forth in mid space, the new-born sun dispelled the darkness of the ancient
night. But infinitely more magnificent is it when the human soul rays forth
its subtler and swifter beams; when the light of the senses irradiates all
outward things, revealing the beauty of their colors, and the exquisite
symmetry of their proportions and forms; when the light of reason
penetrates to their invisible properties and laws, and displays all those
hidden relations that make up all the sciences; when the light of
conscience illuminates the moral world, separating truth from error, and
virtue from vice. The light of the newly-kindled sun, indeed, was glorious.
It struck upon all the planets, and waked into existence their myriad
capacities of life and joy. As it rebounded from them, and showed their
vast orbs all wheeling, circle beyond circle, in their stupendous courses,
the sons of God shouted for joy. That light sped onward, beyond Sirius,
beyond the pole-star, beyond Orion and the Pleiades, and is still spreading
onward into the abysses of space. But the light of the human soul flies
swifter than the light of the sun, and outshines its meridian blaze. It can
embrace not only the sun of our system, but all suns and galaxies of suns;
aye! the soul is capable of knowing and of enjoying Him who created the
suns themselves; and when these starry lustres that now glorify the
firmament shall wax dim, and fade away like a wasted taper, the light of
the soul shall still remain; nor time, nor cloud, nor any power but its own
perversity, shall ever quench its brightness. Again I would say that
whenever a human soul is born into the world, God stands over it, and
pronounces the same sublime fiat, "Let there be light!" And may the time
soon come, when all human governments shall coöperate with the divine
government in carrying this benediction and baptism into fulfillment.
H. Mann.
CVII.
TRUE ELOQUENCE.
When public bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions, when great
interests are at stake, and strong passions excited, nothing is valuable in
speech farther than as it is connected with high intellectual and moral
endowments. Clearness, force, and earnestness are the qualities which
produce conviction. True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It
cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they
will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshalled in every way, but
they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in
the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of
declamation, all may aspire to it; they cannot reach it. It comes, if it
come at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the
bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force.
The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments and studied
contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men, when their own lives, and
the fate of their wives, their children, and their country hang on the
decision of the hour. Then words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain,
and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels
rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then
patriotism is eloquent; then self-devotion is eloquent. The clear
conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm
resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the
eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward
to his object--this, this is eloquence; or rather it is something greater
and higher than all eloquence, it is action, noble, sublime, godlike
action.
D. Webster.
CVIII.
SOUTH CAROLINA AND MASSACHUSETTS.
The eulogium pronounced by the honorable gentleman on the character of the
State of South Carolina, for her Revolutionary and other merits, meets my
hearty concurrence. I shall not acknowledge that the honorable member goes
before me in regard for whatever of distinguished talent, or distinguished
character, South Carolina has produced. I claim part of the honor, I
partake in the pride, of her great names. I claim them for countrymen, one
and all,--the Laurenses, the Rutledges, the Pinckneys, the Sumters, the
Marions,--Americans all, whose fame is no more to be hemmed in by State
lines, than their talents and patriotism were capable of being
circumscribed within the same narrow limits.
In their day and generation, they served and honored the country, and the
whole country; and their renown is of the treasures of the whole country.
Him whose honored name the gentleman himself bears,--does he esteem me
less capable of gratitude for his patriotism, or sympathy for his
sufferings, than if his eyes had first opened upon the light of
Massachusetts, instead of South Carolina? Sir, does he suppose it in his
power to exhibit a Carolina name so bright as to produce envy in my bosom?
No, sir, increased gratification and delight, rather. I thank God, that, if
I am gifted with little of the spirit which is able to raise mortals to the
skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that other spirit, which would drag
angels down.
When I shall be found, sir, in my place here in the Senate, or elsewhere,
to sneer at public merit, because it happens to spring up beyond the little
limits of my own State or neighborhood; when I refuse, for any such cause,
or for any cause, the homage due to American talent, to elevated
patriotism, to sincere devotion to liberty and the country; or, if I see an
uncommon endowment of Heaven,--if I see extraordinary capacity and virtue,
in any son of the South, and if, moved by local prejudice or gangrened by
State jealousy, I get up here to abate the tithe of a hair from his just
character and just fame, may my tongue cleave to the roof my mouth!
Sir, 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 Carolina. Would to God that harmony might again
return! Shoulder 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 exist, 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 Massachusetts; she needs
none. There she is. Behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her
history; the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There
is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill; and there they will
remain forever. The bones of her sons, fallen in the great struggle for
Independence, now lie mingled with the soil of every State, from New
England 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, amid the proudest monuments of
its own glory, and on the very spot of its origin.
