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DISCOURSE 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
 
 FACULTY, STUDENTS, AID ALUJINI 
 
 OF 
 
 DARTMOUTH COLLEGE, 
 
 ON 
 
 THE DAY PRECEDING COMMENCEIMENT, JULY 27, 1853, 
 
 COMMEMORATIVE OP 
 
 DANIEL AVEBSTER 
 
 BY 
 
 RUFUS CHOATE, 
 
 rUBLISHED BY REQUEST. 
 
 BOSTON AND CAMBRIDGE: 
 JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY 
 
 1853. 
 
 • 
 
. Wf C S 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congi-ess, in tlie j-ear 1853, by 
 
 JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Disti-ict of Massachusetts. 
 
 In exchange 
 MAR 2 19^& 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: 
 
 ALLEN AND F AUXIIAM, TEINTERS. 
 
DISCOURSE. 
 
 It would be a straiiQ-e neo-lect of a beautiful and 
 approved custom of the schools of learning, and of one 
 of the most pious and appropriate of the offices of liter- 
 ature, if the college in which the intellectual life of 
 Daniel Webster began, and to which his name imparts 
 charm and illustration, should give no formal expression 
 to her grief in the common sorrow ; if she should not 
 draw near, of the most sad, in the procession of the 
 bereaved, to the tomb at the sea, nor find, in all her 
 classic shades, one affectionate and grateful leaf to 
 set in the garland with which they have bound the 
 brow of her child, the mightiest departed. Others 
 mourn and praise him by his more distant and more 
 general titles to fame and remembrance ; his supre- 
 macy of intellect, his statesmanship of so many years, 
 his eloquence of reason and of the heart, his love 
 of country incorruptible, conscientious, and ruling every 
 hour and act ; that greatness combined of genius, 
 of character, of manner, of place, of achievement, which 
 w^as just now among us, and is not, and yet lives still 
 and evermore. You come, his cherishing mother, to 
 own a closer tie, to indulge an emotion more personal 
 
and more fond^ — grief and exultation contending for 
 mastery, as in the bosom of the desolated parent, whose 
 tears could not hinder him from exclaiming, " I would 
 not exchange my dead son for any living one of Chris- 
 tendom." 
 
 Many places in our American world have spoken his 
 eulogy. To all places the service was befitting, for " his 
 renown, is it not of the treasures of the whole country?" 
 To some it belonged, with a strong local propriety, to 
 discharge it. In the halls of Congress, where the majes- 
 tic form seems ever to stand and the deep tones to 
 linger, the decorated scene of his larger labors and most 
 diffusive glory ; in the courts of law, to whose gladsome 
 light he loved to return, — putting on again the robes Of 
 that profession ancient as magistracy, noble as virtue, 
 necessary as justice, — in which he found the beginning 
 of his honors ; in Faneuil Hall, whose air breathes and 
 burns of him ; in the commercial cities, to whose pur- 
 suits his diplomacy secured a peaceful sea ; in the cities 
 of the inland, around whom his capacious public affec- 
 tions, and wise discernment, aimed ever to develop the 
 uncounted resources of that other, and that larger, and 
 that newer America ; in the pulpit, whose place among 
 the higher influences which exalt a state, our guide in 
 life, our consolation in death, he appreciated profoundly, 
 and vindicated by weightiest argument and testimony, 
 of whose offices, it is among the fittest, to mark and 
 point the moral of the great things of the world, the 
 excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power pass- 
 ing away as the pride of the wave, — passing from our 
 
eye to take on immortality ; in these places, and such as 
 these, there seemed a reason beyond, and other, than 
 the universal calamity, for such honors of the grave. 
 But if so, how fit a place is this for such a service ! We 
 are among the scenes where the youth of Webster 
 awoke first, and fully, to the life of the mind. We stand, 
 as it were, at the sources, physical, social, moral, intellec- 
 tual, of that exceeding greatness. Some now here saw 
 that youth ; almost it was yours, Nilum parvum videre. 
 Some, one of his instructors certainly, some possibly of 
 his class mates, or nearest college friends, some of the 
 books he read, some of the apartments in which he 
 studied, are here. We can almost call up from their 
 habitation in the past, or in the fancy, the whole spiritual 
 circle which environed that time of his life ; the opinions 
 he had embraced ; the theories of mind, of religion, of 
 morals, of philosophy, to which he had surrendered him- 
 self; the canons of taste and criticism which he had 
 accepted; the great authors whom he loved best; the 
 trophies which began to disturb his sleep ; the facts of 
 history which he had learned, believed, and begun to 
 interpret ; the shapes of hope and fear in which imagi- 
 nation began to bring before him the good and evil of the 
 future. Still the same outward world is around you, 
 and above you. The sweet and solemn flow of the river 
 gleaming through intervale here and there ; margins 
 and samples of the same old woods, but thinned and re- 
 tiring ; the same range of green hills yonder, tolerant 
 of culture to the top, but shaded then by primeval 
 forests, on whose crest the last rays of sunset lingered ; 
 
 1=1: 
 
the summit of Ascutney ; the great northern light that 
 never sets ; the constelkitions that Avalk around, and 
 Avatch the pole ; the same nature, undecayed, unchang- 
 ing, is here. Almost, the idolatries of the old paganism 
 grow intelligible. " Magnorum fiuminiim capita veneranmr^^ 
 exclaims Seneca. " Siihita et ex ahrupto vasti amnis eruptio 
 aras hahet !" We stand at the fountain of a stream; we 
 stand rather at the place where a stream, sudden, and 
 from hidden springs, bursts to light ; and whence we 
 can follow it along and down, as we might our own Con- 
 necticut, and trace its resplendent pathway to the sea ; 
 and we venerate, and would almost build altars here. 
 If I may adapt the lofty language of one of the admirers 
 of William Pitt, we come naturally to this place, as if we 
 could thus recall every circumstance of splendid prepara- 
 tion which contributed to fit the great man for the scene 
 of his glory. We come, as if better here than elsewhere, 
 "we could watch, fold by fold, the bracing on of his 
 Yulcanian panoply, and observe with pleased anxiety, 
 the leading forth of that chariot which, borne on irre- 
 sistible wheels, and drawn by steeds of immortal race, is 
 to crush the necks of the mighty, and sweep away the 
 serried strength of armies." 
 
 And therefore it were fitter that I should ask of you, 
 than speak to you, concerning him. Little indeed any- 
 where can be added novv' to that wealth of eulogy that 
 has been heaped upon his tomb. Before he died even, 
 renowned in two hemispheres, in ours he seemed to be 
 known with a universal nearness of knowledge. He 
 walked so long and so conspicuously before the general 
 
eye ; liis actions, his opinions, on all things, which had 
 been large enough to agitate the public mind for the 
 last thirty years and more, had had importance and con- 
 sequences so remarkable — anxiously waited for, pas- 
 sionately canvassed, not adopted always into the parti- 
 cular measure, or deciding the particular vote of gov- 
 ernment or the country, yet sinking deep into the reason 
 of the people — a stream of influence whose fruits it is 
 yet too soon for political philosophy to appreciate com- 
 pletely ; an impression of his extraordinary intellectual 
 endowments, and of their peculiar superiority in that 
 most imposing and intelligible of all forms of manifesta- 
 tion, the moving of others' minds by speech — this im- 
 pression had grown so universal and fixed, and it had 
 kindled curiosity to hear him and read him, so wide 
 and so largely indulged ; his individuality altogether 
 was so absolute and so pronounced, the force of Avill no 
 less than the power of genius ; the exact type and fash- 
 ion of his mind, not less than its general magnitude, 
 were so distinctly shown through his musical and trans- 
 parent style ; the exterior of the man, the grand mystery 
 of brow and eye, the deep tones, the solemnity, the sover- 
 eignty, as of those who would build states, "where every 
 power and every grace did seem to set its seal," had been 
 made, by personal observation, by description, by the 
 exaggeration even of those who had felt the spell, by 
 art, the daguerreotype, and picture, and statue, so familiar 
 to the American eye, graven on the memory like the 
 Washington of Stuart; the narrative of the mere incidents 
 of his life had been so often told — by some so authenti- 
 
8 
 
 cally, and with such skill — and had been so literally 
 committed to hearty that when he died there seemed to 
 be little left but to say when and how his change came ; 
 with what dignity, with what possession of himself, with 
 what loving thought for others, with what gratitude to 
 God, uttered with unfaltering voice, that it was appoint- 
 ed to him there to die ; to say how thus, leaning on the 
 rod and staJBf of the jDromise, he took his way into the 
 great darkness undismayed, till death should be swal- 
 lowed up of life ; and then to relate how they laid him 
 in that simple grave, and turning and pausing and join- 
 ing their voices to the voices of the sea, bade him hail 
 and farewell. 
 
 x\nd yet I hardly know what there is in public biog- 
 raphy, what there is in literature, to be compared, in its 
 kind, with the variety and beauty and adequacy of the 
 series of discourses through which the love and grief, 
 and deliberate and reasoning admiration of America for 
 this great man, have been uttered. Little, indeed, there 
 would be for me to say, if I were capable of the light 
 ambition of proposing to omit all which others have said 
 on this theme before, — little to add if I sought to say 
 any thing wholly new. 
 
 I have thought, perhaps the place where I was to 
 speak suggested the topic, that before we approach 
 the ultimate and historical greatness of Mr. Webster, in 
 its two chief departments, and attempt to appreciate by 
 what qualities of genius and character, and what suc- 
 cession of action he attained it, there might be an 
 interest in going back of all this, so to say, and pausing 
 
9 
 
 a few moments upon bis youth. I include in that 
 designation the period from his birth, on the eighteenth 
 day of January, 1782, until 1805, when, twenty- three 
 years of age, he declined the clerkship of his father's 
 court, and dedicated himself irrevocably to the profes- 
 sion of the law, and the chances of a summons to less 
 or more of public life. These twenty-three years we 
 shall call the youth of Webster. Its incidents are few 
 and well known, and need not long detain us. 
 
 Until May, 1796, beyond the close of his fourteenth 
 year, he lived at home, attending the schools of masters 
 Chase and Tappan, successively; at work sometimes 
 and sometimes at play like any boy ; but finding 
 alreadj^, as few beside him did, the stimulations and the 
 food of intellectual life in the social library ; drinking 
 in, unawares, from the moral and physical aspects about 
 him, the lesson and the power of contention and self- 
 trust ; and learning how much grander than the forest- 
 bending to the long storm; or the silver and cherishing 
 Merrimack swollen to inundation, and turning, as love 
 become madness, to ravage the subject intervale ; or 
 old woods sullenly retiring before axe and fire — learn- 
 ing to feel how much grander than these Avas the com- 
 ing in of civilization as there he saw it, courage, labor, 
 patience, plain living, heroical acting, high thinking, 
 beautiful feeling, the fear of God, love of country, and 
 neighborhood, and family, and all that form of human 
 life of which his father, and mother, and sisters, and 
 brother, were the endeared exemplification. In the 
 arms of that circle, on parent knees, or later, in inter- 
 
10 
 
 vals of work or play, the future American Statesman 
 acquired the idea of country, and became conscious of 
 a national tie and a national life. There and then, 
 something, glimpses, a little of the romance, the sweet 
 and bitter memories of a soldier and borderer of the 
 old colonial time and war, opened to the large dark 
 eyes of the child ; memories of French and Indians 
 stealing up to the very place where the story was 
 telling ; of men shot down at the plough, within sight 
 of the old log house ; of the massacre at Fort William 
 and Mary ; of Stark, of Howe, of Wolfe falling in the 
 arms of victory ; and then of the next age, its grander 
 scenes and higher names ; of the father's part at Ben- 
 nington and White Plains; of Lafayette and Wash- 
 ington ; and then of the Constitution, just adopted, and 
 the first President, just inaugurated, with services of 
 public thanksgiving to Almighty God, and the union 
 just sprung into life, all radiant as morning, harbinger 
 and promise of a brighter day. You have heard how 
 in that season he bought and first read the Constitution 
 on the cotton handkerchief A small cannon, I think his 
 biograi^hers say, was the ominous plaything of Napo- 
 leon's childhood. But this incident reminds us rather 
 of the youthful Luther, astonished and kindling over 
 the first Latin Bible he ever saw — or the still younger 
 Pascal, permitted to look into the Euclid, to whose 
 sublimities an irresistible nature had secretly attracted 
 him. Long before his fourteenth year, the mother first, 
 and then the father, and the teachers and the schools 
 and the little neighborhood, had discovered an extra- 
 
11 
 
 ordinary hope in the boy ; a purpose, a dream, not yet 
 confessed, of giving him an education began to be 
 cherished, and in May, 1796, at the age of a httle more 
 than fourteen, he was sent to Exeter. I have myself 
 heard a gentleman, long a leader of the Essex bar, and 
 eminent in public life, now no more, who was then a 
 pupil at the school, describe his large frame, superb face, 
 immature manners, and rustic dress, surmounted with a 
 student's gown, when first he came ; and say, too, how 
 soon and universally his capacity was owned. Who 
 does not wish that the glorious Buckminster could have 
 foreseen and witnessed the whole greatness, but cer- 
 tainly the renown of eloquence, which w^ere to come 
 to the young stranger, whom, choking, speechless, the 
 great fountain of feelings sealed as yet, he tried in vain 
 to encourage to declaim before the unconscious, bright 
 tribes of the school ? The influences of Exeter on him 
 were excellent, but his stay was brief In the winter 
 of 1796 he was at home again, and in February, 1797, 
 he was placed under the private tuition, and in the 
 family of. Rev. Mr. Wood, of Boscawen. It was on the 
 way with his father, to the house of Mr. Wood, that he 
 first heard with astonishment, that the parental love and 
 good sense had resolved on the sacrifice of giving him 
 an education at college. " I remember," he writes, 
 " the very hill we were ascending, through deep snows, 
 in a New England sleigh, when my father made his 
 purpose known to me. I could not speak. How could 
 he, I thought, with so large a family, and in such 
 narrow circumstances, think of incurring so great an 
 
12 
 
 expense for me ? A warm glow ran all over me, and 
 I lay my head on my fixther's shoulder and wept." 
 That speechlessness, that glow, those tears reveal to 
 us what his memory and consciousness could hardly do 
 to him, that already, somewhere, at some hour of day 
 or evening or night, as he read some page, or heard 
 some narrative, or saw some happier schoolfellow set 
 off from Exeter to begin his college life, the love of 
 mtellectual enjoyment, the ambition of intellectual 
 supremacy had taken hold of him ; that, when or how 
 he knew not, but before he was aware of it, the hope 
 of obtaining a liberal education and leading a profes- 
 sional life had come to be his last thought before he 
 slept ; his first when he awoke ; and to shape his 
 dreams. Behold in them, too, his whole future. That 
 day, that hour, that very moment, from the deep snows 
 of that slow hill he set out on the long ascent that 
 bore him — " no step backward " — to the high places of 
 the world ! He remained under the tuition of Mr. Wood 
 until August, 1796, and then entered this college, where 
 he was, at the end of the full term of four years, gradu- 
 .ated in 1801. Of that college life 3^ou can tell me 
 more than I can tell you. It is the universal evidence 
 that it was distinguished by exemplary demeanor, by 
 reverence for religion, respect for instructors, and ob- 
 servance of law. We hear from all sources, too, that 
 it was distinguished by assiduous and various studies. 
 With the exception of one or two branches, for which 
 his imperfect preparation had failed to excite a taste, 
 he is reported to have addressed himself to the pre- 
 
.3 
 
 scribed tasks, and to have availed liimself of the whole 
 body of means of liberal culture appointed by the 
 government, with decorum and conscientiousness and 
 zeal. We hear more than this. The whole course of 
 traditions concerning his college life is full to prove two 
 facts. The first is, that his reading, general and various 
 far beyond the requirements of the faculty, or the 
 average capacity of that stage of the literary life, was 
 not solid and useful merely, which is vague commenda- 
 tion, but it was such as predicted and educated the 
 future statesman. In English literature, its finer parts, 
 its poetry and tasteful reading, I mean, he had read 
 much rather than many things, but he had read some- 
 what. That a young man of his emotional nature, full 
 of eloquent feeling, the germs of a fine taste, the ear 
 for the music of words, the eye for all beauty and all 
 sublimity already in extraordinary measure his, already 
 practising the art of composition, speech, and criticism, 
 should have recreated himself, as we know he did, with 
 Shakespeare, and Pope, and Addison ; with the great 
 romance of Defoe; with the more recent biographies 
 of Johnson, and his grand imitations of Juvenal ; with 
 the sweet and refined simplicity and abstracted observa- 
 tion of Goldsmith, mingled with sketches of homefelt 
 delight ; with the elegy of Gray, whose solcnui touches 
 soothed the thoughts or tested the consciousness of the 
 last hour; with the vigorous originality of the then 
 recent Cowper, whom he quoted when he came home, 
 as it proved, to die — this we should have expected. 
 But I have heard, and believe, that it was to another 
 
 2 
 
14 
 
 institution, more austere and cliaracteristic, that liis 
 own mind was irresistibly and instinctively even then 
 attracted. The conduct of what Locke calls the human 
 understanding ; the limits of human knowledge ; the 
 means of coming to the knowledge of the different 
 classes of truth ; the laws of thought ; the science of 
 proofs which is logic ; the science of morals ; the facts 
 of history; the spirit of laws; the conduct and aims 
 of reasonings in politics — these were the strong meat 
 that announced and began to train the great political 
 thinker and reasoner of a later day. 
 
 I have heard that he might oftener be found in some 
 solitary seat or walk, with a volume of Gordon's or 
 Ramsay's Revolution, or of the Federalist, or of Hume's 
 History of England, or of his Essays, or of Grotius, or 
 Puffendorf, or Cicero, or Montesquieu, or Locke, or Burke, 
 than with Virgil, or Shakespeare, or the Spectator. Of 
 the history of 02:)inions, in the department of philosophy, 
 he was already a curious student. The oration he deli- 
 vered before the United Fraternity, when he was gradu- 
 ated, treated that topic of opinion, under some aspects, 
 as I recollect from once reading the manuscript, with 
 copiousness, judgment, and enthusiasm; and some of his 
 ridicule of the Berkleian theory of the non-existence of 
 matter, I well remember, anticipated the sarcasm of a 
 later day on a currency all metallic, and on nullification 
 as a strictly constitutional remedy. 
 
