"Sir, I know the
uncertainty
of human affairs; but I see, I
see clearly, through this day's business.
see clearly, through this day's business.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v27 - Wat to Zor
you have come down to us from a former
generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your lives,
that you might behold this joyous day. You are now where you
stood fifty years ago this very hour, with your brothers and your
neighbors, shoulder to shoulder, in the strife of your country.
Behold, how altered ! The same heavens are indeed over your
heads; the same ocean rolls at your feet: but all else, how
now
-
## p. 15740 (#66) ###########################################
15740
DANIEL WEBSTER
All is peace.
1
.
changed! You hear now no roar of hostile cannon, you see no
mixed volumes of smoke and flame rising from burning Charles-
town. The ground strewed with the dead and the dying; the im-
petuous charge; the steady and successful repulse; the loud call to
repeated assault; the summoning of all that is manly to repeated
resistance; a thousand bosoms freely and fearlessly bared in an
instant to whatever of terror there may be in war and death, -
all these you have witnessed, but you witness them no more.
The heights of yonder metropolis, its towers and
roofs, which you then saw filled with wives and children and
countrymen in distress and terror, and looking with unutterable
emotions for the issue of the combat, have presented you to-day
with the sight of its whole happy population, come out to wel-
come and greet you with a universal jubilee.
Yonder proud
ships, by a felicity of position appropriately lying at the foot of
this mount, and seeming fondly to cling to it, are not means of
annoyance to you, but your country's own means of distinction
and defense. All is peace; and God has granted you this sight
of your country's happiness, ere you slumber forever in the
grave. He has allowed you to behold and to partake the reward
of your patriotic toils; and he has allowed us, your sons and
countrymen, to meet you here, and in the name of the present
generation, in the name of your country, in the name of liberty,
to thank you!
A chief distinction of the present day is a community of opin-
ions and knowledge amongst men in different nations, existing
in a degree heretofore unknown. Knowledge has in our time
triumphed, and is triumphing, over distance, over difference of
languages, over diversity of habits, over prejudice, and
bigotry. The civilized and Christian world is fast learning the
great lesson that difference of nation does not imply necessary
hostility, and that all contact need not be war. The whole world
is becoming a common field for intellect to act in. Energy of
mind, genius, power, wheresoever it exists, may speak out in
any tongue, and the world will hear it.
A great chord of senti-
ment and feeling runs through two continents, and vibrates over
both. Every breeze wafts intelligence from country to country;
every wave rolls it: all give it forth and all in turn receive it.
There is a vast commerce of ideas; there are marts and ex-
changes for intellectual discoveries, and a wonderful fellowship
of those individual intelligences which make up the mind and
over
## p. 15741 (#67) ###########################################
DANIEL WEBSTER
15741
opinion of the age. Mind is the great lever of all things; human
thought is the process by which human ends are ultimately an-
swered: and the diffusion of knowledge, so astonishing in the last
half-century, has rendered innumerable minds, variously gifted
by nature, competent to be competitors or fellow-workers on the
theatre of intellectual operation.
Whatever benefit has been acquired is likely to be retained,
for it consists mainly in the acquisition of more enlightened
ideas. And although kingdoms and provinces may be wrested
from the hands that hold them, in the same manner that they
were obtained; although ordinary and vulgar power may, in
human affairs, be lost as it has been won: yet it is the glorious
prerogative of the empire of knowledge, that what it gains it
never loses. On the contrary, it increases by the multiple of its
own power: all its ends become means; all its attainments, helps
to new conquests. Its whole abundant harvest is but so much
seed wheat; and nothing has ascertained, and nothing can ascer-
tain, the amount of ultimate product.
And now let us indulge an honest exultation in the convic-
tion of the benefit which the example of our country has pro-
duced, and is likely to produce, on human freedom and human
happiness. Let us endeavor to comprehend in all its magnitude,
and to feel in all its importance, the part assigned to us in the
great drama of human affairs. We are placed at the head of
the system of representative and popular governments. Thus far
our example shows that such governments are compatible, not
only with respectability and power, but with repose, with peace,
with security of personal rights, with good laws, and a just ad-
ministration.
We are not propagandists. Wherever other systems are pre-
ferred, either as being thought better in themselves, or as bet.
ter suited to existing condition, we leave the preference to be
enjoyed. Our history hitherto proves, however, that the popular
form is practicable, and that with wisdom and knowledge men
may govern themselves; and the duty incumbent on us is, to
preserve the consistency of this cheering example, and take
care that nothing may weaken its authority with the world. If,
in our case, the representative system ultimately fail, popular
governments must be pronounced impossible. No combination
of circumstances more favorable to the experiment can ever be
expected to occur. The last hopes of mankind therefore rest
## p. 15742 (#68) ###########################################
15742
DANIEL WEBSTER
with us; and if it should be proclaimed that our example had
become an argument against the experiment, the knell of popu-
lar liberty would be sounded throughout the earth.
These are incitements to duty; but they are not suggestions
of doubt. Our history and our condition -- all that is gone
before us, and all that surrounds us authorize the belief that
popular governments, though subject to occasional variations,
perhaps not always for the better in form, may yet, in their
general character, be as durable and permanent as other systems.
We know, indeed, that in our country any other is impossible.
The principle of free governments adheres to the American soil.
It is bedded in it, immovable as its mountains.
And let the sacred obligations which have devolved on this
generation, and on us, sink deep into our hearts. Those are
daily dropping from among us who established our liberty and
our government. The great trust now descends to new hands.
Let us apply ourselves to that which is presented to us, as our
appropriate object. We can win no laurels in a war for inde-
pendence. Earlier and worthier hands have gathered them all.
Nor are there places for us by the side of Solon, and Alfred,
and other founders of States. Our fathers have filled them. But
there remains to us a great duty of defense and preservation;
and there is open to us, also, a noble pursuit, to which the
spirit of the times strongly invites us. Our proper business is
improvement. Let our age be the age of improvement. In a
day of peace, let us advance the arts of peace and the works of
peace.
Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its
powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests,
and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not
perform something worthy to be remembered. Let us cultivate
a true spirit of union and harmony. In pursuing the great
objects which our condition points out to us, let us act under a
settled conviction, and an habitual feeling, that these twenty-four
States are one country. Let our conceptions be enlarged to the
circles of our duties. Let us extend our ideas over the whole of
the vast field in which we are called to act. Let our object be,
OUR COUNTRY, OUR WHOLE COUNTRY, AND NOTHING BUT OUR COUN-
TRY. And by the blessing of God, may that country itself
become a vast and splendid monunent, not of oppression and
terror, but of wisdom, of peace, and of liberty, upon which the
world may gaze with admiration forever!
## p. 15743 (#69) ###########################################
DANIEL WEBSTER
15743
MASSACHUSETTS AND SOUTH CAROLINA
From the Speech in the Senate, January 26th, 1830
S'*;
VIR, let me recur to pleasing recollections; let me indulge in
refreshing remembrance of the past; let me remind you
that in early times no States cherished greater harmony,
both of principle and feeling, than Massachusetts and South Caro-
lina. Would to God that harmony might again return! Shoul- .
der to shoulder they went through the Revolution; hand in hand
they stood round the administration of Washington, and felt his
own great arm lean on them for support. Unkind feeling, if
it exists, alienation and distrust, are the growth, unnatural to
such soils, of false principles since sown. They are weeds, the
seeds of which that same great arm never scattered.
Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachu-
setts: she needs none. There she is. Behold her, and judge for
yourselves. There is her history; the world knows it by heart.
The past at least is secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and
Lexington, and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain forever.
The bones of her sons, falling in the great struggle for independ-
ence, now lie mingled with the soil of every State from New Eng.
land to Georgia; and there they will lie forever. And, sir, where
American liberty raised its first voice, and where its youth was
nurtured and sustained, there it still lives, in the strength of its
manhood and full of its original spirit. If discord and disunion
shall wound it, if party strife and blind ambition shall hawk at
and tear it, if folly and madness, if uneasiness under salutary
and necessary restraint, shall succeed in separating it from that
Union by which alone its existence is made sure, it will stand
in the end by the side of that cradle in which its infancy was
rocked; it will stretch forth its arm with whatever of vigor it
may still retain over the friends who gather round it; and it will
fall at last, if fall it must, amidst the proudest monuments of its
own glory, and on the very spot of its origin.
