the sublime truths
taught by the eternal religion of God the Saviour," they solemnly
declare their fixed resolution "to adopt as the sole rule of their
conduct, both in the administration of their respective states, and in
their political relations with every other government, the precepts of
that holy religion, namely, the precepts of justice, charity, and peace,
which, far from being applicable to private life alone, ought, on the
contrary, to have a direct influence upon the counsels of princes, and
guide all their steps, as being the only means of consolidating human
institutions, and remedying their imperfections."[4]

This measure, however, appears principally important, as it was the
first of a series, and was followed afterwards by others of a more
marked and practical nature. These measures, taken together, profess to
establish two principles, which the Allied Powers would introduce as a
part of the law of the civilized world; and the establishment of which
is to be enforced by a million and a half of bayonets.

The first of these principles is, that all popular or constitutional
rights are held no otherwise than as grants from the crown. Society,
upon this principle, has no rights of its own; it takes good government,
when it gets it, as a boon and a concession, but can demand nothing. It
is to live by that favor which emanates from royal authority, and if it
have the misfortune to lose that favor, there is nothing to protect it
against any degree of injustice and oppression. It can rightfully make
no endeavor for a change, by itself; its whole privilege is to receive
the favors that may be dispensed by the sovereign power, and all its
duty is described in the single word _submission_. This is the plain
result of the principal Continental state papers; indeed, it is nearly
the identical text of some of them.

The circular despatch addressed by the sovereigns assembled at Laybach,
in the spring of 1821, to their ministers at foreign courts, alleges,
"that useful and necessary changes in legislation and in the
administration of states ought only to emanate from the free will and
intelligent and well-weighed conviction of those whom God has rendered
responsible for power. All that deviates from this line necessarily
leads to disorder, commotions, and evils far more insufferable than
those which they pretend to remedy."[5] Now, Sir, this principle would
carry Europe back again, at once, into the middle of the Dark Ages. It
is the old doctrine of the Divine right of kings, advanced now by new
advocates, and sustained by a formidable array of power. That the people
hold their fundamental privileges as matter of concession or indulgence
from the sovereign power, is a sentiment not easy to be diffused in this
age, any farther than it is enforced by the direct operation of military
means. It is true, certainly, that some six centuries ago the early
founders of English liberty called the instrument which secured their
rights a _charter_. It was, indeed, a concession; they had obtained it
sword in hand from the king; and in many other cases, whatever was
obtained, favorable to human rights, from the tyranny and despotism of
the feudal sovereigns, was called by the names of _privileges_ and
_liberties_, as being matter of special favor. Though we retain this
language at the present time, the principle itself belongs to ages that
have long passed by us. The civilized world has done with "the enormous
faith, of many made for one." Society asserts its own rights, and
alleges them to be original, sacred, and unalienable. It is not
satisfied with having kind masters; it demands a participation in its
own government; and in states much advanced in civilization, it urges
this demand with a constancy and an energy that cannot well nor long be
resisted. There are, happily, enough of regulated governments in the
world, and those among the most distinguished, to operate as constant
examples, and to keep alive an unceasing panting in the bosoms of men
for the enjoyment of similar free institutions.

When the English Revolution of 1688 took place, the English people did
not content themselves with the example of Runnymede; they did not build
their hopes upon royal charters; they did not, like the authors of the
Laybach circular, suppose that all useful changes in constitutions and
laws must proceed from those only whom God has rendered responsible for
power. They were somewhat better instructed in the principles of civil
liberty, or at least they were better lovers of those principles than
the sovereigns of Laybach. Instead of petitioning for charters, they
declared their rights, and while they offered to the Prince of Orange
the crown with one hand, they held in the other an enumeration of those
privileges which they did not profess to hold as favors, but which they
demanded and insisted upon as their undoubted rights.

I need not stop to observe, Mr. Chairman, how totally hostile are these
doctrines of Laybach to the fundamental principles of our government.
They are in direct contradiction; the principles of good and evil are
hardly more opposite. If these principles of the sovereigns be true, we
are but in a state of rebellion or of anarchy, and are only tolerated
among civilized states because it has not yet been convenient to reduce
us to the true standard.

But the second, and, if possible, the still more objectionable
principle, avowed in these papers, is the right of forcible interference
in the affairs of other states. A right to control nations in their
desire to change their own government, wherever it maybe conjectured, or
pretended, that such change might furnish an example to the subjects of
other states, is plainly and distinctly asserted. The same Congress that
made the declaration at Laybach had declared, before its removal from
Troppau, "that the powers have an undoubted right to take a hostile
attitude in regard to those states in which the overthrow of the
government may operate as an example."

There cannot, as I think, be conceived a more flagrant violation of
public law, or national independence, than is contained in this short
declaration.

No matter what be the character of the government resisted; no matter
with what weight the foot of the oppressor bears on the neck of the
oppressed; if he struggle, or if he complain, he sets a dangerous
example of resistance,--and from that moment he becomes an object of
hostility to the most powerful potentates of the earth. I want words to
express my abhorrence of this abominable principle. I trust every
enlightened man throughout the world will oppose it, and that,
especially, those who, like ourselves, are fortunately out of the reach
of the bayonets that enforce it, will proclaim their detestation of it,
in a tone both loud and decisive. The avowed object of such declarations
is to preserve the peace of the world. But by what means is it proposed
to preserve this peace? Simply, by bringing the power of all governments
to bear against all subjects. Here is to be established a sort of
double, or treble, or quadruple, or, for aught I know, quintuple
allegiance. An offence against one king is to be an offence against all
kings, and the power of all is to be put forth for the punishment of the
offender. A right to interfere in extreme cases, in the case of
contiguous states, and where imminent danger is threatened to one by
what is occurring in another, is not without precedent in modern times,
upon what has been called the law of vicinage; and when confined to
extreme cases, and limited to a certain extent, it may perhaps be
defended upon principles of necessity and self-defence. But to maintain
that sovereigns may go to war upon the subjects of another state to
repress an example, is monstrous indeed. What is to be the limit to such
a principle, or to the practice growing out of it? What, in any case,
but sovereign pleasure, is to decide whether the example be good or bad?
And what, under the operation of such a rule, may be thought of our
example? Why are we not as fair objects for the operation of the new
principle, as any of those who may attempt a reform of government on the
other side of the Atlantic?

The ultimate effect of this alliance of sovereigns, for objects personal
to themselves, or respecting only the permanence of their own power,
must be the destruction of all just feeling, and all natural sympathy,
between those who exercise the power of government and those who are
subject to it. The old channels of mutual regard and confidence are to
be dried up, or cut off. Obedience can now be expected no longer than it
is enforced. Instead of relying on the affections of the governed,
sovereigns are to rely on the affections and friendship of other
sovereigns. There are, in short, no longer to be nations. Princes and
people are no longer to unite for interests common to them both. There
is to be an end of all patriotism, as a distinct national feeling.
Society is to be divided horizontally; all sovereigns above, and all
subjects below; the former coalescing for their own security, and for
the more certain subjection of the undistinguished multitude beneath.
This, Sir, is no picture drawn by imagination. I have hardly used
language stronger than that in which the authors of this new system have
commented on their own work. M. de Chateaubriand, in his speech in the
French Chamber of Deputies, in February last, declared, that he had a
conference with the Emperor of Russia at Verona, in which that august
sovereign uttered sentiments which appeared to him so precious, that he
immediately hastened home, and wrote them down while yet fresh in his
recollection. "The Emperor declared," said he, "that there can no longer
be such a thing as an English, French, Russian, Prussian, or Austrian
policy; there is henceforth but one policy, which, for the safety of
all, should be adopted both by people and kings. It was for me first to
show myself convinced of the principles upon which I founded the
alliance; an occasion offered itself,--the rising in Greece. Nothing
certainly could occur more for my interests, for the interests of my
people, nothing more acceptable to my country, than a religious war in
Turkey. But I have thought I perceived in the troubles of the Morea the
sign of revolution, and I have held back. Providence has not put under
my command eight hundred thousand soldiers to satisfy my ambition, but
to protect religion, morality, and justice, and to secure the prevalence
of those principles of order on which human society rests. It may well
be permitted, that kings may have public alliances to defend themselves
against secret enemies."

These, Sir, are the words which the French minister thought so important
that they deserved to be recorded; and I, too, Sir, am of the same
opinion. But if it be true that there is hereafter to be neither a
Russian policy, nor a Prussian policy, nor an Austrian policy, nor a
French policy, nor even, which yet I will not believe, an English
policy, there will be, I trust in God, an American policy. If the
authority of all these governments be hereafter to be mixed and blended,
and to flow in one augmented current of prerogative over the face of
Europe, sweeping away all resistance in its course, it will yet remain
for us to secure our own happiness by the preservation of our own
principles; which I hope we shall have the manliness to express on all
proper occasions, and the spirit to defend in every extremity. The end
and scope of this amalgamated policy are neither more nor less than
this: to interfere, by force, for any government against any people who
may resist it. Be the state of the people what it may, they shall not
rise; be the government what it will, it shall not be opposed.

The practical commentary has corresponded with the plain language of the
text. Look at Spain, and at Greece. If men may not resist the Spanish
Inquisition, and the Turkish cimeter, what is there to which humanity
must not submit? Stronger cases can never arise. Is it not proper for
us, at all times, is it not our duty, at this time, to come forth, and
deny, and condemn, these monstrous principles? Where, but here, and in
one other place, are they likely to be resisted? They are advanced with
equal coolness and boldness; and they are supported by immense power.
The timid will shrink and give way, and many of the brave may be
compelled to yield to force. Human liberty may yet, perhaps, be obliged
to repose its principal hopes on the intelligence and the vigor of the
Saxon race. As far as depends on us, at least, I trust those hopes will
not be disappointed; and that, to the extent which may consist with our
own settled, pacific policy, our opinions and sentiments may be brought
to act on the right side, and to the right end, on an occasion which is,
in truth, nothing less than a momentous question between an intelligent
age, full of knowledge, thirsting for improvement, and quickened by a
thousand impulses, on one side, and the most arbitrary pretensions,
sustained by unprecedented power, on the other.

This asserted right of forcible intervention in the affairs of other
nations is in open violation of the public law of the world. Who has
authorized these learned doctors of Troppau to establish new articles in
this code? Whence are their diplomas? Is the whole world expected to
acquiesce in principles which entirely subvert the independence of
nations? On the basis of this independence has been reared the beautiful
fabric of international law. On the principle of this independence,
Europe has seen a family of nations flourishing within its limits, the
small among the large, protected not always by power, but by a principle
above power, by a sense of propriety and justice. On this principle, the
great commonwealth of civilized states has been hitherto upheld. There
have been occasional departures or violations, and always disastrous, as
in the case of Poland; but, in general, the harmony of the system has
been wonderfully preserved. In the production and preservation of this
sense of justice, this predominating principle, the Christian religion
has acted a main part. Christianity and civilization have labored
together; it seems, indeed, to be a law of our human condition, that
they can live and flourish only together. From their blended influence
has arisen that delightful spectacle of the prevalence of reason and
principle over power and interest, so well described by one who was an
honor to the age;--

    "And sovereign Law, the state's collected will,
      O'er thrones and globes elate,
    Sits empress,--crowning good, repressing ill:
      Smit by her sacred frown,
    The fiend, Discretion, like a vapor, sinks,
      And e'en the all-dazzling crown
    Hides his faint rays, and at her bidding shrinks."

