arms.

And what has this band of patriots, of sages, and of statesmen, given to us? Not what Cæsar gave to Rome; not what Cromwell gave to England, or Napoleon to France: they established for us the great principles of civil, political, and religious liberty, upon the strong foundations on which they have hitherto stood. There may have been military capacity in Congress; but can any one deny that it is to the wisdom of sages, Washington being one, we are indebted for the signal blessings we enjoy?

176. OPPOSITION TO MISGOVERNMENT, 1814. — Webster.

ALL the evils which afflict the country are imputed to opposition. It is said to be owing to opposition that the war became necessary, and owing to opposition, also, that it has been prosecuted with no better success. This, Sir, is no new strain. It has been sung a thousand times. It is the constant tune of every weak and wicked administration. What minister ever yet acknowledged that the evils which fell on his country were the necessary consequences of his own incapacity, his own folly, or his own corruption? What possessor of political power ever yet failed to charge the mischiefs resulting from his own measures upon those who had uniformly opposed those measures? The people of the United States may well remember the administration of Lord North. He lost America to his country, yet he could find pretences for throwing the odium upon his opponents. He could throw it upon those who had forewarned him of consequences, and who had opposed him, at every stage of his disastrous policy, with all the force of truth, reason and talent. It was not his own weakness, his own ambition, his own love of arbitrary power, that disaffected the Colonies. It was not the Tea Act, the Stamp Act, the Boston Port Bill, that severed the empire of Britain. O, no! It was owing to no fault of Administration. It was the work of Opposition. It was the impertinent boldness of Chatham, the idle declamation of Fox, the unseasonable sarcasm of Barré. These men, and men like them, would not join the minister in his American war. They would not give the name and character of wisdom to what they believed to be the extreme of folly. They would not pronounce those measures just and honorable which their principles led them to condemn. They declared the minister's war to be wanton. They foresaw its end, and pointed it out plainly, both to the minister and to the country. He declared their opposition to be selfish and factious. He persisted in his course; and the result is in history.

Important as I deem it, Sir, to discuss, on all proper occasions, the policy of the measures at present pursued, it is still more important to maintain the right of such discussion in its full and just extent. Sentiments lately sprung up, and now growing popular, render it necessary to be explicit on this point. It is the ancient and constitutional right of this people to canvass public measures, and the merits

of public men. It is a home-bred right, a fireside privilege. It has ever been enjoyed in every house, cottage and cabin, in the Nation. It is not to be drawn into controversy. It is as undoubted as the right of breathing the air and walking on the earth. Belonging to private life as a right, it belongs to public life as a duty; and it is the last duty which those whose representative I am shall find me to abandon. This high constitutional privilege I shall defend and exercise within this House, and without this House, and in all places; in time of war, in time of peace, and at all times. Living, I will assert it; dying, I will assert it; and, should I leave no other legacy to my children, by the blessing of God I will leave them the inheritance of free principles, and the example of a manly, independent, and constitutional defence of them!

177. MORAL FORCE AGAINST PHYSICAL, JAN. 19, 1823.-Webster.

THE time has been, Sir, indeed, when fleets, and armies, and subsidies, were the principal reliances, even in the best cause. But, happily for mankind, there has come a great change in this respect. Moral causes come into consideration, in proportion as the progress of knowledge is advanced; and the public opinion of the civilized world is rapidly gaining an ascendency over mere brutal force. It is already able to oppose the most formidable obstruction to the progress of injustice and oppression; and, as it grows more intelligent, and more intense, it will be more and more formidable. It may be silenced by military power, but it cannot be conquered. It is elastic, irrepressible, and invulnerable to the weapons of ordinary warfare. It is that impassable, unextinguishable enemy of mere violence and arbitrary rule, which, like Milton's angels,

"Vital in every part,

Cannot, but by annihilating, die."