## p. 15744 (#70) ###########################################
15744
DANIEL WEBSTER
LIBERTY AND UNION
From the Speech in the Senate, January 26th, 1830
F
I
ANYTHING be found in the national Constitution, either by
original provision or subsequent interpretation, which ought
not to be in it, the people know how to get rid of it. If
any construction be established unacceptable to them, so as to
become practically a part of the Constitution, they will amend it
at their own sovereign pleasure. But while the people choose to
maintain it as it is, while they are satisfied with it and refuse
to change it, who has given or who can give to the State legis-
latures a right to alter it, either by interference, construction, or
otherwise ? Gentlemen do not seem to recollect that the people
have any power to do anything for themselves. They imagine
there is no safety for them any longer than they are under the
close guardianship of the State legislatures. Sir, the people have
not trusted their safety, in regard to the general Constitution, to
these hands. They have required other security, and taken other
bonds. They have chosen to trust themselves, first, to the plain
words of the instrument, and to such construction as the govern-
ment itself, in doubtful cases, should put on its own powers, and
under their oaths of office, and subject to their responsibility to
them; just as the people of a State trust their own State govern-
ment with a similar power. Secondly, they have reposed their
trust in the efficacy of frequent elections; and in their own
power to remove their own servants and agents whenever they
Thirdly, they have reposed trust in the judicial
power; which, in order that it might be trustworthy, they have
made as respectable, as disinterested, and as independent, as was
practicable. Fourthly, they have seen fit to rely, in case of neces-
sity, or high expediency, on their known and admitted power to
alter or amend the Constitution, peaceably and quietly, whenever
experience shall point out defects or imperfections. And finally,
the people of the United States have at no time, in no way,
directly or indirectly, authorized any State legislature to con-
strue or interpret their high instrument of government; much
less to interfere by their own power, to arrest its course and oper-
ation.
If, sir, the people in these respects had done otherwise than
they have done, their Constitution could neither have been pre-
served, nor would it have been worth preserving. And if its
see
cause.
## p. 15745 (#71) ###########################################
DANIEL WEBSTER
15745
plain provisions shall now be disregarded, and these new doc-
trines interpolated in it, it will become as feeble and helpless a
being as its enemies, whether early or more recent, could possi-
bly desire. It will exist in every State but as a poor dependent
on State permission. It must borrow leave to be; and will be,
no longer than State pleasure or State discretion sees fit to grant
the indulgence, and prolong its poor existence.
But, sir, although there are fears, there are hopes also. The
people have preserved this, their own chosen Constitution, for
forty years; and have seen their happiness, prosperity, and re.
nown grow with its growth, and strengthen with its strength.
They are now, generally, strongly attached to it. Overthrown by
direct assault, it cannot be; evaded, undermined, nullified, it will
not be, if we, and those who shall succeed us here as agents and
representatives of the people, shall conscientiously and vigilantly
discharge the two great branches of our public trust, faithfully to
preserve and wisely to administer it.
Mr. President, I have thus stated the reasons of my dissent
to the doctrines which have been advanced and maintained. I
am conscious of having detained you and the Senate much too
long. I was drawn into the debate with no previous delibera-
tion, such as is suited to the discussion of so grave and import-
ant a subject. But it is a subject of which my heart is full, and
I have not been willing to suppress the utterance of its spon-
taneous sentiments. I cannot, even now, persuade myself to
relinquish it, without expressing once more my deep conviction,
that since it respects nothing less than the union of the States,
it is of most vital and essential importance to the public happi-
ness. I profess, sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept steadily
in view the prosperity and honor of the whole country, and the
preservation of our federal Union. It is to that Union we owe
our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad.
It is to that Union that we are chiefly indebted for whatever
makes us most proud of our country. That Union we reached
only by the discipline of our virtues in the severe school of
adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered
finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its benign
influences, these great interests immediately awoke as from the
dead, and sprang forward with newness of life. Every year of
its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its
blessings; and although our territory has stretched out wider and
XXVII-985
## p. 15746 (#72) ###########################################
15746
DANIEL WEBSTER
2
wider, and our population spread farther and farther, they have
not outrun its protection or its benefits. It has been to us all a
.
copious fountain of national, social, and personal happiness.
I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the Union, to
see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. I have
not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty when the
bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder. I have
not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion, to
see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the
abyss below; nor could I regard him as a safe counselor in the
affairs of this government, whose thoughts should be mainly bent
on considering, not how the Union should be best preserved, but
how tolérable might be the condition of the people when it shall
be broken up and destroyed. While the Union lasts, we have
high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us,- for us
and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil.
God grant that in my day, at least, that curtain may not rise!
God grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies
behind! When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last
time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken
and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States
dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil
feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last
feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of
the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still
full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their
original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star
obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory
as «What is all this worth ? ” nor those other words of delusion
and folly, “Liberty first and Union afterwards ”; but everywhere,
spread over all in characters of living light, blazing on all its
ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in
every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear
to every true American heart — Liberty and Union, now and for-
ever, one and inseparable!
## p. 15747 (#73) ###########################################
DANIEL WEBSTER
15747
THE DRUM-BEAT OF ENGLAND
From Speech in the Senate, May 7th, 1834
The
as
HE Senate regarded this interposition [the President's Protest]
an encroachment by the executive on other branches
of the government; as an interference with the legislative
disposition of the public treasure. It was strongly and forcibly
urged yesterday by the honorable member from South Carolina,
that the true and only mode of preserving any balance of power
in mixed governments is to keep an exact balance. This is very
true; and to this end encroachment must be resisted at the first
step. The question is therefore whether, upon the true principles
of the Constitution, this exercise of power by the President can
be justified. Whether the consequences be prejudicial or not, if
there be any illegal exercise of power it is to be resisted in the
proper manner. Even if no harm or inconvenience result from
transgressing the boundary, the intrusion is not to be suffered to
pass unnoticed. Every encroachment, great or small, is import-
ant enough to awaken the attention of those who are intrusted
with the preservation of a constitutional government. We are
not to wait till great public mischiefs come, till the government
is overthrown, or liberty itself put into extreme jeopardy. We
should not be worthy sons of our fathers were we so to regard
great questions affecting the general freedom. Those fathers
accomplished the Revolution on a strict question of principle.
The Parliament of Great Britain asserted a right to tax the
colonies in all cases whatsoever; and it was precisely on this
question that they made the Revolution turn. The amount of
taxation was trifling, but the claim itself was inconsistent with
liberty; and that was in their eyes enough. It was against the
recital of an act of Parliament, rather than against any suffering
under its enactments, that they took up arms. They went to
war against a preamble. They fought seven years against a dec-
laration. They poured out their treasures and their blood like
water, in a contest against an assertion which those less saga-
cious and not so well schooled in the principles of civil liberty
would have regarded as barren phraseology, or mere parade of
words. They saw in the claim of the British Parliament a sem-
inal principle of mischief, the germ of unjust power; they de-
tected it, dragged it forth from underneath its plausible disguises,
## p. 15748 (#74) ###########################################
15748
DANIEL WEBSTER
struck at it; nor did it elude either their steady eye or well-
directed blow till they had extirpated and destroyed it, to the
smallest fibre. On this question of principle, while actual suffer-
ing was yet afar off, they raised their flag against a power, to
which for purposes of foreign conquest and subjugation, Rome,
in the height of her glory, is not to be compared: a power which
has dotted over the surface of the whole globe with her posses-
sions and military posts; whose morning drum-beat, following
the sun and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth
with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of
England.
T
I
IMAGINARY SPEECH OF JOHN ADAMS
From the (Discourse on the Lives and Services of Adams and Jefferson,'
August 2d, 1826.
was for Mr. Adams to reply to arguments like these. We
know his opinions, and we know his character. He would
commence with his accustomed directness and earnestness.
«Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my
hand and my heart to this vote. It is true, indeed, that in the
beginning we aimed not at independence. But there's a divinity
which shapes our ends. The injustice of England has driven us
to arms; and blinded to her own interest for our good, she has
obstinately persisted, till independence is now within our grasp.