 The other fact, as well established, by all we can ga- 
 ther of his life in College, is, that the fliculty, so trans- 
 cendent afterwards, of moving the minds of men by 
 
15 
 
 speech, was already developed and effective in a remark- 
 able degree. Ahvays there is a best writer and speaker 
 or two in College ; but this stereotyped designation 
 seems wholly inadequate to convey the impression he 
 made in his time. Many, now alive, have said that some 
 of his performances, having regard to his youth, his ob- 
 jects, his topics, his audience — one on the celebration 
 of Independence, one a eulogy on a student much be- 
 loved — produced an instant effect, and left a recollec- 
 tion, to which nothing else could be compared ) which 
 could be felt and admitted only, not explained; but 
 Avhich now they know were the first sweet tones of in- 
 explicable but delightful influence, of that voice, uncon- 
 firmed as yet, and unassured, whose more consummate 
 expression charmed and suspended the soul of a nation. 
 To read these essays now disappoints you somewhat. 
 As Quintillian says of Hortensius, Apparct jplacidsse ali- 
 qiiid CO diccnte quod legentcs non invenmius. Some spell 
 there was in the spoken word which the reader misses. 
 To find the secret of that spell, you must recall the 
 youth of Webster. Beloved fondly, and appreciated by 
 that circle, as much as by any audience, larger, more 
 exacting, more various, and more fit, which afterwards 
 he found anywhere ; known to be manly, just, pure, gen- 
 erous, affectionate ; known and felt by his strong will, 
 his high aims, his commanding character, his imcommon 
 and difficult studies -, he had every heart's warmest good 
 wish Avith him when he rose ; and then, when — un- 
 checked by any very severe theory of taste, unoppressed 
 by an}' dread of saying something incompatible with his 
 
16 
 
 place and fame, or unequal to himself — he just un- 
 locked the deep spring of that eloquent feeling, which, 
 in connection with his power of mere intellect, was such 
 a stupendous psychological mystery, and gave heart and 
 soul, not to the conduct of an argument, or the investi- 
 gation and display of a truth of the reason, but to a 
 fervid, beautiful, and prolonged emotion, to grief, to 
 eulogy, to the patriotism of scholars — why need we 
 doubt or wonder, as they looked on that presiding brow, 
 the eye large, sad, unworldly, incapable to be fathomed, 
 the lip and chin, whose firmness as of chiselled, perfect 
 marble, profoundest sensibility alone caused ever to 
 tremble, why wonder at the traditions of the charm 
 which they owned ; and the fime which they even then 
 predicted ? 
 
 His college life closed in 1801. For the statement 
 that he had thought of selecting the profession of the- 
 ology, the surviving members of his family, his son and 
 his brother-in-law, assure me that there is no foundation. 
 Certainly, he began at once the study of the law, and 
 interrupted only by the necessity of teaching an acade- 
 my a few months, with which he united the recreation 
 of recording deeds, he prosecuted it at Salisbury in the 
 office of Mr. Thompson, and at Boston in the office of 
 Mr. Gore, until March, 1805, v/hen, resisting the sharp 
 temptation of a clerkship, and an annual salary of fifteen 
 hundred dollars, he was admitted to the bar. 
 
 And so he has put on the robe of manhood, and has 
 come to do the work of life. Of his youth there is no 
 need to say more. It had been pure, happ}^, strenuous ; 
 
17 
 
 in many things privileged. Tlie influence of home, of 
 his father, and the excellent mother, and that noble 
 brother, whom he loved so dearly, and mourned with 
 such sorrow — these influences on his heart, principles, 
 will, aims, were elevated and strong. At an early age, 
 comparatively, the then great distinction of liberal edu- 
 cation was his. His college life was brilliant and without 
 a stain ; and in moving his admission to the bar, Mr. Gore 
 presented him as one of extraordinary promise. 
 
 With prospects bright, upon the ■world he came — 
 Pure love of virtue, strong desii-e of fame ; 
 Men watched the way his lofty mind would take, 
 And all foretold the progress he would make. 
 
 And yet, if on some day as that season was drawing to 
 its close, it had been foretold to him, that before his life 
 — prolonged to little more than threescore years and 
 ten — should end, he should see that country, in wdiich 
 he was coming to act his part, expanded across a conti- 
 nent ; the thirteen states of 1801 multiplied to thirty- 
 one ; the territory of the Northwest and the great valley 
 below sown full of those stars of empire ; the Mississippi 
 forded, and the Sabine, and Rio Grande, and the Nueces ; 
 the ponderous gates of the Rocky Mountains opened to 
 shut no more ; the great tranquil sea become our sea ; 
 her area seven times larger, her people five times more 
 in number ; that through all experiences of trial, the 
 madness of party, the injustice of foreign powers, the 
 vast enlargement of her borders, the antagonisms of 
 interior interest and feeling — the spirit of nationality 
 
18 
 
 would grow stronger still and more plastic ; that the 
 tide of American feeling would run ever fuller ; that 
 her agriculture would grow more scientific ; her arts 
 more various and instructed, and better rewarded ; 
 her commerce winged to a wider and still wider flight ; 
 that the part she would play in human affairs would 
 grow nobler ever, and more recognized ; that in this 
 vast growth of national greatness time would be found 
 for the higher necessities of the soul ; that her j)opular 
 and her higher education would go on advancing ; that 
 her charities and all her enterprises of philanthropy 
 w'ould go on enlarging ; that her age of lettered glory 
 should find its auspicious dawn — and then it had been also 
 foretold him that even so, with her growth and strength, 
 should his fame grow and be established and cherished, 
 there where she should garner up her heart ; that by 
 long gradations of service and labor he should rise to 
 be, before he should taste of death, of the peerless 
 among her great ones ; that he should win the double 
 honor, and wear the double wreath of professional and 
 public supremac}^ ; that he should become her wisest to 
 counsel and her most eloquent to persuade ; that he 
 should come to be called the Defender of the Constitu- 
 tion and the preserver of honorable peace ; that the 
 "austere glory of suffering" to save the Union should 
 be his ; that his death, at the summit of greatness, on 
 the verge of a ripe and venerable age, should be distin- 
 guished, less by the flags at half-mast on ocean and lake, 
 less by the minute-gun, less by the public j^i'ocession, 
 and the appointed eulogy, than by sudden j)aleness over- 
 spreading all faces, by gushing tears, by sorrow, thought- 
 
19 
 
 ful, boding, silent, the sense of desolateness, as if renown 
 and grace were dead — as if the hunter's path, and the 
 sailor's in the great solitude of wilderness or sea, hence- 
 forward were more lonely and less safe than before — 
 had this prediction been whispered, how calmly had 
 that j^erfect sobriety of mind put it all aside as a per- 
 nicious or idle dream ! Yet, in the fulfilment of that 
 prediction is told the remaining story of his life. 
 
 It does not come within the plan which I have 
 marked out for this discourse to repeat the incidents of 
 that subsequent history. The more conspicuous are 
 known to you and the whole American world. Minuter 
 details the time does not permit, nor the occasion re- 
 quire. Some quite general views of wdiat he became 
 and achieved ; some attempt to appreciate that intellec- 
 tual power, and force of will, and elaborate culture, and 
 that power of eloquence, so splendid and remarkable, 
 by which he wrought his work ; some tribute to the en- 
 dearing and noble parts of his character ; and some 
 attempt to vindicate the political morality by which his 
 public life was guided, even to its last great act, are all 
 that I propose, and much more than I can hope worthily 
 to accomplish. 
 
 In coming, then, to consider what he became and 
 achieved, I have always thought it was not easy to lay 
 too much stress, in the first place, on that realization of 
 wdiat might have been regarded incompatible forms of 
 superiority, and that exemplification of what might have 
 been regarded incompatible gifts or acquirements — 
 "rare in their separate excellence, wonderful in their 
 
20 
 
 special combination" — which meet lis in him every- 
 where. Remark, first, that eminence, rare, if not unpre- 
 cedented, of the first rate, in the two substantially dis- 
 tinct and unkindred professions — that of the law, and 
 that of pubhc life. In surveying that ultimate and 
 finished greatness in which he stands before you in his 
 full stature and at his best, this double and blended 
 eminence is the first thing that fixes the eye, and the 
 last. When he died he was first of American lawyers, 
 and first of American statesmen. In both characters he 
 continued — discharging the foremost part in each, 
 down to the falling of the awful curtain. Both char- 
 acters he kept distinct — the habits of mind, the forms 
 of reasoning, the nature of the proofs, the style of elo- 
 quence. Neither hurt nor changed the other. How 
 much his understanding was "quickened and invigo- 
 rated " by the law, I have often heard him acknowledge 
 and explain. But how, in spite of the law, was that 
 mind, by other felicity, and other culture, " opened and 
 liberalized " also ! How few of what are called the bad 
 intellectual habits of the bar he carried into the duties 
 of statesmanship ! His interpretations of the consti- 
 tution and of treaties ; his expositions of public law — 
 how little do you find in them, where, if anywhere, 
 you would expect it, of the mere ingenuity, the moving 
 of " vermiculate questions," the word-catching, the schol- 
 astic subtlety which, in the phrase of his memorable 
 quotation, 
 
 *' Can sever and divide 
 A hair 'twixt north and north-west side," — 
 
21 
 
 ascribed by satire to tbe profession ; and how much of 
 its truer function, and nobler power of calling, history, 
 language, the moral sentiments, reason, common sense, 
 the high spirit of magnanimous nationality, to the search 
 of truth ! How little do we find in his politics of an- 
 other bad habit of the profession, the worst " idol of the 
 cave," a morbid, unreasoning, and regretful passion for 
 the past, that bends and weeps over the stream, running 
 irreversibly, because it will not return, and will not 
 pause, and gives back to vanity every hour a changed 
 and less beautiful face ! We ascribe to him certainly a 
 sober and conservative habit of mind, and such he had. 
 Such a habit the study and practice of the law doubtless 
 does not impair. But his was my Lord Bacon's conser- 
 vatism. He held with him, " that antiquity deserveth 
 this reverence, that men should make a stand thereupon, 
 and discover what is the best way ; but when the disco- 
 very is well taken, then to make progression." He 
 would keep the Union according to the Constitution, 
 not as a relic, a memorial, a tradition — not for what it 
 has done, though that kindled his gratitude and excited 
 his admiration — but for what it is now and hereafter 
 to do, when adapted by a wise practical philosophy to 
 a wider and higher area, to larger numbers, to severer 
 and more glorious probation. Who better than he has 
 grasped and displayed the advancing tendencies and 
 enlarging duties of America ? Who has caught — whose 
 eloquence, whose genius, whose counsels, have caught 
 more adequately the genuine inspiration of our destiny ? 
 Who has better expounded by what moral and prudcn- 
 
22 
 
 tial policy, by what improved culture of heart and rea- 
 son, by -what true worship of God, by what good faith 
 to all other nations, the dangers of that destiny may be 
 disarmed, and its large promise laid hold on ? 
 
 And while the lawyer did not hurt the statesman, the 
 statesman did not hurt the lawyer. More ; the states- 
 man did not modify, did not unrobe, did not tinge, the 
 lawyer. It would not be to him that the epigram could 
 have application, where the old Latin satirist makes the 
 client complain that his lawsuit is concerning trcs capellce 
 — three kids ; and that his advocate with large disdain of 
 them, is haranguing with loud voice and both hands, 
 about the slaughters of Cannas, the war of Mithridates, 
 the perjuries of Hannibal. I could never detect that in 
 his discussions of law he did not just as much recognize 
 authority, just as anxiously seek for adjudications old 
 and new in his favor, just as closely sift them and col- 
 late them, that he might bring them to his side if he 
 could, or leave them ambiguous and harmless if he could 
 not ; that he did not just as rigorously observe the pe- 
 culiar mode which that science employs in passing from 
 the known to the unknown, the peculiar logic of the 
 law, as if he had never investigated any other than le- 
 gal truth by any other organon than legal logic in his 
 life. Peculiarities of legal reasoning he certainly had, 
 belonging to the peculiar structure and vast power of 
 his mind ; more original thought, more discourse of prin- 
 ciples, less of that mere subtlety of analj^sis, which is not 
 restrained by good sense, and the higher power of duly 
 tempering and combining one truth in a practical sci- 
 

 ence with other truths, from absurdity or mischief, but 
 still it was all strict and exact legal reasoning. The 
 long habit of employing the more popular methods, the 
 probable and plausible conjectures, the approximations, 
 the compromises of deliberative discussion, did not seem 
 to have left the least trace on his vocabulary, or his rea- 
 sonings, or his demeanor. No doubt, as a part of his 
 whole culture, it helped to give enlargement and gen- 
 eral power and elevation of mind; but the sweet stream 
 passed under the bitter sea, the bitter sea pressed on the 
 sweet stream, and each flowed unmingled, unchanged in 
 taste or color. 
 
 I have said that this double eminence is rare, if not 
 unprecedented. We do no justice to Mr. Webster, if 
 we do not keep this ever in mind. How many exem- 
 plifications of it do you find in British public life ? The 
 Earl of Chatham, Burke, Fox, Sheridan, Windham, Pitt, 
 Grattan, Canning, Peel — were they also, or any one, the 
 acknowledged leader in Westminster Hall or on the 
 circuit ? And, on the other hand, would you say that the 
 mere parliamentary career of Mansfield, or Thurlow, or 
 Dunning, or Erskine, or Camden, or Curran, would com- 
 pare in duration, constancy, variety of efibrt, the range 
 of topics discussed, the fulness, extent and allluence of 
 the discussion, the influence exerted, the space filled, 
 the senatorial character completely realized — with his? 
 In our own public life it is easier to find a parallel. 
 Great names crowd on us in each department ; greater, 
 or more loved, or more venerable, no annals can show. 
 
24 
 
 But how few, even here, have gathered the double 
 
 wreath, and the blended fame ! 
 
 And now, having observed the fact of this combina- 
 tion of quality and excellence scarcely compatible, 
 inspect for a moment each by itself 
 
 The professional life of Mr. AVebster began in the 
 spring of 1805. It may not be said to have ended 
 until he died; but I do not know that it happened 
 to him to appear in court, for the trial of a cause, after 
 his argument of the Goodyear patent for improvements 
 in the preparation of India Eubber, in Trenton, in 
 March, 1852. 
 
 There I saw, and last heard him. The thirty-four 
 years which had elapsed since, a member of this Col- 
 lege, at home for health, I first saw^ and heard him in 
 the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, in the county of 
 Essex, defending Jackman, accused of the robbery of 
 Goodrich, had in almost all things changed him. The 
 raven hair, the vigorous, full frame and firm tread, the 
 eminent but severe beauty of the countenance, not yet 
 sealed with the middle age of man, the exuberant 
 demonstration of all sorts of power, which so marked 
 him at first — for these, as once they were, I explored 
 in vain. Yet how far higher was the interest that 
 attended him now: his sixty-nine years robed, as it 
 were, with honor and with love, with associations of 
 great service done to the state, and of great fixme 
 gathered and safe; and then the perfect mastery of 
 the cause in its legal and scientific principles, and in 
 
25 
 
 all its facts ; the admirable clearness and order in 
 which his propositions were advanced successively; the 
 power, the occasional high ethical tone, the appropriate 
 eloquence, by which they were made probable and 
 persuasive to the judicial reason, these announced the 
 leader of the American bar, with every faculty and 
 every accomplishment by wdiich he had won that proud 
 title, wholly unimpaired ; the eye not dim nor the 
 natural force abated. 
 
 I cannot here and now trace, with any minuteness, 
 the course of Mr. Webster at the bar during these 
 forty-eight years from the opening of his office in 
 Boscawen ; nor convey any impression whatever of the 
 aggregate of labor which that course imposed ; or of 
 the intellectual power Avhich it exacted ; nor indicate 
 the stages of his rise ; nor define the time when his 
 position at the summit of the profession may be said 
 to have become completely vindicated. You know, in 
 general, that he began the practice of the law in New 
 Hampshire in the spring of 180-5; that he prosecuted 
 it, here, in its severest school, with great diligence, and 
 brilliant success, among competitors of larger experi- 
 ence and of consummate abilitv, until 1816 : that he 
 then removed to Massachusetts, and that there, in the 
 courts of that State, and of other States, and in those 
 of the general government, and especially in the Su- 
 preme Court sitting at Washington, he pursued it as 
 the calling by which he was to earn his daily bread, 
 until he died. You know indeed that he did not 
 pursue it exactly as one pursues it who confines himself 
 
 3 
 
2G 
 
 to an office ; and seeks to do the current and miscella- 
 neous business of a single bar. His professional em- 
 ployment, as I have often heard him say, was very 
 much the preparation of opinions on important ques- 
 tions, presented from every part of the country; and 
 the trial of causes. This kind of professional life 
 allowed him seasonable vacations -, and it accommodated 
 itself somewhat to the exactions of his other and public 
 life. But it was all one long and continued practice 
 of the law ; the professional character was never put 
 off; nor the professional robe long unworn to the 
 last. 
 
 You know, too, his character as a jurist. This topic 
 has been recently and separately treated, with great 
 ability, by one in a high degree competent to the task ; 
 the late learned Chief Justice of New Hampshire, now 
 Professor of Law at Cambridge ; and it needs no addi- 
 tional illustration from me. Yet, let me say, that 
 herein, also, the first thing which strikes you is the 
 union of diverse, and, as I have said, what might have 
 been regarded incompatible excellences. I shall sub- 
 mit it to the judgment of the universal American bar, 
 if a carefully prepared opinion of Mr. Webster, on any 
 question of law whatever in the whole range of our 
 jurisprudence, would not be^accepted everywhere as of 
 the most commanding authority, and as the highest 
 evidence of legal truth? I submit it to that same judg- 
 ment, if for many years before his death, they would 
 not have rather chosen to intrust the maintenance and 
 enforcement of any important proposition of law what- 
 
27 
 
 ever, before any legal tribunal of character whatever, 
 to his best exertion of his faculties, than to any other 
 ability which the whole wealth of the profession could 
 supply ? 
 
