The Works of Daniel Webster Part 31

It is twelve or thirteen years, Gentlemen, since I was honored with a seat in Congress, by the choice of the citizens of Boston. They saw fit to repeat that choice more than once; and I embrace, with pleasure, this opportunity of expressing to them my sincere and profound sense of obligation for these manifestations of confidence. At a later period, the Legislature of the State saw fit to transfer me to another place;[105] and have again renewed the trust, under circ.u.mstances which I have felt to impose upon me new obligations of duty, and an increased devotion to the political welfare of the country. These twelve or thirteen years, Gentlemen, have been years of labor, and not without sacrifices; but both have been more than compensated by the kindness, the good-will, and the favorable interpretation with which my discharge of official duties has been received. In this changing world, we can hardly say that we possess what is present, and the future is all unknown. But the past is ours. Its acquisitions, and its enjoyments, are safe. And among these acquisitions, among the treasures of the past most to be cherished and preserved, I shall ever reckon the proofs of esteem and confidence which I have received from the citizens of Boston and the Legislature of Ma.s.sachusetts.

In one respect, Gentlemen, your present oppresses me. It overcomes me by its tone of commendation. It a.s.signs to me a character of which I feel I am not worthy. "The Defender of the Const.i.tution" is a t.i.tle quite too high for me. He who shall prove himself the ablest among the able men of the country, he who shall serve it longest among those who may serve it long, he on whose labors all the stars of benignant fortune shall shed their selectest influence, will have praise enough, and reward enough, if, at the end of his political and earthly career, though that career may have been as bright as the track of the sun across the sky, the marble under which he sleeps, and that much better record, the grateful b.r.e.a.s.t.s of his living countrymen, shall p.r.o.nounce him "the Defender of the Const.i.tution." It is enough for me, Gentlemen, to be connected, in the most humble manner, with the defence and maintenance of this great wonder of modern times, and this certain wonder of all future times. It is enough for me to stand in the ranks, and only to be counted as one of its defenders.

The Const.i.tution of the United States, I am confident, will protect the name and the memory both of its founders and of its friends, even of its humblest friends. It will impart to both something of its own ever memorable and enduring distinction; I had almost said, something of its own everlasting remembrance. Centuries hence, when the vicissitudes of human affairs shall have broken it, if ever they shall break it, into fragments, these very fragments, every shattered column, every displaced foundation-stone, shall yet be sure to bring them all into recollection, and attract to them the respect and grat.i.tude of mankind.

Gentlemen, it is to pay respect to this Const.i.tution, it is to manifest your attachment to it, your sense of its value, and your devotion to its true principles, that you have sought this occasion. It is not to pay an ostentatious personal compliment. If it were, it would be unworthy both of you and of me. It is not to manifest attachment to individuals, independent of all considerations of principles; if it were, I should feel it my duty to tell you, friends as you are, that you were doing that which, at this very moment, const.i.tutes one of the most threatening dangers to the Const.i.tution itself. Your gift would have no value in my eyes, this occasion would be regarded by me as an idle pageant, if I did not know that they are both but modes, chosen by you, to signify your attachment to the true principles of the Const.i.tution; your fixed purpose, so far as in you lies, to maintain those principles; and your resolution to support public men, and stand by them, so long as they shall support and stand by the Const.i.tution of the country, and no longer.

"The Const.i.tution of the country!" Gentlemen, often as I am called to contemplate this subject, its importance always rises, and magnifies itself more and more, before me. I cannot view its preservation as a concern of narrow extent, or temporary duration. On the contrary, I see in it a vast interest, which is to run down with the generations of men, and to spread over a great portion of the earth with a direct, and over the rest with an indirect, but a most powerful influence. When I speak of it here, in this thick crowd of fellow-citizens and friends, I yet behold, thronging about me, a much larger and more imposing crowd. I see a united rush of the present and the future. I see all the patriotic of our own land, and our own time. I see also the many millions of their posterity, and I see, too, the lovers of human liberty from every part of the earth, from beneath the oppressions of thrones, and hierarchies, and dynasties, from amidst the darkness of ignorance, degradation, and despotism, into which any ray of political light has penetrated; I see all those countless mult.i.tudes gather about us, and I hear their united and earnest voices, conjuring us, in whose charge the treasure now is, to hold on, and hold on to the last, by that which is our own highest enjoyment and their best hope.

