equal to the wickedness with which it was planned. The circumstances, now
clearly in evidence, spread out the whole scene before us. Deep sleep had
fallen on the destined victim, and on all beneath his roof A healthful old
man, to whom sleep was sweet, the just sound slumbers of the night held him
in their soft but strong embrace. The assassin enters, through the window
already prepared, into an unoccupied apartment. With noiseless foot he
paces the lonely hall half-lighted by the moon; he winds up the ascent of
the stairs, and reaches the door of the chamber. Of this, he moves the
lock, by soft and continued pressure, till it turns on its hinges without
noise; and he enters, and beholds his victim before him. The room was
uncommonly open to the admission of light. The face of the innocent sleeper
was turned from the murderer, and the beams of the moon, resting on the
gray locks of his aged temple, showed him where to strike. The fatal blow
is given! and the victim passes, without a struggle or a motion, from the
repose of sleep to the repose of death! It is the assassin's purpose to
make sure work; and he plies the dagger, though it is obvious that life has
been destroyed by the blow of the bludgeon. He even raises the aged arm,
that he may not fail in his aim at the heart, and replaces it again over
the wounds of the poniard. To finish the picture, he explores the wrist for
the pulse! He feels for it and ascertains that it beats no longer! It is
accomplished. The deed is done. He retreats, retraces his steps to the
window, passes out through it as he came in, and escapes. He has done the
murder. No eye has seen him, no ear has heard him. The secret is his own,
and it is safe!
Ah! gentlemen, that was a dreadful mistake. Such a secret can be safe
nowhere. The whole creation of God has neither nook nor corner, where the
guilty can bestow it, and say it is safe. Not to speak of that eye which
glances through all disguises, and beholds everything, as in the splendor
of noon, such secrets of guilt are never safe from detection, even by man.
D. Webster.
CXV.
THE SAME CONCLUDED.
True it is, generally speaking, that murder "will out." True it is, that
Providence hath so ordained, and doth so govern tidings, that those who
break the great law of Heaven by shedding man's blood, seldom succeed in
avoiding discovery. Especially, in a case exciting so much attention as
this, discovery must and will come, sooner or later. A thousand eyes turn
at once to explore every man, every thing every circumstance, connected
with the time and place; a thousand ears catch every whisper; a thousand
excited minds intensely dwell on the scene; shedding all their light, and
ready to kindle the slightest circumstance into a blaze of discovery.
Meantime, the guilty soul cannot keep its own secret. It is false to
itself; or rather it feels an irresistible impulse of conscience to be true
to itself. It labors under its guilty possession, and knows not what to do
with it. The human heart was not made for the residence of such an
inhabitant. It finds itself preyed on by a torment, which it dares not
acknowledge to God or man. A vulture is devouring it, and it asks no
sympathy or assistance, either from heaven or earth. The secret which the
murderer possesses, soon comes to possess him; and, like the evil spirits
of which we read, it overcomes him, and leads him whithersoever it will. He
feels it beating at his heart, rising to his throat, and demanding
disclosure. He thinks the whole world sees it in his face, reads it in his
eyes, and almost hears its workings in the very silence of his thoughts. It
has become his master. It betrays his discretion, it breaks down his
courage, it conquers his prudence. When suspicions from without begin to
embarrass him, and the net of circumstances to entangle him, the fatal
secret struggles with still greater violence to burst forth. It must be
confessed; it will be confessed; there is no refuge from confession but
suicide; and suicide is confession.
D. Webster.
CXVI.
DEFENCE OF AMERICAN CLERGYMEN.
By this Will, no minister of the Gospel of any sect or denomination
whatever can be authorized or allowed to hold any office within the
college; and not only that, but no minister or clergyman of any sect can,
for any purpose whatever, enter within the walls that are to surround this
college.
Now I will not arraign the founder of this institution or his motives for
this. I will not inquire into his opinions upon religion. But I feel bound
to say, the occasion demands that I should say that this is the most
opprobrious, the most insulting and unmerited stigma, that ever was cast,
or attempted to be cast, upon the preachers of Christianity, from north to
south, from east to west, through the length and breadth of the land, in
the history of the country. When have they deserved it? Where have they
deserved it? How have they deserved it? They are not to be allowed even the
ordinary rights of hospitality; not even to be permitted to put their foot
over the threshold of this college!