 And this alone completes the description of a lawyer 
 and a forensic orator of the first rate ; but it does not 
 complete the description of his professional character. 
 By the side of all this, so to speak, there was that whole 
 class of qualities which made him for any description of 
 trial by jury whatever, criminal or civil, by even a more 
 universal assent, foremost. For that form of trial no 
 faculty was unused or needless; but you were most 
 struck there to see the unrivalled legal reason put off, 
 as it were, and reappear in the form of a robust com- 
 mon sense and eloquent feeling, applying itself to an 
 exciting subject of business; to see the knowledge of 
 men and life by which the Msehood and veracity of 
 witnesses, the probabilities and improbabilities of trans- 
 actions as sworn to, were discerned in a moment ; the 
 direct, plain, forciljle speech ; the consummate narrative, 
 a department which he had particularly cultivated, and 
 in which no man ever excelled him ; the easy and per- 
 fect analysis by which he conveyed his side of the cause 
 to the mind of the jury ; the occasional gush of strong 
 feeling, indignation, or pity ; the masterly, yet natural 
 way, in which all the moral emotions of which his cause 
 was susceptible, were called to use, the occasional sove- 
 reignty of dictation to which his convictions seemed 
 spontaneously to rise. His efforts in trials by jury com- 
 pose a more traditional and evanescent part of his pro- 
 
28 
 
 fessioiical reputation than his arguments on questions of 
 law ; but I ahnost think they ^Yere his mightiest profes- 
 sional disphi}s, or displays of any kind, after all. 
 
 One such I stood in a relation to witness with a com- 
 paratively easy curiosity, and yet with intimate and 
 professional knowledge of all the embarrassments of the 
 case. It was the trial of John Francis Knapp, charged 
 with being present, aiding, and abetting in the murder 
 of Joseph White, in which Mr. Webster conducted the 
 prosecution for the Commonwealth j in the same year 
 with his reply to Mr. Hayne, in the Senate ; and a few 
 months later ; and when I bring to mind the incidents 
 of that trial : the necessity of proving that the prisoner 
 was near enough to the chamber in which the murder 
 was being committed by another hand to aid in the act ; 
 and was there with the intention to do so, and thus in 
 point of law did aid in it — because mere accessorial 
 guilt was not enough to convict him ; the difficulty of 
 proving this — because the nearest point to which the 
 evidence could trace him was still so distant as to war- 
 rant a pretty formidable doubt whether mere curiosity 
 had not carried him thither ; and whether he could in 
 any useful, or even conceivable manner have cooperated 
 with the actual murderer, if he had intended to do so ; 
 and because the only mode of rendering it proljable 
 that he was there with a purpose of guilt was by show- 
 ing that he was one of the parties to a conspiracy of 
 murder, whose very existence, actors, and objects, had to 
 be made out by the collation of the widest possible 
 range of circumstances — some of them pretty loose — 
 
29 
 
 and even if he was a conspirator it did not quite neces- 
 sarily follow that any active participation was assigned 
 to him for his part, any more than to his brother, who, 
 confessedly took no such part — the great number of 
 witnesses to be examined and cross-examined, a duty 
 devolving wholly on him ; the quick and sound judg- 
 ment demanded and supplied to determine what to use 
 and what to reject of a mass of rather unmanageable 
 materials; the points in the law of evidence to be 
 argued - — in the course of which he made an appeal to 
 the Bench on the complete impunity which the rejection 
 of the prisoner's confession would give to the murder, 
 in a style of dignity and energy, I should rather say, of 
 grandeur which I never heard him equal before or after; 
 the high ability and fidelity with wdiich every part of 
 the defence was conducted ; and the great final sum- 
 ming up to which he brought, and in which he needed, 
 the utmost exertion of every faculty he possessed to 
 persuade the jury that the obligation of that duty the 
 sense of which, he said, " pursued us ever : it is omni- 
 present like the Deity : if we take the wings of the 
 morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, 
 duty performed or duty violated is still with us for our 
 happiness or misery " — to persuade them that this oljli- 
 gation demanded that on his proofs they should convict 
 the prisoner : to which he brought first the profound be- 
 lief of his guilt, without which he coidd not have prose- 
 cuted him; then skill consummate in inspiring thorn 
 with a desire or a willino'ncss to be instrumental in de- 
 tecting that guilt ; and to lean on him in the efibrt to 
 
 o • 
 
30 
 
 detect it ; then every resource of professional alnlitj to 
 break the force of the propositions of the defence, and 
 to estabhsh the trnth of his own : inferring a conspiracy 
 to which the prisoner was a party, from circumstances 
 acutely ridiculed by the able counsel opposing him as 
 "Stuff" — but W'Oven by him into strong and uniform 
 tissue ; and then bridging over from the conspiracy to 
 the not very necessary inference that the particular con- 
 spirator on trial was at his post, in execution of it, 
 to aid and abet — the picture of the murder with Avhich 
 he begun — not for rhetorical dis^^lay, but to inspire 
 solemnity, and horror, and a desire to detect and punish 
 for justice and for security; the sublime exhortation to 
 duty with which he closed — resting on the universality, 
 and authoritativeness and eternity of its obligation — 
 which left in every juror's mind the impression that it 
 was the duty of convicting in this particular case the 
 sense of which would be with him in the hour of death, 
 and in the judgment, and forever — with these recollec- 
 tions of that trial I cannot help thinking it a more diffi- 
 cult and higher effort of mind than that more ilimous 
 •' Oration for the Crown." 
 
 It would be not unpleasing nor inappropriate to pause, 
 and recall the names of some of that succession of com- 
 petitors by whose rivalry the several stages of his pro- 
 fessional life were honored and exercised ; and of some 
 of the eminent judicial persons who presided over tliat 
 various and high contention. Time scarcely permits 
 this; but in the briefest notice I must take occasion to 
 say that perhaps the most important influence — ccr- 
 
31 
 
 tainly the most important early influence — on his pro- 
 fessianal traits and fortunes, was that exerted hy the 
 great general abilities, impressive character, and legal 
 genius of Mr. Mason. Who he was you all know. How 
 much the jurisprudence of New Hampshire owes to him ; 
 what deep traces he left on it; how much he did to 
 promote the culture, and to preserve the integrity of the 
 old common law ; to adapt it to your wants, and }- our 
 institutions; and to construct a system of practice by 
 which it was administered with extraordinary energy 
 and effectiveness for the discovery of truth, and the 
 enforcement of right ; you of the legal profession of this 
 state will ever be proud to acknowledge. Another 
 forum in a neighboring commonwealth, witnessed and 
 profited by the last labors, and enlarged studies of the 
 consummate lawyer and practiser ; and at an earlier day 
 the Senate, the country, had recognized his vast practi- 
 cal wisdom and sagacity, the fruit of the highest intel- 
 lectual endowments, matured thought, and profound 
 observation ; his fidelity to the obligations of that party 
 connection to which he was attached; his fidelity through 
 all his life, still more conspicuous, and still more admi- 
 rable, to the hig-her oblig-ations of a considerate and en- 
 larged patriotism. He had been more than fourteen 
 years at the bar, when Mr. Webster came to it ; he dis- 
 cerned instantly wliat manner of man his youthful com- 
 petitor was ; he admitted him to his intimate friendship ; 
 and paid him the unequivocal compliment, and did him 
 the real kindness of compelling him to the utmost exer- 
 tion of his diligence and capacity by calling out against 
 
32 
 
 him all his own. '• The proprieties of this occasion " — 
 these are Mr. Webster's words in presenting the resolu- 
 tions of the Suffolk Bar upon Mr. Mason's death — " com- 
 pel me, with whatever reluctance, to refrain from the 
 indulgence of the personal feelings which arise in my 
 heart upon the death of one with whom I have culti- 
 vatad a sincere, affectionate, and unbroken friendship from 
 the day when I commenced my own professional career 
 to the closing hour of his life. I will not say of the ad- 
 vantaixes which I have derived from his intercourse and 
 conversation all that Mr. Fox said of Edmund Burke, 
 but I am bound to say, that of my own professional dis- 
 cipline and attainments, whatever they may be, I owe 
 much to that close attention to the discharge of my du- 
 ties which I was compelled to pay for nine successive 
 years, from day to day, by Mr. Mason's efforts* and ai'gu- 
 ments at the same bar. I must have been unintelligent 
 indeed, not to have learned something from the constant 
 displays of that power which I had so much occasion to 
 see and feel." 
 
 I reckon next to his, for the earlier time of his life, 
 the influence of the learned and accomplished Smith ; 
 and next to these — some may believe greater — is that 
 of Mr. Justice Story. That extraordinary person had 
 been admitted to the bar in Essex in Massachusetts in 
 1801 ; and he was engaged in many trials in the county 
 of Eockini>-liam in this state before Mr. Webster had as- 
 sumed his own established position. Their political 
 opinions differed ; but such was his affluence of know- 
 ledge already ; such his stimulant enthusiasm ; he was 
 
33 
 
 bmn-m<^ ^vitll so incredible a passion for learning, and 
 fume, that the influence on the still young Webster ^vas 
 instant ; and it was great and permanent. It was re- 
 ciprocal too; and an intimacy began that attended the 
 whole course of honor through which each, in his several 
 sphere, ascended. Parsons he saw, also, but rarely ; and 
 Dexter oftener, and with more nearness of observation, 
 while yet laying the foundation of his own mmd and 
 character ; and he shared largely in the universal admi- 
 ration of that time, and of this, of their attainments, and 
 genius, and diverse greatness. 
 
 As he came to the grander practice of the national 
 bar, other competition was to be encountered. Other 
 names begin to solicit us; other contention; higher 
 prizes It would be quite within the proprieties of tins 
 discourse to remember the parties, at least, to some of 
 the liiglier causes, by which his ultimate professional 
 fame was built up ; even if I could not hope to convey 
 any impression of the novelty and difaculty of the 
 questions which they involved, or of the positive addi- 
 tion which the argument, and judgment, made to the 
 treasures of our constitutional and general jurispru- 
 dence. But there is only one of which I have time 
 to sav any thing, and that is the case which established 
 the inviolnbilltv of the charter of Dartmouth College 
 by the Legislature of the State of New Hampshire 
 Acts of the Legislature, passed in the year 181b, bad 
 invaded its charter. A suit was brought to test their 
 ^^alidity. It was tried in the Supreme Court ol the 
 State ; a judgment was given against the College, and 
 
34 
 
 tins was appealed to the Supreme Federal Court by 
 writ of error. Upon solemn argument the charter was 
 • decided to be a contract whose obligation a State may 
 not m.pmr; the acts were decided to be invalid as an 
 attempt to impair it, and you hold your charter under 
 that decision to-day. How much Mr. Webster con- 
 tributed to that result, how much the effort advanced 
 his own distinction at the bar, you all know. Well, 
 as if of yesterday, I remember how it was written 
 home from Washington, that «Mr. Webster closed a 
 legal argument of great power by a peroration which 
 charmed and melted his audience." Often since I have 
 heard vague accounts, not much more satisflictory, of 
 the speech and the scene. I was aware that the report 
 of his argument, as it was published, did not contain 
 the actual peroration, and I supposed it lost forever 
 By the great kindness of a learned and excellent per- 
 son, Dr. Chauncy A. Goodrich, a professor in Yale 
 College, with whom I had not the honor of acquaint- 
 ance, although his virtues, accomplishments, and most 
 useful life, were well known to me, I can read to you 
 the words whose power, when those lips spoke them 
 so many owned, although they could not repeat them! 
 As those lips spoke them, we shall hear them never- 
 more, but no utterance can extinguish their simple, 
 sweet, and perfect beauty. Let me first, bring thJ 
 general scene before you, and then you will he^r the 
 rest in Mr. Goodrich's description. It was in 1818, in 
 the thirty-seventh year of Mr. Webster's age. It wa* 
 addressed to a tribunal presided over by Marshall, 
 
35 
 
 assisted by Washington, Livingston, Johnson, Story, 
 Todd, and Duvall — a tribunal unsurpassed on earth 
 in all that gives illustration to a" bench of law, and 
 sustained and venerated by a noble bar. He had 
 called to his aid the ripe and beautiful culture of 
 Hopkinson ; and of his opponents was William Wni, 
 then and ever of the leaders of the bar, who, Avith 
 fliculties and accomplishments fitting him to adorn and 
 guide publixi life, abounding in deep professional learn- 
 ing, and in the most various and elegant acquisitions — 
 a Hpe and splendid orator, made so by genius and the 
 most assiduous culture - consecrated all to the service 
 of the law. It was before that tribunal, and ni pre- 
 sence of an audience select and critical, among whom, 
 it is to be borne in mind, were some graduates of the 
 collecve, who were attending to assist against her, that 
 he opened the cause. I gladly proceed in the words 
 of Mr. Goodrich. 
 
 " Before going to Washington, which I did chiefly for 
 the sake of hearing Mr. Webster, I was told that, in 
 arguing the case at Exeter, New Hampshire, he had left 
 the whde court-room in tears at the conclusion of his 
 speech. This, I confess, struck me unpleasantly — any 
 attempt at pathos on a purely legal question like this, 
 seemed hardly in good taste. On my way to Washmg- 
 ton, I made the acquaintance of Mr. Webster. AVe were 
 together for several days in Philadelphia, at the house 
 of°a connnon fiiend ; and as the College question was 
 one of deep interest to literary men, we conversed often 
 
36 
 
 and largely, on the subject. As he dwelt upon the lead- 
 ing ponits of the ease, in terms so ealm, simple, and pre- 
 cise, I said to myself more than once, in reference to 
 the story I had heard, ^ Whatever may have seemed ap- 
 propriate in defending the College at home, and on her 
 own ground, there will be no appeal to the feelinovs of 
 Judge Marshall and his associates at Washington ' ^The 
 Supreme Court of the United States held its session, 
 that winter, in a mean apartment of moderate size — ' 
 the Capitol not having been built after its destruction 
 in 1814. The audience, when the case came on, was 
 therefore small, consisting chiefly of legal men, the elite 
 of the profession throughout the country. Mr. Webster 
 entered upon his argument in the calm tone of easy 
 and dignified conversation. His matter was so com- 
 pletely at his command that he scarcely looked at his 
 brief, but went on for more than four hours with a 
 statement so luminous, and a chain of reasoning so easy 
 to be understood, and y^i approaching so neady to ab- 
 solute demonstration, that he seemed to carry with him 
 every man of his audience without the slightest eilbrt 
 or weariness on either side. It was hardly eloquence, in 
 the strict sense of the term ; it was pure reason. Now 
 and then, for a sentence or two, his eye flashed and his 
 voice swelled into a bolder note, as he uttered some em- 
 phatic thought; but he instantly foil back into the tone 
 of earnest conversation, which ran throughout the great 
 body of his speech. A single circumstance will show 
 you the clearness and absorbing power of his argument. 
 "I observed that Judge Story, at the opening of the 
 
o 
 
 7 
 
 case, had prejDared himself, pen in hand, as if to take 
 copious minutes. Hour after hour I saw him fixed in 
 the same attitude, but, so far as I could perceive, with 
 not a note on his paper. The argument closed, and I 
 could not discover' that he had taken a single note. Others 
 around me remarked the same thing, and it was among 
 the on dits of Washington, that a friend spoke to him of 
 the fact with surj)rise, when the Judge remarked, ' every 
 thing was so clear, and so easy to remember, that not 
 a note seemed necessary, and, in fact, I thought little or 
 nothing about my notes.' 
 
 " The argument ended. Mr. Webster stood for some 
 moments silent before the Court, while every eye was 
 fixed intently upon him. At length, addressing the 
 Chief Justice, Marshall, he proceeded thus : — 
 
 " ^ This, Sir, is my case I It is the case, not merely of 
 that humble institution, it is the case of every College 
 in our land. It is more. It is the case of every Elee- 
 mosynary Institution throughout our country — of all 
 those great charities founded by the piety of our ances- 
 tors to alleviate human misery, and scatter blessings 
 along the pathway of life. It is more ! It is, in some 
 sense, the case of every man among us who has pro- 
 perty of which he may be stripped, for the question is 
 simply this : Shall our State Legislatures be allowed to 
 take that which is not their own, to turn it from its 
 original use, and apply it to such ends or purposes as 
 they, in their discretion, shall see fit ! 
 
 " ' Sir, you may destroy this little Institution ; it is 
 
 weak ; it is in your hands ! I know it is one of the 
 
 4 
 
lesser lights in the literary horizon of our country. 
 You may put it out But if you do so, you must carry 
 through your work ! You must extinguish, one after 
 another, all those great lights of science which, for more 
 than a century, have thrown their radiance over our 
 land ! 
 
 " ' It is. Sir, as I have said, a small College. And yet, 
 there are those ivho love it .' 
 
 " Here the feelings which he had thus far succeeded in 
 keeping down, broke forth. His lips quivered ; his firm 
 cheeks trembled with emotion ; his eyes were filled with 
 te^rs, his voice choked, and he seemed struggling to the 
 utmost simply to gain that mastery over himself which 
 might save him from an unmanly burst of feeling. I 
 will not attempt to give you the few broken words of 
 tenderness in which he went on to speak of his attach- 
 ment to the College. The whole seemed to be mingled 
 throughout with the recollections of father, mother, 
 brother, and all the trials and j)rivations through which 
 he had made his way into life. Every one saw that it 
 was wholly unpremeditated, a pressure on his heart, 
 which sought relief in words and tears. 
 
