Select Speeches of Daniel Webster, 1817-1845 Part 1

Select Speeches of Daniel Webster.

by Daniel Webster.

Preface.

Burke and Webster are models in the forensic literature of our own language as truly as are Demosthenes and Cicero in the language of the ancient cla.s.sics. Each has distinct and inimitable characteristics which give force and beauty to his work. The study of each should be ordered in such a way as to put one in touch with those qualities of mind and heart, of intellectual and moral manhood, by which each became a leader in political philosophy and a model in literary style. One who studies such authors in order to formulate a historical or a personal estimate merely, or to compare each as to certain externals of rhetorical form, has lost the true perspective of literary judgment.

Reading in the school and in the home is far too often pursued with a purpose to controvert and prove rather than to weigh and consider. Reading which does not result in enlarging, stimulating, and refining one's nature is but a busy idleness. The schools must see to it that the desultory and dissipating methods of reading, so prevalent in the home, are not encouraged. Pupils must be stimulated first of all to enjoy what is beautiful in nature and in art: for here is

"A world of ready wealth, Their minds and hearts to bless-- Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health, Truth breathed by cheerfulness."

The wisdom of the cla.s.sroom is too often "art tongue-tied by authority,"

and hence it is not wisdom at all, but a sham and a pretence. Not until pupils rise to the spontaneity which betokens a genuine love for the work in hand do they secure the richest results.

The publication of the masterpieces of the epic, the lyric, and the drama; of the novel, the essay, and the oration, in a convenient form and at such a price as to bring them within the reach of our schools, makes it inexcusable if pupils are allowed to be ignorant of the great literary, ethical, and artistic impulses which have touched and quickened the life of the past.

Burke's _American Orations_ present him at his best as a statesman, an orator, and a stylist. When the edition of those speeches was prepared, a selection from Webster's great speeches was contemplated as a companion volume. The present edition represents Webster in the various and distinct fields in which his genius manifested itself so powerfully and so n.o.bly.

He is here seen before a jury, before the Supreme Court of the United States, on a great historical occasion, in the Senate of the United States, in a great national canva.s.s, and as a eulogist.

Had it not been for making the volume too large for school use I should have included the famous speech delivered in the Senate on the 7th of March, 1850. This speech has been considered by many as the _vulnus immedicabile_ of Mr. Webster's political life; it is certain that for it he was most rankly abused. "Ma.s.sachusetts," as Hon. John D. Long has said, "smote and broke the heart of Webster, her idol, and then broke her own above his grave, and to-day writes his name highest upon her roll of statesmen."

I find in this speech nothing but what is consistent with Mr. Webster's n.o.ble adherence to the Const.i.tution and the Union; nothing but what is consistent with the solemn duty of a great man in a great national crisis.

In his address at Buffalo on the 22d of May, 1851, he expressed himself very freely in regard to this speech, saying: "I felt that I had a duty to perform to my country, to my own reputation; for I flattered myself that a service of forty years had given me some character, on which I had a right to repose for my justification in the performance of a duty attended with some degree of local unpopularity. I thought it was my duty to pursue this course, and I did not care what was to be the consequence. And, Gentlemen, allow me to say here to-day, that if the fate of John Rogers had stared me in the face, if I had seen the stake, if I had heard the f.a.gots already crackling, by the blessing of Almighty G.o.d I would have gone on and discharged the duty which I thought my country called upon me to perform."

Does this seem the language of one who had abandoned his post and was merely "bidding for the Presidency"?

The address of Hon. Rufus Choate, before the students of Dartmouth College, commemorative of Daniel Webster, has a remark on this subject so just that I cannot refrain from quoting it. He says: "Until the accuser who charges Mr. Webster with having 'sinned against his conscience' will a.s.sert that the conscience of a public man may not, must not, be instructed by profound knowledge of the vast subject-matter with which public life is conversant, and will a.s.sert that he is certain that the consummate science of our great statesman was _felt by himself to prescribe to his morality_ another conduct than that which he adopted, and that he thus consciously outraged that 'sense of duty which pursues us ever,'--is he not inexcusable, whoever he is, that so judges another?"

At the meeting held in Faneuil Hall, Oct. 27, 1852, commemorative of Mr.

Webster's life and work, Mr. Edward Everett said: "Whoever, in after time, shall write the history of the United States for the last forty years will write the life of Daniel Webster; and whoever writes the life of Daniel Webster as it ought to be written will write the history of the Union from the time he took a leading part in its concerns." Mr. Choate, at a meeting of the Supreme Court of Ma.s.sachusetts, Oct. 25, 1852, said: "Happier than the younger Pliny, happier than Cicero, he has found his historian, unsolicited, in his lifetime, and his countrymen have him all by heart."

If this volume shall aid in bringing the young of this generation "to have him all by heart," to ascend his imaginative heights and sit under the shadow of his profound reflections on that which is fundamental in civil and religious liberty, its purpose will be accomplished.