Until this be propitiated or satisfied, it is in vain for power to talk either of triumphs or of repose. No matter what fields are desolated, what fortresses surrendered, what armies subdued, or what provinces overrun. In the history of the year that has passed by us, and in the instance of unhappy Spain, we have seen the vanity of all triumphs, in a cause which violates the general sense of justice of the civilized world. It is nothing that the troops of France have passed from the Pyrenees to Cadiz; it is nothing that an unhappy and prostrate Nation has fallen before them; it is nothing that arrests, and confiscation, and execution, sweep away the little remnant of national existence. There is an enemy that still exists, to check the glory of these triumphs. It follows the conqueror back to the very scene of his ovations; it calls upon him to take notice that Europe, though silent, is yet indignant; it shows him that the sceptre of his victory is a barren sceptre, that it shall confer neither joy nor honor, but shall moulder to dry ashes in his grasp. In the midst of his exulta

tion, it pierces his ear with the cry of injured justice; it denounces against him the indignation of an enlightened and civilized age; it turns to bitterness the cup of his rejoicing, and wounds him with the sting which belongs to the consciousness of having outraged the opinions of mankind.

178. SYMPATHY WITH SOUTH-AMERICAN REPUBLICANISM, 1826. — Webster.

We are told that the country is deluded and deceived by cabalistic words. Cabalistic words! If we express an emotion of pleasure at the results of this great action of the spirit of political liberty; if we rejoice at the birth of new republican Nations, and express our joy by the common terms of regard and sympathy; if we feel and signify high gratification, that, throughout this whole Continent, men are now likely to be blessed by free and popular institutions; and if, in the uttering of these sentiments, we happen to speak of sister Republics, of the great American family of Nations, or of the political systems and forms of Government of this hemisphere, then, indeed, it seems, we deal in senseless jargon, or impose on the judgment and feeling of the community by cabalistic words! Sir, what is meant by this? Is it intended that the People of the United States ought to be totally indifferent to the fortunes of these new neighbors? Is no change, in the lights in which we are to view them, to be wrought, by their having thrown off foreign dominion, established independence, and instituted, on our very borders, republican Governments, essentially after our own example?

Sir, I do not wish to overrate I do not overrate the progress of these new States, in the great work of establishing a well-secured popular liberty. I know that to be a great attainment, and I know they are but pupils in the school. But, thank God, they are in the school! They are called to meet difficulties such as neither we nor our fathers encountered. For these we ought to make large allowances. What have we ever known like the colonial vassalage of these States? Sir, we sprang from another stock. We belong to another race. We have known nothing-we have felt nothing-of the political despotism of Spain, nor of the heat of her fires of intolerance. No rational man expects that the South can run the same rapid career as the North, or that an insurgent province of Spain is in the same condition as the English Colonies when they first asserted their independence. There is, doubtless, much more to be done in the first than in the last case. But, on that account, the honor of the attempt is not less; and, if all difficulties shall be, in time, surmounted, it will be greater. The work may be more arduous, it is not less noble, — because there may be more of ignorance to enlighten, more of bigotry to subdue, more of prejudice to eradicate. If it be a weakness to feel a strong interest in the success of these great revolutions, I confess myself guilty of that weakness. If it be weak to feel that I am an American, to think that recent events have not only opened new

modes of intercourse, but have created, also, new grounds of regard and sympathy, between ourselves and our neighbors; if it be weak to feel that the South, in her present state, is somewhat more emphatically a part of America than when she lay, obscure, oppressed, and unknown, under the grinding bondage of a foreign power; if it be weak to rejoice when, even in any corner of the earth, human beings are able to get up from beneath oppression, to erect themselves, and to enjoy the proper happiness of their intelligent nature, if this be weak, it is a weakness from which I claim no exemption.

179. HATRED OF THE POOR TO THE RICH, 1834. -Webster.

SIR, I see, in those vehicles which carry to the People sentiments from high places, plain declarations that the present controversy is but a strife between one part of the community and another. I hear it boasted as the unfailing security, the solid ground, never to be shaken, on which recent measures rest, that the poor naturally hate the rich. I know that, under the shade of the roofs of the Capitol, within the last twenty-four hours, among men sent here to devise means for the public safety and the public good, it has been vaunted forth, as matter of boast and triumph, that one cause existed, powerful enough to support everything and to defend everything, and that was, -the natural hatred of the poor to the rich.