Sir, I take it upon myself to say, that in no country in the world, upon
either continent, can there be found a body of ministers of the Gospel who
perform so much service to man, in such a full spirit of self-denial, under
so little encouragement from government of any kind, and under
circumstances almost always much straitened and often distressed, at the
ministers of the Gospel in the United States, of all denominations. They
form no part of any established order of religion; they constitute no
hierarchy; they enjoy no peculiar privileges. In some of the states they
are even shut out from all participation in the political rights and
privileges enjoyed by their fellow-citizens. They enjoy no tithes, no
public provision of any kind. Except here and there in large cities, where
a wealthy individual occasionally makes a donation for the support of
public worship, what have they to depend upon? They have to depend entirely
on the voluntary contributions of those who hear them.
And this body of clergymen has shown, to the honor of their own country and
to the astonishment of the hierarchies of the Old World that it is
practicable in free governments to raise and sustain by voluntary
contributions alone a body of clergymen which, for devotedness to their
sacred calling, for purity of life and character, for learning,
intelligence, piety, and that wisdom which cometh from above, is inferior
to none, and superior to most others.
I hope that our learned men have done something for the honor of our
literature abroad. I hope that the courts of justice and members of the bar
of this country have done something to elevate the character of the
profession of the law. I hope that the discussions above (in Congress) have
done something to meliorate the condition of the human race, to secure and
extend the great charter of human rights, and to strengthen and advance the
great principles of human liberty. But I contend that no literary efforts,
no adjudications, no constitutional discussions, nothing that has been said
or done in favor of the great interests of universal man, has done this
country more credit, at home and abroad, than the establishment of our
body of clergymen, their support by voluntary contributions, and the
general excellence off their character for piety and learning.
The great truth has thus been proclaimed and proved, a truth which I
believe will in time to come shake all the hierarchies of Europe, that the
voluntary support of such a ministry, under free institutions, is a
practicable idea.
D. Webster.
CXVII.
PEACEABLE SECESSION IMPOSSIBLE.
Mr. President, I should much prefer to have heard from every member on this
floor declarations of opinion that this Union could never be dissolved,
than the declaration of opinion by any body, that, in any case, under the
pressure of any circumstances, such a dissolution was possible. I hear with
distress and anguish the word "secession," especially when it falls from
the lips of those who are patriotic, and known to the country, and known
all over the world, for their political services.
Secession! Peaceable secession! Sir, your eyes and mine are never destined
to see that miracle. The dismemberment of this vast country without
convulsion! The breaking up of the fountains of the great deep without
ruffling the surface! Who is so foolish, I beg everybody's pardon, as to
expect to see any such thing? Sir, he who sees these States, now revolving
in harmony around a common centre, and expects to see them quit their
places and fly off without convulsion, may look the next hour to see the
heavenly bodies rush from their spheres, and jostle against each other in
the realms of space, without causing the wreck of the universe.
There can be no such thing as peaceable secession. Peaceable secession is
an utter impossibility. Is the great Constitution under which we live,
covering this whole country, is it to be thawed and melted away by
secession, as the snows on the mountain melt under the influence of a
vernal sun, disappear almost unobserved, and run off? No, sir! No, sir! I
will not state what might produce the disruption of the Union; but, sir, I
see as plainly as I see the sun in heaven what that disruption itself must
produce; I see that it must produce war, and such a war as I will not
describe, in its twofold character.
Peaceable secession! Peaceable secession! The concurrent agreement of all
the members of this great republic to separate! A voluntary separation,
with alimony on one side and on the other. Why, what would be the result?
Where is the line to be drawn? What States are to secede? What is to remain
American? What am I to be? An American no longer? Am I to become a
sectional man, a local man, a separatist, with no country in common with
the gentlemen who sit around me here, or who fill the other house of
Congress? Heaven forbid! Where is the flag of the republic to remain? Where
is the eagle still to tower? or is he to cower, and shrink, and fall to the
ground? Why, sir, our ancestors, our fathers and our grandfathers, those of
them that are yet living amongst us with prolonged lives, would rebuke and
reproach us; and our children and our grandchildren would cry out shame
upon us, if we of this generation should dishonor these ensigns of the
power of the government and the harmony of that Union which is every day
felt among us with so much joy and gratitude.