We have but to reach forth to it and it is ours. Why then
should we defer the declaration ? Is any man so weak as now to
hope for a reconciliation with England which shall leave either
safety to the country and its liberties, or safety to his own life
and his own honor ? Are not you, sir, who sit in that chair,-is
not he, our venerable colleague near you,- are you not both al-
ready the proscribed and predestined objects of punishment and
of vengeance? Cut off from all hope of royal clemency, what are
you, what can you be, while the power of England remains, but
outlaws? If we postpone independence, do we mean to carry on
or to give up the war? Do we mean to submit to the measures
of Parliament, Boston Port Bill and all? Do we mean to submit,
and consent that we ourselves shall be ground to powder, and
our country and its rights trodden down in the dust ? I know
we do not mean to submit. We never shall submit. Do we in-
tend to violate that most solemn obligation ever entered into by
## p. 15749 (#75) ###########################################
DANIEL WEBSTER
15749
men,- that plighting, before God, of our sacred honor to Wash-
ington, when, putting him forth to incur the dangers of war as
well as the political hazards of the times, we promised to adhere
to him in every extremity, with our fortunes and our lives? I
know there is not a man here who would not rather see a general
conflagration sweep over the land, or an earthquake sink it, than
one jot or tittle of that plighted faith fall to the ground. For
myself, having twelve months ago in this place moved you that
George Washington be appointed commander of the forces raised,
or to be raised, for defense of American liberty,- may my right
hand forget her cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my
mouth, if I hesitate or waver in the support I give him.
« The war, then, must go on. We must fight it through. And
if the war must go on, why put off longer the declaration of
independence? That measure will strengthen us. It will give us
character abroad. The nations will then treat with us;
which
they never can do while we acknowledge ourselves subjects, in
arms against our sovereign. Nay, I maintain that England her-
.
.
self will sooner treat for peace with us on the footing of inde-
pendence, than consent, by repealing her acts, to acknowledge
that her whole conduct toward us has been a course of injustice
and oppression. Her pride will be less wounded by submitting
to that course of things which now predestinates our independence,
than by yielding the points in controversy to her rebellious sub-
jects. The former she would regard as the result of fortune; the
latter she would feel as her own deep disgrace. Why then, why
then, sir, do we not as soon as possible change this from a civil
to a national war? And since we must fight it through, why not
put ourselves in a state to enjoy all the benefits of victory, if we
gain the victory?
“If we fail, it can be no worse for us. But we shall not fail.
The cause will raise up armies; the cause will create navies. The
people, the people, if we are true to them, will carry us, and will
carry themselves, gloriously through this struggle. I care not
how fickle other people have been found. I know the people of
these colonies; and I know that resistance to British aggression
is deep and settled in their hearts, and cannot be eradicated.
Every colony indeed has expressed its willingness to follow, if
we but take the lead. Sir, the declaration will inspire the people
with increased courage. Instead of a long and bloody war for
(
## p. 15750 (#76) ###########################################
15750
DANIEL WEBSTER
the restoration of privileges, for redress of grievances, for char-
tered immunities held under a British king, set before them the
glorious object of entire independence, and it will breathe into
them anew the breath of life. Read this declaration at the head
of the army: every sword will be drawn from its scabbard, and
the solemn vow uttered to maintain it, or to perish on the bed
of honor. Publish it from the pulpit: religion will approve it,
and the love of religious liberty will cling round it, resolved to
stand with it or fall with it. Send it to the public halls; pro-
claim it there; let them hear it who heard the first roar of the
enemy's cannon; let them see it who saw their brothers and
their sons fall on the field of Bunker Hill and in the streets of
Lexington and Concord, and the very walls will cry out in its
support.
"Sir, I know the uncertainty of human affairs; but I see, I
see clearly, through this day's business. You and I, indeed, may
rue it. We may not live to the time when this declaration shall
be made good. We may die; die colonists; die slaves; die, it
may be, ignominiously and on the scaffold. Be it so.
.
Be it so.
If it be the pleasure of Heaven that my country shall require
the poor offering of my life, the victim shall be ready at the ap-
pointed hour to sacrifice, come when that hour may. But while
I do live, let me have a country, or at least the hope of a coun-
try, and that a free country.
“But whatever may be our fate, be assured, be assured, that
this declaration will stand. It may cost treasure, and it may cost
blood; but it will stand, and it will richly compensate for both.
Through the thick gloom of the present, I see the brightness of
the future, as the sun in heaven. We shall make this a glorious,
an immortal day. When we are in our graves, our children will
honor it. They will celebrate it with thanksgiving, with festivity,
with bonfires and illuminations. On this annual return they will
shed tears,— copious, gushing tears,— not of subjection and
-
slavery, not of agony and distress, but of exultation, of gratitude,
and of joy. Sir, before God, I believe the hour is come. My
judgment approves this measure, and my whole heart is in it.
All that I have, and all that I am, and all that I hope, in this
life, I am now ready here to stake upon it; and I leave off as I
begun, that live or die, survive or perish, I am for the declara-
tion. It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it
## p. 15751 (#77) ###########################################
DANIEL WEBSTER
15751
shall be my dying sentiment, - Independence now, and indEPEND-
ENCE FOREVER. ”
And so that day shall be honored, illustrious prophet and
patriot! so that day shall be honored; and as often as it returns,
thy renown shall come along with it; and the glory of thy life,
like the day of thy death, shall not fail from the remembrance
of men.
THE CONTINUITY OF THE RACE
From the Discourse in Commemoration of the First Settlement of New Eng.
land, delivered at Plymouth on the 22d day of December, 1820
LET
ET 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 inorn 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. Forever hon.
ored. be this, the place of our fathers' refuge! Forever remem-
bered the day which saw them, weary and distressed, broken in
everything but spirit, poor in all but faith and courage, at last
secure from the dangers of wintry seas, and impressing this shore
with the first footsteps of civilized man!
It is a noble faculty of our nature which enables us to con-
nect 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
## p. 15752 (#78) ###########################################
15752
DANIEL WEBSTER
-
>
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 tri-
umphs, - we mingle our own existence with theirs, and seem to
belong to their age. 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 run-
ning along the line of future time, by contemplating the probable
fortunes of those who are coming after us, by attempting some-
thing 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; our-
selves 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 ances-
try, 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 groveling 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
## p. 15753 (#79) ###########################################
DANIEL WEBSTER
15753
the happiness of those who come after it. Poetry is found to
have few stronger conceptions, by which it would affect or over-
whelm 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 for-
ward 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 imposes 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 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 hap-
piness, 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 civiliza-
tion, and letters, made their first lodgment,- in a vast extent of
country, covered with a wilderness and peopled by roving bar-
barians. We are here at the season of the year at which the
## p. 15754 (#80) ###########################################
15754
DANIEL WEBSTER
even
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 on which New England
received the feet of the Pilgrims. We seem
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 resigna-
tion; we hear the whisperings of youthful impatience; and we
see, what a painter of our own has also represented by his pen-
cil, 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: the general firmness and
thoughtfulness of the whole band; their conscious joy for dan-
gers escaped; their deep solicitude about dangers to come; their
trust in Heaven; their high religious faith, full of confidence and
anticipation, — all these seem to belong to this place, and to be
present upon this occasion, to fill us with reverence and admira-
tion.
The settlement of New England by the colony which landed
here on the twenty-second 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 last-
ing commemoration. On these causes and consequences, more
than on its immediately attendant circumstances, its importance
as an historical event depends. Great actions and striking oc-
currences, having excited a temporary admiration, often pass
a
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 achieve-
ments. Of the ten thousand battles which have been fought, of
all the fields fertilized with carnage, of the banners which have
## p. 15755 (#81) ###########################################
DANIEL WEBSTER
15755
-
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 mili-
tary 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 pur-
suit, and the victory: but by their effect in advancing or retard-
ing human knowledge, in overthrowing or establishing despotism,
in extending or destroying human happiness. When the traveler
pauses on the plain of Marathon, what are the emotions which
most strongly agitate his breast ? What is that glorious recollec-
tion 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 here 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 contin-
gency 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 con-
tending hosts; his interest for the result overwhelms him; he
trembles, as if it were still uncertain, and seems to doubt whether
## p. 15756 (#82) ###########################################
15756
DANIEL WEBSTER
(
»
6
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 morn-
ing of that decisive day,—“if we conquer, we shall make Ath-
ens the greatest city of Greece. ” 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 wil-
derness which is before us; we shall fill this region of the great
continent, which stretches almost from pole to pole, with civil.
ization 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 har-
vest of autumn, shall extend 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. ”
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
## p. 15757 (#83) ###########################################
DANIEL WEBSTER
15757
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 accla-
mation and gtatitude, 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 trans-
mitted 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 everything 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 back-
ward 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 treas-
ures 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!
## p. 15758 (#84) ###########################################
15758
JOHN WEBSTER
(EARLY IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY)
PITTLE is known of the life of Shakespeare's greatest pupil in
tragedy, John Webster. He began to write for the stage
about 1601: between 1601 and 1607 he made certain addi-
tions to Marston's (Malcontent,' and collaborated with Dekker in the
History of Sir Thomas Wyatt,' Northward Ho' and 'Westward Ho. ?