But this vision is past. While the teachers of Laybach give the rule,
there will be no law but the law of the strongest.

It may now be required of me to show what interest _we_ have in
resisting this new system. What is it to _us_, it may be asked, upon
what principles, or what pretences, the European governments assert a
right of interfering in the affairs of their neighbors? The thunder, it
may be said, rolls at a distance. The wide Atlantic is between us and
danger; and, however others may suffer, _we_ shall remain safe.

I think it is a sufficient answer to this to say, that we are one of the
nations of the earth; that we have an interest, therefore, in the
preservation of that system of national law and national intercourse
which has heretofore subsisted, so beneficially for all. Our system of
government, it should also be remembered, is, throughout, founded on
principles utterly hostile to the new code; and if we remain undisturbed
by its operation, we shall owe our security either to our situation or
our spirit. The enterprising character of the age, our own active,
commercial spirit, the great increase which has taken place in the
intercourse among civilized and commercial states, have necessarily
connected us with other nations, and given us a high concern in the
preservation of those salutary principles upon which that intercourse is
founded. We have as clear an interest in international law, as
individuals have in the laws of society.

But apart from the soundness of the policy, on the ground of direct
interest, we have, Sir, a duty connected with this subject, which I
trust we are willing to perform. What do _we_ not owe to the cause of
civil and religious liberty? to the principle of lawful resistance? to
the principle that society has a right to partake in its own government?
As the leading republic of the world, living and breathing in these
principles, and advanced, by their operation, with unequalled rapidity
in our career, shall we give _our_ consent to bring them into disrepute
and disgrace? It is neither ostentation nor boasting to say, that there
lies before this country, in immediate prospect, a great extent and
height of power. We are borne along towards this without effort, and not
always even with a full knowledge of the rapidity of our own motion.
Circumstances which never combined before have co-operated in our favor,
and a mighty current is setting us forward which we could not resist
even if we would, and which, while we would stop to make an observation,
and take the sun, has set us, at the end of the operation, far in
advance of the place where we commenced it. Does it not become us, then,
is it not a duty imposed on us, to give our weight to the side of
liberty and justice, to let mankind know that we are not tired of our
own institutions, and to protest against the asserted power of altering
at pleasure the law of the civilized world?

But whatever we do in this respect, it becomes us to do upon clear and
consistent principles. There is an important topic in the message to
which I have yet hardly alluded. I mean the rumored combination of the
European Continental sovereigns against the newly established free
states of South America. Whatever position this government may take on
that subject, I trust it will be one which can be defended on known and
acknowledged grounds of right. The near approach or the remote distance
of danger may affect policy, but cannot change principle. The same
reason that would authorize us to protest against unwarrantable
combinations to interfere between Spain and her former colonies, would
authorize us equally to protest if the same combination were directed
against the smallest state in Europe, although our duty to ourselves,
our policy, and wisdom, might indicate very different courses as fit to
be pursued by us in the two cases. We shall not, I trust, act upon the
notion of dividing the world with the Holy Alliance, and complain of
nothing done by them in their hemisphere if they will not interfere with
ours. At least this would not be such a course of policy as I could
recommend or support. We have not offended, and I hope we do not intend
to offend, in regard to South America, against any principle of national
independence or of public law. We have done nothing, we shall do
nothing, that we need to hush up or to compromise by forbearing to
express our sympathy for the cause of the Greeks, or our opinion of the
course which other governments have adopted in regard to them.

It may, in the next place, be asked, perhaps, Supposing all this to be
true, what can _we_ do? Are we to go to war? Are we to interfere in the
Greek cause, or any other European cause? Are we to endanger our pacific
relations? No, certainly not. What, then, the question recurs, remains
for us? If we will not endanger our own peace, if we will neither
furnish armies nor navies to the cause which we think the just one, what
is there within our power?

Sir, this reasoning mistakes the age. The time has been, indeed, when
fleets, and armies, and subsidies, were the principal reliances even in
the best cause. But, happily for mankind, a great change has taken place
in this respect. 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 impassible, inextinguishable enemy of mere violence and
arbitrary rule, which, like Milton's angels,

    "Vital in every part, ...
    Cannot, but by annihilating, die."

Until this be propitiated or satisfied, it is vain for power to talk
either of triumphs or of repose. No matter what fields are desolated,
what fortresses surrendered, what armies subdued, or what provinces
overrun. In the history of the year that has passed by us, and in the
instance of unhappy Spain, we have seen the vanity of all triumphs in a
cause which violates the general sense of justice of the civilized
world. It is nothing that the troops of France have passed from the
Pyrenees to Cadiz; it is nothing that an unhappy and prostrate nation
has fallen before them; it is nothing that arrests, and confiscation,
and execution, sweep away the little remnant of national resistance.
There is an enemy that still exists to check the glory of these
triumphs. It follows the conqueror back to the very scene of his
ovations; it calls upon him to take notice that Europe, though silent,
is yet indignant; it shows him that the sceptre of his victory is a
barren sceptre; that it shall confer neither joy nor honor, but shall
moulder to dry ashes in his grasp. In the midst of his exultation, it
pierces his ear with the cry of injured justice; it denounces against
him the indignation of an enlightened and civilized age; it turns to
bitterness the cup of his rejoicing, and wounds him with the sting which
belongs to the consciousness of having outraged the opinion of mankind.

In my opinion, Sir, the Spanish nation is now nearer, not only in point
of time, but in point of circumstance, to the acquisition of a regulated
government, than at the moment of the French invasion. Nations must, no
doubt, undergo these trials in their progress to the establishment of
free institutions. The very trials benefit them, and render them more
capable both of obtaining and of enjoying the object which they seek.

I shall not detain the committee, Sir, by laying before it any
statistical, geographical, or commercial account of Greece. I have no
knowledge on these subjects which is not common to all. It is
universally admitted, that, within the last thirty or forty years, the
condition of Greece has been greatly improved. Her marine is at present
respectable, containing the best sailors in the Mediterranean, better
even, in that sea, than our own, as more accustomed to the long
quarantines and other regulations which prevail in its ports. The number
of her seamen has been estimated as high as 50,000, but I suppose that
estimate must be much too large. She has, probably, 150,000 tons of
shipping. It is not easy to ascertain the amount of the Greek
population. The Turkish government does not trouble itself with any of
the calculations of political economy, and there has never been such a
thing as an accurate census, probably, in any part of the Turkish
empire. In the absence of all official information, private opinions
widely differ. By the tables which have been communicated, it would seem
that there are 2,400,000 Greeks in Greece proper and the islands; an
amount, as I am inclined to think, somewhat overrated. There are,
probably, in the whole of European Turkey, 5,000,000 Greeks, and
2,000,000 more in the Asiatic dominions of that power.

The moral and intellectual progress of this numerous population, under
the horrible oppression which crushes it, has been such as may well
excite regard. Slaves, under barbarous masters, the Greeks have still
aspired after the blessings of knowledge and civilization. Before the
breaking out of the present revolution, they had established schools,
and colleges, and libraries, and the press. Wherever, as in Scio, owing
to particular circumstances, the weight of oppression was mitigated, the
natural vivacity of the Greeks, and their aptitude for the arts, were
evinced. Though certainly not on an equality with the civilized and
Christian states of Europe,--and how is it possible, under such
oppression as they endured, that they should be?--they yet furnished a
striking contrast with their Tartar masters. It has been well said, that
it is not easy to form a just conception of the nature of the despotism
exercised over them. Conquest and subjugation, as known among European
states, are inadequate modes of expression by which to denote the
dominion of the Turks. A conquest in the civilized world is generally no
more than an acquisition of a new dominion to the conquering country. It
does not imply a never-ending bondage imposed upon the conquered, a
perpetual mark,--an opprobrious distinction between them and their
masters; a bitter and unending persecution of their religion; an
habitual violation of their rights of person and property, and the
unrestrained indulgence towards them of every passion which belongs to
the character of a barbarous soldiery. Yet such is the state of Greece.
The Ottoman power over them, obtained originally by the sword, is
constantly preserved by the same means. Wherever it exists, it is a mere
military power. The religious and civil code of the state being both
fixed in the Koran, and equally the object of an ignorant and furious
faith, have been found equally incapable of change. "The Turk," it has
been said, "has been _encamped_ in Europe for four centuries." He has
hardly any more participation in European manners, knowledge, and arts,
than when he crossed the Bosphorus. But this is not the worst. The power
of the empire is fallen into anarchy, and as the principle which belongs
to the head belongs also to the parts, there are as many despots as
there are pachas, beys, and viziers. Wars are almost perpetual between
the Sultan and some rebellious governor of a province; and in the
conflict of these despotisms, the people are necessarily ground between
the upper and the nether millstone. In short, the Christian subjects of
the Sublime Porte feel daily all the miseries which flow from despotism,
from anarchy, from slavery, and from religious persecution. If any thing
yet remains to heighten such a picture, let it be added, that every
office in the government is not only actually, but professedly,
venal,--the pachalics, the vizierates, the cadiships, and whatsoever
other denomination may denote the depositary of power. In the whole
world, Sir, there is no such oppression felt as by the Christian Greeks.
In various parts of India, to be sure, the government is bad enough; but
then it is the government of barbarians over barbarians, and the feeling
of oppression is, of course, not so keen. There the oppressed are
perhaps not better than their oppressors; but in the case of Greece,
there are millions of Christian men, not without knowledge, not without
refinement, not without a strong thirst for all the pleasures of
civilized life, trampled into the very earth, century after century, by
a pillaging, savage, relentless soldiery. Sir, the case is unique. There
exists, and has existed, nothing like it. The world has no such misery
to show; there is no case in which Christian communities can be called
upon with such emphasis of appeal.

But I have said enough, Mr. Chairman, indeed I need have said nothing to
satisfy the House, that it must be some new combination of
circumstances, or new views of policy in the cabinets of Europe, which
have caused this interesting struggle not merely to be regarded with
indifference, but to be marked with opprobrium. The very statement of
the case, as a contest between the Turks and Greeks, sufficiently
indicates what must be the feeling of every individual, and every
government, that is not biassed by a particular interest, or a
particular feeling, to disregard the dictates of justice and humanity.

