Webster, Daniel-Continued in blood; sometimes witnessing the martyrdom of Sydneys and Russells; often baffled and repulsed, but still gaining, on the whole, and holding what it gained with a grasp which nothing but the complete extinction of its own being could compel it to relinquish. At length the great conquest over executive power, in the leading western states of Europe, has been accomplished. The feudal system, like other stupendous fabrics of past ages, is known only by the rubbish which it has left behind it. Crowned heads have been compelled to submit to the restraints of law, and the people, with that intelligence and that spirit which make their voice resistless, have been able to say to prerogative, "Thus far shalt thou come, and no farther." I need hardly say, sir, that, into the full enjoyment of all which Europe has reached only through such slow and painful steps, we sprang at once, by the declaration of independence, and by the establishment of free representative governments; governments borrowing more or less from the models of other free states, but strengthened, secured, improved in their symmetry, and deepened in their foundation by those great men of our own country, whose names will be as familiar to future times as if they were written on the arch of the sky. Moral Force and Civilization - 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 ascendency 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 impassable, unextinguishable enemy of mere violence and arbitrary rule, which, like Milton's angels, "Vital in every part, Cannot, but by annihilating, die. » - (1823.) "My God's and Truth's» —I mean to stand upon the Constitution. I need no other platform. I shall know but one country. The ends I aim at shall be my country's, my God's, and Truth's. I was born an American; I live an American; I shall die an American; and I intend to perform the duties incumbent upon me in that character to the end of my career. I mean to do this, with absolute disregard of personal consequences. What are personal consequences? What is the individual man, with all the good or evil that may betide him, in comparison with the good or evil which may befall a great country in a crisis like this, and in the midst of great transactions which concern that country's fate? Let the consequences be what they will, I am careless. No man can suffer too much, and no man can fall too soon, if he suffer, or if he fall, in defense of the liberties and constitution of his country (1850.) "Matches and Overmatches» (Replying to Hayne)-Matches and overmatches! Those terms are more applicable elsewhere than here, and fitter for other assemblies than this. Sir, the gentleman seems to forget where and what we are. This is a Senate; a Senate of equals; of men of individual honor and personal character, and of absolute independence. We know no masters; we acknowledge no dictators. This is a hall for mutual consultation and discussion; not an arena for the exhibition of champions. I offer myself, sir, as a match for no man; I throw the challenge of debate at no man's feet. But, then, sir, since the honorable member has put the question, in a manner that calls for an answer, I will give him an answer; and I tell him, that, holding myself to be the humblest of the members here, I yet know nothing in the arm of his friend from Missouri, either alone, or when aided by the arm of his friend from South Carolina, that need deter even me from espousing whatever opinions I may choose to espouse, from debating whenever I may choose to debate, or from speaking whatever I may see fit to say, on the floor of the Senate. Sir, when uttered as matter of commendation or compliment, I should dissent from nothing which the honorable member might say of his friend. Still less do I put forth any pretensions of my own. But, when put to me as matter of taunt, I throw it back, and say to the gentleman that he could possibly say nothing less likely than such a comparison to wound my pride of personal character. The anger of its tone rescued the remark from intentional irony, which, otherwise, probably, would have been its general acceptation. But, sir, if it be imagined that, by this mutual quotation and commendation; if it be supposed that, by casting the characters of the drama, assigning to each his part,-to one, the attack; to another, the cry of onset; - or, if it be thought that, by a loud and empty vaunt of anticipated victory, any laurels are to be won here; if it be imagined, especially, that any or all these things shall shake any purpose of mine,-I can tell the honorable member, once for all, that he is greatly mistaken, and that he is dealing with one of whose temper and character he has yet much to learn. Sir, I shall not allow myself, on this occasion,-I hope on no occasion,-to be betrayed into any loss of temper; but if provoked, as I trust I never shall allow myself to be, into crimination and recrimination, the honorable member may, perhaps, find that in that contest there will be blows to take, as well as blows to give; that others can state comparisons as significant, at least, as his own; and that his impunity may, perhaps, demand of him whatever powers of taunt and sarcasm he may possess. I commend him to a prudent husbandry of his resources. - (1830.) Webster, Daniel - Continued Massachusetts-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. Secession