In 1612 Vittoria Corombona,' the most famous of his tragedies, was
published, and in 1623 "The Duchess of Malfi' appeared. Webster's
classical tragedy, Appius and Virginia,' was not published until 1654.
Besides these plays he wrote a tragi-comedy entitled “The Devil's
Law-Case,' and with Rowley the curious drama of A Cure for a
Cuckold. ' In his introduction to the Mermaid Edition of Webster's
plays, J. A. Symonds points out that there is little internal evidence
of this collaboration, for which the publisher Kirkman's word was the
authority. Mr. Edmund Gosse suggested that the little play within
this play might be the work of Webster; and acting on this sugges-
tion, the Hon. S. E. Spring-Rice detached the minor drama from A
Cure for a Cuckold,' and under the name of Love's Graduate had
it printed at the private press of Mr. Daniel. For two hundred years
after Webster lived, he was almost forgotten. The keen appreciation
of Charles Lamb rescued him from the strange oblivion which had
rested upon his remarkable if sinister genius. In his (Specimens
from the English Dramatic Poets,' he accords him the highest praise.
In 1830 the Rev. Alexander Dyce collected and edited the works of
Webster; bringing them for the first time within the reach of the
general reader, and securing the preservation of what are acknowl-
edged masterpieces of a certain order of tragedy.
The two Italian dramas, "The Duchess of Malfi' and Vittoria
Corombona; or The White Devil, belong to that strange genus, the
tragedy of blood,” which began with the extravagances of Kyd, a
predecessor of Shakespeare, and received its highest illustration by
the master himself in “Hamlet. Webster made a less plausible use
of this kind of tragedy than did Shakespeare, although he sometimes
approaches him in dramatic strength. His sinister imagination is
like the lightning of a midnight tempest, revealing the tormented
sky and the black fury of the storm. “No dramatist,” writes Mr.
Symonds, “showed more consummate ability in heightening terrific
((
## p. 15759 (#85) ###########################################
JOHN WEBSTER
15759
>
effects, in laying bare the inner mysteries of crime, remorse, and
pain;
he was drawn to comprehend and reproduce abnormal
elements of spiritual anguish. ” His men and women go out of life
in a black mist, as they pass through it in a red mist of crime.
Vittoria Corombona, the beautiful evil heroine of the play, cries out
when she is stabbed:
«My soul, like to a ship in a black storm,
Is driven, I know not whither. »
Her brother, Flamineo, holds to the cynicism of his reckless life
even amid the awful scenes of the last catastrophe.
“We cease to grieve, cease to be fortune's slaves,
Nay, cease to die, by dying. ”
Yet the humanity of these men and women of Webster's is not
disguised by their crimes. His insight into human nature is deep
and incisive, but he knew only its night side. He was in love with
agony and abnormal wickedness, and with the tortures of sin-haunted
sou He found fitting material for his uses in the stories of crime
furnished by the splendid, corrupt Italy of the sixteenth century.
The plots of Vittoria Corombona' and of the Duchess of Malfi are
both taken from this source. Viewed in the light of Italian Renais-
sance history, they cannot be called extravagant; but the sombre
genius of Webster has made the most of their terrors.
In his Roman play of Appius and Virginia' he has shown that
he could write calmly and dispassionately, and without the effects of
the terrible and the ghastly. It is a stately and quiet composition;
but it lacks those sudden flashes of illumination, those profound
and searching glimpses into the bottomless abyss of human misery,
which render the two Italian tragedies unique. ”
Webster's style is singularly well adapted to the spirit in which
he portrays human life. It is cutting, sententious, powerful. He has
the faculty of expressing an entire gamut of human emotions in a
few words, as when Ferdinand in the Duchess of Malfi' sees the
body of his twin-sister murdered by his orders, and exclaims —
«Cover her face: mine eyes dazzle; she dies young. ”
Webster's portions in the collaborated plays are inconsiderable,
and are not in any way characteristic of his peculiar genius.
## p. 15760 (#86) ###########################################
15760
JOHN WEBSTER
FROM "THE DUCHESS OF MALFI)
[The Duchess of Malfi, having secretly married her steward Antonio,
arouses thereby the wrath of her brother, Duke Ferdinand, the heir of her
great fortune had she died childless. She is forced to separate from her hus-
band, and by the order of her brother she and her children and her attendant
Cariola are put to death. ]
Scene : Room in the Duchess's Lodging. Enter Duchess and Cariola.
D
UCHESS What hideous noise was that?
Cariola-
'Tis the wild consort
Of madmen, lady, which your tyrant brother
Hath placed about your lodging: this tyranny,
I think, was never practiced till this hour.
Duchess — Indeed, I thank him: nothing but noise and folly
Can keep me in my right wits; whereas reason
And silence make me stark mad. Sit down;
Discourse to me some dismal tragedy.
Cariola — Oh, 'twill increase your melancholy.
Duchess -
Thou art deceived:
To hear of greater grief would lessen mine.
This is a prison ?
Cariola
Yes, but you shall live
To shake this durance off.
Duchess -
Thou art a fool:
The robin-redbreast and the nightingale
Never live long in cages.
Cariola -
Pray, dry your eyes.
What think you of, madam ?
Duchess –
Of nothing;
When I muse thus I sleep.
Cariola Like a madman, with your eyes open?
Duchess - Dost thou think we shall know one another
In the other world ?
Cariola
Yes, out of question.
Duchess — Oh that it were possible we might
But hold some two days' conference with the dead!
From them I should learn somewhat, I am sure,
I never shall know here. I'll tell thee a miracle:
I am not mad yet, to my cause of sorrow;
The heaven o'er my head seems made of molten brass,
The earth of flaming sulphur, yet I am not mad.
I am acquainted with sad misery
As the tanned galley-slave is with his oar:
## p. 15761 (#87) ###########################################
JOHN WEBSTER
15761
Necessity makes me suffer constantly,
And custom makes it easy. Who do I look like now?
Cariola — Like to your picture in the gallery,–
A deal of life in show, but none in practice;
. Or rather like some reverend monument
Whose ruins are even pitied.
Duchess
Very proper:
And fortune seems only to have her eyesight
To behold my tragedy:- How now!
What noise is that?
Enter Servant
Sertant
I am come to tell you
Your brother hath intended you some sport.
A great physician, when the Pope was sick
Of a deep melancholy, presented him
With several sorts of madmen, which wild object,
Being full of change and sport, forced him to laugh,
And so the imposthume broke: the selfsame cure
The duke intends on you.
Duchess –
Let them come in.
Servant — There's a mad lawyer; and a secular priest;
A doctor that hath forfeited his wits
By jealousy; an astrologian
That in his works said such a day o’ the month
Should be the day of doom, and failing o't,
Ran mad; an English tailor crazed i’ the brain
With the study of new fashions; a gentleman-usher
Quite beside himself with care to keep in mind
The number of his lady's salutations
Or “How do you” she employed him in each morning;
A farmer too, an excellent knave in grain,
Mad 'cause he was hindered transportation :
And let one broker that's mad loose to these,
You'd think the Devil were among them.
Duchess — Sit, Cariola. — Let them loose when you please,
For I am chained to endure all your tyranny.
Enter Madmen
(Here this song is sung to a dismal kind of music by a Madman. )
Oh, let us howl some heavy note,
Some deadly doggèd howl,
XXVII—986
## p. 15762 (#88) ###########################################
15762
JOHN WEBSTER
Sounding as from the threatening throat
Of beasts and fatal fowl!
As ravens, screech-owls, bulls, and bears,
We'll bell, and bawl our parts,
Till irksome noise have cloyed your ears
And corrosived your hearts.
At last, whenas our quire wants breath,
Our bodies being blest,
We'll sing, like swans, to welcome death,
And die in love and rest.
First Madman – Doomsday not come yet! I'll draw it nearer by
a perspective, or make a glass that shall set all the world on fire
upon the instant.
I cannot sleep, my pillow is stuffed with a litter
of porcupines.
Second Madman — Hell is a mere glass-house, where the devils are
continually blowing up women's souls on hollow irons, and the fire
never goes out.
First Madman - I have skill in heraldry.
Second Madman — Hast?
First Madman – You do give for your crest a woodcock's head
with the brains picked out on't; you are a very ancient gentleman.
Third Madman - -Greek is turned Turk: we are only to be saved
by the Helvetian translation.