And now, Sir, what has been the conduct pursued by the Allied Powers in
regard to this contest? When the revolution broke out, the sovereigns
were assembled in congress at Laybach; and the papers of that assembly
sufficiently manifest their sentiments. They proclaim their abhorrence
of those "criminal combinations which had been formed in the eastern
parts of Europe"; and, although it is possible that this denunciation
was aimed, more particularly, at the disturbances in the provinces of
Wallachia and Moldavia, yet no exception is made, from its general
terms, in favor of those events in Greece which were properly the
commencement of her revolution, and which could not but be well known at
Laybach, before the date of these declarations. Now it must be
remembered, that Russia was a leading party in this denunciation of the
efforts of the Greeks to achieve their liberation; and it cannot but be
expected by Russia, that the world should also remember what part she
herself has heretofore acted in the same concern. It is notorious, that
within the last half-century she has again and again excited the Greeks
to rebellion against the Porte, and that she has constantly kept alive
in them the hope that she would, one day, by her own great power, break
the yoke of their oppressor. Indeed, the earnest attention with which
Russia has regarded Greece goes much farther back than to the time I
have mentioned. Ivan the Third, in 1482, having espoused a Grecian
princess, heiress of the last Greek Emperor, discarded St. George from
the Russian arms, and adopted the Greek two-headed black eagle, which
has continued in the Russian arms to the present day. In virtue of the
same marriage, the Russian princes claim the Greek throne as their
inheritance.

Under Peter the Great, the policy of Russia developed itself more fully.
In 1696, he rendered himself master of Azof, and, in 1698, obtained the
right to pass the Dardanelles, and to maintain, by that route,
commercial intercourse with the Mediterranean. He had emissaries
throughout Greece, and particularly applied himself to gain the clergy.
He adopted the _Labarum_ of Constantine, "In hoc signo vinces"; and
medals were struck, with the inscription, "Petrus I. Russo-Graecorum
Imperator." In whatever new direction the principles of the Holy
Alliance may now lead the politics of Russia, or whatever course she may
suppose Christianity now prescribes to her, in regard to the Greek
cause, the time has been when she professed to be contending for that
cause, as identified with Christianity. The white banner under which the
soldiers of Peter the First usually fought, bore, as its inscription,
"In the name of the Prince, and for our country." Relying on the aid of
the Greeks, in his war with the Porte, he changed the white flag to red,
and displayed on it the words, "In the name of God, and for
Christianity." The unfortunate issue of this war is well known. Though
Anne and Elizabeth, the successors of Peter, did not possess his active
character, they kept up a constant communication with Greece, and held
out hopes of restoring the Greek empire. Catharine the Second, as is
well known, excited a general revolt in 1769. A Russian fleet appeared
in the Mediterranean, and a Russian army was landed in the Morea. The
Greeks in the end were disgusted at being expected to take an oath of
allegiance to Russia, and the Empress was disgusted because they refused
to take it. In 1774, peace was signed between Russia and the Porte, and
the Greeks of the Morea were left to their fate. By this treaty the
Porte acknowledged the independence of the Khan of the Crimea; a
preliminary step to the acquisition of that country by Russia. It is not
unworthy of remark, as a circumstance which distinguished this from most
other diplomatic transactions, that it conceded to the cabinet of St.
Petersburg the right of intervention in the interior affairs of Turkey,
in regard to whatever concerned the religion of the Greeks. The
cruelties and massacres that happened to the Greeks after the peace
between Russia and the Porte, notwithstanding the general pardon which
had been stipulated for them, need not now be recited. Instead of
retracing the deplorable picture, it is enough to say, that in this
respect the past is justly reflected in the present. The Empress soon
after invaded and conquered the Crimea, and on one of the gates of
Kerson, its capital, caused to be inscribed, "The road to Byzantium."
The present Emperor, on his accession to the throne, manifested an
intention to adopt the policy of Catharine the Second as his own, and
the world has not been right in all its suspicions, if a project for the
partition of Turkey did not form a part of the negotiations of Napoleon
and Alexander at Tilsit.

All this course of policy seems suddenly to be changed. Turkey is no
longer regarded, it would appear, as an object of partition or
acquisition, and Greek revolts have all at once become, according to the
declaration of Laybach, "criminal combinations." The recent congress at
Verona exceeded its predecessor at Laybach in its denunciations of the
Greek struggle. In the circular of the 14th of December, 1822, it
declared the Grecian resistance to the Turkish power to be rash and
culpable, and lamented that "the firebrand of rebellion had been thrown
into the Ottoman empire." This rebuke and crimination we know to have
proceeded on those settled principles of conduct which the Continental
powers had prescribed for themselves. The sovereigns saw, as well as
others, the real condition of the Greeks; they knew as well as others
that it was most natural and most justifiable, that they should
endeavor, at whatever hazard, to change that condition. They knew that
they themselves, or at least one of them, had more than once urged the
Greeks to similar efforts; that they themselves had thrown the same
firebrand into the midst of the Ottoman empire. And yet, so much does it
seem to be their fixed object to discountenance whatsoever threatens to
disturb the actual government of any country, that, Christians as they
were, and allied, as they professed to be, for purposes most important
to human happiness and religion, they have not hesitated to declare to
the world that they have wholly forborne to exercise any compassion to
the Greeks, simply because they thought that they saw, in the struggles
of the Morea, the sign of revolution. This, then, is coming to a plain,
practical result. The Grecian revolution has been discouraged,
discountenanced, and denounced, solely because it _is_ a revolution.
Independent of all inquiry into the reasonableness of its causes or the
enormity of the oppression which produced it; regardless of the peculiar
claims which Greece possesses upon the civilized world; and regardless
of what has been their own conduct towards her for a century; regardless
of the interest of the Christian religion,--the sovereigns at Verona
seized upon the case of the Greek revolution as one above all others
calculated to illustrate the fixed principles of their policy. The
abominable rule of the Porte on one side, the value and the sufferings
of the Christian Greeks on the other, furnished a case likely to
convince even an incredulous world of the sincerity of the professions
of the Allied Powers. They embraced the occasion with apparent ardor:
and the world, I trust, is satisfied.

We see here, Mr. Chairman, the direct and actual application of that
system which I have attempted to describe. We see it in the very case of
Greece. We learn, authentically and indisputably, that the Allied
Powers, holding that all changes in legislation and administration ought
to proceed from kings alone, were wholly inexorable to the sufferings of
the Greeks, and entirely hostile to their success. Now it is upon this
practical result of the principle of the Continental powers that I wish
this House to intimate its opinion. The great question is a question of
principle. Greece is only the signal instance of the application of that
principle. If the principle be right, if we esteem it conformable to the
law of nations, if we have nothing to say against it, or if we deem
ourselves unfit to express an opinion on the subject, then, of course,
no resolution ought to pass. If, on the other hand, we see in the
declarations of the Allied Powers principles, not only utterly hostile
to our own free institutions, but hostile also to the independence of
all nations, and altogether opposed to the improvement of the condition
of human nature; if, in the instance before us, we see a most striking
exposition and application of those principles, and if we deem our
opinions to be entitled to any weight in the estimation of
mankind,--then I think it is our duty to adopt some such measure as the
proposed resolution.

It is worthy of observation, Sir, that as early as July, 1821, Baron
Strogonoff, the Russian minister at Constantinople, represented to the
Porte, that, if the undistinguished massacres of the Greeks, both of
such as were in open resistance and of those who remained patient in
their submission were continued, and should become a settled habit, they
would give just cause of war against the Porte to all Christian states.
This was in 1821.[6] It was followed, early in the next year, by that
indescribable enormity, that appalling monument of barbarian cruelty,
the destruction of Scio; a scene I shall not attempt to describe; a
scene from which human nature shrinks shuddering away; a scene having
hardly a parallel in the history of fallen man. This scene, too, was
quickly followed by the massacres in Cyprus; and all these things were
perfectly known to the Christian powers assembled at Verona. Yet these
powers, instead of acting upon the case supposed by Baron Strogonoff,
and which one would think had been then fully made out,--instead of
being moved by any compassion for the sufferings of the Greeks,--these
powers, these Christian powers, rebuke their gallantry and insult their
sufferings by accusing them of "throwing a firebrand into the Ottoman
empire." Such, Sir, appear to me to be the principles on which the
Continental powers of Europe have agreed hereafter to act; and this, an
eminent instance of the application of those principles.

I shall not detain the committee, Mr. Chairman, by any attempt to recite
the events of the Greek struggle up to the present time. Its origin may
be found, doubtless, in that improved state of knowledge which, for some
years, has been gradually taking place in that country. The emancipation
of the Greeks has been a subject frequently discussed in modern times.
They themselves are represented as having a vivid remembrance of the
distinction of their ancestors, not unmixed with an indignant feeling
that civilized and Christian Europe should not ere now have aided them
in breaking their intolerable fetters.

In 1816 a society was founded in Vienna for the encouragement of Grecian
literature. It was connected with a similar institution at Athens, and
another in Thessaly, called the "Gymnasium of Mount Pelion." The
treasury and general office of the institution were established at
Munich. No political object was avowed by these institutions, probably
none contemplated. Still, however, they had their effect, no doubt, in
hastening that condition of things in which the Greeks felt competent to
the establishment of their independence. Many young men have been for
years annually sent to the universities in the western states of Europe
for their education; and, after the general pacification of Europe, many
military men, discharged from other employment, were ready to enter even
into so unpromising a service as that of the revolutionary Greeks.

In 1820, war commenced between the Porte and Ali, the well-known Pacha
of Albania. Differences existed also with Persia and with Russia. In
this state of things, at the beginning of 1821, an insurrection broke
out in Moldavia, under the direction of Alexander Ypsilanti, a
well-educated soldier, who had been major-general in the Russian
service. From his character, and the number of those who seemed inclined
to join him, he was supposed to be countenanced by the court of St.
Petersburg. This, however, was a great mistake, which the Emperor, then
at Laybach, took an early opportunity to rectify. The Turkish government
was alarmed at these occurrences in the northern provinces of European
Turkey, and caused search to be made of all vessels entering the Black
Sea, lest arms or other military means should be sent in that manner to
the insurgents. This proved inconvenient to the commerce of Russia, and
caused some unsatisfactory correspondence between the two powers. It may
be worthy of remark, as an exhibition of national character, that,
agitated by these appearances of intestine commotion, the Sultan issued
a proclamation, calling on all true Mussulmans to renounce the pleasures
of social life, to prepare arms and horses, and to return to the manner
of their ancestors, the life of the plains. The Turk seems to have
thought that he had, at last, caught something of the dangerous
contagion of European civilization, and that it was necessary to reform
his habits, by recurring to the original manners of military roving
barbarians.