Filled with these sentiments, Gentlemen, and having through my political life hitherto always acted under the deepest conviction of their truth and importance, it is natural that I should have regarded the preservation of the Const.i.tution as the first great political object to be secured. But I claim no exclusive merit. I should deem it, especially, both unbecoming and unjust in me to separate myself, in this respect, from other public servants of the people of Ma.s.sachusetts. The distinguished gentlemen who have preceded and followed me in the representation of the city, their a.s.sociates from other districts of the State, and my late worthy and most highly esteemed colleague, are ent.i.tled, one and all, to a full share in the public approbation. If accidental circ.u.mstances, or a particular position, have sometimes rendered me more prominent, equal patriotism and equal zeal have yet made them equally deserving. It were invidious to enumerate these fellow-laborers, or to discriminate among them. Long may they live! and I could hardly express a better wish for the interest and honor of the States, than that the public men who may follow them may be as disinterested, as patriotic, and as able as they have proved themselves.

There have been, Gentlemen, it is true, anxious moments. That was an anxious occasion, to which the gentleman who has addressed me in your behalf has alluded; I mean the debate in January, 1830. It seemed to me then that the Const.i.tution was about to be abandoned. Threatened with most serious dangers, it was not only not defended, but attacked, as I thought, and weakened and wounded in its vital powers and faculties, by those to whom the country naturally looks for its defence and protection. It appeared to me that the Union was about to go to pieces, before the people were at all aware of the extent of the danger. The occasion was not sought, but forced upon us; it seemed to me momentous, and I confess that I felt that even the little that I could do, in such a crisis, was called for by every motive which could be addressed to a lover of the Const.i.tution. I took a part in the debate, therefore, with my whole heart already in the subject, and careless for every thing in the result, except the judgment which the people of the United States should form upon the questions involved in the discussion. I believe that judgment has been definitely p.r.o.nounced; but nothing is due to me, beyond the merit of having made an earnest effort to present the true question to the people, and to invoke for it that attention from them, which its high importance appeared to me to demand.

The Const.i.tution of the United States, Gentlemen, is of a peculiar structure. Our whole system is peculiar. It is fas.h.i.+oned according to no existing model, likened to no precedent, and yet founded on principles which lie at the foundations of all free governments, wherever such governments exist. It is a complicated system. It is elaborate, and in some sense artificial, in its composition. We have twenty-four State sovereignties, all exercising legislative, judicial, and executive powers. Some of the sovereignties, or States, had long existed, and, subject only to the restraint of the power of the parent country, had been accustomed to the forms and to the exercise of the powers of representative republics. Others of them are new creations, coming into existence only under the Const.i.tution itself; but all now standing on an equal footing.

The general government, under which all these States are united, is not, as has been justly remarked by Mr. Gray, a confederation. It is much more than a confederation. It is a popular representative government, with all the departments, and all the functions and organs, of such a government. But it is still a limited, a restrained, a severely-guarded government. It exists under a written const.i.tution, and all that human wisdom could do is done, to define its powers and to prevent their abuse. It is placed in what was supposed to be the safest medium between dangerous authority on the one hand, and debility and inefficiency on the other. I think that happy medium was found, by the exercise of the greatest political sagacity, and the influence of the highest good fortune. We cannot move the system either way, without the probability of hurtful change; and as experience has taught us its safety, and its usefulness, when left where it is, our duty is a plain one.