 " The court room during these two or three minutes 
 presented an extraordinary spectacle. Chief Justice 
 Marshall, with his tall and gaunt figure bent over as if 
 to catch the slightest whisper, the deep furrows of his 
 cheek expanded with emotion, and ej^es sufi'used with 
 tears ; Mr. Justice Washington at his side, with his small 
 and emaciated frame and countenance more like marble 
 than I ever saw on any other human being — leaning 
 
39 
 
 forward with an eager, troubled look ; and the remain- 
 der of the Court, at the two extremities, pressing, as it 
 were, toward a single point, while the audience below 
 w^ere wrapping themselves round in closer folds beneath 
 the bench to catch each look, and every movement of 
 the speaker's face. If a painter could give us the scene 
 on canvas — those forms and countenances, and Daniel 
 Webster as he then stood in the midst, it would be one 
 of the most touching pictures in the history of eloquence. 
 One thing it taught me, that the pafhctic depends not 
 merely on the words uttered, but still more on the 
 estimate we put upon him who utters them. There was 
 not one among the strong-minded men of that assembly 
 who could think it unmanly to weep, when he saw 
 standing before him the man who had made such an 
 argument, melted into the tenderness of a child. 
 
 " Mr. Webster had now recovered his composure, and 
 fixing his keen eye on the Chief Justice, said, in that 
 deep tone with which he sometimes thrilled the heart of 
 an audience : — 
 
 "'Sir, I know not how others may feel,' (glancing at 
 the opponents of the College before him,) ' but, for my- 
 self, when I see my alma mater surrounded, like Caesar 
 m the senate house, by those who arc reiterating stab 
 upon stab, I would not, for this right hand, have her 
 turn to me, and say, M iu qiioque mi fill ! And thou 
 too, my sou ! ' 
 
 "He sat down. There was a deathlike stilhiess 
 throughout the room for some moments; every one 
 seemed to be slowly recovering himself, and coming 
 
40 
 
 gradually back to liis ordinary range of thought and 
 feeling." 
 
 It was while Mr. Webster was ascending through the 
 long gradations of the legal profession to its highest 
 rank, that by a parallel series of display on a stage, and 
 in parts totally distinct, by other studies, thoughts, and 
 actions he rose also to be at his death the first of Amer- 
 ican Statesmen. The last of the mighty rivals was 
 dead before, and he stood alone. Give this aspect also 
 of his greatness a passing glance. His public life began 
 in May 1813, in the House of Representatives in Con- 
 gress, to which this State had elected him. It ended 
 when he died. If you except the interval between his 
 removal from New Hampshire and his election in Massa- 
 chusetts, it was a public life of forty years. By what 
 :political morality, and by what enlarged patriotism, em- 
 bracing the whole country, that life was guided, I shall 
 consider hereafter. Let me now fix your attention 
 rather on the magnitude and variety and actual value 
 of the service. Consider that from the day he went 
 upon the Committee of Foreign Relations, in 1813, in 
 time of war, and more and more, the longer he lived 
 and the higher he rose, he was a man whose great 
 talents and devotion to public duty j^laced and kept 
 him in a position of associated or sole command ; com- 
 mand in the political connection to which he belonged, 
 command in opposition, command in power ; and appre- 
 ciate the responsibilities which that implies, what care, 
 what prudence, what mastery of the whole ground — 
 
41 
 
 exacting for the conduct of a party, as Gibbon says of 
 Fox, abilities and civil discretion equal to the conduct 
 of an empire. Consider the work he did in that life of 
 forty years — the range of subjects investigated and 
 discussed : composing the Avliole theory and practice of 
 our organic and administrative politics, foreign and do- 
 mestic : the vast body of instructive thought he pro- 
 duced and put in possession of the country ; how much 
 he achieved in congress as well as at the bar, to fix the 
 true interpretation, as well as to impress the transcen- 
 dent value of the constitution itself, as much altogether 
 as any jurist or statesman since its adoption ; how much 
 to establish in the general mind the great doctrine that 
 the government of the United States is a government 
 pro^^er, established by the people of the States, not a 
 compact between sovereign communities, — that within 
 its limits it is supreme, and that whether it is within its 
 limits or not, in any given exertion of itself, is to be 
 determined by the Supreme Court of the United States 
 — the ultimate arbiter in the last resort — from which 
 there is no appeal but to revolution ; how much he did 
 in the course of the discussions which grew out of the 
 proposed mission to Panama, and, at a later day, out of^ 
 the removal of the deposits, to place the executive 
 department of the government on its true basis, and 
 under its true limitations; to secure to that department 
 all its just powers on the one hand, and on the other 
 hand to vindicate to the legislative department, and 
 especially to the senate, all that belong to them; to 
 arrest the tendencies which he thought at one time 
 
 4* 
 
42 
 
 threatened to substitute the government of a single 
 will, of a single person of great force of character and 
 boundless jDopularity, and of a numerical majority of 
 the people, told by the head, without intermediate insti- 
 tutions of any kind, judicial or senatorial, in place of 
 the elaborate system of checks and balances, by which 
 the constitution aimed at a government of laws, and not 
 of men; how much, attracting less popular attention, 
 but scarcely less important, to comj^lete the great work 
 which experience had shown to be left unfinished by 
 the judiciary act of 1789, by providing for the punish- 
 ment of all crimes against the United States; how 
 much for securing a safe currency and a true financial 
 system, not only by the promulgation of sound opinions, 
 but by good specific measures adopted, or bad ones 
 defeated; how much to develop) the vast material re- 
 sources of the country, and to push forward the plant- 
 ing of the West — not troubled by any fear of exhausting 
 old States — by a liberal policy of public lands, by 
 vindicating the constitutional power of Congress to 
 make or aid in making large classes of internal improve- 
 ments, and by acting on that doctrine uniformly from 
 1813, whenever a road was to be built, or a rapid sup- 
 pressed, or a canal to be opened, or a breakwater or 
 a lighthouse set up above or below the flow of the tide, 
 if so far beyond the ability of a single state, or of so 
 wide utility to commerce and labor as to rise to the 
 rank of a work general in its influences — another tie 
 of union because another proof of the beneficence of 
 union; how much to protect the vast mechanical and 
 
43 
 
 manufacturing interests of the country, a value of many 
 hundreds of millions — after having been lured into 
 existence against his counsels, against his science of 
 political economy, by a policy of artificial encourage- 
 jnent — from being sacrificed, and the pursuits and plans 
 of large regions and communities broken up, and the 
 acquired skill of the country squandered by a sudden 
 and capricious withdrawal of the promise of the govern- 
 ment ; how much for the right performance of the most 
 delicate and difficult of all tasks, the ordering of the 
 foreign affairs of a nation, free, sensitive, self-conscious, 
 recognizing, it is true, public law and a morality of the 
 State, binding on the conscience of the State, yet aspir- 
 ing to power, eminence, and command, its whole frame 
 filled full and all on fire wdth American feeling, sympa- 
 thetic with liberty everywhere — how much for the 
 riffht orderino; of the foreio-n affairs of such a State — 
 aiming in all his policy, from his speech on the Greek 
 question in 1823, to his letters to M. Hulsemann in 
 1850, to occupy the high, plain, yet dizzy ground which 
 separates influence from intervention, to avow and pro- 
 mulgate warm good w411 to humanity, wdierever striving 
 to be free, to inquire authentically into the history of 
 its struggles, to take official and avowed pains to ascer- 
 tain the moment when its success may be recognized, 
 consistently, ever, with the great code that keeps the 
 peace of the world, abstaining from every thing which 
 shall give any nation a right under the law of nations 
 to utter one word of complaint, still less to retaliate by 
 ^yar — the sympathy, but also the neutrality, of Wash- 
 
44 
 
 ington — liow much to compose with honor a concur- 
 rence of difficulties with the first power m the world, 
 which any thing less than the highest degree of discre- 
 tiouj firmness, ability, and means of commanding respect 
 and confidence at home and abroad would inevitably 
 have conducted to the last calamity — a disputed boun- 
 dary line of many hundred miles, from the St. Croix to 
 the Rocky Mountains, which divided an exasperated and 
 impracticable border population, enlisted the pride and 
 affected the interests and controlled the politics of par- 
 ticular States, as well as pressed on the -peace and honor 
 of the nation, which the most popular administrations 
 of the era of the quietest and best public feelings, the 
 times of Monroe and of Jackson, could not adjust ; 
 which had grown so complicated with other topics of 
 excitement that one false step, right or left, would have 
 been a step down a precipice — this line settled forever 
 — the claim of England to search our ships for the sup- 
 pression of the slave-trade silenced forever, and a new 
 engagement entered into by treaty, binding the national 
 faith to contribute a specific naval force for putting an 
 end to the great crime of man — the long practice of 
 England to enter an American ship and impress from its 
 crew, terminated forever ; the deck henceforth guarded 
 sacredly and completely hy the flag — how much by 
 profound discernment, by eloquent speech, by devoted 
 life to strengthe the ties of Union, and breathe the 
 fine and strong spirit of nationality through all our 
 numbers — how much, most of all, last of all, after the 
 war with Mexico, needless if his counsels had governed, 
 
45 
 
 had ended in so vast an acquisition of territory, in pre- 
 senting to the two great antagonist sections of our 
 country so vast an area to enter on, so imperial a prize 
 to contend for, and the accursed fraternal strife had 
 begun — how much then, when rising to the measure of 
 a true, and difficult, and rare greatness, remembering 
 that he had a country to save as well as a local constitu- 
 ency to gratify, laying all the wealth, all the hopes, of 
 an illustrious life on the altar of a hazardous patriotism, 
 he sought and won the more exceeding glory wdiich now 
 attends — wdiich in the next age shall more conspicu- 
 ously attend — his name who composes an agitated and 
 saves a sinking land — recall this series of conduct and 
 influences, study them carefully in their facts and results 
 — the reading of years — and 3/ou attain to a true 
 appreciation of this aspect of his greatness — his public 
 character and life. 
 
 For such a review^ the eulogy of an hour has no 
 room. Such a task demands research ; details ; proofs ; 
 illustrations ; a long labor — a volume of history com- 
 posed according to her severest laws — setting down 
 nothing, depreciating nothing, in n alignity to the 
 dead ; suppressing nothing and flilsifying nothing in 
 adulation of the dead ; professing fidelity incorrupt — 
 miswerved by hatred or by love, yet able to measure, 
 able to glow in the contemplation of a true greatness 
 and a vast and varied and useful public life ; such a 
 history as the genius and judgment and delicate pri- 
 vate and public morality of Everett — assisted by his 
 perfect knowledge of the focts — not disrpialified by 
 
46 
 
 his long friendsliiji imcliilled to the last hour — such 
 a history as he might construct. 
 
 Two or three suggestions, occurring on the most 
 general observation of this aspect of his eminence, you 
 will tolerate as I leave the topic. 
 
 Eemark how very large a proportion of all this class 
 of his acts, are wholly beyond, and outside, of the 
 jDrofession of the law ; demanding studies, experience, 
 a turn of mind, a cast of qualities and character, such 
 as that profession neither gives, nor exacts. Some 
 single^ speeches in Congress of consummate ability, 
 have been made by great lawyers, drawing for the 
 purpose, only on the learning, accomplishments, logic, 
 and eloquence of the forum. Such was Chief Justice, 
 then Mr. Marshall's argument in the case of Jonathan 
 Ro])bins — turning on the interpretation of a treaty, 
 and the constitutional power of the executive; a de- 
 monstration if there is any in Euclid — anticipating the 
 masterly judgments in the cause of Dartmouth College, 
 or of Gibbons and Ogden, or of Maculloch and the 
 State of Maryland ; but such an one as a lawyer like 
 him — if another there was — could have made in his 
 professional capacity at the bar of the House, although 
 he had never reflected on j^ractical politics an hour in 
 his life. Such somewhat was William Pinkney's speech 
 in the House of Representatives on the treaty-making 
 power, in 1815, and his two more splendid displays, in 
 the Senate, on the Missouri question, in 1820, the last 
 of which I heard Mr. Clay pronounce the greatest he 
 ever heard. They were pieces of legal reasoning, on 
 
47 
 
 questions of constitutional law ; decorated of course by 
 a rhetoric wliich Hortensius miglit have envied, and 
 Cicero would not have despised; but they were pro- 
 fessional at last. To some extent this is true of some 
 of Mr. Webster's ablest speeches in Congress ; or, more 
 accurately, of some of the more important portions of 
 some of his ablest. I should say so of a part of that 
 on the Panama Mission; of the reply to Mr. Hayne 
 even ; and of almost the whole of that reply to Mr. 
 Calhoun on the thesis, " the Constitution not a compact 
 between sovereign States ; " the whole series of discus- 
 sion of the constitutional power of the Executive, and 
 the constitutional power of the Senate, growing out 
 of the removal of the deposites and the supposed ten- 
 dencies of our system towards a centralization of gov- 
 ernment in a President, and a majority of the people — 
 marked, all of them, by amazing ability. To these the 
 lawyer who could demonstrate that the Charter of this 
 College is a contract within the Constitution, or that 
 the Steamboat Monopoly usurped upon the executed 
 power of Congress to regulate commerce, was already 
 equal — but to have been the leader, or of the leaders of 
 his political connection for thirty years ; to have been 
 able to instruct and guide on every question of policy 
 as well as law, which interested the nation in all that 
 time ; every question of finance ; of currency ; of the 
 lands ; of the development and care of our resources and 
 labor ; to have been of strength to help to lead his 
 country by the hand, up to a position of iiilluence and 
 attraction on the highest places of earth, yet to keep 
 
48 
 
 her peace, and to keep her honor ; to have been able 
 to emulate the prescriptive and awful renown of the 
 founders of States by doing something which will be 
 admitted, when some generations have passed, even 
 more than now, to have contributed to preserve the 
 State' — for all this another man was needed — and he 
 stands forth another and the same. 
 
 I am hereafter to speak separately of the political 
 morality which guided him ever, but I would say a 
 word now on two portions of his public life, one of 
 which has been the subject of accusatory, the other 
 of disparaging criticism, unsound — unkind — in both in- 
 stances. 
 
 The first comprises his course in regard to a protec- 
 tive policy. He opposed a tariff of protection it is said, 
 in 1816, and 1820, and 1824 ; and he opposed, in 1828, 
 a sudden and fatal repeal of such a tariff j and there- 
 upon I have seen it written that " this proved him a 
 man with no great comprehen,sive ideas of political 
 economy ; who took the fleeting interests, and transient 
 ojDinions of the hour for his norms of conduct;" "who 
 had no sober and serious convictions of his own." I 
 have seen it more decorously written, " that his opinions 
 on this subject w^ere not determined by general prin- 
 ciples, but by a consideration of immediate sectional 
 interests." 
 
 I will not answer this by what Scaliger says of Lipsius, 
 the arrogant pedant who dogmatized on the deeper poli- 
 tics as he did on the text of Tacitus and Seneca. Neqiie 
 est politiciis ; ncc potest qidcquam in politid ; niliil possimt pe- 
 
49 
 
 dantcs in ipsis rebus : nee ego, nee alius doetus possmmis scrihere 
 in politicis. I say only that the case totally fails to give 
 color to the charge. The reasonings of Mr. Webster in 
 1816, 1820, and 1824, express, that on mature reflection, 
 and due and appropriate study he had embraced the 
 optnion that it was needless and unwise to force Ameri- 
 can manufactures, by regulation, prematurely to life. 
 Bred in a commercial community ; taught from his ear- 
 liest hours of thought to regard the care of commerce 
 as, in point of fact, a leading object and cause of the 
 Union : to observe around him no other forms of ma- 
 terial industry than those of commerce ; navigation ; 
 fisheries ; agriculture, and a few plain and robust me- 
 chanical arts, he would come to the study of the political 
 economy of the subject with a certain preoccupation of 
 mind perhaps ; so coming he did study it at its well 
 heads, and he adopted his conclusions sincerely, and 
 announced them strongly. 
 
 His opinions were overruled by Congress ; and a 
 national policy was adopted, holding out all conceivable 
 promise of permanence, under which vast and sensitive 
 investments of capital were made ; the expectations, the 
 employments, the habits, of whole ranges of States were 
 recast ; an industry, new to us, springing, innnature, had 
 been advanced just so far, that if deserted, at that 
 moment, there must follow a squandering of skill ; 
 a squandering of property ; an aggregate of destruction, 
 senseless, needless, and unconscientious — such as marks 
 the worst form of revolution. On these facts, at a later 
 
 day, he thought that that industry, the child of Govern- 
 
 5 
 
50 
 
 ment, should not thus capriciously be deserted. "The 
 duty of the government," he said, " at the present mo- 
 ment would seem to be to preserve, not to destroy ; to 
 maintain the position which it has assumed ; and for one 
 I shall feel it an indispensable obligation to hold it 
 steady, as far as in my j)ower, to that degree of protec- 
 tion which it has undertaken to bestow." 
 
 And does this prove that these original opinions were 
 hasty ; shallow ; insincere ; unstudied ? Consistently 
 with every one of them ; consistently with the true 
 spirit, and all the aims, of the science of political econ- 
 omy itself; consistently with every duty of sober, high, 
 earnest, and moral statesmanship, might not he who 
 resisted the making of a tariff in 1816, deprecate its 
 abandonment in 1828 ? Does not Adam Smith himself 
 admit that it is '^^ maticr fit for deliberation how far or in 
 what manner, it may be proper to restore that free im- 
 portation after it has been for some time interrupted ? " 
 implying that a general principle of national wealth 
 may be displaced or modified by special circumstances 
 — but would these censors therefore cry out that he 
 had no " great and comprehensive ideas of political econ- 
 omy," and was willing to be " determined not by gene- 
 ral principles, but by immediate interests ? " Because a 
 father advises his son against an early and injudicious 
 marriage ; does it logically follow, or is it ethically right, 
 that after his advice has been disregarded, he is to 
 recommend desertion of the young wife, and the young 
 child? I do not appreciate the beauty and "compre- 
 hensiveness" of those scientific ideas which forget that 
 
51 
 
 the actual and vast "interests" of the community are 
 exactly what the legislator has to protect ; that the con- 
 crete of things must limit the foolish wantonness of a 
 priori theory ; that that department of politics, which 
 has for its object the promotion and distribution of the 
 wealth of nations, may very consistently, and very sci- 
 entifically preserve what it would not have created. He 
 who accuses Mr. Webster in this behalf of " having no 
 sober and serious convictions of his own," must afford 
 some other proof than his opposition to the introduction 
 of a policy ; and then his willingness to protect it after 
 it had been introduced, and five hundred millions of 
 property, or, however, a countless sum had been invested 
 under it, or become dependent on its continuance. 
 