It was about this time, that is to say, at the commencement of 1821,
that the revolution burst out in various parts of Greece and the isles.
Circumstances, certainly, were not unfavorable to the movement, as one
portion of the Turkish army was employed in the war against Ali Pacha in
Albania, and another part in the provinces north of the Danube. The
Greeks soon possessed themselves of the open country of the Morea, and
drove their enemy into the fortresses. Of these, that of Tripolitza,
with the city, fell into their hands, in the course of the summer.
Having after these first movements obtained time to breathe, it became,
of course, an early object to establish a government. For this purpose
delegates of the people assembled, under that name which describes the
assembly in which we ourselves sit, that name which "freed the
Atlantic," a _Congress_. A writer, who undertakes to render to the
civilized world that service which was once performed by Edmund Burke, I
mean the compiler of the English Annual Register, asks, by what
authority this assembly could call itself a Congress. Simply, Sir, by
the same authority by which the people of the United States have given
the same name to their own legislature. We, at least, should be
naturally inclined to think, not only as far as names, but things also,
are concerned, that the Greeks could hardly have begun their revolution
under better auspices; since they have endeavored to render applicable
to themselves the general principles of our form of government, as well
as its name. This constitution went into operation at the commencement
of the next year. In the mean time, the war with Ali Pacha was ended, he
having surrendered, and being afterwards assassinated, by an instance of
treachery and perfidy, which, if it had happened elsewhere than under
the government of the Turks, would have deserved notice. The negotiation
with Russia, too, took a turn unfavorable to the Greeks. The great point
upon which Russia insisted, beside the abandonment of the measure of
searching vessels bound to the Black Sea, was, that the Porte should
withdraw its armies from the neighborhood of the Russian frontiers; and
the immediate consequence of this, when effected, was to add so much
more to the disposable force ready to be employed against the Greeks.
These events seemed to have left the whole force of the Ottoman empire,
at the commencement of 1822, in a condition to be employed against the
Greek rebellion; and, accordingly, very many anticipated the immediate
destruction of the cause. The event, however, was ordered otherwise.
Where the greatest effort was made, it was met and defeated. Entering
the Morea with an army which seemed capable of bearing down all
resistance, the Turks were nevertheless defeated and driven back, and
pursued beyond the isthmus, within which, as far as it appears, from
that time to the present, they have not been able to set their foot.

It was in April of this year that the destruction of Scio took place.
That island, a sort of appanage of the Sultana mother, enjoyed many
privileges peculiar to itself. In a population of 130,000 or 140,000, it
had no more than 2,000 or 3,000 Turks; indeed, by some accounts, not
near as many. The absence of these ruffian masters had in some degree
allowed opportunity for the promotion of knowledge, the accumulation of
wealth, and the general cultivation of society. Here was the seat of
modern Greek literature; here were libraries, printing-presses, and
other establishments, which indicate some advancement in refinement and
knowledge. Certain of the inhabitants of Samos, it would seem, envious
of this comparative happiness of Scio, landed upon the island in an
irregular multitude, for the purpose of compelling its inhabitants to
make common cause with their countrymen against their oppressors. These,
being joined by the peasantry, marched to the city and drove the Turks
into the castle. The Turkish fleet, lately reinforced from Egypt,
happened to be in the neighboring seas, and, learning these events,
landed a force on the island of fifteen thousand men. There was nothing
to resist such an army. These troops immediately entered the city and
began an indiscriminate massacre. The city was fired; and in four days
the fire and sword of the Turk rendered the beautiful Scio a clotted
mass of blood and ashes. The details are too shocking to be recited.
Forty thousand women and children, unhappily saved from the general
destruction, were afterwards sold in the market of Smyrna, and sent off
into distant and hopeless servitude. Even on the wharves of our own
cities, it has been said, have been sold the utensils of those hearths
which now exist no longer. Of the whole population which I have
mentioned, not above nine hundred persons were left living upon the
island. I will only repeat, Sir, that these tragical scenes were as
fully known at the Congress of Verona, as they are now known to us; and
it is not too much to call on the powers that constituted that congress,
in the name of conscience and in the name of humanity, to tell us if
there be nothing even in these unparalleled excesses of Turkish
barbarity to excite a sentiment of compassion; nothing which they regard
as so objectionable as even the very idea of popular resistance to
power.

The events of the year which has just passed by, as far as they have
become known to us, have been even more favorable to the Greeks than
those of the year preceding. I omit all details, as being as well known
to others as to myself. Suffice it to say, that with no other enemy to
contend with, and no diversion of his force to other objects, the Porte
has not been able to carry the war into the Morea; and that, by the last
accounts, its armies were acting defensively in Thessaly. I pass over,
also, the naval engagements of the Greeks, although that is a mode of
warfare in which they are calculated to excel, and in which they have
already performed actions of such distinguished skill and bravery, as
would draw applause upon the best mariners in the world. The present
state of the war would seem to be, that the Greeks possess the whole of
the Morea with the exception of the three fortresses of Patras, Coron,
and Modon; all Candia, but one fortress; and most of the other islands.
They possess the citadel of Athens, Missolonghi, and several other
places in Livadia. They have been able to act on the offensive, and to
carry the war beyond the isthmus. There is no reason to believe their
marine is weakened; more probably, it is strengthened. But, what is most
important of all, they have obtained time and experience. They have
awakened a sympathy throughout Europe and throughout America; and they
have formed a government which seems suited to the emergency of their
condition.

Sir, they have done much. It would be great injustice to compare their
achievements with our own. We began our Revolution, already possessed of
government, and, comparatively, of civil liberty. Our ancestors had from
the first been accustomed in a great measure to govern themselves. They
were familiar with popular elections and legislative assemblies, and
well acquainted with the general principles and practice of free
governments. They had little else to do than to throw off the paramount
authority of the parent state. Enough was still left, both of law and of
organization, to conduct society in its accustomed course, and to unite
men together for a common object. The Greeks, of course, could act with
little concert at the beginning; they were unaccustomed to the exercise
of power, without experience, with limited knowledge, without aid, and
surrounded by nations which, whatever claims the Greeks might seem to
have upon them, have afforded them nothing but discouragement and
reproach. They have held out, however, for three campaigns; and that, at
least, is something. Constantinople and the northern provinces have sent
forth thousands of troops;--they have been defeated. Tripoli, and
Algiers, and Egypt, have contributed their marine contingents;--they
have not kept the ocean. Hordes of Tartars have crossed the
Bosphorus;--they have died where the Persians died. The powerful
monarchies in the neighborhood have denounced their cause, and
admonished them to abandon it and submit to their fate. They have
answered them, that, although two hundred thousand of their countrymen
have offered up their lives, there yet remain lives to offer; and that
it is the determination of _all_, "yes, of ALL," to persevere until they
shall have established their liberty, or until the power of their
oppressors shall have relieved them from the burden of existence.

It may now be asked, perhaps, whether the expression of our own
sympathy, and that of the country, may do them good? I hope it may. It
may give them courage and spirit, it may assure them of public regard,
teach them that they are not wholly forgotten by the civilized world,
and inspire them with constancy in the pursuit of their great end. At
any rate, Sir, it appears to me that the measure which I have proposed
is due to our own character, and called for by our own duty. When we
shall have discharged that duty, we may leave the rest to the
disposition of Providence.

I do not see how it can be doubted that this measure is entirely
_pacific_. I profess my inability to perceive that it has any possible
tendency to involve our neutral relations. If the resolution pass, it is
not of necessity to be immediately acted on. It will not be acted on at
all, unless, in the opinion of the President, a proper and safe occasion
for acting upon it shall arise. If we adopt the resolution to-day, our
relations with every foreign state will be to-morrow precisely what they
now are. The resolution will be sufficient to express our sentiments on
the subjects to which I have adverted. Useful for that purpose, it can
be mischievous for no purpose. If the topic were properly introduced
into the message, it cannot be improperly introduced into discussion in
this House. If it were proper, which no one doubts, for the President to
express his opinions upon it, it cannot, I think, be improper for us to
express ours. The only certain effect of this resolution is to signify,
in a form usual in bodies constituted like this, our approbation of the
general sentiment of the message. Do we wish to withhold that
approbation? The resolution confers on the President no new power, nor
does it enjoin on him the exercise of any new duty; nor does it hasten
him in the discharge of any existing duty.

I cannot imagine that this resolution can add any thing to those
excitements which it has been supposed, I think very causelessly, might
possibly provoke the Turkish government to acts of hostility. There is
already the message, expressing the hope of success to the Greeks and
disaster to the Turks, in a much stronger manner than is to be implied
from the terms of this resolution. There is the correspondence between
the Secretary of State and the Greek Agent in London, already made
public, in which similar wishes are expressed, and a continuance of the
correspondence apparently invited. I might add to this, the unexampled
burst of feeling which this cause has called forth from all classes of
society, and the notorious fact of pecuniary contributions made
throughout the country for its aid and advancement. After all this,
whoever can see cause of danger to our pacific relations from the
adoption of this resolution has a keener vision than I can pretend to.
Sir, there is no augmented danger; there is no danger. The question
comes at last to this, whether, on a subject of this sort, this House
holds an opinion which is worthy to be expressed.

Even suppose, Sir, an agent or commissioner were to be immediately
sent,--a measure which I myself believe to be the proper one,--there is
no breach of neutrality, nor any just cause of offence. Such an agent,
of course, would not be accredited; he would not be a public minister.
The object would be inquiry and information; inquiry which we have a
right to make, information which we are interested to possess. If a
dismemberment of the Turkish empire be taking place, or has already
taken place; if a new state be rising, or be already risen, in the
Mediterranean,--who can doubt, that, without any breach of neutrality,
we may inform ourselves of these events for the government of our own
concerns? The Greeks have declared the Turkish coasts in a state of
blockade; may we not inform ourselves whether this blockade be _nominal_
or _real_? and, of course, whether it shall be regarded or disregarded?
The greater our trade may happen to be with Smyrna, a consideration
which seems to have alarmed some gentlemen, the greater is the reason,
in my opinion, why we should seek to be accurately informed of those
events which may affect its safety. It seems to me impossible,
therefore, for any reasonable man to imagine that this resolution can
expose us to the resentment of the Sublime Porte.

As little reason is there for fearing its consequences upon the conduct
of the Allied Powers. They may, very naturally, dislike our sentiments
upon the subject of the Greek revolution; but what those sentiments are
they will much more explicitly learn in the President's message than in
this resolution. They might, indeed, prefer that we should express no
dissent from the doctrines which they have avowed, and the application
which they have made of those doctrines to the case of Greece. But I
trust we are not disposed to leave them in any doubt as to our
sentiments upon these important subjects. They have expressed their
opinions, and do not call that expression of opinion an interference;
in which respect they are right, as the expression of opinion in such
cases is not such an interference as would justify the Greeks in
considering the powers at war with them. For the same reason, any
expression which we may make of different principles and different
sympathies is no interference. No one would call the President's message
an interference; and yet it is much stronger in that respect than this
resolution. If either of them could be construed to be an interference,
no doubt it would be improper, at least it would be so according to my
view of the subject; for the very thing which I have attempted to resist
in the course of these observations is the right of foreign
interference. But neither the message nor the resolution has that
character. There is not a power in Europe which can suppose, that, in
expressing our opinions on this occasion, we are governed by any desire
of aggrandizing ourselves or of injuring others. We do no more than to
maintain those established principles in which we have an interest in
common with other nations, and to resist the introduction of new
principles and new rules, calculated to destroy the relative
independence of states, and particularly hostile to the whole fabric of
our government.