in Peace Impossible-Such a thing as peaceable secession! It is utterly impossible. Is the Constitution under which we live, covering this whole country, to be thawed and melted away by secession, as the snows upon the mountains are melted under the influence of a vernal sun, to disappear almost unobserved? Our ancestors will rebuke and reproach us; our children and grandchildren would cry shame upon us, if we of this generation should tarnish those ensigns of the honor, power, and harmony of the Union, which we now behold with so much joy and gratitude. Peaceable secession! A concurrent resolution of all the members of this great republic to separate! Where is the line to be drawn? What States are to be associated? What is to become of the army? What is to become of the navy? What is to become of the public lands? Alas! what is to remain of America? What am I to be? Where is our flag to remain? Where is the eagle still to soar aloft ? or is he to cower, and shrink, and fall to the earth? Sir, we could not sit down here to-day, and draw a line of separation that would satisfy any five men in the country. There are natural causes that would keep and tie us together, and there are social and domestic relations which we could not break if we would, and which we should not if we could.-(From a speech in 1850.) / "Sink or Swim, Live or Die"- 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?-(Attributed by Webster to John Adams.) Public Opinion-We think that nothing is powerful enough to stand before autocratic, monarchical, or despotic power. There is something strong enough, quite strong enough,- and, if properly exerted, will prove itself so,- and that is the power of intelligent public opinion in all the nations of the earth. There is not a monarch on earth whose throne is not liable to be shaken by the progress of opinion, and the sentiment of the just and intelligent part of the people. It becomes us, in the station which we hold, to let that public opinion, so far as we form it, have a free course. Let it go out; let it be pronounced in thunder tones; let it open the ears of the deaf; let it open the eyes of the blind; and let it everywhere be proclaimed what we, of this great republic, think of the general principle of human liberty, and of that oppression which all abhor.- (From a speech in 1852.) Popular Government-The people's government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people.- (From a speech in the U. S. Senate, 1830.) Weed, Thurlow (American, 1797-1882.) "A Good Enough Morgan»- That is a good enough Morgan for us until you bring back the one you carried off. (Another version is : That is a good enough Morgan until after election.)-(During the Anti-Masonic excitement of 1872.) Wesley, John (England, 1703–1791.) "Pleasures, Shadows, Dreams!"—It is true, those who are void of all virtue may have pleasures, such as they are; but happiness they have not, cannot have. No : "Their joy is all sadness; their mirth is all vain; Their laughter is madness; their pleasure is pain!" Pleasures? Shadows! dreams! fleeting as the wind! unsubstantial as the rainbow! as unsatisfying to the poor gasping soul,— "As the gay colors of an eastern cloud.» "Painted and Gilded, but Empty Still»— O ye lovers of money, hear the word of the Lord! Suppose ye that money, though multiplied as the sand of the sea, can give happiness? Then you are "given up to a strong delusion to believe a lie » ;-a palpable lie, confuted daily by a thousand experiments! Open your eyes! Look all around you! Are the richest men the happiest? Have those the largest share of content who have the largest possessions? Is not the very reverse true? Is it not a common observation, that the richest of men are, in general, the most discontented, the most miserable? Had not the far greater part of them more content, when they had less money? Look into your own breasts. If you are increased in goods, are you proportionally increased in happiness? You have more substance; but have you more content? You know that in seeking happiness from riches, you are only striving to drink out of empty cups. And let them be painted and gilded ever so finely, they are empty still.-(From a sermon on I. Timothy, vi. 9.) Wilberforce, William (England, 1759-1833-) On the British Slave Trade- The true way to virtue is by withdrawing from temptation; let us, then, withdraw from these wretched Africans those temptations to fraud, violence, cruelty, and injustice, which the slave trade furnishes. Wherever the sun shines, let us go round the world with him, diffusing our beneficence; but let us not traffic, only that we may set kings against their subjects, subjects against their kings, sowing discord in every village, fear and terror in every family, setting millions of our fellow-creatures a-hunting each other for slaves, creating fairs and markets for human flesh through one whole continent of the world, and, under the name of policy, concealing from ourselves all the baseness and iniquity of such a traffic. Why may we not hope, ere long, to see Hans-towns established on the coast of Africa as they were on the Baltic ? It is said the Africans are idle, but they are not too idle, at least, to catch one another; seven hundred to one thousand tons of rice are annually bought of them; by the same rule, why should we not buy more? At Gambia one thousand of them