 I should not think that 1 consulted his true fame if I 
 did not add that as he came to observe the practical 
 workings of the protective policy more closely than at 
 first he had done ; as he came to observe the working and 
 influences of a various manufacturing and mechanical 
 labor ; to see how it employs and develops every facul- 
 ty ; finds occupation for every hour ; creates or diffuses 
 and disciplines ingenuity, gathering up every fragment 
 of mind and time so that nothing be lost ; how a steady 
 and ample home market assists agriculture ; how all the 
 great employments of man are connected by a kindred 
 tie, so that the tilling of the land, navigation, foreign, 
 coastwise and interior commerce, all grow with the 
 ii-rowth, and strens^then with the strength of the indus- 
 try of the arts — he came to appreciate, more adequately 
 than at first, how this form of labor contributes to wealth; 
 
62 
 
 power ; enjoj'inent ; a great civilization ; he came more 
 justly to grasp the conception of how consiunmate a de- 
 struction it would cause — how senseless, how unphilo- 
 sophical, how immoral — to arrest it suddenly and capri- 
 ciously — after it had been lured into life ; how wiser — 
 how far truer to the principles of the science which seeks 
 to augment the wealth of the State, to refuse to destroy 
 so iunuense an accumulation of that w^ealth. In this 
 sense, and in this wa}', I believe his opinions were ma- 
 tured and modified ; but it does not quite follow that 
 they were not, in every period, conscientiously formed 
 and held, or that they were not in the actual circum- 
 stances of each period philosophically just, and j)racti- 
 cally wise. 
 
 The other act of his public life to which I alluded is 
 his negotiation of the Treaty of Washington, in 1842, 
 with Great Britain. This act, the countr}^, the world, 
 has judged, and has applauded. Of his administrative 
 ability ; his discretion ; temper ; civil courage ; his power 
 of exacting respect and confidence from those wath whom 
 he communicated ; and of influencing their reason ; his 
 knowledge of the true interests and true grandeur of the 
 two great parties to the negotiation ; of the States of 
 the Union more immediately concerned, and of the 
 world wdiose chief concern is peace ; and of the intre- 
 pidity with which he encountered the disappointed feel- 
 ings, and disparaging criticisms of the hour, in the con- 
 sciousness that he had done a jj-ood and laro-e deed, and 
 earned a permanent and honest renown — of these it is 
 the truest and most fortunate single exemplification 
 
53 
 
 wliich remains of him. Concerning its difficulty, impor- 
 tance and merits of all sorts, there were at the time, few 
 dissenting opinions among those most conversant with 
 the subject, although there were some ; to-day there are 
 fewer still. They are so few — a single sneer by the 
 side of his grave, expressing that " a man who makes 
 such a bargain is not entitled to any great glory among 
 diplomatists," is all that I can call to mind — that I will 
 not arrest the course of your feelings here and now by 
 attempting to refute that " sneer " out of the history of 
 the hour and scene. " Standing here," he said in April, 
 1846, in the Senate of the United States to wliich he 
 had returned — " standing here to-day, in this Senate, 
 and speaking in behalf of the administration of which I 
 formed a part, and in behalf of the two houses of Con- 
 gress who sustained that administration, cordially and ef- 
 fectively, in every thing relating to this treaty, I am will- 
 ing to appeal to the public men of the age, whether in 
 1842, and in the city of Washington, something was not 
 done for the suppression of crime ; for the true exposition 
 of the principles of public law ; for the freedom and secu- 
 rity of commerce on the ocean, and for the peace of the 
 world ! " In that forum the appeal has been heard, and 
 the praise of a diplomatic achievement of true and per- 
 manent glory, has been irreversibly awarded to him. 
 Beyond that forum of the mere " public men of the age," 
 by the larger jurisdiction, the general public, the same 
 praise has been awarded. jStml hie diam sua prwrnia laucU. 
 That which I had the honor to say in the Senate, in the 
 session of 1843, in a discussion concerning this treaty, 
 
 5* 
 
54 
 
 is true, and applicable, now as then. " Why should I, or 
 why should any one, assume the defence of a treaty here 
 in this body, which but just now, on the amplest con- 
 sideration, in the confidence and calmness of executive 
 session, was approved by a vote so decisive ? Sir, the 
 countr}" by a vote tar more decisive, in a proportion very 
 far beyond thirty-nme to nine, has a23proved your ap- 
 proval. Some there are, some few — I speak not now 
 of any member of this senate — restless, selfish, reckless, 
 " the cankers of a calm world and a long peace," pining 
 with thirst of notoriety, slaves to their hatred of Eng- 
 land, to whom the treaty is distasteful ; to whom any 
 treaty, and all things but the glare and clamor, the vain 
 pomp and hollow circumstance of war — all but these 
 would be distasteful and dreary. But the country is 
 with vou in this act of wisdom and o-lorv ; its intelli- 
 gence ; its morality ; its labor ; its good men ; the 
 thoughtful ; the philanthropic ; the discreet ; the masses, 
 are with you." "It confirms the purpose of the wise 
 and good of both nations to be forever at peace with 
 one another, and to put away forever all war from the 
 kindred races : war the most ridiculous of blunders ; the 
 most tremendous of crimes ; the most comprehensive of 
 evils." 
 
 And now to him who in the solitude of his library 
 depreciates this act, first, because there was no danger 
 of a war with England, I answer that according to the 
 overwhelming weight of that kind of evidence by 
 Avhich that kind of question must be tried, that is by 
 the judgment of the great body of well-informed public 
 
55 
 
 men at that moment in Congress ; in the Government ; 
 in diplomatic situation — our rekitions to that power had 
 become so delicate, and so urgent, that unless soon ad- 
 justed by negotiation there was real danger of war. 
 Against such evidence what is the value of the specula- 
 tion of a private person, ten years afterwards, in the 
 shade of his general studies, whatever his sagacity ? 
 The temper of the border population ; the tendencies to 
 disorder in Canada, stimulated by sympathizers on our 
 side of the line ; the entrance on our territory of a Brit- 
 ish armed force in 1837; cutting the Caroline out of 
 her harbor, and sending her down the falls ; the arrest 
 of McLeod in 1841, a British subject, composing part of 
 that force, by the government of New York, and the 
 threat to hang him, which a person high in office in 
 England, declared, in a letter which was shown to me, 
 would raise a cry for war from " whig, radical, and tory " 
 which no ministry could resist -, growing irritation caused 
 by the search of our vessels under color of suppressing 
 the slave-trade ; the long controversy, almost as old as 
 the government, about the boundary line — so conduct- 
 ed as to have at last convinced each disputant that the 
 other was fraudulent and insincere ; as to have enlisted 
 the pride of States ; as to have exasperated and agitated 
 a large line of border ; as to have entered finally into 
 the tactics of political parties, and the schemes of ambi- 
 tious men, out-bidding, out-racing one another in a com- 
 petition of clamor and vehemence ; a controversy on 
 which England, a European monarchy, a first class power, 
 near to the great sources of the opinion of the world, 
 
56 
 
 by her press, her diplomac}^, and her universal inter- 
 course had taken great pains to persuade Europe that 
 our claim was groundless and unconscientious — all these 
 things announced to near observers in public life a crisis 
 at hand which demanded something more than "any 
 sensible and honest man " to encounter ; assuring some 
 glory to him who should triumph over it. One such 
 observer said : " Men stood facino; each other with firuns 
 on their shoulders, upon opposite sides of fordable rivers, 
 thirty yards wide. The discharge of a single musket 
 would have brought on a war whose fires would have 
 encircled the globe." 
 
 Is this act disparaged next because what each party 
 had for sixty years claimed as the true line of the old 
 treat}^ was waived, a line of agreement substituted, and 
 equivalents given and taken, for gain or loss ? But here- 
 in you will see only, what the nation has seen, the bold- 
 ness as well as sagacity of Mr. Webster. "When the 
 award of the king of the Netherlands, proposing a line 
 of ao;reement, was offered to President Jackson, that 
 strong will dared not accept it in face of the party poli- 
 tics of Maine — although he advised to offer her the 
 value of a million of dollars to procure her assent to an 
 adjustment which his own mind approved. What he 
 dared not do, inferred some peril I suppose. Yet the 
 experience of twenty years ; of sixty years ; should have 
 taught all men ; had taught many who shrank from act- 
 injx on it, that the Gordian knot must be cut, not un- 
 loosed — that all^ further attempt to find the true line 
 must be abandoned as an idle and a perilous diplomacy ; 
 
57 
 
 and that a boundary must be made by a bargain Avortliy 
 of nations, or must be traced by the point of the bayonet. 
 The merit of Mr. Webster is first that he dared to open 
 the negotiation on this basis. I say the boldness. For 
 appreciate the domestic difficulties which attended it. 
 In its nature it proposed to give up something which 
 we had thought our own for half a century ; to cede of 
 the territory of more than one State ; it demanded there- 
 fore the assent of those states by formal act, committing 
 the State parties in power unequivocally ; it was to be 
 undertaken not in the administration of Munroe — elect- 
 ed by the whole people — not in the administration of 
 Jackson whose vast popularity could carry any thing, 
 and withstand anything; but just when the death of 
 President Harrison had scattered his party 5 had alien- 
 ated hearts ; had severed ties and dissolved connections 
 indispensable to the strength of administration ; creating 
 a loud call on Mr. Webster to leave the Cabinet — creat- 
 ing almost the appearance of an unwillingness that he 
 should contribute to its glory even by largest service to 
 the State. 
 
 Yet consider finally how he surmounted every diffi- 
 culty. I will not say with Lord Palmerston, in parlia- 
 ment, that there was " nobody in Eugland who did not 
 admit it a very bad treaty for England." But I may re- 
 peat what I said on it in the Senate in 1843. "And 
 now what does the world see? An adjustment con- 
 cluded by a special minister at Washington, by which 
 four fifths of the value of the whole subject in contro- 
 versy, is left to you as your own ; and by which, for that 
 
58 
 
 one fifth which England desires to possess, she pays j^ou 
 over and over, in national equivalents, imperial equiva- 
 lents, such as a nation may give, such as a nation may 
 accept, satisfactory to your interests, soothing to your 
 honor — the navigation of the St. John — a concession 
 the value of which nobody disputes, a concession not to 
 Maine alone, but to the whole country, to commerce, to 
 navigation, as far as winds blow or waters roll — an 
 equivalent of inappreciable value, opening an ample path 
 to the sea, an equivalent in part for what she receives 
 of the territory in dispute — a hundred thousand acres 
 in New Hampshire ; fifty thousand acres in Vermont 
 and New York ; the point of land commanding the 
 great military way to and from Canada by Lake Cham- 
 plain ; the fair and fertile island of St. George ; the sur- 
 render of a pertinacious pretension to four millions of 
 acres westward of Lake Superior. Sir, I will not say 
 that this adjustment admits, or was designed to admit 
 that our title to the whole territory in controversy was 
 perfect and indisputable. I wdll not do so much in- 
 justice to the accomplished and excellent person who 
 represented the moderation and the good sense of the 
 English government and people in this negotiation. I 
 cannot adopt even for the defence of a treaty which 
 I so much approve, the language of a writer in- the 
 London Morning Chronicle of September last, who has 
 been said to be Lord Palmerston, which over and over 
 asserts — substantially as his Lordship certainly did in 
 parliament, that the adjustment "virtually acknowledges 
 the American claim to the whole of the disputed terri- 
 
59 
 
 tory," and that " it gives England no share at all ; abso- 
 lutely none ; for the capitulation virtually and practi- 
 cally yields up the whole territory to the United States, 
 and then brings back a small part of it in exchange for 
 the right of navigating the St. John." I Avill not say 
 this. But I say first, that by concession of everybody 
 it is a better treaty than the administration of President 
 Jackson would have most eagerly concluded, if by the 
 oflfer of a million and a quarter acres of land they could 
 have procured the assent of Maine to it. That treaty she 
 rejected; this she accepts; and I disparage nobody when I 
 maintain that on all parts, and all aspects, of this ques- 
 tion, national or state, military or industrial, her opinion 
 is worth that of the wdiole country beside. I say next 
 that the treaty admits the substantial justice of your 
 general claim. It admits that in its utmost extent it 
 was plausible, formidable, and made in pure good faith. 
 It admits before the nations that we have not been rapa- 
 cious ; have not made false clamor ; that we have 
 asserted our own, and obtained our own. Adjudging to 
 you the possession of four fifths indisputably, she gives you 
 for the one fifth which you concede, equivalents, given 
 as equivalents, eo nomine, on purpose so soothe and save the 
 point of honor ; whose intrinsical and comparative value 
 is such that you may accept them as equivalents without 
 reproach to your judgment, or your firmness, or your 
 good faith ; whose intrinsical and comparative value, 
 tried by the maxims, weighed in the scales of imperial 
 traffic, make them a compensation over and over again 
 for all we concede." 
 
60 
 
 But I linger too long upon his public life, and upon this 
 one of its great acts. With what profound conviction 
 of all the difficulties Avhich beset it ; with what anxieties 
 for the issue, hope and fear alternately preponderating, 
 he entered on that extreme trial of capacity, and good 
 fortune, and carried it through, I shall not soon forget. 
 As if it were last night, I recall the time when, after the 
 Senate had ratified it in an evening executive session, by 
 a vote of thirtjMiine to nine, I personally carried to him 
 the result, at his own house, and in presence of his 
 wife. Then, indeed, the measure of his glory and hap- 
 piness seemed full. In the exuberant language of 
 Burke, " I stood near him, and his face, to use the ex- 
 pression of the Scripture of the first martyr, was as if it 
 had been the face of an angel. • Hope elevated, and 
 joy-brightened his crest.' I do not know how others 
 feel, but if I had stood in that situation, I would not 
 have exchanged it for all that kings or people could 
 
 bestow." 
 
 Such eminence and such hold on the public mind as 
 he attained demands extraordinary general intellectual 
 poY\-er, adequate mental culture, an impressive, attract- 
 ive, energetic and great character, and extraordinary 
 specific power also of influencing the convictions and 
 actions of others by speech. These all he had. 
 
 That in the quality of pure and sheer power of intel- 
 lect he was of the first class of men, is, I think, the uni- 
 versal judgment of all who have personally witnessed 
 many of his higher displays, and of all who Avithout 
 that opportunity have studied his life in its actions and 
 
61 
 
 influences, and studied his mind in its recorded thoughts. 
 Sometimes it has seemed to me that to enable one to 
 appreciate with accuracy, as a psychological speculation, 
 the intrinsic and absolute volume and texture of that 
 brain ; the real rate and measure of those abilities ; it was 
 better not to see or hear him, unless you could see or 
 hear him frequently, and in various modes of exhibition ; 
 for undoubtedly there was something in his countenance 
 and bearing so exj)ressive of command ; something even 
 in his conversational language when saying iiarva siim- 
 misse et modica temperate, so exquisitely plausible, em- 
 bodying the likeness at least of a rich truth, the forms 
 at least of a large generalization, in an epithet ; an anti- 
 thesis ; a pointed phrase ; a broad and peremptory thesis 
 — and something in his grander forth-putting when 
 roused by a great subject or occasion exciting his reason 
 and touching his moral sentiments and his heart, so diffi- 
 cult to be resisted, approaching so near, going so far be- 
 yond, the higher style of man, that although it left you a 
 very good witness of his power of influencing others, j^ou 
 were not in the best condition, immediately, to pro- 
 nounce on the quality, or the source of the influence. 
 You saw the flash and heard the peal ; and felt the ad- 
 miration and fear ; but from what region it was launched, 
 and by what divinity, and from what Olympian seat, 
 you could not certainly yet tell. To do that, you must, 
 if you saw him at all, see him many times ; compare 
 him with himself, and with others ; follow his dazzling 
 career from his father's house ; observe from what com- 
 petitors he Avon those laurels ; study his discourses,. 
 
 6 
 
62 
 
 study them by the side of those of other great men of 
 this country and time, and of other countries and times, 
 conspicuous in the same fields of mental achievement ; 
 look through the crystal water of the style down to the 
 golden sands of the thought ; analyze and contrast intel- 
 lectual power somewhat ; consider what kind, and what 
 quantity of it has been held by students of mind need- 
 ful in order to great eminence in the higher mathe- 
 matics, or metaphysics, or reason of the law : what 
 capacity to analyze, through and through, to the pri- 
 mordial elements of the truths of that science ; yet what 
 wisdom and sobriety, in order to control the wantonness 
 and shun the absurdities of a mere scholastic logic, by 
 systematizing ideas, and combining them, and repressing 
 one by another, thus producing, not a collection of in- 
 tense and conflicting paradoxes, but a code — scientifi- 
 cally coherent, and practically useful, — consider what 
 description and what quantity of mind have been held 
 needful by students of mind in order to conspicuous 
 eminence, long maintained, in statesmanship ; that great 
 practical science, that great philosophical art — whose 
 ends are the existence, happiness and honor of a nation : 
 whose truths are to be drawn from the widest survey of 
 man ; of social man : of the particular race, and parti- 
 cular community for which a government is to be made, 
 or kept, or a policy to be provided ; " philosophy in ac- 
 tion," demanding at once, or affording place for, the high- 
 est speculative genius, and the most skilful conduct of 
 men, and of affairs; and, finally, consider what degree 
 and kind of mental power has been found to be required 
 
6 
 
 o 
 
 in order to influence the reason of an audience and a 
 natipn by sjoeecli — not magnetizing the mere nervous 
 or emotional nature by an effort of that nature — but 
 operating on reason by reason — a great reputation in 
 forensic and dehberative eloquence, maintained and ad- 
 vancing for a lifetime — it is thus that we come to be 
 sure that his intellectual power was as real and as uni- 
 form, as its very happiest particular display liad been 
 imposing and remarkable. 
 
 It was not quite so easy to analyze that power, to 
 compare or contrast it with that of other mental celebri- 
 ties, and show how it differed or resembled, as it was to 
 discern its existence. 
 