First Madman - Come on, sir, I will lay the law to you.
generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your lives,
that you might behold this joyous day. You are now where you
stood fifty years ago this very hour, with your brothers and your
neighbors, shoulder to shoulder, in the strife of your country.
Behold, how altered ! The same heavens are indeed over your
heads; the same ocean rolls at your feet: but all else, how
now
-
## p. 15740 (#66) ###########################################
15740
DANIEL WEBSTER
All is peace.
1
.
changed! You hear now no roar of hostile cannon, you see no
mixed volumes of smoke and flame rising from burning Charles-
town. The ground strewed with the dead and the dying; the im-
petuous charge; the steady and successful repulse; the loud call to
repeated assault; the summoning of all that is manly to repeated
resistance; a thousand bosoms freely and fearlessly bared in an
instant to whatever of terror there may be in war and death, -
all these you have witnessed, but you witness them no more.
The heights of yonder metropolis, its towers and
roofs, which you then saw filled with wives and children and
countrymen in distress and terror, and looking with unutterable
emotions for the issue of the combat, have presented you to-day
with the sight of its whole happy population, come out to wel-
come and greet you with a universal jubilee.
Yonder proud
ships, by a felicity of position appropriately lying at the foot of
this mount, and seeming fondly to cling to it, are not means of
annoyance to you, but your country's own means of distinction
and defense. All is peace; and God has granted you this sight
of your country's happiness, ere you slumber forever in the
grave. He has allowed you to behold and to partake the reward
of your patriotic toils; and he has allowed us, your sons and
countrymen, to meet you here, and in the name of the present
generation, in the name of your country, in the name of liberty,
to thank you!
A chief distinction of the present day is a community of opin-
ions and knowledge amongst men in different nations, existing
in a degree heretofore unknown. Knowledge has in our time
triumphed, and is triumphing, over distance, over difference of
languages, over diversity of habits, over prejudice, and
bigotry. The civilized and Christian world is fast learning the
great lesson that difference of nation does not imply necessary
hostility, and that all contact need not be war. The whole world
is becoming a common field for intellect to act in. Energy of
mind, genius, power, wheresoever it exists, may speak out in
any tongue, and the world will hear it.
A great chord of senti-
ment and feeling runs through two continents, and vibrates over
both. Every breeze wafts intelligence from country to country;
every wave rolls it: all give it forth and all in turn receive it.
There is a vast commerce of ideas; there are marts and ex-
changes for intellectual discoveries, and a wonderful fellowship
of those individual intelligences which make up the mind and
over
## p. 15741 (#67) ###########################################
DANIEL WEBSTER
15741
opinion of the age. Mind is the great lever of all things; human
thought is the process by which human ends are ultimately an-
swered: and the diffusion of knowledge, so astonishing in the last
half-century, has rendered innumerable minds, variously gifted
by nature, competent to be competitors or fellow-workers on the
theatre of intellectual operation.
Whatever benefit has been acquired is likely to be retained,
for it consists mainly in the acquisition of more enlightened
ideas. And although kingdoms and provinces may be wrested
from the hands that hold them, in the same manner that they
were obtained; although ordinary and vulgar power may, in
human affairs, be lost as it has been won: yet it is the glorious
prerogative of the empire of knowledge, that what it gains it
never loses. On the contrary, it increases by the multiple of its
own power: all its ends become means; all its attainments, helps
to new conquests. Its whole abundant harvest is but so much
seed wheat; and nothing has ascertained, and nothing can ascer-
tain, the amount of ultimate product.
And now let us indulge an honest exultation in the convic-
tion of the benefit which the example of our country has pro-
duced, and is likely to produce, on human freedom and human
happiness. Let us endeavor to comprehend in all its magnitude,
and to feel in all its importance, the part assigned to us in the
great drama of human affairs. We are placed at the head of
the system of representative and popular governments. Thus far
our example shows that such governments are compatible, not
only with respectability and power, but with repose, with peace,
with security of personal rights, with good laws, and a just ad-
ministration.
We are not propagandists. Wherever other systems are pre-
ferred, either as being thought better in themselves, or as bet.
ter suited to existing condition, we leave the preference to be
enjoyed. Our history hitherto proves, however, that the popular
form is practicable, and that with wisdom and knowledge men
may govern themselves; and the duty incumbent on us is, to
preserve the consistency of this cheering example, and take
care that nothing may weaken its authority with the world. If,
in our case, the representative system ultimately fail, popular
governments must be pronounced impossible. No combination
of circumstances more favorable to the experiment can ever be
expected to occur. The last hopes of mankind therefore rest
## p. 15742 (#68) ###########################################
15742
DANIEL WEBSTER
with us; and if it should be proclaimed that our example had
become an argument against the experiment, the knell of popu-
lar liberty would be sounded throughout the earth.
These are incitements to duty; but they are not suggestions
of doubt. Our history and our condition -- all that is gone
before us, and all that surrounds us authorize the belief that
popular governments, though subject to occasional variations,
perhaps not always for the better in form, may yet, in their
general character, be as durable and permanent as other systems.
We know, indeed, that in our country any other is impossible.
The principle of free governments adheres to the American soil.
It is bedded in it, immovable as its mountains.
And let the sacred obligations which have devolved on this
generation, and on us, sink deep into our hearts. Those are
daily dropping from among us who established our liberty and
our government. The great trust now descends to new hands.
Let us apply ourselves to that which is presented to us, as our
appropriate object. We can win no laurels in a war for inde-
pendence. Earlier and worthier hands have gathered them all.
Nor are there places for us by the side of Solon, and Alfred,
and other founders of States. Our fathers have filled them. But
there remains to us a great duty of defense and preservation;
and there is open to us, also, a noble pursuit, to which the
spirit of the times strongly invites us. Our proper business is
improvement. Let our age be the age of improvement. In a
day of peace, let us advance the arts of peace and the works of
peace.
Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its
powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests,
and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not
perform something worthy to be remembered. Let us cultivate
a true spirit of union and harmony. In pursuing the great
objects which our condition points out to us, let us act under a
settled conviction, and an habitual feeling, that these twenty-four
States are one country. Let our conceptions be enlarged to the
circles of our duties. Let us extend our ideas over the whole of
the vast field in which we are called to act. Let our object be,
OUR COUNTRY, OUR WHOLE COUNTRY, AND NOTHING BUT OUR COUN-
TRY. And by the blessing of God, may that country itself
become a vast and splendid monunent, not of oppression and
terror, but of wisdom, of peace, and of liberty, upon which the
world may gaze with admiration forever!
## p. 15743 (#69) ###########################################
DANIEL WEBSTER
15743
MASSACHUSETTS AND SOUTH CAROLINA
From the Speech in the Senate, January 26th, 1830
S'*;
VIR, let me recur to pleasing recollections; let me indulge in
refreshing remembrance of the past; let me remind you
that in early times no States cherished greater harmony,
both of principle and feeling, than Massachusetts and South Caro-
lina. Would to God that harmony might again return! Shoul- .
der to shoulder they went through the Revolution; hand in hand
they stood round the administration of Washington, and felt his
own great arm lean on them for support. Unkind feeling, if
it exists, alienation and distrust, are the growth, unnatural to
such soils, of false principles since sown. They are weeds, the
seeds of which that same great arm never scattered.
Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachu-
setts: she needs none. There she is. Behold her, and judge for
yourselves. There is her history; the world knows it by heart.
The past at least is secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and
Lexington, and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain forever.
The bones of her sons, falling in the great struggle for independ-
ence, now lie mingled with the soil of every State from New Eng.
land to Georgia; and there they will lie forever. And, sir, where
American liberty raised its first voice, and where its youth was
nurtured and sustained, there it still lives, in the strength of its
manhood and full of its original spirit. If discord and disunion
shall wound it, if party strife and blind ambition shall hawk at
and tear it, if folly and madness, if uneasiness under salutary
and necessary restraint, shall succeed in separating it from that
Union by which alone its existence is made sure, it will stand
in the end by the side of that cradle in which its infancy was
rocked; it will stretch forth its arm with whatever of vigor it
may still retain over the friends who gather round it; and it will
fall at last, if fall it must, amidst the proudest monuments of its
own glory, and on the very spot of its origin.