It cannot be doubted that a system thus complicated must be accompanied by more or less of danger, in every stage of its existence. It has not the simplicity of despotism. It is not a plain column, that stands self-poised and self-supported. Nor is it a loose, irregular, unfixed, and undefined system of rule, which admits of constant and violent changes, without losing its character. But it is a balanced and guarded system; a system of checks and controls; a system in which powers are carefully delegated, and as carefully limited; a system in which the symmetry of the parts is designed to produce an aggregate whole, which shall be favorable to personal liberty, favorable to public prosperity, and favorable to national glory. And who can deny, that, by a trial of fifty years, this American system of government has proved itself capable of conferring all these blessings? These years have been years of great agitation throughout the civilized world. In the course of them the face of Europe has been completely changed. Old and corrupt governments have been destroyed, and new ones, erected in their places, have been destroyed too, sometimes in rapid succession. Yet, through all the extraordinary, the most extraordinary scenes of this half-century, the free, popular, representative government of the United States has stood, and has afforded security for liberty, for property, and for reputation, to all citizens.

That it has been exposed to many dangers, that it has met critical moments, is certain. That it is now exposed to dangers, and that a crisis is now before it, is equally clear, in my judgment. But it has. .h.i.therto been preserved, and vigilance and patriotism may rescue it again.

Our dangers, Gentlemen, are not from _without_. We have nothing to fear from foreign powers, except those interruptions of the occupations of life which all wars occasion. The dangers to our system, as a system, do not spring from that quarter. On the contrary, the pressure of foreign hostility would be most likely to unite us, and to strengthen our union, by an augmented sense of its utility and necessity. But our dangers are from within. I do not now speak of those dangers which have in all ages beset republican governments, such as luxury among the rich, the corruption of public officers, and the general degradation of public morals. I speak only of those peculiar dangers to which the structure of our government particularly exposes it, in addition to all other ordinary dangers. These arise among ourselves; they spring up at home; and the evil which they threaten is no less than disunion, or the overthrow of the whole system. Local feelings and local parties, a notion sometimes a sedulously cultivated of opposite interests in different portions of the Union, evil prophecies respecting its duration, cool calculations upon the benefits of separation, a narrow feeling that cannot embrace all the States as one country, an unsocial, anti-national, and half-belligerent spirit, which sometimes betrays itself,--all these undoubtedly are causes which affect, more or less, our prospect of holding together.

All these are unpropitious influences.

The Const.i.tution, again, is founded on compromise, and the most perfect and absolute good faith, in regard to every stipulation of this kind contained in it is indispensable to its preservation. Every attempt to accomplish even the best purpose, every attempt to grasp that which is regarded as an immediate good, in violation of these stipulations, is full of danger to the whole Const.i.tution. I need not say, also, that possible collision between the general and the State governments always has been, is, and ever must be, a source of danger to be strictly watched by wise men.

But, Gentlemen, as I have spoken of dangers now, in my judgment actually existing, I will state at once my opinions on that point, without fear and without reserve. I reproach no man, I accuse no man; but I speak of things as they appear to me, and I speak of principles and practices which I deem most alarming. I think, then, Gentlemen, that a great practical change is going on in the Const.i.tution, which, if not checked, must completely alter its whole character. This change consists in the diminution of the just powers of Congress on the one hand, and in the vast increase of executive authority on the other. The government of the United States, in the aggregate, or the legislative power of Congress, seems fast losing, one after another, its accustomed powers. One by one, they are practically struck out of the Const.i.tution. What has become of the power of internal improvement? Does it remain in the Const.i.tution, or is it erased by the repeated exercise of the President's veto, and the acquiescence in that exercise of all who call themselves his friends, whatever their own opinions of the Const.i.tution may be? The power to create a national bank, a power exercised for forty years, approved by all Presidents, and by Congress at all times, and sanctioned by a solemn adjudication of the Supreme Court, is it not true that party has agreed to strike this power, too, from the Const.i.tution, in compliance with what has been openly called the interests of party? Nay, more; that great power, the power of protecting domestic industry, who can tell me whether that power is now regarded as in the Const.i.tution, or out of it?