 Whether, for example, he would have excelled as 
 much in other fields of exertion — in speculative philo- 
 sophy', for example, in any of its departments — is a 
 problem impossible to determine and needless to move. 
 To me it seems quite clear that the whole wealth of his 
 powers, his whole emotional nature, his eloquent feeling, 
 his matchless capacity to affect others' conduct by affect- 
 ing their practical judgments, could not have been 
 known, could not have been poured forth in a stream 
 so rich and strong and full, could not have so reacted 
 on, and aided and winged the mighty intelligence, in 
 any other walk of mind, or life, than that he chose — 
 that in any other there must have been some disjoining 
 of qualities which God had united — some divorce of 
 pure intellect from the helps or hindrances or compan- 
 ionship of common sense and beautiful genius ; and that 
 in any field of speculative ideas but half of him, or part 
 
64 
 
 of him, could have found its sphere. What that part 
 might have been or done, it is vain to inquire. 
 
 I have been told that the assertion has been hazarded 
 that he " was great in understanding; deficient in the large 
 reason ; " and to prove this distinction he is compared dis- 
 advantageously, with " Socrates ; Aristotle ; Plato ; Leib- 
 nitz ; Newton ; and Descartes." If this means that he 
 did not devote his mind, such as it was, to their specu- 
 lations, it is true ; but that would not prove that he had 
 not as much " higher reason." Where was Bacon's hif/hcr 
 reason when he was composing his reading on the Statute 
 of Uses ? Had he lost it ? or Avas he only not employ- 
 ing it ? or was he employing it on an investigation of 
 law ? If it means that he had not as much absolute in- 
 tellectual power as they, or could not, in their dejDart- 
 ments, have done what they did, it may be dismissed as 
 a dogma incapable of proof, and incapable of refuta- 
 tion ; ineffectual as a disparagement ; unphiloso^^hical 
 as a comparison. 
 
 It is too common with those who come from the rev- 
 eries of a cloistered speculation, to judge a practical life ; 
 to say of him, and such as he, that they " do not enlarge 
 universal law, and first principles ; and philosophical 
 ideas ; " that " they add no new maxim formed by induc- 
 tion out of human history and old thought." In this 
 there is some truth ; and yet it totally fails to j^rove 
 that they do not possess all the intellectual power, and 
 all the specific form of intellectual power required for 
 such a description of achievement ; and it totally fails, 
 too, to prove that they do not use it quite as truly to 
 
65 
 
 " the glory of God, and the bettering of man's estate." 
 Whether they posses such power or not, the evidence 
 does not disprove ; and it is a pedantic dogmatism, if it 
 is not a mahgnant dogmatism, which, /row^ such evidence, 
 pronounces that they do not ; but it is doubtless so, that 
 by an original bias ; by accidental circumstances or deli- 
 berate choice, he determined early to devote himself to 
 a practical and great duty, and that w\as to uphold a 
 recent, delicate, and complex political system, which his 
 studies, his sagacity, taught him, as Solon learned, was 
 the best the people could bear ; to uphold it ; to adapt 
 its essential principles and its actual organism to the 
 great changes of his time ; the enlarging territory ; en- 
 larging numbers ; sharper antagonisms ; mightier pas- 
 sions ; a new nationality ; and under it, and by means 
 of it, and by a steady government, a wise policy of busi- 
 ness, a temperate conduct of foreign relations, to enable 
 a people to develop their resources, and fulfil their 
 mission. This he selected as his work on earth ; this 
 his task ; this, if well done, his consolation, his joy, his 
 triumph ! To this, call it, in comparison w^ith the medi- 
 tations of philosophy, humble or high, he brought all 
 the vast gifts of intellect, whatever they were, where- 
 with God had enriched him. And now, do they infer 
 that, because he selected such a work to do he could not 
 have possessed the higher form of intellectual power ; or 
 do they say that, because having selected it, he performed 
 it w^ith a masterly and uniform sagacity, and prudence, 
 and good sense ; using ever the appropriate means to the 
 selected end ; that therefore he could not have 2)0ssessed 
 
 6:.: 
 
66 
 
 the higher form of intellectual power ? Because all his 
 life long, he recognized that his vocation was that of 
 a statesman and a jurist, not that of a thinker and 
 dreamer in the shade, still less of a general agitator ; that 
 his duties connected themselves mainly with an existing 
 stupendous political order of things, to be kept — to be 
 adapted with all possible civil discretion and temper to 
 the growth of the nation — but by no means to be ex- 
 changed for any quantity of amorphous matter in the 
 form of " universal law " or new maxims and great ideas 
 born since the last change of the moon — because he 
 quite habitually spoke the language of the Constitution 
 and the law, not the phraseology of a new philosophy ; 
 confining himself very much to inculcating historical, tra- 
 ditional, and indispensable maxims — neutrality ; justice ; 
 good faith ; observance of fundamental compacts of Union 
 and the like — because it was America — our America — 
 he sought to preserve, and to set forward to her glory — 
 not so much an abstract conception of humanity ; be- 
 cause he could combine many ideas; many elements; 
 many antagonisms ; in a harmonious, and noble practi- 
 cal politics, instead of fastening on one only, and — that 
 sure sign of small or perverted ability — aggravating it 
 to disease and falsehood — is it therefore inferred that 
 he had not the larger form of intellectual power ? 
 
 And this power was not oppressed, but aided and 
 accomplished by exercise the most constant, tlie most 
 severe, the most stimulant, and by a force of will as 
 remarkable as his genius, and by adequate mental and 
 tasteful culture. How much the eminent greatness 
 it reached is due to the various and lofty competition 
 
67 
 
 to -svliicli he brought, if he could, the most careful 
 prei^aration — competition with adversaries cum qiiihus 
 ceriare erat gloriosius, quam omnino adversarios non habere, 
 cum prwsertim non modo, nnuquam sit aid illorum ah ipso 
 cursKS impeditus, aid ah ipsis sum, sed contra semper alter 
 ah allcro adjidus, et commumcando, ct monendo, ct favendo, 
 you may well appreciate. 
 
 I claim much, too, under the name of mere mental 
 culture. Remark his style. I allow its full weight to 
 the Horatian maxim, scribendi rccte sapere est et princi- 
 piiim et fons, and I admit that he had deep and ex- 
 quisite judgment, largely of the gift of God. But 
 such a style as his is due also to art, to practice — in 
 the matter of style, incessant, to great examples of 
 fine writing turned by the nightly and the daily hand ; 
 to Cicero, through whose pellucid deep seas the pearl 
 shows distinct, and large and near, as if within the 
 arm's reach ; to Virgil, whose magic of words, whose 
 exquisite structure and ''rich economy of expression," 
 no other writer ever equalled; to our English Bible, 
 and especially to the prophetical wTitings, and of these 
 especially to Ezekiel — of some of whose peculiarities, 
 and among them that of the repetition of single words, 
 or phrases for emphasis and impression, a friend has 
 called my attention to some very striking illustrations ; 
 to Shakespeare, of the style of whose comic dialogue 
 we may, in the language of the great critic, assert '• that 
 it is that which in the English nation is never to 
 become obsolete, a certain mode of phraseology so 
 consonant and congenial to analog}^, to principles of 
 
68 
 
 the language, as to remain settled and unaltered — 
 a style above grossness, below modish and pedantic 
 forms of speech, where propriety resides ; " to Addison, 
 whom Johnson, Mackintosh, and Macaulay, concur to 
 put at the head of all fine writers, for the amenity, 
 delicacy, and unostentatious elegance of his English; 
 to Pope, polished, condensed, sententious ; to Johnson 
 and Burke, in whom all the affluence and all the 
 energy of our tongue in both its great elements of 
 Saxon and Latin might be exemplified ; to the study 
 and comparison, but not the copying of authors such 
 as these ; to habits of writing, and speaking, and con- 
 versing, on the capital theory of always doing his 
 best — thus somewhat, I think, was acquired that re- 
 markable production, " the last work of combined study 
 and genius," his rich, clear, correct, harmonious, and 
 weighty style of prose. 
 
 Beyond these studies and exercises of taste, he had 
 read variously and judiciously. If any public man, or 
 any man, had more thoroughly mastered British con- 
 stitutional and general histor}^, or the history of Brit- 
 ish legislation, or could deduce the progress, eras, 
 causes, and hindrances of British liberty in more prompt, 
 exact, and copious detail, or had in his memory, at any 
 given moment, a more ample political biography, or 
 political literature, I do not know him. His library of 
 English history, and of all history, was always rich, se- 
 lect, and catholic, and I well recollect hearing him, in 
 1819, while attending a commencement of this College, 
 at an evening party sketch, with great emphasis and 
 
69 
 
 interest of manner, the merits of George Buchanan, the 
 historian of ScotLand — his latinity and eloquence al- 
 most equal to Livy's, his love of liberty and his genius 
 greater, and his title to credit not much worse. Ameri- 
 can history and American political literature he had by 
 heart. The long series of influences that trained us for 
 representative and free government; that other series 
 of influences which moulded us into a united govern- 
 ment — the colonial era — the age of controversy be- 
 fore the revolution ; every scene and every person in 
 that great tragic action — the age of controversy fol- 
 lowing the revolution, and preceding the Constitution, 
 unlike the earlier, in which we divided among ourselves 
 on the greatest questions which can engage the mind of 
 America — the questions of the existence of a national 
 government, of the continued existence of the State 
 governments, on the partition of powers, on the umpi- 
 rage of disputes between them — a controversy on which 
 the destiny of the New World was staked ; every problem, 
 which has successively engaged our politics, and every 
 name which has figured in them, the whole stream of 
 our time was open, clear, and present ever to his eye. 
 
 I think, too, that, though not a frequent and ambi- 
 tious citer of authorities, he had read, in the course of 
 the study of his profession or politics, and had meditated 
 all the great writers and thinkers by whom the princi- 
 ples of republican government, and all free govern- 
 ments, are most authoritatively expounded. Aristotle, 
 Cicero, Machiavel, one of whose discourses on Livy, 
 maintains in so masterly an argument, how much wiser 
 
70 
 
 and more constant are the people tlian the prince — a 
 doctrine of Hberty consolatory and full of joy, Harring- 
 ton, Milton, Sidney, Locke, I know he had read and 
 weighed. 
 
 Other classes of information there were, partly ob- 
 tained from books, partly from observation — to some 
 extent referable to his two main employments of poli- 
 tics and law — by which he was distinguished remarkably. 
 Thus, nobody but was struck with his knowledge of 
 civil and physical geography, and to a less extent of 
 geology and races ; of all the great routes and marts of 
 our foreign, coastwise, and interior commerce ; the sub- 
 jects which it exchanges, the whole circle of industry it 
 comprehends and passes around ; the kinds of our me- 
 chanical and manufacturing productions, and their re- 
 lations to all labor, and life ; the history, theories, and 
 practice of agriculture, our own and that of other coun- 
 tries, and its relations to government, liberty, happiness 
 and the character of nations. This kind of information 
 enriched and assisted all his public efforts ; but to appre- 
 ciate the variety and accuracy of his knowledge, and 
 even the true compass of his mind, yon must have had 
 some familiarity with his friendly written correspon- 
 dence, and you must have conversed with him, with 
 some degree of freedom. There, more than in senato- 
 rial or forensic debate, gleamed the true riches of his 
 genius, as well as the goodness of his large heart, and 
 the kindness of his nojjle nature. There, with no 
 longer a great part to discharge, no longer compelled to 
 weigh and measure propositions, to tread the dizzy 
 
71 
 
 heights which part the antagonisms of the Constitution, 
 to put aside allusions and illustrations, which crowded 
 on his mind in action, but which the dignity of a puljlic 
 appearance had to reject — in the confidence of hospi- 
 tality, which ever he dispensed as a prince who also 
 was a friend — his memory, one of his most extraordi- 
 nary fiiculties, quite in proportion to all the rest, swept 
 free over the readings and labors of more than half a 
 century ; and then allusions, direct and ready quota- 
 tions, a jDassing, mature criticism, sometimes only a recol- 
 lection of the mere emotions wdiicli a glorious passage 
 or interesting event had once excited, darkening for a 
 moment the face, and filling the eye — often an instruct- 
 ive exposition of a current maxim of philosophy or 
 politics, the history of an invention, the recital of some 
 incident casting a new light on some transaction or some 
 institution — this flow of unstudied conversation, quite 
 as remarkable as any other exhibition of his mind, bet- 
 ter than any other, perhaps, at once opened an unex- 
 pected glimpse of his various accquirements, and gave 
 you to experience delightedly that the " mild senti- 
 ments have their eloquence as well as the stormy 
 passions." 
 
 There must be added next the element of an impres- 
 sive character, inspiring regard, trust, and admiration, 
 not unmingled with love. It had, I think, intrinsically 
 a charm such as belongs only to a good, noble, and 
 beautiful nature. In its combination with so much 
 fame, so much force of will, and so much intellect, it 
 fdled and fascinated the imagination and heart. It was 
 
72 
 
 affectionate in cliildhood and youth, and it was more 
 than ever so in the few last months of his long life. It 
 is the universal testimony that he gave to his parents, 
 in largest measure, honor, love, obedience ; that he 
 eagerly appropriated the first means which he could 
 connnand to relieve the father from the debts contracted 
 to educate his brother and himself — that he selected 
 his first place of professional practice that he might 
 soothe the coming on of his old age — that all through 
 life he neglected no occasion, sometimes when leaning on 
 the arm of a friend, alone, with faltering voice, sometimes 
 in the presence of great assemblies, where the tide of 
 general emotion made it graceful, to express his " aflec- 
 tionate veneration of him who reared and defended the 
 log cabin in which his elder brothers and sisters were 
 born, against savage violence and destruction ; cherished 
 all the domestic virtues beneath its roof, and through 
 the fire and blood of some years of revolutionary war, 
 shrank from no danger, no toil, no sacrifice, to serve his 
 countrj^, and to raise his children to a condition better 
 than his own." 
 
 Equally beautiful was his love of all his kindred, and 
 of all his friends. When I hear him accused of selfish- 
 ness, and a cold, bad nature, I recall him l3'ing sleepless 
 all night, not w^ithout tears of boyhood, conferring with 
 Ezekiel how the darling desire of both hearts should be 
 compassed, and he too admitted to the precious privi- 
 leges of education ; courageously pleading the cause of 
 both brothers in the morning ; prevailing by the wise 
 and discerning affection of the mother ; suspending his 
 
73 
 
 studies of the law, {iiid registering deeds and teaching 
 school to earn the means, for both, of availing themselves 
 of the opportunity Avhich the parental self-sacrifice had 
 placed within their reach — loving him through life, 
 mourning him when dead, with a love and a sorrow 
 very wonderful — passing the sorrow of woman ; I re- 
 call the husband, the father of the living and of the 
 early departed, the friend, the counsellor of man}^ years, 
 and my heart grows too full and liquid for the refutation 
 of words. 
 
 His affectionate nature, craving ever friendship, as 
 well as the presence of kindred blood, diffused itself 
 through all his private life, gave sincerity to all his hos- 
 pitalities, kindness to his eye, warmth to the pressure of 
 his hand ; made his greatness and genius unbend them- 
 selves to the playfulness of childhood, flowed out in 
 graceful memories indulged of the past or the dead, of 
 incidents when life was young and promised to be happy 
 — crave Q-enerous sketches of his rivals — the high con- 
 tention now hidden by the handful of earth — hours 
 passed fifty years ago with great authors, recalled for 
 the vernal emotions Avhich then they made to live 
 and revel in the soul. And from these conversations 
 of friendship, no man — no man, old or 3'oung — Avent 
 aAvay to remember one word of profaneness, one allusion 
 of indelicacy, one impure thought, one unbelieving 
 suggestion, one doul^t cast on the reality of virtue, of 
 patriotism, of enthusiasm, of the progress of man — 
 one doubt cast on righteousness, or temperance, or 
 
 judgment to come. 
 
 7 
 
74 
 
 Every one of his tastes anJ recreations announced 
 the same type of character. His love of agriculture, 
 of sports in the open air, of the outward world in 
 starlight and storms, and sea and boundless wilderness 
 — partly a result of the influences of the first fourteen 
 years of his life, perpetuated like its other affections 
 and its other lessons of a mother's love, the psalms,' 
 the Bible, the stories of the wars — partly the return 
 of an unsophisticated and healthful nature, tiring, for 
 a space, of the idle business of political life, its dis- 
 tinctions, its artificialities, to employments, to sensations 
 which interest without agitating the universal race 
 alike, as God has framed it ; in which one feels himself 
 only a man, fashioned from the earth, set to till it, 
 appointed to return to it, yet made in the image of his 
 Maker, and with a spirit that shall not die — all dis- 
 played a man whom the most various intercourse 
 with the world, the longest career of strife and honors, 
 the consciousness of intellectual supremacy, the com- 
 ing in of a w^ide fame, constantly enlarging, left as he 
 was at first, natural, simple, manly, genial, kind. 
 
 You will all concur, I think, with a learned friend who 
 thus calls my attention to the resemblance of his char- 
 acter, in some of these particulars, to that of AYalter 
 Scott. 
 
 "Nature endowed both with athletic frames, and a 
 noble presence ; both passionately loved rural life, its 
 labors, and sports; possessed a manly simplicity free 
 from all affectation, genial and social tastes, full minds, 
 and happy elocution; both stamped themselves with 
 
10 
 
 indelible marks upon the age in wliicli tliey lived ; 
 both were laborious and always with high and virtuous 
 aims, ardent in patriotism, overflowing with love of 
 ^ kindred blood/ and, above all, frank and unostentatious 
 Christians." 
 
 I have learned by evidence the most direct and 
 satisfactory, that in the last months of his life, the 
 whole affectionateness of his nature ; his consideration 
 of others; his gentleness; his desire to make them 
 happy and to see them happy, seemed to come out in 
 more and more beautiful and habitual ex^Dression than 
 ever before. The long day's public tasks were felt to 
 be done ; the cares, the uncertainties, the mental con- 
 flicts of high place, were ended ; and he came home 
 to recover himself for the few years Avhich he might 
 still expect would be his before he should go hence 
 to be here no more. And there, I am assured and 
 fully believe, no imbecoming regrets pursued him ; no 
 discontent, as for injustice suffered or expectations 
 unfulfilled; no self-reproach for any thing done or 
 any thing omitted by himself; no irritation, no peevish- 
 ness unworthy of his noble nature ; but instead, love 
 and hope for his country, when she became the sub- 
 ject of conversation ; and for all around him, the 
 dearest and the most indifferent, for all breathing things 
 about him, the overflow of the kindest heart growing 
 in gentleness and benevolence ; paternal, patriarchal 
 affections, seeming to become more natural, Avarm, and 
 communicative every hour. Softer and yet brighter 
 grew the tints on the sky of parting day ; and the 
 
76 
 
 • 
 
 last lingering rays, more even than the glories of noon, 
 announced how divine was the source from which they 
 proceeded -, how incapable to be quenched ; how cer- 
 tain to rise on a morning; which no nioht should 
 follow. 
 