I close, then, Sir, with repeating, that the object of this resolution
is to avail ourselves of the interesting occasion of the Greek
revolution to make our protest against the doctrines of the Allied
Powers, both as they are laid down in principle and as they are applied
in practice. I think it right, too, Sir, not to be unseasonable in the
expression of our regard, and, as far as that goes, in a manifestation
of our sympathy with a long oppressed and now struggling people. I am
not of those who would, in the hour of utmost peril, withhold such
encouragement as might be properly and lawfully given, and, when the
crisis should be past, overwhelm the rescued sufferer with kindness and
caresses. The Greeks address the civilized world with a pathos not easy
to be resisted. They invoke our favor by more moving considerations than
can well belong to the condition of any other people. They stretch out
their arms to the Christian communities of the earth, beseeching them,
by a generous recollection of their ancestors, by the consideration of
their desolated and ruined cities and villages, by their wives and
children sold into an accursed slavery, by their blood, which they seem
willing to pour out like water, by the common faith, and in the name,
which unites all Christians, that they would extend to them at least
some token of compassionate regard.


[Footnote 1: The interior of the hall of the House of Representatives is
surrounded by a magnificent colonnade of the composite order. [1824.]]

[Footnote 2: See Lord Castlereagh's speech in the House of Commons,
February 3, 1816. Debates in Parliament, Vol. XXXVI. p. 355; where also
the treaty may be found at length.]

[Footnote 3: Law of Nature and Nations, Book II. cap. 2, § 11.]

[Footnote 4: Martens, Recueil des Traités, Tome XIII. p. 656.]

[Footnote 5: Annual Register for 1821, p. 601.]

[Footnote 6: Annual Register for 1821, p. 251.]




THE TARIFF.

A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES,
ON THE 1ST AND 2D OF APRIL, 1824.


[At an early period of the session of Congress of 1823-24 a bill was
introduced into the House of Representatives to amend the several acts
laying duties on imports. The object of the bill was a comprehensive
revision of the existing laws, with a view to the extension of the
protective system. The bill became the subject of a protracted debate,
in which much of the talent of the House on both sides was engaged. Mr.
Webster took an active part in the discussion, and spoke upon many of
the details of the bill, while it remained in the committee of the whole
House on the state of the Union. Several objectionable provisions were
removed, and various amendments were introduced upon his motion; and it
was a matter of regret to him, as seen in the following speech, that the
friends of the bill were not able or willing to bring it into a form in
which, as a whole, he could give it his support. On the 30th and 31st of
March, Mr. Clay, Speaker of the House, addressed the committee of the
whole, at length and with great ability, on the general principles of
the bill; and he was succeeded by Mr. Webster, on the 1st and 2d of
April, in the following speech.]

MR. CHAIRMAN,--I will avail myself of the present occasion to make some
remarks on certain principles and opinions which have been recently
advanced, and on those considerations which, in my judgment, ought to
govern us in deciding upon the several and respective parts of this very
important and complex measure. I can truly say that this is a painful
duty. I deeply regret the necessity which is likely to be imposed upon
me of giving a general affirmative or negative vote on the whole of the
bill. I cannot but think this mode of proceeding liable to great
objections. It exposes both those who support and those who oppose the
measure to very unjust and injurious misapprehensions. There may be good
reasons for favoring some of the provisions of the bill, and equally
strong reasons for opposing others; and these provisions do not stand to
each other in the relation of principal and incident. If that were the
case, those who are in favor of the principal might forego their
opinions upon incidental and subordinate provisions. But the bill
proposes enactments entirely distinct and different from one another in
character and tendency. Some of its clauses are intended merely for
revenue; and of those which regard the protection of home manufactures,
one part stands upon very different grounds from those of other parts.
So that probably every gentleman who may ultimately support the bill
will vote for much which his judgment does not approve; and those who
oppose it will oppose something which they would very gladly support.

Being intrusted with the interests of a district highly commercial, and
deeply interested in manufactures also, I wish to state my opinions on
the present measure, not as on a whole, for it has no entire and
homogeneous character, but as on a collection of different enactments,
some of which meet my approbation and some of which do not.

And allow me, Sir, in the first place, to state my regret, if indeed I
ought not to express a warmer sentiment, at the names or designations
which Mr. Speaker[1] has seen fit to adopt for the purpose of describing
the advocates and the opposers of the present bill. It is a question, he
says, between the friends of an "American policy" and those of a
"foreign policy." This, Sir, is an assumption which I take the liberty
most directly to deny. Mr. Speaker certainly intended nothing invidious
or derogatory to any part of the House by this mode of denominating
friends and enemies. But there is power in names, and this manner of
distinguishing those who favor and those who oppose particular measures
may lead to inferences to which no member of the House can submit. It
may imply that there is a more exclusive and peculiar regard to American
interests in one class of opinions than in another. Such an implication
is to be resisted and repelled. Every member has a right to the
presumption, that he pursues what he believes to be the interest of his
country with as sincere a zeal as any other member. I claim this in my
own case; and while I shall not, for any purpose of description or
convenient arrangement use terms which may imply any disrespect to other
men's opinions, much less any imputation upon other men's motives, it is
my duty to take care that the use of such terms by others be not,
against the will of those who adopt them, made to produce a false
impression.

Indeed, Sir, it is a little astonishing, if it seemed convenient to Mr.
Speaker, for the purposes of distinction, to make use of the terms
"American policy" and "foreign policy," that he should not have applied
them in a manner precisely the reverse of that in which he has in fact
used them. If names are thought necessary, it would be well enough, one
would think, that the name should be in some measure descriptive of the
thing; and since Mr. Speaker denominates the policy which he recommends
"a new policy in this country"; since he speaks of the present measure
as a new era in our legislation; since he professes to invite us to
depart from our accustomed course, to instruct ourselves by the wisdom
of others, and to adopt the policy of the most distinguished foreign
states,--one is a little curious to know with what propriety of speech
this imitation of other nations is denominated an "American policy,"
while, on the contrary, a preference for our own established system, as
it now actually exists and always has existed, is called a "foreign
policy." This favorite American policy is what America has never tried;
and this odious foreign policy is what, as we are told, foreign states
have never pursued. Sir, that is the truest American policy which shall
most usefully employ American capital and American labor, and best
sustain the whole population. With me it is a fundamental axiom, it is
interwoven with all my opinions, that the great interests of the country
are united and inseparable; that agriculture, commerce, and manufactures
will prosper together or languish together; and that all legislation is
dangerous which proposes to benefit one of these without looking to
consequences which may fall on the others.

Passing from this, Sir, I am bound to say that Mr. Speaker began his
able and impressive speech at the proper point of inquiry,--I mean the
present state and condition of the country,--although I am so
unfortunate, or rather although I am so happy, as to differ from him
very widely in regard to that condition. I dissent entirely from the
justice of that picture of distress which he has drawn. I have not seen
the reality, and know not where it exists. Within my observation, there
is no cause for so gloomy and terrifying a representation. In respect to
the New England States, with the condition of which I am of course best
acquainted, the present appears to me a period of very general
prosperity. Not, indeed, a time for sudden acquisition and great
profits, not a day of extraordinary activity and successful
speculation. There is no doubt a considerable depression of prices, and,
in some degree, a stagnation of business. But the case presented by Mr.
Speaker was not one of _depression_, but of _distress_; of universal,
pervading, intense distress, limited to no class and to no place. We are
represented as on the very verge and brink of national ruin. So far from
acquiescing in these opinions, I believe there has been no period in
which the general prosperity was better secured, or rested on a more
solid foundation. As applicable to the Eastern States, I put this remark
to their representatives, and ask them if it is not true. When has there
been a time in which the means of living have been more accessible and
more abundant? When has labor been rewarded, I do not say with a larger,
but with a more certain success? Profits, indeed, are low; in some
pursuits of life, which it is not proposed to benefit, but to _burden_,
by this bill, very low. But still I am unacquainted with any proofs of
extraordinary distress. What, indeed, are the general indications of the
state of the country? There is no famine nor pestilence in the land, nor
war, nor desolation. There is no writhing under the burden of taxation.
The means of subsistence are abundant; and at the very moment when the
miserable condition of the country is asserted, it is admitted that the
wages of labor are high in comparison with those of any other country. A
country, then, enjoying a profound peace, perfect civil liberty, with
the means of subsistence cheap and abundant, with the reward of labor
sure, and its wages higher than anywhere else, cannot be represented as
in gloom, melancholy, and distress, but by the effort of extraordinary
powers of tragedy.

Even if, in judging of this question, we were to regard only those
proofs to which we have been referred, we shall probably come to a
conclusion somewhat different from that which has been drawn. Our
exports, for example, although certainly less than in some years, were
not, last year, so much below an average formed upon the exports of a
series of years, and putting those exports at a fixed value, as might be
supposed. The value of the exports of agricultural products, of animals,
of the products of the forest and of the sea, together with gunpowder,
spirits, and sundry unenumerated articles, amounted in the several years
to the following sums, viz.:--

In 1790,    $27,716,152
   1804,     33,842,316
   1807,     38,465,854

Coming up now to our own times, and taking the exports of the years
1821, 1822, and 1823, of the same articles and products, at the same
prices, they stand thus:--

In 1821,    $45,643,175
   1822,     48,782,295
   1823,     55,863,491

Mr. Speaker has taken the very extraordinary year of 1803, and, adding
to the exportation of that year what he thinks ought to have been a just
augmentation, in proportion to the increase of our population, he swells
the result to a magnitude, which, when compared with our actual exports,
would exhibit a great deficiency. But is there any justice in this mode
of calculation? In the first place, as before observed, the year 1803
was a year of extraordinary exportation. By reference to the accounts,
that of the article of flour, for example, there was an export that year
of thirteen hundred thousand barrels; but the very next year it fell to
eight hundred thousand, and the next year to seven hundred thousand. In
the next place, there never was any reason to expect that the increase
of our exports of agricultural products would keep pace with the
increase of our population. That would be against all experience. It is,
indeed, most desirable, that there should be an augmented demand for the
products of agriculture; but, nevertheless, the official returns of our
exports do not show that absolute want of all foreign market which has
been so strongly stated.