What is to become of the army? What is to become of the navy? What is to
become of the public lands? How is each of tile thirty States to defend
itself? But, sir, I am ashamed to pursue this line of remark, I dislike it,
I have an utter disgust for it. I would rather hear of natural blasts and
mildews, war, pestilence, and famine, than to hear gentlemen talk of
secession. To break up this great government! to dismember this glorious
country! to astonish Europe with an act of folly such as Europe for two
centuries has never beheld in any government or any people! No, Sir! no,
Sir! There will be no secession! Gentlemen are not serious when they talk
of secession.
D. Webster.
CXVIII.
LIBERTY AND UNION.
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 forth with
newness of life. Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of
its utility and its blessings; and though our territory has stretched out
wider and 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, personal happiness.
I have not allowed myself sir, to look beyond the Union, to see what might
lie hidden in the dark recesses behind. I have not coolly weighted 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 counsellor in the affairs
of this government, whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering,
not how the Union may be best preserved, but how tolerable 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 clamored 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 all over 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.
D. Webster.
CXIX.
EVENTS GREAT, BECAUSE OF THEIR RESULTS.
Great actions and striking occurrences having excited a temporary
admiration, often pass away and are forgotten, because they leave no
lasting results, affecting the prosperity and happiness of communities.
Such is frequently the fortune of the most brilliant military achievements.
Of the ten thousand battles which have been fought, of all the fields
fertilized with carnage, of the banners which have been bathed in blood, of
the warriors who have hoped that they had risen from the field of conquest
to a glory as bright and as durable as the stars, how few that continue
long to interest mankind! The victory of yesterday is reversed by the
defeat of to-day; the star of military glory, rising like a meteor, like a
meteor has fallen; disgrace and disaster hang on the heels of conquest and
renown; victor and vanquished presently pass away to oblivion, and the
world goes on in its course, with the loss only of so many lives and so
much treasure.
But if this be frequently, or generally, the fortune of military
achievements, it is not always so. There are enterprises, military as well
as civil, which sometimes check the current of events, give a new turn to
human affairs, and transmit their consequences through ages. We see their
importance in their results, and call them great because great things
follow. There have been battles which have fixed the fate of nations. These
come down to us in history with a solid and permanent interest not created
by a display of glittering armor, the rush of adverse battalions, the
sinking and rising of pennons, the flight, the pursuit, and the victory;
but by their effect in advancing or retarding human knowledge, in
overthrowing or establishing despotism, in extending or destroying human
happiness.
When the traveller pauses on the plains of Marathon, what are the emotions
which most strongly agitate his breast? What is that glorious recollection,
which thrills through his frame and suffuses his eyes? Not I imagine that
Grecian skill and Grecian valor were here most signally displayed; but that
Greece herself was 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 contingency, whether the Persian or the
Greek banner should wave victorious in the beams of that day's setting sun.
And as his imagination kindles at the retrospect, he is transported back to
the interesting moment, he counts the fearful odds of the contending hosts,
his interest for the result overwhelms him; he trembles, as if it were
still uncertain, and seems to doubt whether he may consider Socrates and
Plato, Demosthenes, Sophocles, and Phidias, as secure, yet, to himself and
to the world.
D. Webster.
CXX.
THE FUTURE OF AMERICA.
Fellow-citizens, the hours of this day are rapidly flying, and this
occasion will soon be passed. Neither we nor our children can expect to
behold its return. They are in the distant regions of futurity, they exist
only in the all-creating power of God, who shall stand here, a hundred
years hence, to trace, through us, their descent from the Pilgrims, and to
survey, as we have now surveyed, the progress of their country during the
lapse of a century. We would anticipate their concurrence with us in our
sentiments of deep regard for our common ancestors. We would anticipate and
partake the pleasure with which they will then recount the steps of New
England's advancement. On the morning of that day, although it will not
disturb us in our repose, the voice of acclamation and gratitude,
commencing on the rock of Plymouth, shall be transmitted through millions
of the sons of the Pilgrims, till it lose itself in the murmurs of the
Pacific seas. We would leave, for the consideration of those who shall then
occupy our places, some proof that we hold the blessings transmitted from
our fathers in just estimation; some proof of our attachment to the cause
of good government, and of civil and religious liberty; some proof of a
sincere and ardent desire to promote 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 backward and warming
with gratitude for what our ancestors have done for our happiness, run
forward also to our posterity and meet them with cordial salutation, ere
yet they have arrived on the shore of being.