 Such a character was made to be loved. It was 
 loved. Those who knew and saw it in its hour of 
 calm — those who could repose on that soft green, 
 loved him. His plain neighbors loved him; and one 
 said, wdien he was laid in his grave, "How lonesome 
 the world seems!" Educated young men loved him. 
 The ministers of the gospel, the general intelligence 
 of the country, the masses afar off, loved him. True, 
 they had not found in his speeches, read by millions, 
 so much adulation of the people ; so much of the 
 music which robs the public reason of itself; so many 
 j)hrases of humanity and philanthropy ; and some had 
 told them he was lofty and cold — solitary in his great- 
 ness ; but every year they came nearer and nearer to 
 Jiim, and as they came nearer they loved him better; 
 they heard how tender the son had been, the husband, 
 the brother, the father, the friend, and neighbor; that 
 lie was plain, simple, natural, generous, hospitable — 
 the heart larger than the brain; that he loved little 
 children and reverenced God, the Scriptures, the sab- 
 bath day, the Constitution, and the law — and their 
 hearts clave unto him. More truly of him than even 
 of the great naval darling of England might it be 
 said, that "his presence would set the church bells 
 ringing, and give school-boys a holiday — would bring 
 
77 
 
 cliilclren from school and old men from the chimney 
 corner, to gaze on hmi ere he died," The great and 
 imavailing lamentation first revealed the deep place 
 he had in the hearts of his countrymen. 
 
 You are now to add to this his extraordinary power 
 of influencing the convictions of others by speech, and 
 you have completed the survey of the means of his 
 greatness. And here again I begin by admiring an 
 aggregate, made up of excellences and triumphs, 
 ordinarily deemed incompatible. He spoke with con- 
 summate ability to the bench, and yet exactly as, 
 according to every sound canon of taste and ethics, 
 the bench ought to be addressed. He spoke with 
 consummate ability to the jury, and yet exactly as, 
 according to every sound canon, that totally different 
 tribunal oudit to be addressed. In the halls of Con- 
 gress, before the people assembled for political discus- 
 sion in masses, before audiences smaller and more 
 select, assembled for some solemn commemoration of 
 the past, or of the dead ; in each of these, again, his 
 speech, of the first form of ability, was exactly adapted 
 also to the critical proprieties of the place; each 
 achieved, when delivered, the most instant and specific 
 success of eloquence, some of them in a splendid and 
 remarkable degree, and yet stranger still, when reduced 
 to writing as they fell from his lips, they compose a 
 body of reading, in many volumes, solid, clear, rich, 
 and full of harmony, a classical and permanent political 
 literature. 
 
 And yet all these modes of his eloquence, exactly 
 
78 
 
 adapted each to its stage and its end, were stamped 
 with his image and siiperscrij)^^^^ ; identified by charac- 
 teristics incapable to be counterfeited, and impossible 
 to be mistaken. The same high power of reason, 
 intent in every one to explore and display some truth; 
 some truth of judicial, or historical, or biographical 
 fact; some truth of law, deduced by construction, 
 perhaps, or by illation ; some truth of policy, for want 
 whereof a nation, generations, may be the worse ; 
 reason seeking and unfolding truth: the same tone 
 in all of deep earnestness, expressive of strong desire 
 that that which he felt to be important should be 
 accepted as true, and spring up to action ; the same 
 transparent, plain, forcible and direct speech, conveying 
 his exact thought to the mind, not something less or 
 more ; the same sovereignty of form, of brow, and eye, 
 and tone, and manner — everywhere the intellectual 
 king of men, standing before you — that same marvel- 
 lousness of qualities and results, residing, I know not 
 where, in words, in pictures, in the ordering of ideas, 
 in felicities indescribal)le, by means whereof, coming 
 from his tongue, all things seemed mended; truth 
 seemed more true ; probability more plausible ; great- 
 ness more grand ; goodness more awful ; every affection 
 more tender than when cominsr from other tono-ues, — 
 these are in all his eloquence. But sometimes it be- 
 came individualized, and discriminated even from itself; 
 sometimes place and circumstances, great interests at 
 stake, a stage, an audience fitted for the highest historic 
 action, a crisis, personal or national, upon him, stirred 
 
70 
 
 the depths of that emotional nature as the anger of 
 the goddess stirs the sea on which the great epic is 
 beginning ; strong passions, themselves kindled to in- 
 tensity, quickened every faculty to a new life ; the 
 stimulated associations of ideas brought all treasures 
 of thought and knowledge within command, the spell, 
 which often held his imagination flxst, dissolved, and 
 she arose and gave him to choose of her urn of gold ; 
 earnestness became vehemence, the simple, perspicuous, 
 measured and direct language became a headlong, full 
 and burning tide of speech ; the discourse of reason, 
 wisdom, gravity, and beauty, changed to that zJeivon^?, 
 that rarest consummate eloquence, grand, rapid, pa- 
 thetic, terrible ; the aliqidd immensiim infinitwnque that 
 Cicero might have recognized ; the master triumph of 
 man in the rarest opportunity of his noblest power. 
 
 Such elevation above himself, in congressional debate, 
 was most uncommon. Some such there were in the 
 great discussions of executive power following the re- 
 moval of the deposits, which they who heard them will 
 never forget, and some which rest in the tradition of 
 hearers only. But there were other fields of oratory on 
 which, under the influence of more uncommon springs 
 of inspiration, he exemplified, in still other forms, an 
 eloquence in which I do not know that he has had a 
 superior among men. Addressing masses by tens of 
 thousands in the open air, on the urgent political ques- 
 tions of the day ; or designated to lead the meditations 
 of an hour devoted to the remembrance of some na- 
 tional era, or of some incident marking the progress of 
 
80 
 
 the nation, and lifting him up to a view of what is and 
 what is past, and some indistinct revelation of the glory 
 that lies in the future, or of some great historical name, 
 just borne by the nation to his tomb — we have learned 
 that then and there, at the base of Bunker Hill, before 
 the corner-stone was laid, and again when from the fin- 
 ished column the centuries looked on him ; in Fanueil 
 Hall, mourning for those with whose spoken or written 
 eloquence of freedom its arches had so often resounded ; 
 on the rock of Plymouth ; before the capitol, of which 
 there shall not be one stone left on another, before his 
 memory shall have ceased to live — in such scenes, un- 
 fettered by the laws of forensic or parliamentary de- 
 bate, multitudes uncounted lifting up their eyes to him ; 
 some great historical scenes of America around — all 
 symbols of her glory, and art, and power, and fortune, 
 there — voices of the past, not unheard — shapes beck- 
 oning from the future, not unseen — sometimes that 
 mighty intellect, borne upwards to a height and kindled 
 to an illumination which we shall see no more, wrought 
 out, as it were, in an instant, a picture of vision, warn- 
 ing, prediction ; the progress of the nation ; the con- 
 trasts of its eras ; the heroic deaths ; the motives to 
 patriotism ; the maxims and arts imperial by which the 
 glory has been gathered and may be heightened — 
 wrought out, in an instant, a picture to fade only when 
 all I'ecord of our mind shall die. 
 
 In looking over the public remains of his oratory, it 
 is striking to remark how, even in that most sober, and 
 massive understanding and nature, you see gathered and 
 
81 
 
 expressed the cliaracteristic sentiments and the passing 
 time of our America. It is the strong old oak, which 
 ascends before you; yet our soil, our heaven, are attested 
 in it, as perfectly as if it were a flower that could grow 
 in no other climate, and in no other hour of the year or 
 day. Let me instance in one thing only. It is a pecu- 
 liarity of some schools of eloquence, that they embody 
 and utter, not merely the individual genius and charac- 
 ter of the speaker, but a national consciousness ; a na- 
 tional era ; a mood ; a hope ; a dread ; a despair, in 
 which you listen to the spoken history of the time. 
 There is an eloquence of an expiring nation ; such as 
 seems to sadden the glorious speech of Demosthenes; 
 such as breathes grand and gloomy from the visions of 
 the prophets of the last days of Israel and Judah ; such 
 as gave a spell to the expression of Grattan, and of 
 Kossuth — the sweetest, most mournful, most aw^ful of 
 the words which man may utter, or which man may 
 hear, the eloquence of a perishing nation. There is 
 another eloquence, in which the national consciousness 
 of a young, or renewed and vast strength ; of trust in 
 a dazzling, certain, and limitless future ; an inward glo- 
 rying in victories yet to be won, sounds out, as by voice 
 of clarion, challenging to contest for the highest prize 
 of earth — such as that in which the leader of Israel in 
 its first days holds up to the new nation the land of 
 Promise ; such as that which in the well imagined 
 speeches scattered by Liv}^, over the history of the 
 " majestic series of victories," speaks the Roman con- 
 sciousness of growing aggrandizement which should sub- 
 
82 
 
 ject the world ; sncli as that, through Avhich, at the tri- 
 bunes of her revohition, in the bulletins of her rising 
 Soldier, France told to the world her dream of glory. 
 And of this kind, somewhat, is ours ; cheerful ; hopeful ; 
 trusting, as befits youth and spring ; the eloquence of 
 a State beginning to ascend to the first class of power, 
 eminence, and consideration ; and conscious of itself It 
 is to no purpose that they tell you it is in bad taste ; 
 that it partakes of arrogance, and vanity ; that a true 
 national goodbreeding would not know, or seem to 
 know, whether the nation is old or young ; whether the 
 tides of being are in their flow or ebb ; whether these 
 coursers of the sun are sinking, slowly to rest, wearied 
 with a journey of a thousand years, or just bounding 
 from the Orient unbreathed. Higher laws than those of 
 taste determine the consciousness of nations. Higher laws 
 than those of taste determine the general forms of the 
 expression of that consciousness. Let the downward 
 age of America find its orators, and poets, and artists, 
 to erect its spirit ; or grace, and soothe its dying ; be it 
 ours to go up with Webster to the rock ; the monument ; 
 the capitol ; and bid " the distant generations hail ! " 
 
 In this connection remark, somewhat more generally, 
 to how extraordinary an extent he had, by his acts, 
 words, thoughts, or the events of his life, associated him- 
 self forever, in the memory of all of us, with every his- 
 torical incident, or at least with every historical epoch ; 
 with every policy, with every glory, with every great 
 name and fundamental institution, and grand or beauti- 
 ful image, which are peculiarly and properly American. 
 
83 
 
 Look backwards to the planting of Pljanouth, and James- 
 town ; to the various scenes of colonial "life in peace and 
 war ; to the opening and march, and close of the revo- 
 lutionary drama — to the age of the Constitution — to 
 Washington, and Franklin, and Adams, and Jefferson — 
 to the whole train of causes from the Reformation down- 
 wards, which prepared us to be Republicans — to that 
 other train of causes which led us to be Unionists ; look 
 round on field, workshop, and deck, and hear the music 
 of labor rewarded, fed and protected — look on the bright 
 sisterhood of the States, each singing as a seraph in 
 her motion, yet blending in a common beam and swell- 
 ing a common harmony — and there is nothing which 
 does not bring him by some tie to the memory of 
 America. 
 
 We seem to see his form and hear his deep grave 
 speech everywhere. By some felicity of his personal 
 life ; by some wise, deep, or beautiful word spoken or 
 written; by some service of his own, or some commem- 
 oration of the services of others, it has come to pass that 
 " our granite hills, our inland seas and prairies, and fresh, 
 unbounded, magnificent wilderness ; " our encircling 
 ocean ; the resting-place of the Pilgrims ; our new-born 
 sister of the Pacific; our popular assemblies; our free 
 schools, all our cherished doctrines of education, and of 
 the influence of religion, and material policy and law, 
 and the Constitution, give us back his name. What 
 American landscape will you look on — what subject of 
 American interest will you study — what source of hope 
 
84 
 
 or of anxiet}^, as an American, will you acknowledge, 
 that it does not recall liim ? 
 
 I have reserved, until I could treat it as a separate and 
 final topic, the consideration of the morality of Mr. Web- 
 ster's public character and life. To his true fame, to 
 the kind and degree of influence which that large series 
 of great actions, and those embodied thoughts of great 
 intellect are to exert on the future — this is the all- 
 important consideration. In the last speech which he 
 made in the Senate — the last of those which he made, 
 as he said, for the Constitution and the Union, and which 
 he might have commended, as Bacon his name and 
 memory, " to men's charitable speeches, to foreign na- 
 tions, and the next ages," yet with a better hope, he as- 
 serted — " The ends I aim at shall be those of my coun- 
 try, my God, and truth." Is that praise his ? 
 
 Until the seventh day of March, 1850, 1 think it w^ould 
 have been accorded to him by an almost universal 
 acclaim, as general, and as expressive of profound and 
 intelligent conviction, and of enthusiasm, love, and 
 trust, as ever saluted conspicuous statesmanship, tried 
 by many crises of affairs in a great nation, agitated 
 ever by parties, and wholly free. 
 
 That he had admitted into his heart a desire to win, 
 by deserving them, the highest forms of public honor, 
 many would have said ; and the}^ who loved him most 
 fondly, and felt the truest solicitude that he should carry 
 a good conscience and pure fame brightening to the 
 end, would not have feared to concede. For he was not 
 
85 
 
 ignorant of himself, and he therefore knew that there 
 was nothing within the Union, Constitution and law, too 
 high, or too large, or too difficult for him. He believed 
 that his natural or his acquired abilities, and his policy 
 of administration, would contribute to the true glory of 
 America \ and he held no theory of ethics which re- 
 quired him to disparage, to suppress, to ignore vast ca- 
 pacities of public service merely because they were his 
 own. If the fleets of Greece were assembling, and her 
 tribes buckling on their arms from Laconia to Mount 
 Olympus, from the promontory of Sunium to the isle far- 
 thest to the west, and the great epic action was opening, it 
 was not for him to fain insanity or idiocy, to escape the per- 
 ils and the honor of command. But that all this in him 
 had been ever in subordination to a principled and beau- 
 tiful public virtue ; that every sectional bias, every party 
 tie, as well as every personal aspiring, had been uniform- 
 ly held by him for nothing against the claims of coun- 
 try; that nothing lower than country seemed worthy 
 enough — nothing smaller than country large enough — 
 for that great heart, would not have been questioned by 
 a whisper. All ! if at any hour before that day he had 
 died, how would then the great procession of the people 
 of America — the great triumphal procession of the 
 dead — have moved onward to his grave — the sublim- 
 ity of national sorrow, not contrasted, not outraged by 
 one feeble voice of calumny ! 
 
 In that antecedent public life, embracing from 1812 
 to 1850 — a period of thirty-eight years — I find 
 grandest proofs of the genuineness and comprchen- 
 
 8 
 
86 
 
 siveness of his patriotism, and the boldness and man- 
 liness of his pnblic virtue. He began his career of 
 politics as a federalist. Such was his father — so be- 
 loved and revered ; such his literary and professional 
 companions; such, although by no very decisive or 
 certain preponderance, the community in which he 
 was bred and was to live. Under that name of party 
 he entered Congress, personally, and by connection, 
 ojoposed to the war, which was thought to bear with 
 such, extreme sectional severity upon the North and 
 East. And yet, one might almost say that the only 
 thing he imbibed from federalists or federalism, was 
 love and admiration for the Constitution as the means 
 of union. That passion he did inherit from them ; 
 that he cherished. 
 
 He came into Congress, opposed, as I have said, to 
 the war; and behold him, if you would judge of the 
 quality of his political ethics, in ojoposition. Did those 
 eloquent lips, at a time of life when vehemence and 
 imprudence are expected, if ever, and not ungraceful, 
 let fall ever one word of faction? Did he ever deny 
 one power to the general government, which the 
 soundest expositors of all creeds have allowed it ? Did 
 he ever breathe a syllable which could excite a region, 
 a State, a family of States, against the Union — which 
 could hold out hope or aid to the enemy? — which 
 sought or tended to turn back or to chill the fiery 
 tide of a new and intense nationality, then bursting 
 up, to flow and burn till all things appointed to America 
 to do shall be fulfilled ? These questions in their sub- 
 
87 
 
 stance, he put to Mr. Calhoun, in 1838, in tlie Senate, 
 and that great man — one of the authors of the war — 
 just then, only then, in relations unfriendly to Mr. 
 Webster, and who had just insinuated a reproach on 
 his conduct in the war, was silent. Did Mr. Webster 
 content himself even with objecting to the details of 
 the mode in which the administration waged the war ? 
 No, indeed. Taught by his constitutional studies that 
 the Union was made in part for commerce, familiar 
 with the habits of our long line of coast, knowing 
 well how many sailors and fishermen, driven from 
 every sea by embargo and war, burned to go to the 
 gun-deck and avenge the long wrongs of England on 
 the element wdiere she had inflicted them, his opposi 
 tion to the war manifested itself by teaching the nation 
 that the deck was her field of fame. Non ilU imjjenum 
 pclacji saeviim que tridentum, sed nobis, sorte datum. 
 