But, if it be true that the diminution of the just powers of Congress, in these particulars, has been attempted, and attempted with more or less success, it is still more obvious, I think, that the executive power of the government has been dangerously increased. It is spread, in the first place, over all that ground from which the legislative power of Congress is driven. Congress can no longer establish a bank, controlled by the laws of the United States, amenable to the authority, and open, at all times, to the examination and inspection of the legislature. It is no longer const.i.tutional to make such a bank, for the safe custody of the public treasure. But of the thousand State corporations already existing, it is const.i.tutional for the executive government to select such as it pleases, to intrust the public money to their keeping, without responsibility to the laws of the United States, without the duty of exhibiting their concerns, at any time, to the committees of Congress, and with no other guards or securities than such as executive discretion on the one hand, and the banks themselves on the other, may see fit to agree to.

And so of internal improvement. It is not every thing in the nature of public improvements which is forbidden. It is only that the selection of objects is not with Congress. Whatever appears to the executive discretion to be of a proper nature, or such as comes within certain not very intelligible limits, may be tolerated. And even with respect to the tariff itself, while as a system it is denounced as unconst.i.tutional, it is probable some portion of it might find favor.

But it is not the frequent use of the power of the veto, it is not the readiness with which men yield their own opinions, and see important powers practically obliterated from the Const.i.tution, in order to subserve the interest of the party, it is not even all this which furnishes, at the present moment, the most striking demonstration of the increase of executive authority. It is the use of the power of patronage; it is the universal giving and taking away of all place and office, for reasons no way connected with the public service, or the faithful execution of the laws; it is this which threatens with overthrow all the true principles of the government. Patronage is reduced to a system. It is used as the patrimony, the property of party.

Every office is a largess, a bounty, a favor; and it is expected to be compensated by service and fealty. A numerous and well-disciplined corps of office-holders, acting with activity and zeal, and with incredible union of purpose, is attempting to seize on the strong posts, and to control, effectually, the expression of the public will. As has been said of the Turks in Europe, they are not so much mingled with us, as encamped among us. And it is more lamentable, that the apathy which prevails in a time of general prosperity produces, among a great majority of the people, a disregard to the efforts and objects of this well-trained and effective corps. But, Gentlemen, the principle is vicious; it is destructive and ruinous; and whether it produces its work of disunion to-day or to-morrow, it must produce it in the end. It must destroy the balance of the government, and so destroy the government itself. The government of the United States controls the army, the navy, the custom-house, the post-office, the land-offices, and other great sources of patronage. What have the States to oppose to all this? And if the States shall see all this patronage, if they shall see every officer under this government, in all its ramifications, united with every other officer, and all acting steadily in a design to produce political effect, even in State governments, is it possible not to perceive that they will, before long, regard the whole government of the Union with distrust and jealousy, and finally with fear and hatred?

Among other evils, it is the tendency of this system to push party feelings and party spirit to their utmost excess. It involves not only opinions and principles, but the pursuits of life and the means of living, in the contests of party. The executive himself becomes but the mere point of concentration of party power; and when executive power is exercised or is claimed for the supposed benefit of party, party will approve and justify it. When did heated and exasperated party ever complain of its leaders for seizing on new degrees of power?

This system of government has been openly avowed. Offices of trust are declared, from high places, to be the regular spoils of party victory; and all that is furnished out of the public purse, as a reward for labor in the public service, becomes thus a boon, offered to personal devotion and partisan service. The uncontrolled power of removal is the spring which moves all this machinery; and I verily believe the government is, and will be, in serious danger, till some check is placed on that power.

To combine and consolidate a great party by the influence of personal hopes, to govern by the patronage of office, to exercise the power of removal at pleasure, in order to render that patronage effectual,--this seems to be the sum and substance of the political systems of the times.

I am sorry to say, that the germ of this system had its first being in the Senate.

The policy began in the last year of Mr. Adams's administration, when nominations made by him to fill vacancies occurring by death or resignation were postponed, by a vote of the majority of the Senate, to a period beyond the ensuing 4th of March; and this was done with no other view than that of giving the patronage of these appointments to the incoming President. The nomination of a judge of the Supreme Court, among others, was thus disposed of. The regular action of the government was, in this manner, deranged, and undue and unjustly obtained patronage came to be received as among the ordinary means of government. Some of the gentlemen who concurred in this vote have since, probably, seen occasion to regret it. But they thereby let loose the lion of executive prerogative, and they have not yet found out how they can drive it back again to its cage. The debates in the Senate on these questions, in the session of 1828-29, are not public; but I take this occasion to say, that the minority of the Senate, as it was then const.i.tuted, including, among others, myself and colleague, contended against this innovation upon the Const.i.tution, for days and for weeks; but we contended in vain.