D. Webster.
CIX.
AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE.
I deem it my duty on this occasion to suggest, that the land is not yet
wholly free from the contamination of a traffic, at which every feeling of
humanity must forever revolt,--I mean the African slave trade. Neither
public sentiment, nor the law, has hitherto been able entirely to put an
end to this odious and abominable trade. At the moment when God in his
mercy has blessed the Christian world with a universal peace, there is
reason to fear, that, to the disgrace of the Christian name and character,
new efforts are making for the extension of this trade by subjects and
citizens of Christian States, in whose hearts there dwell no sentiments of
humanity or of justice, and over whom neither the fear of God nor the fear
of man exercises a control. In the sight of our law, the African slave
trader is a pirate and a felon; and in the sight of Heaven, an offender far
beyond the ordinary depth of human guilt. There is no brighter page of our
history, than that which records the measures which have been adopted by
the government at an early day and at different times since, for the
suppression of this traffic; and I would call on all the true sons of New
England to coöperate with the laws of man, and the justice of Heaven. If
there be, within the extent of our knowledge or influence, any
participation in this traffic, let us pledge ourselves here, upon the rock
of Plymouth, to extirpate and destroy it. It is not fit that the land of
the Pilgrims should bear the shame longer. I hear the sound of the hammer,
I see the smoke of the furnaces where manacles and fetters are still forged
for human limbs. I see the visages of those who by stealth and at midnight
labor in this work of hell, foul and dark, as may become the artificers of
such instruments of misery and torture. Let that spot be purified, or let
it cease to be of New England. Let it be purified, or let it be set aside
from the Christian world; let it be put out of the circle of human
sympathies and human regards, and let civilized man henceforth have no
communion with it.
I would invoke those who fill the seats of justice, and all who minister at
her altar, that they execute the wholesome and necessary severity of the
law. I invoke the ministers of our religion, that they proclaim its
denunciation of these crimes, and add its solemn sanctions to the authority
of human laws. If the pulpit be silent whenever or wherever there may be a
sinner bloody with this guilt within the hearing of its voice, the pulpit
is false to its trust. I call on the fair merchant, who has reaped his
harvest upon the seas, that he assist in scourging from those seas the
worst pirates that ever infested them. That ocean, which seems to wave with
a gentle magnificence to waft the burden of an honest commerce, and to roll
along its treasures with a conscious pride, that ocean, which hardy
industry regards, even when the winds have ruffled its surface, as a field
of grateful toil,--what is it to the victim of this oppression, when he is
brought to its shores, and looks forth upon it, for the first time, loaded
with chains, and bleeding with stripes? What is it to him but a wide-spread
prospect of suffering, anguish and death? Nor do the skies smile longer,
nor is the air longer fragrant to him. The sun is cast down from heaven. An
inhuman and accursed traffic has cut him off in his manhood, or in his
youth, from every enjoyment belonging to his being, and every blessing
which his Creator intended for him.
The Christian communities send forth their emissaries of religion and
letters, who stop, here and there, along the coast of the vast continent of
Africa, and with painful and tedious efforts make some almost imperceptible
progress in the communication of knowledge, and in the general improvement
of the natives who are immediately about them. Not thus slow and
imperceptible is the transmission of the vices and bad passions which the
subjects of Christian States carry to the land. The slave trade having
touched the coast, its influence and its evils spread, like a pestilence,
over the whole continent, making savage wars more savage and more frequent,
and adding new and fierce passions to the contests of barbarians.
I pursue this topic no further, except again to say, that all Christendom,
being now blessed with peace, is bound by everything which belongs to its
character, and to the character of the present age, to put a stop to this
inhuman and disgraceful traffic.
D. Webster.
CX.
SUPPOSED SPEECH OF JOHN ADAMS IN FAVOR OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.
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 already the proscribed and predestined objects of
punishment and 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 intend to
violate that most solemn obligation ever entered into by men, that
plighting, before God, of our sacred honor to Washington, 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 the
defence 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 independence,
than consent, by repealing her acts, to acknowledge that her whole conduct
towards 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 subjects. 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?
D. Webster.
CXI.
THE SAME CONCLUDED.
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 restoration of privileges,
for redress of grievances, for chartered 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; proclaim 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 dearly
through this day's business. You and I, indeed, may run 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
appointed hour of sacrifice, come when that hour may. But, while I do live,
let me have a country, or at least the hope of a country, 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 its 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 Declaration. It is my living sentiment, and, by the blessing of God, it
shall be my dying sentiment,--Independence now; and Independence Forever!
D. Webster.
CXII.
INFLUENCE OF THE CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON.