 But I might recall other evidence of the sterling 
 and unusual qualities of his public virtue. Look in 
 how manly a sort he, not merely conducted a particular 
 argument or a particular speech, but in how maulj- 
 a sort, in how high a moral tone, he uniformly dealt 
 with the mind of his country. Politicians got an advan- 
 tage of him for this while he lived ; let the dead have just 
 praise to-day. Our public life is one long electioneer- 
 ing, and even Burke tells you that at popular elections 
 the most rigorous casuists will remit something of 
 their severity. But where do you find him flattering 
 his countrymen, indirectly or directly, for a vote ? On 
 what did he ever place himself but good counsels and 
 
88 
 
 useful service ? His arts were mauly arts, and he never 
 saw a day of temptation when he would not rather 
 fall than stand on any other. AYho ever heard that 
 voice cheering the people on to rapacity, to injustice, 
 to a vain and guilty glory ? Who ever saw that pencil 
 of light hold up a picture of manifest destiny to dazzle 
 the fancy ? How anxiously rather, in season and out, 
 by the energetic eloquence of his youth, by his counsels 
 bequeathed on the verge of a timely grave, he preferred 
 to teach that by all possible acquired sobriety of mind, 
 by asking reverently of the past, by obedience to the 
 law, by habits of patient and legitimate labor, by the 
 cultivation of the mind, by the fear and worship of God, 
 we educate ourselves for the future that is revealing. 
 Men said he did not sympathize with the masses, 
 because his phraseology was rather of an old and 
 simple school, rejecting the nauseous and vain repeti- 
 tions of humanity and philanthropy, and progress and 
 brotherhood, in which may lurk heresies so dreadful, 
 of socialism or disunion ; in which a selfish, hollow, and 
 shallow ambition may mask itself — the syren song 
 which would lure the pilot from his course. But I 
 say that he did sympathize with them; and, because 
 he did, he came to them not with adulation, but with 
 truth ; not with words to please, but with measures to 
 serve them ; not that his popular sympathies were less, 
 but that his personal and intellectual dignity and his 
 public morality were greater. 
 
 And on the seventh day of March, and down to the 
 final scene, might he not still say as ever before, that 
 
89 
 
 " all the ends lie aimed at were his country's, his God's, 
 and truth's." He declared, "I speak to-day for the 
 preservation of the Union. Hear me for my cause. 
 I speak to-day out of a solicitous and anxious heart 
 for the restoration to the country of that quiet and 
 harmony, which make the blessings of this Union so 
 rich and so dear to us all. These are the motives and 
 the sole motives that mfluence me." If in that decla- 
 ration he was sincere, was he not hound in conscience 
 to give the counsels of that day? What were they? 
 What was the single one for which his political morality 
 was called in question ? Only that a provision of the 
 Federal Constitution, ordaining the restitution of fugi- 
 tive slaves, should be executed according to its true 
 meaning. This only. And might he not in good con- 
 science keep the Constitution in this part, and in all, 
 for the preservation of the Union ? 
 
 Under his oath to su|)port it, and to support it all, 
 and Avith his opinions of that duty so long held, pro- 
 claimed uniformly, in whose vindicatioji on some great 
 days, he had found the chief opportunity of his per- 
 sonal glory, might he not, in good conscience support 
 it, and all of it, even if he could not, and no human 
 intelligence could, certainly, know, that the extreme 
 evil would follow, in immediate consequence, its viola- 
 tion? Was it so recent a doctrine of his that the 
 Constitution was obligatory upon the national and in- 
 dividual conscience, that you should ascribe it to sudden 
 and irresistible temptation ? Wh}', what had he, quite 
 
 down to the seventh of March, that more truly iudi- 
 
 8* 
 
90 
 
 vidualized liim — what had he more characteristically 
 his own — wherewithal had he to glory more or other 
 than all beside, than this very doctrine of the sacred 
 and permanent obligation to support each and all 
 parts of that great compact of union and justice? 
 Had not this been his distinction, his siKckdity — 
 almost the foible of his greatness — the darling and mas- 
 ter passion ever ? Consider that that was a sentiment 
 which had been part of his conscious nature for more 
 than sixty years; that from the time he bought his 
 first copy of the Constitution on the handkerchief, and 
 revered parental lips had commended it to him, with 
 all other holy and beautiful things, along with lessons 
 of reverence to God, and the belief and love of His 
 Scriptures, along with the doctrine of the catechism, 
 the unequalled music of Watts, the name of Washing- 
 ton — there had never been an hour that he had not 
 held it the master work of man — just in its ethics, 
 consummate in its practical wisdom, paramount in its 
 injunctions; that every year of life had deepened the 
 original imjDression : that as his mind opened, and his 
 associations widened, he found that every one for whom 
 he felt respect, instructors, theological and moral teach- 
 ers, his entire party connection, the opposite party, 
 and the whole country, so held it, too ; that its fruits 
 of more than half a century of union, of happiness, 
 of renown, bore constant and clear witness to it in 
 his mind, and that it chanced that certain emergent 
 and rare occasions had devolved on him to stand forth 
 to maintain it, to vindicate its interpretation, to vindi- 
 
91 
 
 cate its autliority, to unfold its workings and uses; 
 that he had so acquitted himself of that opportunity 
 as to have won the title of its Expounder and Defender, 
 so that his proudest memories, his most prized renown, 
 referred to it, and were entwined with it — and say 
 whether with such antecedents, readiness to execute, 
 or disposition to evade, would have been the hardest 
 to explain ; likeliest to suggest the surmise of a new 
 temptation ! He who knows any thing of man, knows 
 that his vote for beginning the restoration of harmony 
 by keeping the whole Constitution, was determined, 
 was necessitated by the great law of sequences — a 
 great law of cause and effect, running back to his 
 mother's arms, as resistless as the law which moves the 
 system about the sun — and that he must have given 
 it, although it had been opened to him in vision, that 
 within the next natural day his « eyes should be turned 
 to behold for the last time the sun in heaven." 
 
 To accuse him in that act of " sinning against his own 
 conscience," is to charge, one of these things; either 
 that no well instructed conscience can approve and 
 maintain the Constitution, and each of its parts ; and there- 
 fore that his, by inference, did not approve it ; or that 
 he had never employed the proper means of instructing 
 his conscience; and therefore its approval, if it were 
 given, was itself an innnorality. The accuser must as- 
 sert one of these propositions. He will not deny, I take 
 it for granted, that the conscience requires to be in- 
 structed by political teaching, in order to guide the citi- 
 zen, or the public man aright, in the matter of political 
 
92 
 
 duties. Will lie say that tlie moral sentiments alone, 
 whatever their origin ; whether factitious and deriva- 
 tive, or parcel of the spirit of the child and born with 
 it ; that they alone, by force of strict and mere ethical 
 training, become qualified to pronounce authoritatively 
 whether the Constitution, or any other vast, and com- 
 plex civil policy, as a whole, whereby a nation is crea- 
 ted, and preserved, ought to have been made, or ought 
 to be executed? Will he venture to tell you that if 
 your conscience ajDproves the Union, the Constitution in 
 all its parts, and the law which administers it, that you 
 are bound to obey and uphold them ; and if it disap- 
 proves, you must, according to your measure, and in 
 your circles of agitation, disobey and subvert them, and 
 leave the matter there — forgetting or designedly omit- 
 ting to tell you also that you are bound, in all good 
 faith and diligence to resort to studies and to teachers 
 ah extra — in order to determine whether the conscience 
 oiigJit to approve or disapprove the Union, the Constitu- 
 tion and the law, in view of the ivhole aggregat cof their 
 nature and fruits? Does he not perfectly know that 
 this moral faculty, however trained, by mere moral 
 institution, specifically directed to that end, to be 
 tender, sensitive, and peremptory", is totally unequal to 
 decide on any action, or any thing, but the very sim- 
 plest ', that which produces the most palpable and im- 
 mediate result of unmixed good, or unmixed evil ; and 
 that when it comes to judge on the great mixed cases of 
 the world, where the consequences are numerous, their 
 development slow and successive, the light and shadow 
 
93 
 
 of a blended and multiform good and evil spread out on 
 the lifetime of a nation, that then morality must bor- 
 row from history ; from politics ; from reason operating 
 on history and politics ; her elements of determination ? 
 I think he must agree to this. He must agree, I think, 
 that to single out one provision in a political system of 
 many parts and of elaborate interdependence, to take it 
 all alone, exactly as it stands, and without attention to 
 its origin and history ; the necessities, morally resistless, 
 which prescribed its introduction into the system, the 
 unmeasured good in other forms which its allowance 
 buys, the unmeasured evil in other forms which its allow- 
 ance hinders — without attention to these, to present it in 
 all " the nakedness of a metaphysical abstraction " to 
 the mere sensibilities ; and ask if it is not inhuman, and 
 if they answer according to their kind, that it is, then 
 to say that the problem is solved, and the right of dis- 
 obedience is made clear — he must agree that this is 
 not to exalt reason and conscience, but to outrage both. 
 He must agree that although the supremacy of con- 
 science is absolute whether the decision be right or 
 wrong, that is, according to the real qualUics of things or not, 
 that there lies back of the actual conscience, and its 
 actual decisions, the great anterior duty of having a 
 conscience that shall decide according to the real qualities of 
 things; that to this vast attainment some adequate 
 knowledge of the real qualities of the things which are 
 to be subjected to its inspection is indispensable ; that if 
 the matter to be judged of is any thing so large, com- 
 plex, and conventional as the duty of the citizen, or the 
 
94 
 
 public man, to the State ; the duty of preserving or de- 
 stroying the order of things in which we are born ; the 
 duty of executing or viohiting one of the provisions of 
 organic hxw which the country, having a wide and clear 
 view before and after, had deemed a needful instrumen- 
 tal means for the preservation of that order ; that then 
 it is not enough to relegate the citizen, or the public 
 man, to a higher law, and an interior illumination, and 
 leave him there. Such discourse is " as the stars, which 
 give so little light because they are so high." He must 
 agree that in such case, morality itself should go to 
 school. There must be science as well as conscience, as 
 old Fuller has said. She must herself learn of history ; 
 she must learn of politics; she must consult the build- 
 ers of the State, the living and the dead, to know its 
 value, its aspects in the long run, on happiness and 
 morals ; its dangers ; the means of its preservation ; the 
 maxims and arts imperial of its glory. To fit her to be 
 the mistress of civil life, he will agree, that she must 
 come out for a space from the interior round of emo- 
 tions, and subjective states and contemplations, and in- 
 trospection, " cloistered, unexercised, unbreathed " — 
 and, carrying with her nothing but her tenderness, her 
 scrupulosity, and her love of truth, survey the object- 
 ive realities of the State ; ponder thoughtfully on the 
 complications, and impediments, and antagonisms which 
 make the noblest politics but an aspiring, an approxima- 
 tion, a compromise, a type, a shadow of good to come, 
 " the buying of great blessings at great prices " — and 
 
95 
 
 there learn civil duty secundum siihjcctam materiam. "Add 
 to your virtue knowledge " — or it is no virtue. 
 
 And now, is he who accuses Mr. Webster of " sinning 
 against his own conscience," quite sure that he hioivs, 
 that that conscience, — well instructed by profoundest 
 political studies, and thoughts of the reason; well 
 instructed by an appropriate moral institution sedu- 
 lously applied, did not commend and approve his 
 conduct to himself? Does he know, that he had not 
 anxiously, and maturely studied the ethics of the Con- 
 stitution; and as a question of ethics, but of ethics 
 applied to a stupendous problem of practical life, and 
 had not become satisfied that they were right ? Does 
 he know that he had not done this, when his faculties 
 were all at their best ; and his motives under no suspi- 
 cion? May not such an inquirer, for aught you can 
 know ; may not that great mind have verily and 
 conscientiously thought that he had learned in that 
 investigation many things ? May he not have thought 
 that he learned, that the duty of the inhabitants of 
 the free States, in that day's extremity, to the republic, 
 the duty at all events of statesmen, to the republic, is 
 a little too large, and delicate, and difficult, to be all com- 
 prehended in the single emotion of compassion for one 
 class of persons in the commonwealth, or in carrying out 
 the single principle of abstract, and natural, and violent 
 justice to one class ? May he not have thought that he 
 found there some stupendous exemplifications of what we 
 read of, in books of casuistry, the "dialectics of con- 
 science," as conflicts of duties; such things as the 
 
96 
 
 conflicts of the greater with the less; conflicts of the 
 attainable with the visionary ; conflicts of the real with 
 the seeming; and may he not have been soothed to 
 learn that the evil which he found in this part of the 
 Constitution was the least of two ; was unavoidable ; 
 was compensated ; was justified ; was commanded, as by 
 a voice from the mount, by a more exceeding and 
 enduring good? May he not have thought that he 
 had learned, that the grandest, most difficult, most 
 pleasing to God, of the achievements of secular wisdom 
 and philanthropy, is the building of a state; that of 
 the first class of grandeur and difficulty, and acceptable- 
 ness to Him, in this kind, was the building of our own : 
 that unless everybody of consequence enough to be 
 heard of in the age and generation of Washington — 
 unless that whole age and generation were in a con- 
 spiracy to cheat themselves, and history, and posterity, 
 a certain policy of concession and forbearance of region 
 to region, was indisjoensable to rear that master work 
 of man ; and that that same policy of concession and for- 
 bearance is as indispensable, more so, now, to afford 
 a rational ground of hope for its preservation ? May 
 he not have thought that he had learned that the 
 obligation, if such in any sense you may call it, of one 
 State to allow itself to become an asylum for those fly- 
 ing from slavery in another State, was an obligation of 
 benevolence, of humanity only, not of justice ; that it 
 must, therefore, on ethical principles, be exercised under 
 all the limitations which regulate and condition the 
 benevolence of States ; that therefore each is to exer- 
 
97 
 
 cise it in strict subordination to its own interests, esti- 
 mated by a wise statesmanship, and a well instructed 
 public conscience ; that benevolence itself, even its 
 ministrations of mere good-will, is an affair of measure 
 and of proportions ; and must choose sometimes between 
 the greater good, and the less ; that if, to the highest 
 degrve, and widest diffusion of human happiness, a 
 Union of States such as ours, some free, some not so, 
 was necessfir} ; .■. ■ yuch Union the Constitution was 
 necessary; . icii a Constitution this clause Avas 
 
 necessary, humanity itself prescribes it, and presides in 
 it ? May he not have thought that he learned that 
 there are proposed to humanity in this world many 
 fields of beneficent exertion ; some larger, some smaller, 
 some more, some less expensive and profitable to till ; 
 that among these it is always lawful, and often indispen- 
 sable to make a choice ; that sometimes, to acquire the 
 right, or the ability to labor in one, it is needful to 
 covenant, not to invade another ; and that such cove- 
 nant, in partial restraint, rather in reasonable direction of 
 philanthropy, is good in the forum of conscience ; and 
 setting out with these very elementary maxims of prac- 
 tical morals, may he not have thought that he learned 
 from the careful study of the fticts of our history, and 
 opinions, that to acquire the power of advancing the 
 dearest interests of man, through generations countless, 
 by that unequalled security of peace and progress, the 
 Union ; the power of advancing the interest of each 
 State, each region, each relation — the slave and the 
 master ; the power of subjecting a whole continent all 
 
98 
 
 astir, and on fire with the emnlation of young repub- 
 lics ; of subjecting it, through ages of household calm, 
 to the sweet influences of Christianity, of culture, of 
 the great, gentle, and sure reformer, time, that to enable 
 us to do this, to enable us to grasp this boundless and 
 ever-renewing harvest of philanthropy, it would have 
 been a good bargain — that humanity herself would 
 have approved it — to have bound ourselves never so 
 jiuch as to look across the line into the inclosure of 
 Soutliei'n municipal slavery; certainly never to enter 
 it ; still less, still less to 
 
 " Pluck its berries harsh and crude, 
 And with forced fingers rude 
 
 1 
 
 Shatter its leaves before the mellowing year." 
 
 Until the accuser who charges him, now that he is in 
 his grave, with " having sinned against his conscience," 
 w^ill assert 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 
 — even as the conscience of the mariner may be and 
 must be instructed by the knowledge of navigation ; 
 and that of the pilot by the knowledge of the depths and 
 shallow^s of the coast ; and that of the engineer of the 
 boat and the train, by the knowledge of the capacities 
 of his mechanism, to achieve a proposed velocity ; and 
 will assert that he is certain that the consummate science 
 of our great statesman, ivasfcli hj himself to iirescrihe io lih 
 momVdij another conduct than that which he adopted, 
 and that he thus consciously outraged that "sense of 
 
99 
 
 duty which pursues us ever " — is he not inexcusable, 
 whoever he is, that so judges another? 
 
 But it is time that this eulogy was spoken. My heart 
 goes back into the coffin there with him, and I would 
 pause. I went — it is a day or two since — alone, to 
 see again the home -which he so dearly loved, the cham- 
 ber where he died, the grave in which they laid him — 
 all habited as when 
 
 "Hi.s lo>?k drew audience still as night, 
 Or summer's nooniiuV cV.^;" 
 
 till the heavens be no more. Throughout that spacious 
 and calm scene all things to the eye showed at first 
 nnchanged. The books in the library, the portraits, 
 the table at which he wrote, the scientific culture of 
 the land, the course of agricultural occupation, the 
 comino: in of harvests, fruit of the seed his own hand 
 had scattered, the animals and implements of husband- 
 ry, the trees planted by him in lines, in copses, in 
 orchards, by thousands, the seat under the noble elm 
 on which he used to sit to feel the southwest wind at 
 evening, or hear the breathings of the sea, or the not 
 less audible music of the starry heavens, all seemed 
 at first unchanged. The sun of a bright day, from 
 which, however, something of the fervors of mid- 
 summer were wanting, fell temperately on them all, 
 filled the air on all sides with the utterances of life, 
 and gleamed on the long line of ocean. Some of those 
 whom on earth he loved best, still were there. The 
 great mind still seemed to preside ; the great presence 
 
100 
 
 to be with you ; you might expect to hear again the 
 rich and playful tones of the voice of the old hospi- 
 tality. Yet a moment more, and all the scene took 
 on the aspect of one great monument, inscribed with 
 his name, and sacred to his memory. And such it 
 shall be in all the future of America ! The sensation 
 of desolateness, and loneliness, and darkness, vjith 
 wdiich you see it now, will pass away ; the slmrp grief 
 of love and friendship will become soothx-ed ; men will 
 repiiw. thither a ; hey are wont to commemorate the 
 great days of hl;ory; the same glance shall take in, 
 and the same emotions shall greet and bless the Harbor 
 of the Pilgrims, and the Tomb of Webster. 
 
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