are continually at work; why should not some more thousands be set to work in the same manner? It is the slave trade that causes their idleness and every other mischief. We are told by one witness: "They sell one another as they can"; and while they can get brandy by catching one another, no wonder they are too idle for any regular work. (In Parliament, 1789. From "The World's Best Orations. ») Wilkes, John (England, 1727-1797.) "The Wide Arch of the Raised Empire Will Fall"-I shudder at our injustice and cruelty; I tremble for the consequences of our imprudence. You will urge the Americans to desperation. They will certainly defend their property and liberties, with the spirit of freemen, with the spirit our ancestors did, and I hope we should exert on a like occasion. They will sooner declare themselves independent, and risk every consequence of such a contest, than submit to the galling yoke which the administration is preparing for them. Recollect Philip II., King of Spain; remember the Seven Provinces and the Duke of Alva. It was deliberated in the council of the monarch what measures should be adopted respecting the Low Countries; some were disposed for clemency, others advised rigor; the second prevailed. The Duke of Alva was victorious, it is true, wherever he appeared; but his cruelties sowed the teeth of the serpent. The beggars of the Briel, as they were called by the Spaniards, who despised them as you now despise the Americans, were those, however, who first shook the power of Spain to the centre. And, comparing the probabilities of success in the contest of that day, with the chances in that of the present, are they so favorable to England as they were then to Spain? This none will pretend. You all know, however, the issue of that sanguinary conflict, how that powerful empire was rent asunder, and severed forever into many parts. Profit, then, by the experience of the past, if you would avoid a similar fate. But you would declare the Americans rebels; and to your injustice and oppression you add the most opprobrious language and the most insulting scoffs. If you persist in your resolution all hope of a reconciliation is extinct. The Americans will triumph, the whole continent of North America will be dismembered from Great Britain, and the wide arch of the raised empire fall. But I hope the just vengeance of the people will overtake the authors of these pernicious counsels, and the loss of the first province of the empire be speedily followed by the loss of the heads of those ministers who first invented them.-(House of Commons. 1775.) Rebellion and Revolution—A successful resistance is a revolution, not a rebellion! Rebellion indeed, appears on the back of a flying enemy; but revolution flames on the breastplate of the victorious warrior. Williams, George H. (American, 1823-.) Pioneers of the Pacific Coast-We can look back and see, in the dim distance, the slowlymoving train; the wagons with their once white, but now dingy covers; the patient oxen, measuring their weary steps; men travel-stained and bronzed by exposure; women with mingled hope and care depicted upon their anxious faces; and children peering from their uneasy abodes, and wondering when their discomforts will cease. These are pioneers on their way to the promised land. Moons wax and wane, again and again; but day after day the toilsome march is resumed. Sometimes there are Indian scares and depredations; unbridged streams are encountered: rugged ascents and steep declivities occur; teams give out and wagons break down; but finally, through "moving accidents by flood and field," and when the year has glided into the gold and russet of autumn, they reach the long-looked-for end of their journey. To some, all this did not happen; to others, more than this happened. And there were those who looked back with sad hearts, and remembered where they had left the wild winds to chant their funeral requiem over a lonely and deserted grave. When the pioneers arrived here, they found a land of marvelous beauty. They found extended prairies, rich with luxuriant verdure. They found grand and gloomy forests, majestic rivers, and mountains covered with eternal snow; but they found no friends to greet them, no homes to go to, nothing but the genial heavens and the generous earth to give them consolation and hope.-(From an address delivered at Portland, Oregon, in March, 1895.) Wilmot, David (American, 1814-1868.) "Fanaticism" and "Property Rights"— The instincts of money are the same the world over, the same here as in the most grinding despotism of Europe. Money is cold, selfish, heartless. It has no pulse of humanity, no feelings of pity or of love. Interest, gain, accumulation, are the sole instincts of its nature; and it is the same, whether invested in manufacturing stock, bank stock, or the black stock of the South. Intent on its own interest, it is utterly regardless of the rights of humanity. It would coin dividends out of the destruction of souls. Here, then, sir, we have sixteen hundred millions of capital,-heartless, unfeeling capital, intent on its own pecuniary advancement. It is here, sir, in these halls, in desperate conflict with the rights of humanity and of free labor. It is struggling to clutch in its iron grasp the soil of the country,-that soil which is man's inheritance, and which of right should belong to him who labors upon it. Sixteen