Advance, then, ye future generations! We would hail you, as you rise in
your long succession, to fill the places which we now fill, and to taste
the blessings of existence, where we are passing, and soon shall have
passed, our human duration. We bid you welcome to the healthful skies and
the verdant fields of New England. We greet your accession to the great
inheritance which we have enjoyed. We welcome you to the blessings of good
government, and religious liberty. We welcome you to the treasures of
science, and the delights of learning. We welcome you to the transcendent
sweets of domestic life, to the happiness of kindred, and parents, and
children. We welcome you to the immeasurable blessings of rational
existence, the immortal hope of Christianity and the light of everlasting
truth.
D. Webster.
CXXI.
LIBERTY OF SPEECH.
Important, sir, as I deem it to discuss, on all proper occasions, the
policy of the measures at present pursued, it is still more important to
maintain the right of such discussion in its full and just extent.
Sentiments lately sprung up, and now growing fashionable, make it necessary
to be explicit on this point. The more I perceive a disposition to check
the freedom of inquiry by extravagant and unconstitutional pretences, the
firmer shall be the tone in which I shall assert, and the freer the manner
in which I shall exercise it.
It is the ancient and undoubted prerogative of this people to canvass
public measures, and the merits of public men. It is a "home-bred"
right, a fireside privilege. It hath ever been enjoyed in every house,
cottage, and cabin, in the nation. It is not to be drawn into
controversy. It is as undoubted as the right of breathing the air, or
walking on the earth. Belonging to private life as a right, it belongs
to public life as a duty; and it is the last duty which those whose
representative I am shall find me to abandon. Aiming at all times to be
courteous and temperate in its use, except when the right itself shall
be questioned, I shall then carry it to its extent. I shall place myself
on the extreme boundary of my right, and bid defiance to any arm that
would move me from my ground.
This high constitutional privilege I shall defend and exercise within this
house, and in all places; in times of peace, and in all times. Living, I
shall assert it; and, should I leave no other inheritance to my children,
by the blessing of God I will leave them the inheritance of free
principles, and the example of a manly, independent, and constitutional
defence of them.
D. Webster.
CXXII.
WASHINGTON TO THE PRESENT GENERATION.
Fellow-citizens,--What contemplations are awakened in our minds, as we
assemble here to reenact a scene like that performed by Washington!
Methinks I see his venerable form now before me, as presented in the
glorious statue by Houdon, now in the capital of Virginia. He is dignified
and grave; but his concern and anxiety seem to soften the lineaments of his
countenance. The government over which he presides is yet in the crisis of
experiment. Not free from troubles at home, he sees the world in commotion
and arms, all around him. He sees that imposing foreign powers are half
disposed to try the strength of the recently established American
government. We perceive that mighty thoughts, mingled with fears as well as
hopes, are struggling within him. He heads a short procession over these
then naked fields; he crosses yonder stream on a fallen tree; he ascends to
the top of this eminence, whose original oaks of the forest stand as thick
around him as if the spot had been devoted to Druidical worship, and here
he performs the appointed duty of the day.
And now, fellow-citizens, if this vision were a reality,--if Washington
actually were now amongst us,--and if he could draw around him the shades
of the great public men of his own days,--patriots and warriors, orators
and statesmen, and were to address us, in their presence, would he not say
to us,--"Ye men of this generation, I rejoice, and thank God for being able
to see that our labors, and toils, and sacrifices, were not in vain. You
are prosperous,--you are happy,--you are grateful. The fire of liberty
burns brightly and steadily in your hearts, while duty and the law restrain
it from bursting forth in wild and destructive conflagration. Cherish
liberty, as you love it;--cherish its securities, as you wish to preserve
it. Maintain the Constitution which we labored so painfully to establish
and which has been to you such a source of inestimable blessings. Preserve
the Union of the States, cemented as it was by our prayers, our tears, and
our blood. Be true to God, to your country, and to your duty. So shall the
whole Eastern world follow the morning sun, to contemplate you as a nation;
so shall all succeeding generations honor you as they honor us; and so
shall that Almighty Power which so graciously protected us, and which now
protects you, shower its everlasting blessings upon you and your
posterity."