The doctrine of patronage thus got a foothold in the government. A general removal from office followed, exciting, at first, no small share of public attention; but every exercise of the power rendered its exercise in the next case still easier, till removal at will has become the actual system on which the government is administered.

It is hardly a fit occasion, Gentlemen, to go into the history of this power of removal. It was declared to exist in the days of Was.h.i.+ngton, by a very small majority in each house of Congress. It has been considered as existing to the present time. But no man expected it to be used as a mere arbitrary power; and those who maintained its existence declared, nevertheless, that it would justly become matter of impeachment, if it should be used for purposes such as those to which the most blind among us must admit they have recently seen it habitually applied. I have the highest respect for those who originally concurred in this construction of the Const.i.tution. But, as discreet men of the day were divided on the question, as Madison and other distinguished names were on one side, and Gerry and other distinguished names on the other, one may now differ from either, without incurring the imputation of arrogance, since he must differ from some of them. I confess my judgment would have been, that the power of removal did not belong to the President alone; that it was but a part of the power of appointment, since the power of appointing one man to office implies the power of vacating that office, by removing another out of it; and as the whole power of appointment is granted, not to the President alone, but to the President and Senate, the true interpretation of the Const.i.tution would have carried the power of removal into the same hands. I have, however, so recently expressed my sentiments on this point in another place, that it would be improper to pursue this line of observation further.

In the course of the last session, Gentlemen, several bills pa.s.sed the Senate, intended to correct abuses, to restrain useless expenditure, to curtail the discretionary authority of public officers, and to control government patronage. The post-office bill, the custom-house bill, and the bill respecting the tenure of office, were all of this cla.s.s. None of them, however, received the favorable consideration of the other house. I believe, that in all these respects a reform, a real, honest reform, is decidedly necessary to the security of the Const.i.tution; and while I continue in public life, I shall not halt in my endeavors to produce it. It is time to bring back the government to its true character as an agency for the people. It is time to declare that offices, created for the people, are public trusts, not private spoils.

It is time to bring each and every department within its true original limits. It is time to a.s.sent, on one hand, to the just powers of Congress, in their full extent, and to resist, on the other, the progress and rapid growth of executive authority.

These, Gentlemen, are my opinions. I have spoken them frankly, and without reserve. Under present circ.u.mstances, I should wish to avoid any concealment, and to state my political opinions in their full length and breadth. I desire not to stand before the country as a man of no opinions, or of such a mixture of opposite opinions that the result has no character at all. On the contrary, I am desirous of standing as one who is bound to his own consistency by the frankest avowal of his sentiments, on all important and interesting subjects. I am not partly for the Const.i.tution, and partly against it; I am wholly for it, for it altogether, for it as it is, and for the exercise, when occasion requires, of all its just powers, as they have heretofore been exercised by Was.h.i.+ngton, and the great men who have followed him in its administration.

I disdain, altogether, the character of an uncommitted man. I am committed, fully committed; committed to the full extent of all that I am, and all that I hope, to the Const.i.tution of the country, to its love and reverence, to its defence and maintenance, to its warm commendation to every American heart, and to its vindication and just praise, before all mankind. And I am committed _against_ every thing which, in my judgment, may weaken, endanger, or destroy it. I am committed against the encouragement of local parties and local feelings; I am committed against all fostering of anti-national spirit; I am committed against the slightest infringement of the original compromise on which the Const.i.tution was founded; I am committed against any and every derangement of the powers of the several departments of the government, against any derogation from the const.i.tutional authority of Congress, and especially against all extension of executive power; and I am committed against any attempt to rule the free people of this country by the power and the patronage of the government itself. I am committed, fully and entirely committed, against making the government the people's master.