## p. 15744 (#70) ###########################################
15744
DANIEL WEBSTER
LIBERTY AND UNION
From the Speech in the Senate, January 26th, 1830
F
I
ANYTHING be found in the national Constitution, either by
original provision or subsequent interpretation, which ought
not to be in it, the people know how to get rid of it. If
any construction be established unacceptable to them, so as to
become practically a part of the Constitution, they will amend it
at their own sovereign pleasure. But while the people choose to
maintain it as it is, while they are satisfied with it and refuse
to change it, who has given or who can give to the State legis-
latures a right to alter it, either by interference, construction, or
otherwise ? Gentlemen do not seem to recollect that the people
have any power to do anything for themselves. They imagine
there is no safety for them any longer than they are under the
close guardianship of the State legislatures. Sir, the people have
not trusted their safety, in regard to the general Constitution, to
these hands. They have required other security, and taken other
bonds. They have chosen to trust themselves, first, to the plain
words of the instrument, and to such construction as the govern-
ment itself, in doubtful cases, should put on its own powers, and
under their oaths of office, and subject to their responsibility to
them; just as the people of a State trust their own State govern-
ment with a similar power. Secondly, they have reposed their
trust in the efficacy of frequent elections; and in their own
power to remove their own servants and agents whenever they
Thirdly, they have reposed trust in the judicial
power; which, in order that it might be trustworthy, they have
made as respectable, as disinterested, and as independent, as was
practicable. Fourthly, they have seen fit to rely, in case of neces-
sity, or high expediency, on their known and admitted power to
alter or amend the Constitution, peaceably and quietly, whenever
experience shall point out defects or imperfections. And finally,
the people of the United States have at no time, in no way,
directly or indirectly, authorized any State legislature to con-
strue or interpret their high instrument of government; much
less to interfere by their own power, to arrest its course and oper-
ation.
If, sir, the people in these respects had done otherwise than
they have done, their Constitution could neither have been pre-
served, nor would it have been worth preserving. And if its
see
cause.
## p. 15745 (#71) ###########################################
DANIEL WEBSTER
15745
plain provisions shall now be disregarded, and these new doc-
trines interpolated in it, it will become as feeble and helpless a
being as its enemies, whether early or more recent, could possi-
bly desire. It will exist in every State but as a poor dependent
on State permission. It must borrow leave to be; and will be,
no longer than State pleasure or State discretion sees fit to grant
the indulgence, and prolong its poor existence.
But, sir, although there are fears, there are hopes also. The
people have preserved this, their own chosen Constitution, for
forty years; and have seen their happiness, prosperity, and re.
nown grow with its growth, and strengthen with its strength.
They are now, generally, strongly attached to it. Overthrown by
direct assault, it cannot be; evaded, undermined, nullified, it will
not be, if we, and those who shall succeed us here as agents and
representatives of the people, shall conscientiously and vigilantly
discharge the two great branches of our public trust, faithfully to
preserve and wisely to administer it.
Mr. President, I have thus stated the reasons of my dissent
to the doctrines which have been advanced and maintained. I
am conscious of having detained you and the Senate much too
long. I was drawn into the debate with no previous delibera-
tion, such as is suited to the discussion of so grave and import-
ant a subject. But it is a subject of which my heart is full, and
I have not been willing to suppress the utterance of its spon-
taneous sentiments. I cannot, even now, persuade myself to
relinquish it, without expressing once more my deep conviction,
that since it respects nothing less than the union of the States,
it is of most vital and essential importance to the public happi-
ness. I profess, sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept steadily
in view the prosperity and honor of the whole country, and the
preservation of our federal Union. It is to that Union we owe
our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad.
It is to that Union that we are chiefly indebted for whatever
makes us most proud of our country. That Union we reached
only by the discipline of our virtues in the severe school of
adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered
finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its benign
influences, these great interests immediately awoke as from the
dead, and sprang forward with newness of life. Every year of
its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its
blessings; and although our territory has stretched out wider and
XXVII-985
## p. 15746 (#72) ###########################################
15746
DANIEL WEBSTER
2
wider, and our population spread farther and farther, they have
not outrun its protection or its benefits. It has been to us all a
.
copious fountain of national, social, and personal happiness.
I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the Union, to
see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. I have
not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty when the
bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder. I have
not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion, to
see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the
abyss below; nor could I regard him as a safe counselor in the
affairs of this government, whose thoughts should be mainly bent
on considering, not how the Union should be best preserved, but
how tolérable might be the condition of the people when it shall
be broken up and destroyed. While the Union lasts, we have
high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us,- for us
and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil.
God grant that in my day, at least, that curtain may not rise!
God grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies
behind! When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last
time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken
and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States
dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil
feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last
feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of
the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still
full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their
original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star
obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory
as «What is all this worth ? ” nor those other words of delusion
and folly, “Liberty first and Union afterwards ”; but everywhere,
spread over all in characters of living light, blazing on all its
ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in
every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear
to every true American heart — Liberty and Union, now and for-
ever, one and inseparable!
## p. 15747 (#73) ###########################################
DANIEL WEBSTER
15747
THE DRUM-BEAT OF ENGLAND
From Speech in the Senate, May 7th, 1834
The
as
HE Senate regarded this interposition [the President's Protest]
an encroachment by the executive on other branches
of the government; as an interference with the legislative
disposition of the public treasure. It was strongly and forcibly
urged yesterday by the honorable member from South Carolina,
that the true and only mode of preserving any balance of power
in mixed governments is to keep an exact balance. This is very
true; and to this end encroachment must be resisted at the first
step. The question is therefore whether, upon the true principles
of the Constitution, this exercise of power by the President can
be justified. Whether the consequences be prejudicial or not, if
there be any illegal exercise of power it is to be resisted in the
proper manner. Even if no harm or inconvenience result from
transgressing the boundary, the intrusion is not to be suffered to
pass unnoticed. Every encroachment, great or small, is import-
ant enough to awaken the attention of those who are intrusted
with the preservation of a constitutional government. We are
not to wait till great public mischiefs come, till the government
is overthrown, or liberty itself put into extreme jeopardy. We
should not be worthy sons of our fathers were we so to regard
great questions affecting the general freedom. Those fathers
accomplished the Revolution on a strict question of principle.
The Parliament of Great Britain asserted a right to tax the
colonies in all cases whatsoever; and it was precisely on this
question that they made the Revolution turn. The amount of
taxation was trifling, but the claim itself was inconsistent with
liberty; and that was in their eyes enough. It was against the
recital of an act of Parliament, rather than against any suffering
under its enactments, that they took up arms. They went to
war against a preamble. They fought seven years against a dec-
laration. They poured out their treasures and their blood like
water, in a contest against an assertion which those less saga-
cious and not so well schooled in the principles of civil liberty
would have regarded as barren phraseology, or mere parade of
words. They saw in the claim of the British Parliament a sem-
inal principle of mischief, the germ of unjust power; they de-
tected it, dragged it forth from underneath its plausible disguises,
## p. 15748 (#74) ###########################################
15748
DANIEL WEBSTER
struck at it; nor did it elude either their steady eye or well-
directed blow till they had extirpated and destroyed it, to the
smallest fibre. On this question of principle, while actual suffer-
ing was yet afar off, they raised their flag against a power, to
which for purposes of foreign conquest and subjugation, Rome,
in the height of her glory, is not to be compared: a power which
has dotted over the surface of the whole globe with her posses-
sions and military posts; whose morning drum-beat, following
the sun and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth
with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of
England.
T
I
IMAGINARY SPEECH OF JOHN ADAMS
From the (Discourse on the Lives and Services of Adams and Jefferson,'
August 2d, 1826.
was for Mr. Adams to reply to arguments like these. We
know his opinions, and we know his character. He would
commence with his accustomed directness and earnestness.
«Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my
hand and my heart to this vote. It is true, indeed, that in the
beginning we aimed not at independence. But there's a divinity
which shapes our ends. The injustice of England has driven us
to arms; and blinded to her own interest for our good, she has
obstinately persisted, till independence is now within our grasp.