hundred millions of dollars demands the soil of our territories in perpetuity for its human chattels,to drive back the free laborer from his rightful field of enterprise,—from his lawful and God-given inheritance. Slavery must have a wider field, or the money value of flesh and blood will deteriorate. Additional security and strength must be given to the holders of human stock. What though humanity should shriek and wail? Money is insatiate, capital is deaf to the voice of its pleadings. To oppose the extension of slavery, -to resist in the councils of the nation the demands of this huge money power, to advocate the rights of humanity and of free labor is, in the estimation of the gentleman from Illinois, to be sectional and fanatical. To bow down to this money power, to do its bidding,-to be its instrument and its tool, is doubtless, in the esteem of the gentleman, to stand upon a "broad and national platform." Freedom and humanity, truth and justice, is a platform too narrow for his enlarged and comprehensive mind, the universality of slavery can alone fill its capacious powers. Slavery is democratic, - freedom fanatical! Sir, the gentleman no doubt sees fanaticism in a bold and fearless advocacy of the right. With some minds nothing is rational and practical except that which pays well. - (From a speech in Congress, July 24th, 1856.) Winthrop, Robert C. (American, 1809-1894.) Washington-The republic may perish; the wide arch of our raised Union may fall; star by star its glories may expire; stone after stone its columns and its capitol may molder and crumble; all other names which adorn its annals may be forgotten; but as long as human hearts shall anywhere pant, or human tongue shall anywhere plead, for a sure, rational, constitutional liberty, those hearts shall enshrine the memory, and those tongues shall prolong the fame, of George Washington.-(At the laying of the corner stone of the Washington monument.) The Union of 1776-Our fathers were no propagandists of republican institutions in the abstract. Their own adoption of a republican form was, at the moment, almost as much a matter of chance as of choice, of necessity as of preference. The thirteen colonies had, happily, been too long accustomed to manage their own affairs, and were too widely jealous of each other, also, to admit for an instant any idea of centralization; and without centralization a monarchy, or any other form of arbitrary government, was out of the question. Union was then, as it is now, the only safety for liberty; but it could only be a constitutional union, a limited and restricted union, founded on compromises and mutual concessions; a union recognizing a large measure of States' rights,resting not only on the division of powers among legislative and executive departments, but resting also on the distribution of powers between the States and the nation, both deriving their original authority from the people, and exercising that authority for the people. This was the system contemplated by the declaration of 1776. This was the system approximated to by the confederation of 1778-1781. This was the system finally consummated by the Constitution of 1789. And under this system our great example of self-government has been held up before the nations, fulfilling, so far as it has fulfilled it, that lofty mission which is recognized to-day as "liberty enlightening the world.» - (From his Centennial oration delivered in Boston, July 4th, 1876.) Wirt, William (American, 1772-1834.) Jefferson's "Nunc Domine»-Those who surrounded the death-bed of Mr. Jefferson report that in the few short intervals of delirium that occurred, his mind manifestly relapsed to the age of the Revolution. He talked in broken sentences of the committees of safety, and the rest of that great machinery which he imagined to be still in action. One of his exclamations was : "Warn the committee to be on their guard"; and he instantly rose in his bed, with the help of his attendants, and went through the act of writing a hurried note. But these intervals were few and short. His reason was almost constantly upon her throne, and the only aspiration he was heard to breathe was the prayer that he might live to see the Fourth of July. When that day came, all that he was heard to whisper was the repeated ejaculation,-" Nunc Domine dimittas»-(Now, Lord, let thy servant depart in peace!) And the prayer of the patriot was heard and answered.—(1826.) Genius and Work-Genius unexerted is like the poor moth that flutters around a candle till it scorches itself to death. If genius be desirable at all, it is only of that great and magnani. mous kind which, like the condor of South America, pitches from the summit of Chimborazo above the clouds, and sustains itself at pleasure, in that empyreal region, with an energy rather invigorated than weakened by the effort. It is this capacity for high and long-continued exertion, this vigorous power of profound and searching investigation,-this careering and wide-spreading comprehension of mind, and those long reaches of thought, that,— - Pluck bright honor from the pale-faced moon, this is the prowess, and these the hardy achievements which are to enroll your names among the great men of the earth. Wise, Henry A. (American, 1819-1869.) "Dark Lanterns » in Politics-KnowNothingism is against the spirit of Reformation and Protestantism. Let the most bigoted Protestant enumerate what he defines to have been the abominations of the Church of Rome. What would he say were the worst ?