But there are other means by which to judge of the general condition of
the people. The quantity of the means of subsistence consumed, or, to
make use of a phraseology better suited to the condition of our own
people, the quantity of the comforts of life enjoyed, is one of those
means. It so happens, indeed, that it is not so easy in this country as
elsewhere to ascertain facts of this sort with accuracy. Where most of
the articles of subsistence and most of the comforts of life are taxed,
there is, of course, great facility in ascertaining, from official
statements, the amount of consumption. But in this country, most
fortunately, the government neither knows, nor is concerned to know, the
annual consumption; and estimates can only be formed in another mode,
and in reference only to a few articles. Of these articles, tea is one.
It is not quite a luxury, and yet is something above the absolute
necessaries of life. Its consumption, therefore, will be diminished in
times of adversity, and augmented in times of prosperity. By deducting
the annual export from the annual import, and taking a number of years
together, we may arrive at a probable estimate of consumption. The
average of eleven years, from 1790 to 1800, inclusive, will be found to
be two millions and a half of pounds. From 1801 to 1812, inclusive, the
average was three millions seven hundred thousand; and the average of
the last three years, to wit, 1821, 1822, and 1823, was five millions
and a half. Having made a just allowance for the increase of our
numbers, we shall still find, I think, from these statements, that there
is no distress which has limited our means of subsistence and enjoyment.

In forming an opinion of the degree of general prosperity, we may
regard, likewise, the progress of internal improvements, the investment
of capital in roads, bridges, and canals. All these prove a balance of
income over expenditure; they afford evidence that there is a surplus of
profits, which the present generation is usefully vesting for the
benefit of the next. It cannot be denied, that, in this particular, the
progress of the country is steady and rapid.

We may look, too, to the sums expended for education. Are our colleges
deserted? Do fathers find themselves less able than usual to educate
their children? It will be found, I imagine, that the amount paid for
the purpose of education is constantly increasing, and that the schools
and colleges were never more full than at the present moment. I may add,
that the endowment of public charities, the contributions to objects of
general benevolence, whether foreign or domestic, the munificence of
individuals towards whatever promises to benefit the community, are all
so many proofs of national prosperity. And, finally, there is no
defalcation of revenue, no pressure of taxation.

The general result, therefore, of a fair examination of the present
condition of things, seems to me to be, that there is a considerable
depression of prices, and curtailment of profit; and in some parts of
the country, it must be admitted, there is a great degree of pecuniary
embarrassment, arising from the difficulty of paying debts which were
contracted when prices were high. With these qualifications, the general
state of the country may be said to be prosperous; and these are not
sufficient to give to the whole face of affairs any appearance of
general distress.

Supposing the evil, then, to be a depression of prices, and a partial
pecuniary pressure, the next inquiry is into the causes of that evil;
and it appears to me that there are several; and in this respect, I
think, too much has been imputed by Mr. Speaker to the single cause of
the diminution of exports. Connected, as we are, with all the commercial
nations of the world, and having observed great changes to take place
elsewhere, we should consider whether the causes of those changes have
not reached us, and whether we are not suffering by the operation of
them, in common with others. Undoubtedly, there has been a great fall in
the price of all commodities throughout the commercial world, in
consequence of the restoration of a state of peace. When the Allies
entered France in 1814, prices rose astonishingly fast, and very high.
Colonial produce, for instance, in the ports of this country, as well as
elsewhere, sprung up suddenly from the lowest to the highest extreme. A
new and vast demand was created for the commodities of trade. These were
the natural consequences of the great political changes which then took
place in Europe.

We are to consider, too, that our own war created new demand, and that a
government expenditure of twenty-five or thirty million dollars a year
had the usual effect of enhancing prices. We are obliged to add, that
the paper issues of our banks carried the same effect still further. A
depreciated currency existed in a great part of the country; depreciated
to such an extent, that, at one time, exchange between the centre and
the North was as high as twenty per cent. The Bank of the United States
was instituted to correct this evil; but, for causes which it is not
necessary now to enumerate, it did not for some years bring back the
currency of the country to a sound state. This depreciation of the
circulating currency was so much, of course, added to the nominal prices
of commodities, and these prices, thus unnaturally high, seemed, to
those who looked only at the appearance, to indicate great prosperity.
But such prosperity is more specious than real. It would have been
better, probably, as the shock would have been less, if prices had
fallen sooner. At length, however, they fell; and as there is little
doubt that certain events in Europe had an influence in determining the
time at which this fall took place, I will advert shortly to some of the
principal of those events.

In May, 1819, the British House of Commons decided, by a unanimous vote,
that the resumption of cash payments by the Bank of England should not
be deferred beyond the ensuing February. The restriction had been
continued from time to time, and from year to year, Parliament always
professing to look to the restoration of a specie currency whenever it
should be found practicable. Having been, in July, 1818, continued to
July, 1819, it was understood that, in the interim, the important
question of the time at which cash payments should be resumed should be
finally settled. In the latter part of the year 1818, the circulation of
the bank had been greatly reduced, and a severe scarcity of money was
felt in the London market. Such was the state of things in England. On
the Continent, other important events took place. The French Indemnity
Loan had been negotiated in the summer of 1818, and the proportion of it
belonging to Austria, Russia, and Prussia had been sold. This created an
unusual demand for gold and silver in those countries. It has been
stated, that the amount of the precious metals transmitted to Austria
and Russia in that year was at least twenty millions sterling. Other
large sums were sent to Prussia and to Denmark. The effect of this
sudden drain of specie, felt first at Paris, was communicated to
Amsterdam and Hamburg, and all other commercial places in the North of
Europe.

The paper system of England had certainly communicated an artificial
value to property. It had encouraged speculation, and excited
over-trading. When the shock therefore came, and this violent pressure
for money acted at the same moment on the Continent and in England,
inflated and unnatural prices could be kept up no longer. A reduction
took place, which has been estimated to have been at least equal to a
fall of thirty, if not forty per cent. The depression was universal; and
the change was felt in the United States severely, though not equally so
in every part. There are those, I am aware, who maintain that the events
to which I have alluded did not cause the great fall of prices, but that
that fall was natural and inevitable, from the previously existing state
of things, the abundance of commodities, and the want of demand. But
that would only prove that the effect was produced in another way,
rather than by another cause. If these great and sudden calls for money
did not reduce prices, but prices fell, as of themselves, to their
natural state, still the result is the same; for we perceive that, after
these new calls for money, prices could not be kept longer at their
unnatural height.

About the time of these foreign events, our own bank system underwent a
change; and all these causes, in my view of the subject, concurred to
produce the great shock which took place in our commercial cities, and
in many parts of the country. The year 1819 was a year of numerous
failures, and very considerable distress, and would have furnished far
better grounds than exist at present for that gloomy representation of
our condition which has been presented. Mr. Speaker has alluded to the
strong inclination which exists, or has existed, in various parts of the
country, to issue paper money, as a proof of great existing
difficulties. I regard it rather as a very productive cause of those
difficulties; and the committee will not fail to observe, that there is,
at this moment, much the loudest complaint of distress precisely where
there has been the greatest attempt to relieve it by systems of paper
credit. And, on the other hand, content, prosperity, and happiness are
most observable in those parts of the country where there has been the
least endeavor to administer relief by law. In truth, nothing is so
baneful, so utterly ruinous to all true industry, as interfering with
the legal value of money, or attempting to raise artificial standards to
supply its place. Such remedies suit well the spirit of extravagant
speculation, but they sap the very foundation of all honest acquisition.
By weakening the security of property, they take away all motive for
exertion. Their effect is to transfer property. Whenever a debt is
allowed to be paid by any thing less valuable than the legal currency in
respect to which it was contracted, the difference between the value of
the paper given in payment and the legal currency is precisely so much
property taken from one man and given to another, by legislative
enactment.

When we talk, therefore, of protecting industry, let us remember that
the first measure for that end is to secure it in its earnings; to
assure it that it shall receive its own. Before we invent new modes of
raising prices, let us take care that existing prices are not rendered
wholly unavailable, by making them capable of being paid in depreciated
paper. I regard, Sir, this issue of irredeemable paper as the most
prominent and deplorable cause of whatever pressure still exists in the
country; and, further, I would put the question to the members of this
committee, whether it is not from that part of the people who have tried
this paper system, and tried it to their cost, that this bill receives
the most earnest support? And I cannot forbear to ask, further, whether
this support does not proceed rather from a general feeling of
uneasiness under the present condition of things, than from the clear
perception of any benefit which the measure itself can confer? Is not
all expectation of advantage centred in a sort of vague hope, that
change may produce relief? Debt certainly presses hardest where prices
have been longest kept up by artificial means. They find the shock
lightest who take it soonest; and I fully believe that, if those parts
of the country which now suffer most had not augmented the force of the
blow by deferring it, they would have now been in a much better
condition than they are. We may assure ourselves, once for all, Sir,
that there can be no such thing as payment of debts by legislation. We
may abolish debts indeed; we may transfer property by visionary and
violent laws. But we deceive both ourselves and our constituents, if we
flatter either ourselves or them with the hope that there is any relief
against whatever pressure exists, but in economy and industry. The
depression of prices and the stagnation of business have been in truth
the necessary result of circumstances. No government could prevent them,
and no government can altogether relieve the people from their effect.
We have enjoyed a day of extraordinary prosperity; we had been neutral
while the world was at war, and had found a great demand for our
products, our navigation, and our labor. We had no right to expect that
that state of things would continue always. With the return of peace,
foreign nations would struggle for themselves, and enter into
competition with us in the great objects of pursuit.

Now, Sir, what is the remedy for existing evils? What is the course of
policy suited to our actual condition? Certainly it is not our wisdom to
adopt any system that may be offered to us, without examination, and in
the blind hope that whatever changes our condition may improve it. It is
better that we should

                "bear those ills we have,
    Than fly to others that we know not of."

We are bound to see that there is a fitness and an aptitude in whatever
measures may be recommended to relieve the evils that afflict us; and
before we adopt a system that professes to make great alterations, it is
our duty to look carefully to each leading interest of the community,
and see how it may probably be affected by our proposed legislation.

And, in the first place, what is the condition of our commerce? Here we
must clearly perceive, that it is not enjoying that rich harvest which
fell to its fortune during the continuance of the European wars. It has
been greatly depressed, and limited to small profits. Still, it is
elastic and active, and seems capable of recovering itself in some
measure from its depression. The shipping interest, also, has suffered
severely, still more severely, probably, than commerce. If any thing
should strike us with astonishment, it is that the navigation of the
United States should be able to sustain itself. Without any government
protection whatever, it goes abroad to challenge competition with the
whole world; and, in spite of all obstacles, it has yet been able to
maintain eight hundred thousand tons in the employment of foreign trade.
How, Sir, do the ship-owners and navigators accomplish this? How is it
that they are able to meet, and in some measure overcome, universal
competition? It is not, Sir, by protection and bounties: but by
unwearied exertion, by extreme economy, by unshaken perseverance, by
that manly and resolute spirit which relies on itself to protect itself.
These causes alone enable American ships still to keep their element,
and show the flag of their country in distant seas. The rates of
insurance may teach us how thoroughly our ships are built, and how
skilfully and safely they are navigated. Risks are taken, as I learn,
from the United States to Liverpool, at one per cent; and from the
United States to Canton and back, as low as three per cent. But when we
look to the low rate of freight, and when we consider, also, that the
articles entering into the composition of a ship, with the exception of
wood, are dearer here than in other countries, we cannot but be utterly
surprised that the shipping interest has been able to sustain itself at
all. I need not say that the navigation of the country is essential to
its honor and its defence. Yet, instead of proposing benefits for it in
this hour of its depression, we threaten by this measure to lay upon it
new and heavy burdens. In the discussion, the other day, of that
provision of the bill which proposes to tax tallow for the benefit of
the oil-merchants and whalemen, we had the pleasure of hearing eloquent
eulogiums upon that portion of our shipping employed in the
whale-fishery, and strong statements of its importance to the public
interest. But the same bill proposes a severe tax upon that interest,
for the benefit of the iron-manufacturer and the hemp-grower. So that
the tallow-chandlers and soapboilers are sacrificed to the
oil-merchants, in order that these again may contribute to the
manufacturers of iron and the growers of hemp.