With few exceptions these selections are given entire. Whenever they have been abridged, the continuity of the discourse has not been impaired.

In the matter of annotation the purpose has been to furnish sufficient aid to the general reader, and at the same time to indicate to the special student lines along which he may study the speeches.

In Edward Everett's Memoir, found in the first volume of Mr. Webster's works; in the life of Mr. Webster by George Tichnor Curtis, and in Henry Cabot Lodge's _Daniel Webster_, in the American Statesman Series, the student has exhaustive, scholarly, and judicious estimates of Mr.

Webster's work.

I am indebted to the Hon. George F. h.o.a.r and the Hon. Edward J. Phelps for a.s.sistance in the task of selecting representative speeches; and to the former for permission to a.s.sociate his name with this edition of Mr.

Webster's work.

A. J. G.

Brookline, November, 1892.

Introduction.

Mr. Webster approaches as nearly to the _beau ideal_ of a republican Senator as any man that I have ever seen in the course of my life; worthy of Rome or Venice rather than of our noisy and wrangling generation.-- Hallam.

Coleridge used to say that he had seldom known or heard of any great man who had not much of the woman in him. Even so the large intellect of Daniel Webster seemed to be coupled with all softer feelings; and his countenance and bearing, at the very first, impressed me with this. A commanding brow, thoughtful eyes, and a mouth that seemed to respond to all humanities. He deserves his fame, I am sure.--John Kenyon.

He is a magnificent specimen. You might say to all the world, "This is our Yankee Englishman; such limbs we make in Yankee-land!" As a parliamentary Hercules one would incline to back him at first sight against all the extant world. The tanned complexion; that amorphous craglike face; the dull black eyes under the precipice of brows, like dull anthracite furnaces needing only to be _blown_; the mastiff mouth, accurately closed; I have not traced so much of _silent Berserkir rage_ that I remember of in any other man.--Thomas Carlyle.

When the historian shall look back upon the first century of the American Republic, the two names that will s.h.i.+ne with most unfading l.u.s.tre and the serenest glory, high above all others, are Was.h.i.+ngton and Webster.-- Professor Felton.

Consider the remarkable phenomenon of excellence in three unkindred, one might have thought incompatible, forms of public speech,--that of the forum, with its double audience of bench and jury, of the halls of legislation, and of the most thronged and tumultuous a.s.semblies of the people. Consider, further, that this multiform eloquence, exactly as his words fell, became at once so much accession to permanent literature in the strictest sense,--solid, attractive, rich,--and ask how often in the history of public life such a thing has been exemplified.--Rufus Choate.

The n.o.blest monument to Daniel Webster is in his works. As a repository of political truth and practical wisdom, applied to the affairs of government, I know not where we shall find their equal. The works of Burke naturally suggest themselves to the mind, as the only writings in our language that can sustain the comparison.--Edward Everett.

He writes like a man who is thinking of his subject, and not of his style, and thus he wastes no time upon the mere garb of his thoughts. His style is Doric, not Corinthian. His sentences are like shafts hewn from the granite of his own hills,--simple, ma.s.sive, strong. We may apply to him what Quinctilian says of Cicero, that a relish for his writings is itself a mark of good taste.--George S. Hillard.

He taught the people of the United States, in the simplicity of common understanding, the principles of the Const.i.tution and government of the country, and he wrought for them, in a style of matchless strength and beauty, the literature of statesmans.h.i.+p. He made his language the very household words of a nation. They are the library of the people. They are the school-book of the citizen.--John D. Long.

Take him for all in all, he was not only the greatest orator this country has ever known, but in the history of eloquence his name will stand with those of Demosthenes and Cicero, Chatham and Burke.--Henry Cabot Lodge.

It may be said that the style of Webster is pre-eminently distinguished by manliness. The intellect and moral manliness of Webster underlies all his great orations and speeches; and this plain force of manhood, this st.u.r.dy grapple with every question that comes before his understanding for settlement, leads him to reject all the meretricious aids and ornaments of mere rhetoric, and is prominent, among the many exceptional qualities of his large nature, which have given him a high position among the prose- writers of his country as a consummate master of English style.--Edwin P.

Whipple.

His broad, wise statesmans.h.i.+p is to be the ample and refres.h.i.+ng shade, his character the bright and breezy presence, in which all the members of this great and ill.u.s.trious Republic may meet and sit down and feast together.-- H. N. Hudson.

Defence of the Kennistons.