-The secrets of Jesuitism, of the Auto-da-fé, of the monasteries and of the nunneries; the private penalties of the Inquisition's Scavenger's Daughter,proscription, persecution, bigotry, intolerance, shutting up of the Book of the Word. And do Protestants now mean to out-Jesuit the Jesuits? Do they mean to strike and not be seen? To be felt and not to be heard? To put a shudder upon humanity by the masks of mutes? Will they wear the monkish cowls? Will they inflict penalties at the polls without reasoning together with their fellows at the hustings? Will they proscribe? Persecute? Will they bloat up themselves into that bigotry which would burn Nonconformists? Will they not tolerate freedom of conscience, but doom dissenters, in secret conclave, to a forfeiture of civil privileges for a religious difference? Will they not translate the scripture of their faith? Will they visit us with dark lanterns and execute us by signs, and test oaths, and in secrecy ? Protestantism, forbid it!- (From an address in 1856, against the Know-Nothings.) Wiseman, Nicholas P. S., Cardinal land, 1802-1865.) (Eng The Church Bell-Of all musical instruments, it is by far the grandest, solemn or deep, or shrill and clear; or, still better, with both combined in a choral peal, it is the only instrument whose music can travel on the winds, can heave in noble swells upon the breeze, and can out-bellow the storm. It alone speaks to heaven as to earth, and scatters abroad its sounds, till in the distance they seem to come but by fragments and broken notes. Every other instrument creeps on earth, or sends its sounds skimming over its surface; but this pours it out from above, like the shower, or the light, or whatever comes from the higher regions to benefit those below. Indeed, it seems to call out from the middle space which heavenly messengers would occupy, to make proclamation to man; condescending to an inferior sphere, but not wholly deigning to soil themselves with earth; high enough to command, low enough to be understood. The Levite trumpet had something startling and military in it, that spoke of alarms and human passions; every other vocal instrument belongs to the world (excepting, perhaps, the noble organ, too huge and too delicately constructed for out-of-doors), and associates itself with profane amusements; but the solemn old bell has refused to lend itself for any such purpose, and as it swings to and fro, receiving its impulses from the temple of God below, talks of nothing but sacred things, and now reproves the laggard, and now cheers the sorrowful, and now chides the over-mirthful. Woodbury, Levi (American, 1789-1851.) The Tariff of 1842-So, if you have the right to give protection to one branch of industry, as a legitimate constitutional end under the powers of the Federal Government, and not merely as an incidental consequence of duties imposed for revenue, why not march manfully to such protection in a separate bill? Why not, as in France, expressly prohibit what comes from abroad, and competes with our manufactures, which it is deemed so important to cherish? Why not add, likewise, direct bounties in other cases, where found necessary to sustain them? That would at least be intelligible, aboveboard, and the country would see and understand what Congress was really doing; and that policy would not, as in this case, by an unnatural combination, embarrass or endanger the only avowed object of this measure on its face,which is, to raise revenue.-(From a speech in the U. S. Senate, in August, 1842.) Woolworth, James M. (American, Contemporaneous.) Individual Liberty-«Glittering generalities," a most brilliant advocate called the selfevident truths of the Declaration. Possibly so; indeed, certainly so, if you stop with that instrument. But when they were realized in the conscience, and embedded in the moral constitution of the people, and interwoven with all the filaments of the heart, so as to give tone and temper to the common life, and appear and reappear in the very efflorescence of popular sentiments, instincts, impulses, emotions, and passions, they became transcendent, vital, and all-governing facts. And so it is not strange, it is just what we should expect that these "glittering generalities » were more particularly stated and defined in the Constitution, in other words, to be sure, but words of the same meaning, sense, and import; that is to say, no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; no State shall deny to any person the equal protection of the laws; private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation; and the many other clauses, by which these fundamental rights, privileges, immunities, and franchises are assured; such as those guaranteeing free elections, free speech, justice administered without denial or delay, the privileges of the habeas corpus, trial by a jury of the vicinage, and so on and so on. And thus, reversing our steps, we trace these mandates, prohibitions, and guarantees of our constitutions back to the comprehensive phrase of the Declaration of Independence, that governments are instituted to the end that each and every man may exercise all his faculties in whatever way he may, according to his own judgment, choose, so as to derive from them his |