If such be the state of our commerce and navigation, what is the
condition of our home manufactures? How are they amidst the general
depression? Do they need further protection? and if any, how much? On
all these points, we have had much general statement, but little
precise information. In the very elaborate speech of Mr. Speaker, we are
not supplied with satisfactory grounds of judging with respect to these
various particulars. Who can tell, from any thing yet before the
committee, whether the proposed duty be too high or too low on any one
article? Gentlemen tell us, that they are in favor of domestic industry;
so am I. They would give it protection; so would I. But then all
domestic industry is not confined to manufactures. The employments of
agriculture, commerce, and navigation are all branches of the same
domestic industry; they all furnish employment for American capital and
American labor. And when the question is, whether new duties shall be
laid, for the purpose of giving further encouragement to particular
manufactures, every reasonable man must ask himself, both whether the
proposed new encouragement be necessary, and whether it can be given
without injustice to other branches of industry.

It is desirable to know, also, somewhat more distinctly, how the
proposed means will produce the intended effect. One great object
proposed, for example, is the increase of the home market for the
consumption of agricultural products. This certainly is much to be
desired; but what provisions of the bill are expected wholly or
principally to produce this, is not stated. I would not deny that some
increase of the home market may follow, from the adoption of this bill,
but all its provisions have not an equal tendency to produce this
effect. Those manufactures which employ most labor, create, of course,
most demand for articles of consumption; and those create least in the
production of which capital and skill enter as the chief ingredients of
cost. I cannot, Sir, take this bill merely because a committee has
recommended it. I cannot espouse a side, and fight under a flag. I
wholly repel the idea that we must take this law, or pass no law on the
subject. What should hinder us from exercising our own judgments upon
these provisions, singly and severally? Who has the power to place us,
or why should we place ourselves, in a condition where we cannot give to
every measure, that is distinct and separate in itself, a separate and
distinct consideration? Sir, I presume no member of the committee will
withhold his assent from what he thinks right, until others will yield
their assent to what they think wrong. There are many things in this
bill acceptable, probably, to the general sense of the House. Why should
not these provisions be passed into a law, and others left to be decided
upon their own merits, as a majority of the House shall see fit? To some
of these provisions I am myself decidedly favorable; to others I have
great objections; and I should have been very glad of an opportunity of
giving my own vote distinctly on propositions which are, in their own
nature, essentially and substantially distinct from one another.

But, Sir, before expressing my own opinion upon the several provisions
of this bill, I will advert for a moment to some other general topics.
We have heard much of the policy of England, and her example has been
repeatedly urged upon us, as proving, not only the expediency of
encouragement and protection, but of exclusion and direct prohibition
also. I took occasion the other day to remark, that more liberal notions
were becoming prevalent on this subject; that the policy of restraints
and prohibitions was getting out of repute, as the true nature of
commerce became better understood; and that, among public men, those
most distinguished were most decided in their reprobation of the broad
principle of exclusion and prohibition. Upon the truth of this
representation, as matter of fact, I supposed there could not be two
opinions among those who had observed the progress of political
sentiment in other countries, and were acquainted with its present
state. In this respect, however, it would seem that I was greatly
mistaken. We have heard it again and again declared, that the English
government still adheres, with immovable firmness, to its old doctrines
of prohibition; that although journalists, theorists, and scientific
writers advance other doctrines, yet the practical men, the legislators,
the government of the country, are too wise to follow them. It has even
been most sagaciously hinted, that the promulgation of liberal opinions
on these subjects is intended only to delude other governments, to
cajole them into the folly of liberal ideas, while England retains to
herself all the benefits of the admirable old system of prohibition. We
have heard from Mr. Speaker a warm commendation of the complex mechanism
of this system. The British empire, it is said, is, in the first place,
to be protected against the rest of the world; then the British Isles
against the colonies; next, the isles respectively against each other,
England herself, as the heart of the empire, being protected most of
all, and against all.

Truly, Sir, it appears to me that Mr. Speaker's imagination has seen
system, and order, and beauty, in that which is much more justly
considered as the result of ignorance, partiality, or violence. This
part of English legislation has resulted, partly from considering
Ireland as a conquered country, partly from the want of a complete
union, even with Scotland, and partly from the narrow views of colonial
regulation, which in early and uninformed periods influenced the
European states.

Nothing, I imagine, would strike the public men of England more
singularly, than to find gentlemen of real information and much weight
in the councils of this country expressing sentiments like these, in
regard to the existing state of these English laws. I have never said,
indeed, that prohibitory laws do not exist in England; we all know they
do; but the question is, Does she owe her prosperity and greatness to
these laws? I venture to say, that such is not the opinion of public men
now in England, and the continuance of the laws, even without any
alteration, would not be evidence that their opinion is different from
what I have represented it; because the laws having existed long, and
great interests having been built up on the faith of them, they cannot
now be repealed without great and overwhelming inconvenience. Because a
thing has been wrongly done, it does not therefore follow that it can
now be undone; and this is the reason, as I understand it, for which
exclusion, prohibition, and monopoly are suffered to remain in any
degree in the English system; and for the same reason, it will be wise
in us to take our measures, on all subjects of this kind, with great
caution. We may not be able, but at the hazard of much injury to
individuals, hereafter to retrace our steps. And yet, whatever is
extravagant or unreasonable is not likely to endure. There may come a
moment of strong reaction; and if no moderation be shown in laying on
duties, there may be as little scruple in taking them off.

It may be here observed, that there is a broad and marked distinction
between entire prohibition and reasonable encouragement. It is one
thing, by duties or taxes on foreign articles, to awaken a home
competition in the production of the same articles; it is another thing
to remove all competition by a total exclusion of the foreign article;
and it is quite another thing still, by total prohibition, to raise up
at home manufactures not suited to the climate, the nature of the
country, or the state of the population. These are substantial
distinctions, and although it may not be easy in every case to determine
which of them applies to a given article, yet the distinctions
themselves exist, and in most cases will be sufficiently clear to
indicate the true course of policy; and, unless I have greatly mistaken
the prevailing sentiment in the councils of England, it grows every day
more and more favorable to the diminution of restrictions, and to the
wisdom of leaving much (I do not say every thing, for that would not be
true) to the enterprise and the discretion of individuals. I should
certainly not have taken up the time of the committee to state at any
length the opinions of other governments, or of the public men of other
countries, upon a subject like this; but an occasional remark made by me
the other day, having been so directly controverted, especially by Mr.
Speaker, in his observations yesterday, I must take occasion to refer to
some proofs of what I have stated.

What, then, is the state of English opinion? Everybody knows that, after
the termination of the late European war, there came a time of great
pressure in England. Since her example has been quoted, let it be asked
in what mode her government sought relief. Did it aim to maintain
artificial and unnatural prices? Did it maintain a swollen and
extravagant paper circulation? Did it carry further the laws of
prohibition and exclusion? Did it draw closer the cords of colonial
restraint? No, Sir, but precisely the reverse. Instead of relying on
legislative contrivances and artificial devices, it trusted to the
enterprise and industry of the people, which it sedulously sought to
excite, not by imposing restraint, but by removing it, wherever its
removal was practicable. In May, 1820, the attention of the government
having been much turned to the state of foreign trade, a distinguished
member[2] of the House of Peers brought forward a Parliamentary motion
upon that subject, followed by an ample discussion and a full statement
of his own opinions. In the course of his remarks, he observed, "that
there ought to be no prohibitory duties as such; for that it was
evident, that, where a manufacture could not be carried on, or a
production raised, but under the protection of a prohibitory duty, that
manufacture, or that produce, could not be brought to market but at a
loss. In his opinion, the name of strict prohibition might, therefore,
in commerce, be got rid of altogether; but he did not see the same
objection to protecting duties, which, while they admitted of the
introduction of commodities from abroad similar to those which we
ourselves manufactured, placed them so much on a level as to allow a
competition between them." "No axiom," he added, "was more true than
this: that it was by growing what the territory of a country could grow
most cheaply, and by receiving from other countries what it could not
produce except at too great an expense, that the greatest degree of
happiness was to be communicated to the greatest extent of population."

In assenting to the motion, the first minister[3] of the crown expressed
his own opinion of the great advantage resulting from unrestricted
freedom of trade. "Of the soundness of that general principle," he
observed, "I can entertain no doubt. I can entertain no doubt of what
would have been the great advantages to the civilized world, if the
system of unrestricted trade had been acted upon by every nation from
the earliest period of its commercial intercourse with its neighbors. If
to those advantages there could have been any exceptions, I am persuaded
that they would have been but few; and I am also persuaded that the
cases to which they would have referred would not have been, in
themselves, connected with the trade and commerce of England. But we are
now in a situation in which, I will not say that a reference to the
principle of unrestricted trade can be of no use, because such a
reference may correct erroneous reasoning, but in which it is impossible
for us, or for any country in the world but the United States of
America, to act unreservedly on that principle. The commercial
regulations of the European world have been long established, and cannot
suddenly be departed from." Having supposed a proposition to be made to
England by a foreign state for free commerce and intercourse, and an
unrestricted exchange of agricultural products and of manufactures, he
proceeds to observe: "It would be impossible to accede to such a
proposition. We have risen to our present greatness under a different
system. Some suppose that we have risen in consequence of that system;
_others, of whom I am one, believe that we have risen in spite of that
system_. But, whichever of these hypotheses be true, certain it is that
we have risen under a very different system than that of free and
unrestricted trade. It is utterly impossible, with our debt and
taxation, even if they were but half their existing amount, that we can
suddenly adopt the system of free trade."