Gentlemen of the Jury,--It is true that the offence charged in the indictment in this case is not capital; but perhaps this can hardly be considered as favorable to the defendants. To those who are guilty, and without hope of escape, no doubt the lightness of the penalty of transgression gives consolation. But if the defendants are innocent, it is more natural for them to be thinking upon what they have lost by that alteration of the law which has left highway robbery no longer capital, than upon what the guilty might gain by it. They have lost those great privileges in their trial, which the law allows, in capital cases, for the protection of innocence against unfounded accusation. They have lost the right of being previously furnished with a copy of the indictment, and a list of the government witnesses. They have lost the right of peremptory challenge; and, notwithstanding the prejudices which they know have been excited against them, they must show legal cause of challenge, in each individual case, or else take the jury as they find it. They have lost the benefit of a.s.signment of counsel by the court. They have lost the benefit of the Commonwealth's process to bring in witnesses in their behalf. When to these circ.u.mstances it is added that they are strangers, almost wholly without friends, and without the means for preparing their defence, it is evident they must take their trial under great disadvantages.

But without dwelling on these considerations, I proceed, Gentlemen of the Jury, to ask your attention to those circ.u.mstances which cannot but cast doubts on the story of the prosecutor.

In the first place, it is impossible to believe that a robbery of this sort could have been committed by three or four men without previous arrangement and concert, and of course without the knowledge of the fact that Goodridge would be there, and that he had money. They did not go on the highway, in such a place, in a cold December's night, for the general purpose of attacking the first pa.s.senger, running the chance of his being somebody who had money. It is not easy to believe that a gang of robbers existed, that they acted systematically, communicating intelligence to one another, and meeting and dispersing as occasion required, and that this gang had their head-quarters in such a place as Newburyport. No town is more distinguished for the general correctness of the habits of its citizens; and it is of such a size that every man in it may be known to all the rest. The pursuits, occupations, and habits of every person within it are within the observation of his neighbors. A suspicious stranger would be instantly observed, and all his movements could be easily traced.

This is not the place to be the general rendezvous of a gang of robbers.

Offenders of this sort hang on the skirts of large towns. From the commission of their crimes they hasten into the crowd, and hide themselves in the populousness of great cities. If it be wholly improbable that a gang existed in such a place for the purpose of general plunder, the next inquiry is, Is there any reason to think that there was a special or particular combination, for the single purpose of robbing the prosecutor?

Now it is material to observe, that not only is there no evidence of any such combination, but also, that circ.u.mstances existed which render it next to impossible that the defendants could have been parties to such a combination, or even that they could have any knowledge of the existence of any such man as Goodridge, or that any person, with money, was expected to come from the eastward, and to be near Ess.e.x Bridge, at or about nine o'clock, the evening when the robbery is said to have been committed.

One of the defendants had been for some weeks in Newburyport, the other pa.s.sed the bridge from New Hamps.h.i.+re at twelve o'clock on the 19th of December, 1816. At this time, Goodridge had not yet arrived at Exeter, twelve or fourteen miles from the bridge. How, then, could either of the defendants know that he was coming? Besides, he says that n.o.body, as far as he is aware, knew on the road that he had money, and nothing happened till he reached Exeter, according to his account, from which it might be conjectured that such was the case. Here, as he relates it, it became known that he had pistols; and he must wish you to infer that the plan to rob him was laid here, at Exeter, by some of the persons who inferred that he had money from his being armed. Who were these persons? Certainly not the defendants, or either of them. Certainly not Taber. Certainly not Jackman. Were they persons of suspicious characters? Was he in a house of a suspicious character? On this point he gives us no information. He has either not taken the pains to inquire, or he chooses not to communicate the result of his inquiries. Yet nothing could be more important, since he seems compelled to lay the scene of the plot against him at Exeter, than to know who the persons were that he saw, or who saw him, at that place.

On the face of the facts now proved, nothing could be more improbable than that the plan of robbery was concerted at Exeter. If so, why should those who concerted it send forward to Newburyport to engage the defendants, especially as they did not know that they were there? What should induce any persons so suddenly to apply to the defendants to a.s.sist in a robbery?

There was nothing in their personal character or previous history that should induce this.

Nor was there time for all this. If the prosecutor had not lingered on the road, for reasons not yet discovered, he must have been in Newburyport long before the time at which he states the robbery to have been committed. How, then, could any one expect to leave Exeter, come to Newburyport, fifteen miles, there look out for and find out a.s.sistants for a highway robbery, and get back two miles to a convenient place for the commission of the crime? That any body should have undertaken to act thus is wholly improbable; and, in point of fact, there is not the least proof of any body's travelling, that afternoon, from Exeter to Newburyport, or of any person who was at the tavern at Exeter having left it that afternoon. In all probability, nothing of this sort could have taken place without being capable of detection and proof. In every particular, the prosecutor has wholly failed to show the least probability of a plan to rob him having been laid at Exeter.

But how comes it that Goodridge was near or quite four hours and a half in travelling a distance which might have been travelled in two hours or two hours and a half. He says he missed his way, and went the Salisbury road.

But some of the jury know that this could not have delayed him more than five or ten minutes. He ought to be able to give some better account of this delay.