Sir, I pronounce the author of such sentiments to be guilty of attempting a detestable fraud on the community; a double fraud, a fraud which is to cheat men out of their property, and out of the earnings of their labor, by first cheating them out of their understandings.

"The natural hatred of the poor to the rich!" Sir, it shall not be till the last moment of my existence; it shall be only when I am drawn to the verge of oblivion, when I shall cease to have respect or affection for anything on earth, - that I will believe the people of the United States capable of being effectually deluded, cajoled, and driven about in herds, by such abominable frauds as this. If they shall sink to that point, if they so far cease to be men- thinking men, intelligent men-as to yield to such pretences and such clamor, they will be slaves already; slaves to their own passions, slaves to the fraud and knavery of pretended friends. They will deserve to be blotted out of all the records of freedom. They ought not to dishonor the cause of self-government, by attempting any longer to exercise it. They ought to keep their unworthy hands entirely off from the cause of republican liberty, if they are capable of being the victims of artifices so shallow, of tricks so stale, so threadbare, so often practised, so much worn out, on serfs and slaves.

"The natural hatred of the poor against the rich!" "The danger of a moneyed aristocracy!" "A power as great and dangerous as that resisted by the Revolution!" "A call to a new Declaration of Inde

pendence!"

Sir, I admonish the People against the objects of outcries like these. I admonish every industrious laborer in the country to be on his guard against such delusions. I tell him the attempt is to play off his passions against his interests, and to prevail on him, in the name of liberty, to destroy all the fruits of liberty; in the name of patriotism, to injure and afflict his country; and in the name of his own independence, to destroy that very independence, and make him a beggar and a slave!

180. ON SUDDEN POLITICAL CONVERSIONS, 1838.-Webster.

MR. PRESIDENT, public men must certainly be allowed to change their opinions, and their associations, whenever they see fit. No one doubts this. Men may have grown wiser, they may have attained to better and more correct views of great public subjects. Nevertheless, Sir, it must be acknowledged, that what appears to be a sudden, as well as a great change, naturally produces a shock. I confess, for one, I was shocked, when the honorable gentleman,* at the last session, espoused this billt of the Administration. Sudden movements of the affections, whether personal or political, are a little out of nature.

Several years ago, Sir, some of the wits of England wrote a mock play, intended to ridicule the unnatural and false feeling the senti mentality of a certain German school of literature. In this play, two strangers are brought together at an inn. While they are warming themselves at the fire, and before their acquaintance is yet five minutes old, one springs up, and exclaims to the other, "A sudden thought strikes me! Let us swear an eternal friendship!"

This affectionate offer was instantly accepted, and the friendship duly sworn, unchangeable and eternal! Now, Sir, how long this eternal friendship lasted, or in what manner it ended, those who wish to know may learn by referring to the play. But it seems to me, Sir, that the honorable member has carried his political sentimentality a good deal higher than the flight of the German school; for he appears to have fallen suddenly in love, not with strangers, but with opponents. Here we all had been, Sir, contending against the progress of Executive power, and more particularly, and most strenuously, against the projects and experiments of the Administration upon the currency. The honorable member stood among us, not only as an associate, but as a leader. We thought we were making some headway. The People appeared to be coming to our support and our assistance. The country had been roused; every successive election weakening the strength of the adversary, and increasing our own. We were in this career of success, carried strongly forward by the current of public opinion, and only needed to hear the cheering voice of the honorable member,

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more! " and we should have prostrated, forever, this anti-constitutional, anticommercial, anti-republican, and anti-American policy of the Adminis tration. But, instead of these encouraging and animating accents, †The Sub-treasury bill.

*Mr. Calhoun.