Lord Ellenborough, in the same debate, said, "that he attributed the
general distress then existing in Europe to the regulations that had
taken place since the destruction of the French power. Most of the
states on the Continent had surrounded themselves as with walls of
brass, to inhibit intercourse with other states. Intercourse was
prohibited, even in districts of the same state, as was the case in
Austria and Sardinia. Thus, though the taxes on the people had been
lightened, the severity of their condition had been increased. He
believed that the discontent which pervaded most parts of Europe, and
especially Germany, was more owing to commercial restrictions than to
any theoretical doctrines on government; and that a free communication
among them would do more to restore tranquillity, than any other step
that could be adopted. He objected to all attempts to frustrate the
benevolent intentions of Providence, which had given to various
countries various wants, in order to bring them together. He objected to
it as anti-social; he objected to it as making commerce the means of
barbarizing instead of enlightening nations. The state of the trade with
France was most disgraceful to both countries; the two greatest
civilized nations of the world, placed at a distance of scarcely twenty
miles from each other, had contrived, by their artificial regulations,
to reduce their commerce with each other to a mere nullity." Every
member speaking on this occasion agreed in the general sentiments
favorable to unrestricted intercourse, which had thus been advanced; one
of them remarking, at the conclusion of the debate, that "the principles
of free trade, which he was happy to see so fully recognized, were of
the utmost consequence; for, though, in the present circumstances of the
country, a free trade was unattainable, yet their task hereafter was to
approximate to it. Considering the prejudices and interests which were
opposed to the recognition of that principle, it was no small indication
of the firmness and liberality of government to have so fully conceded
it."

Sir, we have seen, in the course of this discussion, that several
gentlemen have expressed their high admiration of the _silk manufacture_
of England. Its commendation was begun, I think, by the honorable member
from Vermont, who sits near me, who thinks that that alone gives
conclusive evidence of the benefits produced by attention to
manufactures, inasmuch as it is a great source of wealth to the nation,
and has amply repaid all the cost of its protection. Mr. Speaker's
approbation of this part of the English example was still warmer. Now,
Sir, it does so happen, that both these gentlemen differ very widely on
this point from the opinions entertained in England, by persons of the
first rank, both as to knowledge and power. In the debate to which I
have already referred, the proposer of the motion urged the expediency
of providing for the admission of the silks of France into England. "He
was aware," he said, "that there was a poor and industrious body of
manufacturers, whose interests must suffer by such an arrangement; and
therefore he felt that it would be the duty of Parliament to provide for
the present generation by a large Parliamentary grant. It was
conformable to every principle of sound justice to do so, when the
interests of a particular class were sacrificed to the good of the
whole." In answer to these observations, Lord Liverpool said that, with
reference to several branches of manufactures, time, and the change of
circumstances, had rendered the system of protecting duties merely
nominal; and that, in his opinion, if all the protecting laws which
regarded both the woollen and cotton manufactures were to be repealed,
no injurious effects would thereby be occasioned. "But," he observes,
"with respect to silk, that manufacture in this kingdom is so completely
artificial, that any attempt to introduce the principles of free trade
with reference to it might put an end to it altogether. I allow that the
silk manufacture is not natural to this country. _I wish we had never
had a silk manufactory._ I allow that it is natural to France; I allow
that it might have been better, had each country adhered exclusively to
that manufacture in which each is superior; and had the silks of France
been exchanged for British cottons. But I must look at things as they
are; and when I consider the extent of capital, and the immense
population, consisting, I believe, of about fifty thousand persons,
engaged in our silk manufacture, I can only say, that one of the few
points in which I totally disagree with the proposer of the motion is
the expediency, under existing circumstances, of holding out any idea
that it would be possible to relinquish the silk manufacture, and to
provide for those who live by it, by Parliamentary enactment. Whatever
objections there may be to the continuance of the protecting system, I
repeat, that it is impossible altogether to relinquish it. I may regret
that the system was ever commenced; but as I cannot recall that act, I
must submit to the inconvenience by which it is attended, rather than
expose the country to evils of greater magnitude." Let it be remembered,
Sir, that these are not the sentiments of a theorist, nor the fancies of
speculation; but the operative opinions of the first minister of
England, acknowledged to be one of the ablest and most practical
statesmen of his country.

Gentlemen could have hardly been more unfortunate than in the selection
of the silk manufacture in England as an example of the beneficial
effects of that system which they would recommend. It is, in the
language which I have quoted, completely artificial. It has been
sustained by I know not how many laws, breaking in upon the plainest
principles of general expediency. At the last session of Parliament, the
manufacturers petitioned for the repeal of three or four of these
statutes, complaining of the vexatious restrictions which they impose on
the wages of labor; setting forth, that a great variety of orders has
from time to time been issued by magistrates under the authority of
these laws, interfering in an oppressive manner with the minutest
details of the manufacture,--such as limiting the number of threads to
an inch, restricting the widths of many sorts of work, and determining
the quantity of labor not to be exceeded without extra wages; that by
the operation of these laws, the rate of wages, instead of being left to
the recognized principles of regulation, has been arbitrarily fixed by
persons whose ignorance renders them incompetent to a just decision;
that masters are compelled by law to pay an equal price for all work,
whether well or ill performed; and that they are wholly prevented from
using improved machinery, it being ordered, that work, in the weaving of
which machinery is employed, shall be paid precisely at the same rate as
if done by hand; that these acts have frequently given rise to the most
vexatious regulations, the unintentional breach of which has subjected
manufacturers to ruinous penalties; and that the introduction of all
machinery being prevented, by which labor might be cheapened, and the
manufacturers being compelled to pay at a fixed price, under all
circumstances, they are unable to afford employment to their workmen, in
times of stagnation of trade, and are compelled to stop their looms. And
finally, they complain that, notwithstanding these grievances under
which they labor, while carrying on their manufacture in London, the law
still prohibits them, while they continue to reside there, from
employing any portion of their capital in the same business in any other
part of the kingdom, where it might be more beneficially conducted.
Now, Sir, absurd as these laws must appear to be to every man, the
attempt to repeal them did not, as far as I recollect, altogether
succeed. The weavers were too numerous, their interests too great, or
their prejudices too strong; and this notable instance of protection and
monopoly still exists, to be lamented in England with as much sincerity
as it seems to be admired here.

In order further to show the prevailing sentiment of the English
government, I would refer to a report of a select committee of the House
of Commons, at the head of which was the Vice-President of the Board of
Trade (Mr. Wallace), in July, 1820. "The time," say that committee,
"when monopolies could be successfully supported, or would be patiently
endured, either in respect to subjects against subjects, or particular
countries against the rest of the world, seems to have passed away.
Commerce, to continue undisturbed and secure, must be, as it was
intended to be, a source of reciprocal amity between nations, and an
interchange of productions to promote the industry, the wealth, and the
happiness of mankind." In moving for the re-appointment of the committee
in February, 1823, the same gentleman said: "We must also get rid of
that feeling of appropriation which exhibited itself in a disposition to
produce every thing necessary for our own consumption, and to render
ourselves independent of the world. No notion could be more absurd or
mischievous; it led, even in peace, to an animosity and rancor greater
than existed in time of war. Undoubtedly there would be great prejudices
to combat, both in this country and elsewhere, in the attempt to remove
the difficulties which are most obnoxious. It would be impossible to
forget the attention which was in some respects due to the present
system of protections, although that attention ought certainly not to be
carried beyond the absolute necessity of the case." And in a second
report of the committee, drawn by the same gentleman, in that part of it
which proposes a diminution of duties on timber from the North of
Europe, and the policy of giving a legislative preference to the
importation of such timber in the log, and a discouragement of the
importation of deals, it is stated that the committee reject this
policy, because, among other reasons, "it is founded on a principle of
exclusion, which they are most averse to see brought into operation, in
any _new instance_, without the warrant of some evident and great
political expediency." And on many subsequent occasions the same
gentleman has taken occasion to observe, that he differed from those who
thought that manufactures could not nourish without restrictions on
trade; that old prejudices of that sort were dying away, and that more
liberal and just sentiments were taking their place.

These sentiments appear to have been followed by important legal
provisions, calculated to remove restrictions and prohibitions where
they were most severely felt; that is to say, in several branches of
navigation and trade. They have relaxed their colonial system, they have
opened the ports of their islands, and have done away the restriction
which limited the trade of the colony to the mother country. Colonial
products can now be carried directly from the islands to any part of
Europe; and it may not be improbable, considering our own high duties on
spirits, that that article may be exchanged hereafter by the English
West India colonies directly for the timber and deals of the Baltic. It
may be added, that Mr. Lowe, whom the gentleman has cited, says, that
nobody supposes that the three great staples of English manufactures,
cotton, woollen, and hardware, are benefited by any existing protecting
duties; and that one object of all these protecting laws is usually
overlooked, and that is, that they have been intended to reconcile the
various interests to taxation; the corn law, for example, being designed
as some equivalent to the agricultural interest for the burden of tithes
and of poor-rates.

In fine, Sir, I think it is clear, that, if we now embrace the system of
prohibitions and restrictions, we shall show an affection for what
others have discarded, and be attempting to ornament ourselves with
cast-off apparel.

Sir, I should not have gone into this prolix detail of opinions from any
consideration of their special importance on the present occasion; but
having happened to state that such was the actual opinion of the
government of England at the present time, and the accuracy of this
representation having been so confidently denied, I have chosen to put
the matter beyond doubt or cavil, although at the expense of these
tedious citations. I shall have occasion hereafter to refer more
particularly to sundry recent British enactments, by way of showing the
diligence and spirit with which that government strives to sustain its
navigating interest, by opening the widest possible range to the
enterprise of individual adventurers. I repeat, that I have not alluded
to these examples of a foreign state as being fit to control our own
policy. In the general principle, I acquiesce. Protection, when carried
to the point which is now recommended, that is, to entire prohibition,
seems to me destructive of all commercial intercourse between nations.
We are urged to adopt the system upon general principles; and what would
be the consequence of the universal application of such a general
principle, but that nations would abstain entirely from all intercourse
with one another? I do not admit the general principle; on the contrary,
I think freedom of trade to be the general principle, and restriction
the exception. And it is for every state, taking into view its own
condition, to judge of the propriety, in any case, of making an
exception, constantly preferring, as I think all wise governments will,
not to depart without urgent reason from the general rule.

There is another point in the existing policy of England to which I
would most earnestly invite the attention of the committee; I mean the
warehouse system, or what we usually call the system of drawback. Very
great prejudices appear to me to exist with us on that subject. We seem
averse to the extension of the principle. The English government, on the
contrary, appear to have carried it to the extreme of liberality. They
have arrived, however, at their present opinions and present practice by
slow degrees. The transit system was commenced about the year 1803, but
the first law was partial and limited. It admitted the importation of
raw materials for exportation, but it excluded almost every sort of
manufactured goods. This was done for the same reason that we propose to
prevent the transit of Canadian wheat through the United States, the
fear of aiding the competition of the foreign article with our own in
foreign markets. Better reflection or more experience has induced them
to abandon that mode of reasoning, and to consider all such means of
influencing foreign markets as nugatory; since, in the present active
and enlightened state of the world, nations will supply themselves from
the best sources, and the true policy of all producers, whether of raw
materials or of manufactured articles, is, not vainly to endeavor to
keep other vendors out of the market, but to conquer them in it by the
quality and the cheapness of their articles. The present policy of
En