We have but to reach forth to it and it is ours. Why then
should we defer the declaration ? Is any man so weak as now to
hope for a reconciliation with England which shall leave either
safety to the country and its liberties, or safety to his own life
and his own honor ? Are not you, sir, who sit in that chair,-is
not he, our venerable colleague near you,- are you not both al-
ready the proscribed and predestined objects of punishment and
of vengeance? Cut off from all hope of royal clemency, what are
you, what can you be, while the power of England remains, but
outlaws? If we postpone independence, do we mean to carry on
or to give up the war? Do we mean to submit to the measures
of Parliament, Boston Port Bill and all? Do we mean to submit,
and consent that we ourselves shall be ground to powder, and
our country and its rights trodden down in the dust ? I know
we do not mean to submit. We never shall submit. Do we in-
tend to violate that most solemn obligation ever entered into by
## p. 15749 (#75) ###########################################
DANIEL WEBSTER
15749
men,- that plighting, before God, of our sacred honor to Wash-
ington, when, putting him forth to incur the dangers of war as
well as the political hazards of the times, we promised to adhere
to him in every extremity, with our fortunes and our lives? I
know there is not a man here who would not rather see a general
conflagration sweep over the land, or an earthquake sink it, than
one jot or tittle of that plighted faith fall to the ground. For
myself, having twelve months ago in this place moved you that
George Washington be appointed commander of the forces raised,
or to be raised, for defense of American liberty,- may my right
hand forget her cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my
mouth, if I hesitate or waver in the support I give him.
« The war, then, must go on. We must fight it through. And
if the war must go on, why put off longer the declaration of
independence? That measure will strengthen us. It will give us
character abroad. The nations will then treat with us;
which
they never can do while we acknowledge ourselves subjects, in
arms against our sovereign. Nay, I maintain that England her-
.
.
self will sooner treat for peace with us on the footing of inde-
pendence, than consent, by repealing her acts, to acknowledge
that her whole conduct toward us has been a course of injustice
and oppression. Her pride will be less wounded by submitting
to that course of things which now predestinates our independence,
than by yielding the points in controversy to her rebellious sub-
jects. The former she would regard as the result of fortune; the
latter she would feel as her own deep disgrace. Why then, why
then, sir, do we not as soon as possible change this from a civil
to a national war? And since we must fight it through, why not
put ourselves in a state to enjoy all the benefits of victory, if we
gain the victory?
“If we fail, it can be no worse for us. But we shall not fail.
The cause will raise up armies; the cause will create navies. The
people, the people, if we are true to them, will carry us, and will
carry themselves, gloriously through this struggle. I care not
how fickle other people have been found. I know the people of
these colonies; and I know that resistance to British aggression
is deep and settled in their hearts, and cannot be eradicated.
Every colony indeed has expressed its willingness to follow, if
we but take the lead. Sir, the declaration will inspire the people
with increased courage. Instead of a long and bloody war for
(
## p. 15750 (#76) ###########################################
15750
DANIEL WEBSTER
the restoration of privileges, for redress of grievances, for char-
tered immunities held under a British king, set before them the
glorious object of entire independence, and it will breathe into
them anew the breath of life. Read this declaration at the head
of the army: every sword will be drawn from its scabbard, and
the solemn vow uttered to maintain it, or to perish on the bed
of honor. Publish it from the pulpit: religion will approve it,
and the love of religious liberty will cling round it, resolved to
stand with it or fall with it. Send it to the public halls; pro-
claim it there; let them hear it who heard the first roar of the
enemy's cannon; let them see it who saw their brothers and
their sons fall on the field of Bunker Hill and in the streets of
Lexington and Concord, and the very walls will cry out in its
support.
"Sir, I know the uncertainty of human affairs; but I see, I
see clearly, through this day's business. You and I, indeed, may
rue it. We may not live to the time when this declaration shall
be made good. We may die; die colonists; die slaves; die, it
may be, ignominiously and on the scaffold. Be it so.
.
Be it so.
If it be the pleasure of Heaven that my country shall require
the poor offering of my life, the victim shall be ready at the ap-
pointed hour to sacrifice, come when that hour may. But while
I do live, let me have a country, or at least the hope of a coun-
try, and that a free country.
“But whatever may be our fate, be assured, be assured, that
this declaration will stand. It may cost treasure, and it may cost
blood; but it will stand, and it will richly compensate for both.
Through the thick gloom of the present, I see the brightness of
the future, as the sun in heaven. We shall make this a glorious,
an immortal day. When we are in our graves, our children will
honor it. They will celebrate it with thanksgiving, with festivity,
with bonfires and illuminations. On this annual return they will
shed tears,— copious, gushing tears,— not of subjection and
-
slavery, not of agony and distress, but of exultation, of gratitude,
and of joy. Sir, before God, I believe the hour is come. My
judgment approves this measure, and my whole heart is in it.
All that I have, and all that I am, and all that I hope, in this
life, I am now ready here to stake upon it; and I leave off as I
begun, that live or die, survive or perish, I am for the declara-
tion. It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it
## p. 15751 (#77) ###########################################
DANIEL WEBSTER
15751
shall be my dying sentiment, - Independence now, and indEPEND-
ENCE FOREVER. ”
And so that day shall be honored, illustrious prophet and
patriot! so that day shall be honored; and as often as it returns,
thy renown shall come along with it; and the glory of thy life,
like the day of thy death, shall not fail from the remembrance
of men.
THE CONTINUITY OF THE RACE
From the Discourse in Commemoration of the First Settlement of New Eng.
land, delivered at Plymouth on the 22d day of December, 1820
LET
ET 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 inorn 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. Forever hon.
ored. be this, the place of our fathers' refuge! Forever remem-
bered the day which saw them, weary and distressed, broken in
everything but spirit, poor in all but faith and courage, at last
secure from the dangers of wintry seas, and impressing this shore
with the first footsteps of civilized man!
It is a noble faculty of our nature which enables us to con-
nect 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
## p. 15752 (#78) ###########################################
15752
DANIEL WEBSTER
-
>
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 tri-
umphs, - we mingle our own existence with theirs, and seem to
belong to their age. 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 run-
ning along the line of future time, by contemplating the probable
fortunes of those who are coming after us, by attempting some-
thing 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; our-
selves 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 ances-
try, 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 groveling 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
## p. 15753 (#79) ###########################################
DANIEL WEBSTER
15753
the happiness of those who come after it. Poetry is found to
have few stronger conceptions, by which it would affect or over-
whelm 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 for-
ward 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 imposes 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 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 hap-
piness, 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 civiliza-
tion, and letters, made their first lodgment,- in a vast extent of
country, covered with a wilderness and peopled by roving bar-
barians. We are here at the season of the year at which the
## p. 15754 (#80) ###########################################
15754
DANIEL WEBSTER
even
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 on which New England
received the feet of the Pilgrims. We seem
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 resigna-
tion; we hear the whisperings of youthful impatience; and we
see, what a painter of our own has also represented by his pen-
cil, 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: the general firmness and
thoughtfulness of the whole band; their conscious joy for dan-
gers escaped; their deep solicitude about dangers to come; their
trust in Heaven; their high religious faith, full of confidence and
anticipation, — all these seem to belong to this place, and to be
present upon this occasion, to fill us with reverence and admira-
tion.
The settlement of New England by the colony which landed
here on the twenty-second 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 last-
ing commemoration. On these causes and consequences, more
than on its immediately attendant circumstances, its importance
as an historical event depends. Great actions and striking oc-
currences, having excited a temporary admiration, often pass
a
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 achieve-
ments. Of the ten thousand battles which have been fought, of
all the fields fertilized with carnage, of the banners which have
## p. 15755 (#81) ###########################################
DANIEL WEBSTER
15755
-
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 mili-
tary 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 pur-
suit, and the victory: but by their effect in advancing or retard-
ing human knowledge, in overthrowing or establishing despotism,
in extending or destroying human happiness. When the traveler
pauses on the plain of Marathon, what are the emotions which
most strongly agitate his breast ? What is that glorious recollec-
tion 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 here 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 contin-
gency 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 con-
tending hosts; his interest for the result overwhelms him; he
trembles, as if it were still uncertain, and seems to doubt whether
## p. 15756 (#82) ###########################################
15756
DANIEL WEBSTER
(
»
6
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 morn-
ing of that decisive day,—“if we conquer, we shall make Ath-
ens the greatest city of Greece. ” 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 wil-
derness which is before us; we shall fill this region of the great
continent, which stretches almost from pole to pole, with civil.
ization 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 har-
vest of autumn, shall extend 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. ”
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
## p. 15757 (#83) ###########################################
DANIEL WEBSTER
15757
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 accla-
mation and gtatitude, 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 trans-
mitted 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 everything 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 back-
ward 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 treas-
ures 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!
## p. 15758 (#84) ###########################################
15758
JOHN WEBSTER
(EARLY IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY)
PITTLE is known of the life of Shakespeare's greatest pupil in
tragedy, John Webster. He began to write for the stage
about 1601: between 1601 and 1607 he made certain addi-
tions to Marston's (Malcontent,' and collaborated with Dekker in the
History of Sir Thomas Wyatt,' Northward Ho' and 'Westward Ho. ?