These, Gentlemen, are my opinions. I have purposely avowed them with the utmost frankness. They are not the sentiments of the moment, but the result of much reflection, and of some experience in the affairs of the country. I believe them to be such sentiments as are alone compatible with the permanent prosperity of the country, or the long continuance of its union.

And now, Gentlemen, having thus solemnly avowed these sentiments and these convictions, if you should find me hereafter to be false to them, or to falter in their support, I now conjure you, by all the duty you owe your country, by all your hopes of her prosperity and renown, by all your love for the general cause of liberty throughout the world,--I conjure you, that, renouncing me as a recreant, you yourselves go on, right on, straightforward, in maintaining, with your utmost zeal and with all your power, the true principles of the best, the happiest, the most glorious Const.i.tution of a free government, with which it has pleased Providence, in any age, to bless any of the nations of the earth.

FOOTNOTES

[104] Speech delivered in the Odeon, at Boston, on Occasion of the Presentation of a Vase by Citizens of that Place, on the 12th of October, 1835.

[105] The Senate of the United States.

RECEPTION AT NEW YORK.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

At a meeting of the political friends of the Hon. Daniel Webster, held at Euterpian Hall, in the city of New York, on Tuesday evening, the 21st of February, 1837, Chancellor Kent was called to the chair, and Messrs. Hiram Ketchum and Gabriel P. Dissosway were appointed secretaries.

The object of the meeting having been explained, the following resolutions were, on motion, duly seconded and unanimously adopted:--

"_Resolved_, That this meeting has heard with deep concern of the intention of the Hon. Daniel Webster to resign his seat in the Senate of the United States at the close of the present session of Congress, or early in the next session.

"_Resolved_, That while we regret the resignation of Mr. Webster, it would be most unreasonable to censure the exercise of his right to seek repose, after fourteen years of unremitted, zealous, and highly distinguished labors in the Congress of the United States; but we indulge the hope that the nation will, at no distant day, again profit by his ripe experience as a statesman and his extensive knowledge of public affairs, by his wisdom in council and eloquence in debate.

"_Resolved_, That in the judgment of this meeting there is none among the living or the dead who has given to the country more just or able expositions of the Const.i.tution of the United States; none who has enforced, with more lucid and impa.s.sionate eloquence, the necessity and importance of the preservation of the Union, or exhibited more zeal or ability in defending the Const.i.tution from the foes without the government, and foes within it, than Daniel Webster.

"_Resolved_, That there is no part of our widely extended country more deeply interested in the preservation of the Union than the city of New York; her motto should be 'Union and Liberty, now and for ever, one and inseparable,' and her grat.i.tude should be shown to the statesman who first gave utterance to this sentiment.

"_Resolved_, That David B. Ogden, Peter Stagg, Jonathan Thompson, James Brown, Philip Hone, Samuel Stevens, Robert Smith, Joseph Tucker, Peter Sharpe, Egbert Benson, Hugh Maxwell, Peter A. Jay, Aaron Clark, Ira B.

Wheeler, William W. Todd, Seth Grosvenor, Simeon Draper, Jr., Wm.

Aspinwall, Nathaniel Weed, Jonathan Goodhue, Caleb Bartow, Hiram Ketchum, Gabriel P. Dissosway, Henry K. Bogert, James Kent, Wm. S.

Johnson, and John W. Leavitt, Esqrs., be a committee authorized and empowered to receive the Hon. Daniel Webster on his return from Was.h.i.+ngton, and make known to him, in the form of an address or otherwise, the sentiments which this meeting, in common with the friends of the Union and the Const.i.tution in the city, entertain for the services which he has performed for the country; that the committee correspond with Mr. Webster, and ascertain the time when his arrival may be expected, and give public notice of the same, together with the order of proceedings which may be adopted under these resolutions.

"_Resolved_, That these resolutions, signed by the Chairman and Secretaries, be published when the committee shall notify the public of the expected arrival of Mr. Webster.

"JAMES KENT, _Chairman_.

"HIRAM KETCHUM, GABRIEL P. DISSOSWAY, _Secretaries_."