America has furnished to the world the character of Washington! And if our
American institutions had done nothing else, that alone would have entitled
them to the respect of mankind.
Washington! "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his
countrymen!" Washington is all our own! The enthusiastic veneration and
regard in which the people of the United States hold him prove them to be
worthy of such a countryman; while his reputation abroad redeems the
highest honor on his country and its institutions. I would cheerfully put
the question to-day to the intelligence of Europe and the world what
character of the century, upon the whole, stands out in the relief of
history, most pure, most respectable, most sublime; and I doubt not, that,
by a suffrage approaching to unanimity, the answer would be Washington!
The structure now standing before us, by its uprightness, its solidity, its
durability, is no unfit emblem of his character. His public virtues and
public principles were as firm as the earth on which it stands; his
personal motives, as pure as the serene heavens in which its summit is
lost. But, indeed, though a fit, it is an inadequate emblem. Towering high
above the column which our hands have builded, beheld, not by the
inhabitants of a single city or a single State, but by all the families of
man, ascends the colossal grandeur of the character and life of Washington.
In all the constituents of the one, in all the acts of the other, in all
its titles to immortal love, admiration and renown, it is an American
production. It is the embodiment and vindication of our Transatlantic
liberty.
Born upon our soil of parents also born upon it; never for a moment having
had sight of the Old World; instructed, according to the modes of his
time, only in the spare, plain, but wholesome elementary knowledge which
our institutions provided for the children of the people; growing up
beneath and penetrated by the genuine influences of American society;
living from infancy to manhood and age amidst our expanding, but not
luxurious civilization; partaking in our great destiny of labor, our long
contest with unreclaimed nature and uncivilized man, our agony of glory,
the war of independence, our great victory of peace, the formation of the
Union, and the establishment of the Constitution; he is all, all our own!
Washington is ours. That crowded and glorious life,
"Where multitudes of virtues passed along,
Each pressing foremost, in the mighty throng
Ambitious to be seen, then making room
For greater multitudes that were to come,"--
that life was the life of an American citizen.
I claim him for America. In all the perils, in every darkened moment of the
State, in the midst of the reproaches of enemies and the misgiving of
friends, I turn to that transcendent name for courage and for consolation.
To him who denies or doubts whether our fervid liberty can be combined with
law, with order, with the security of property, with the pursuits and
advancement of happiness; to him who denies that our forms of government
are capable of producing exaltation of soul, and the passion of true glory;
to him who denies that we have contributed anything to the stock of great
lessons and great examples; to all these I reply by pointing to Washington!
D. Webster.
CXIII.
PUBLIC OPINION.
The time has been, indeed, when fleets, and armies, and subsidies, were the
principal reliances even in the best cause. But, happily for mankind, a
great change has taken place in this respect. Moral causes come into
consideration, in proportion as the progress of knowledge is advanced; and
the public opinion of the civilized world is rapidly gaining an ascendeney
over mere brutal force. It is already able to oppose the most formidable
obstruction to the progress of injustice and oppression; and as it grows
more intelligent and more intense it will be more and more formidable. It
may be silenced by military power, but it cannot be conquered. It is
elastic, irrepressible, and invulnerable to the weapons of ordinary
warfare. It is that impassive, inextinguishable enemy of mere violence and
arbitrary rule, which, like Milton's angels,
"Vital in every part, . . . . .
Cannot, but by annihilating die."
Until this be propitiated or satisfied, it is vain for power to talk either
of triumphs or of repose. No matter what fields are desolated, what
fortresses surrendered, what armies subdued, or what provinces overrun. In
the history of the year that has passed by us, and in the instance of
unhappy Spain, we have seen the vanity of all triumphs in a cause which
violates the general sense of justice of the civilized world. It is nothing
that the troops of France have passed from the Pyrenees to Cadiz; it is
nothing that an unhappy and prostrate nation has fallen before them; it is
nothing that arrests, and confiscation, and execution, sweep away the
little remnant of national resistance. There is an enemy that still exists
to check the glory of these triumphs. It follows the conqueror back to the
very scene of his ovations; it calls upon him to take notice that Europe,
though silent, is yet indignant; it shows him that the sceptre of his
victory is a barren sceptre; that it shall confer neither joy nor honor,
but shall moulder to dry ashes in his grasp. In the midst of his
exultation, it pierces his ear with the cry of injured Justice; it
denounces against him the indignation of an enlightened and civilized age;
it turns to bitterness the cup of his rejoicing, and wounds him with the
sting which belongs to the consciousness of having outraged the opinion of
mankind.
D. Webster.
CXIV.
THE MURDERER'S SECRET.