In 1612 Vittoria Corombona,' the most famous of his tragedies, was
published, and in 1623 "The Duchess of Malfi' appeared. Webster's
classical tragedy, Appius and Virginia,' was not published until 1654.
Besides these plays he wrote a tragi-comedy entitled “The Devil's
Law-Case,' and with Rowley the curious drama of A Cure for a
Cuckold. ' In his introduction to the Mermaid Edition of Webster's
plays, J. A. Symonds points out that there is little internal evidence
of this collaboration, for which the publisher Kirkman's word was the
authority. Mr. Edmund Gosse suggested that the little play within
this play might be the work of Webster; and acting on this sugges-
tion, the Hon. S. E. Spring-Rice detached the minor drama from A
Cure for a Cuckold,' and under the name of Love's Graduate had
it printed at the private press of Mr. Daniel. For two hundred years
after Webster lived, he was almost forgotten. The keen appreciation
of Charles Lamb rescued him from the strange oblivion which had
rested upon his remarkable if sinister genius. In his (Specimens
from the English Dramatic Poets,' he accords him the highest praise.
In 1830 the Rev. Alexander Dyce collected and edited the works of
Webster; bringing them for the first time within the reach of the
general reader, and securing the preservation of what are acknowl-
edged masterpieces of a certain order of tragedy.
The two Italian dramas, "The Duchess of Malfi' and Vittoria
Corombona; or The White Devil, belong to that strange genus, the
tragedy of blood,” which began with the extravagances of Kyd, a
predecessor of Shakespeare, and received its highest illustration by
the master himself in “Hamlet. Webster made a less plausible use
of this kind of tragedy than did Shakespeare, although he sometimes
approaches him in dramatic strength. His sinister imagination is
like the lightning of a midnight tempest, revealing the tormented
sky and the black fury of the storm. “No dramatist,” writes Mr.
Symonds, “showed more consummate ability in heightening terrific
((
## p. 15759 (#85) ###########################################
JOHN WEBSTER
15759
>
effects, in laying bare the inner mysteries of crime, remorse, and
pain;
he was drawn to comprehend and reproduce abnormal
elements of spiritual anguish. ” His men and women go out of life
in a black mist, as they pass through it in a red mist of crime.
Vittoria Corombona, the beautiful evil heroine of the play, cries out
when she is stabbed:
«My soul, like to a ship in a black storm,
Is driven, I know not whither. »
Her brother, Flamineo, holds to the cynicism of his reckless life
even amid the awful scenes of the last catastrophe.
“We cease to grieve, cease to be fortune's slaves,
Nay, cease to die, by dying. ”
Yet the humanity of these men and women of Webster's is not
disguised by their crimes. His insight into human nature is deep
and incisive, but he knew only its night side. He was in love with
agony and abnormal wickedness, and with the tortures of sin-haunted
sou He found fitting material for his uses in the stories of crime
furnished by the splendid, corrupt Italy of the sixteenth century.
The plots of Vittoria Corombona' and of the Duchess of Malfi are
both taken from this source. Viewed in the light of Italian Renais-
sance history, they cannot be called extravagant; but the sombre
genius of Webster has made the most of their terrors.
In his Roman play of Appius and Virginia' he has shown that
he could write calmly and dispassionately, and without the effects of
the terrible and the ghastly. It is a stately and quiet composition;
but it lacks those sudden flashes of illumination, those profound
and searching glimpses into the bottomless abyss of human misery,
which render the two Italian tragedies unique. ”
Webster's style is singularly well adapted to the spirit in which
he portrays human life. It is cutting, sententious, powerful. He has
the faculty of expressing an entire gamut of human emotions in a
few words, as when Ferdinand in the Duchess of Malfi' sees the
body of his twin-sister murdered by his orders, and exclaims —
«Cover her face: mine eyes dazzle; she dies young. ”
Webster's portions in the collaborated plays are inconsiderable,
and are not in any way characteristic of his peculiar genius.
## p. 15760 (#86) ###########################################
15760
JOHN WEBSTER
FROM "THE DUCHESS OF MALFI)
[The Duchess of Malfi, having secretly married her steward Antonio,
arouses thereby the wrath of her brother, Duke Ferdinand, the heir of her
great fortune had she died childless. She is forced to separate from her hus-
band, and by the order of her brother she and her children and her attendant
Cariola are put to death. ]
Scene : Room in the Duchess's Lodging. Enter Duchess and Cariola.
D
UCHESS What hideous noise was that?
Cariola-
'Tis the wild consort
Of madmen, lady, which your tyrant brother
Hath placed about your lodging: this tyranny,
I think, was never practiced till this hour.
Duchess — Indeed, I thank him: nothing but noise and folly
Can keep me in my right wits; whereas reason
And silence make me stark mad. Sit down;
Discourse to me some dismal tragedy.
Cariola — Oh, 'twill increase your melancholy.
Duchess -
Thou art deceived:
To hear of greater grief would lessen mine.
This is a prison ?
Cariola
Yes, but you shall live
To shake this durance off.
Duchess -
Thou art a fool:
The robin-redbreast and the nightingale
Never live long in cages.
Cariola -
Pray, dry your eyes.
What think you of, madam ?
Duchess –
Of nothing;
When I muse thus I sleep.
Cariola Like a madman, with your eyes open?
Duchess - Dost thou think we shall know one another
In the other world ?
Cariola
Yes, out of question.
Duchess — Oh that it were possible we might
But hold some two days' conference with the dead!
From them I should learn somewhat, I am sure,
I never shall know here. I'll tell thee a miracle:
I am not mad yet, to my cause of sorrow;
The heaven o'er my head seems made of molten brass,
The earth of flaming sulphur, yet I am not mad.
I am acquainted with sad misery
As the tanned galley-slave is with his oar:
## p. 15761 (#87) ###########################################
JOHN WEBSTER
15761
Necessity makes me suffer constantly,
And custom makes it easy. Who do I look like now?
Cariola — Like to your picture in the gallery,–
A deal of life in show, but none in practice;
. Or rather like some reverend monument
Whose ruins are even pitied.
Duchess
Very proper:
And fortune seems only to have her eyesight
To behold my tragedy:- How now!
What noise is that?
Enter Servant
Sertant
I am come to tell you
Your brother hath intended you some sport.
A great physician, when the Pope was sick
Of a deep melancholy, presented him
With several sorts of madmen, which wild object,
Being full of change and sport, forced him to laugh,
And so the imposthume broke: the selfsame cure
The duke intends on you.
Duchess –
Let them come in.
Servant — There's a mad lawyer; and a secular priest;
A doctor that hath forfeited his wits
By jealousy; an astrologian
That in his works said such a day o’ the month
Should be the day of doom, and failing o't,
Ran mad; an English tailor crazed i’ the brain
With the study of new fashions; a gentleman-usher
Quite beside himself with care to keep in mind
The number of his lady's salutations
Or “How do you” she employed him in each morning;
A farmer too, an excellent knave in grain,
Mad 'cause he was hindered transportation :
And let one broker that's mad loose to these,
You'd think the Devil were among them.
Duchess — Sit, Cariola. — Let them loose when you please,
For I am chained to endure all your tyranny.
Enter Madmen
(Here this song is sung to a dismal kind of music by a Madman. )
Oh, let us howl some heavy note,
Some deadly doggèd howl,
XXVII—986
## p. 15762 (#88) ###########################################
15762
JOHN WEBSTER
Sounding as from the threatening throat
Of beasts and fatal fowl!
As ravens, screech-owls, bulls, and bears,
We'll bell, and bawl our parts,
Till irksome noise have cloyed your ears
And corrosived your hearts.
At last, whenas our quire wants breath,
Our bodies being blest,
We'll sing, like swans, to welcome death,
And die in love and rest.
First Madman – Doomsday not come yet! I'll draw it nearer by
a perspective, or make a glass that shall set all the world on fire
upon the instant.
I cannot sleep, my pillow is stuffed with a litter
of porcupines.
Second Madman — Hell is a mere glass-house, where the devils are
continually blowing up women's souls on hollow irons, and the fire
never goes out.
First Madman - I have skill in heraldry.
Second Madman — Hast?
First Madman – You do give for your crest a woodcock's head
with the brains picked out on't; you are a very ancient gentleman.
Third Madman - -Greek is turned Turk: we are only to be saved
by the Helvetian translation.
First Madman - Come on, sir, I will lay the law to you.
