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your country, and what a praise you have added to freedom, and then rejoice in the sympathy and gratitude which beam upon your last days from the improved condition of mankind.

20. SANCTITY OF STATE OBLIGATIONS, 1840.-Webster.

WE have the good fortune, under the blessing of a benign Providence, to live in a country which we are proud of for many things,for its independence, for its public liberty, for its free institutions, for its public spirit, for its enlightened patriotism; but we are proud also, - and it is among those things we should be the most proud of, -we are proud of its public justice, of its sound faith, of its substantially correct morals in the administration of the Government, and the general conduct of the country, since she took her place among the nations of the world. But among the events which most threaten our character and standing, and which so grossly attach on these moral principles that have hitherto distinguished us, are certain sentiments which have been broached among us, and, I am sorry to say, have more supporters than they ought, because they strike at the very foundation of the social system. I do not speak especially of those which have been promulgated by some person in my own State, but of others, which go yet deeper into our political condition. I refer to the doctrine that one generation of men, acting under the Constitution, cannot bind another generation, who are to be their successors; on which ground it is held, among other things, that State bonds are not obligatory.

What! one generation cannot bind another? Where is the link of separation? It changes hourly. The American community to-day is not the same with the American community to-morrow. The community in which I began this day to address you is not the same as it is at this moment. How abhorrent is such a doctrine to those great truths which teach us that, though individuals flourish and decay, States are immortal; that political communities are ever young, ever green, ever flourishing, ever identical! The individuals who compose them may change, as the atoms of our bodies change; but the political community still exists in its aggregate capacity, as do our bodies in their natural; with this only difference, that we know that our natural frames must soon dissolve, and return to their original dust; but, for our country, she yet lives, she ever dwells in our hearts, and it will, even at that solemn moment, go up as our last aspiration to Heaven, that she may be immortal!

21. THE FOURTH OF JULY. - Daniel Webster, at Washington, D. C., July 4, 1851, on laying the corner-stone of the new wing of the Capitol.

THIS is that day of the year which announced to mankind the great fact of American Independence! This fresh and brilliant morning blesses our vision with another beholding of the birth-day of our nation;

and we see that nation, of recent origin, now among the most considerable and powerful, and spreading over the continent from sea to sea. "Westward the course of empire takes its way;

The four first acts already past,

A fifth shall close the drama with the day,-
Time's noblest offspring is the last."

On the day of the Declaration of Independence, our illustrious fathers performed the first scene in the last great act of this drama; one, in real importance, infinitely exceeding that for which the great English poet invoked

"A muse of fire,

A kingdom for a stage, princes to act,
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene."

The Muse inspiring our fathers was the Genius of Liberty, all on fire with a sense of oppression, and a resolution to throw it off; the whole world was the stage, and higher characters than princes trod it; and, instead of monarchs, countries, and nations, and the age, beheld the swelling scene. How well the characters were cast, and how well each acted his part, and what emotions the whole performance excited, let history, now and hereafter, tell.

On the Fourth of July, 1776, the representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, declared that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States. This declaration, made by most patriotic and resolute men, trusting in the justice of their cause, and the protection of Heaven, — and yet made not without deep solicitude and anxiety,- has now stood for seventy-five years, and still stands. It was sealed in blood. It has met dangers, and overcome them; it has had enemies, and conquered them; it has had detractors, and abashed them all; it has had doubting friends, but it has cleared all doubts away; and now, to-day, raising its august form higher than the clouds, twenty millions of people contemplate it with hallowed love, and the world beholds it, and the consequences which have followed from it, with profound admiration.

This anniversary animates, and gladdens, and unites, all American hearts. On other days of the year we may be party men, indulging in controversies more or less important to the public good; we may have likes and dislikes, and we may maintain our political differences, often with warm, and sometimes with angry feelings. But to-day we are Americans all; and all nothing but Americans. As the great luminary over our heads, dissipating mists and fogs, now cheers the whole hemisphere, so do the associations connected with this day disperse all cloudy and sullen weather in the minds and feelings of true Americans. Every man's heart swells within him, every man's port and bearing becomes somewhat more proud and lofty, as he remembers that seventy-five years have rolled away, and that the great inheritance of liberty is still his; his, undiminished and unimpaired; his, in all its original glory; his to enjoy, his to protect, and his to transmit to future generations.

22. APOSTROPHE TO WASHINGTON. On the last-named occasion.

FELLOW-CITIZENS: What contemplations are awakened in our minds, as we assemble here to reenact a scene like that performed by Washington! Methinks I see his venerable form now before me, as presented in the glorious statue by Houdon, now in the Capitol of Virginia. He is dignified and grave; but concern and anxiety seem to soften the lineaments of his countenance. The government over which he presides is yet in the crisis of experiment. Not free from troubles at home, he sees the world in commotion and arms all around him. He sees that imposing foreign powers are half disposed to try the strength of the recently established American government. Mighty thoughts, mingled with fears as well as with hopes, are struggling within him. He heads a short procession over these then naked fields; he crosses yonder stream on a fallen tree; he ascends to the top of this eminence, whose original oaks of the forest stand as thick around him as if the spot had been devoted to Druidical worship, and here he performs the appointed duty of the day.

And now, fellow-citizens, if this vision were a reality, — if Washington actually were now amongst us, and if he could draw around him the shades of the great public men of his own days, patriots and warriors, orators and statesmen, and were to address us in their presence, would he not say to us: "Ye men of this generation, I rejoice and thank God for being able to see that our labors, and toils, and sacrifices, were not in vain. You are prosperous, you are happy, you are grateful. The fire of liberty burns brightly and steadily in your hearts, while duty and the law restrain it from bursting forth in wild and destructive conflagration. Cherish liberty, as you love it; cherish its securities, as you wish to preserve it. Maintain the Constitution which we labored so painfully to establish, and which has been to you such a source of inestimable blessings. Preserve the Union of the States, cemented as it was by our prayers, our tears and our blood. Be true to God, to your country, and to your duty. So shall the whole Eastern world follow the morning sun, to contemplate you as a nation; so shall all generations honor you, as they honor us; and so shall that Almighty Power which so graciously protected us, and which now protects you, shower its everlasting blessings upon you and your posterity!"

Great father of your country! we heed your words; we feel their force, as if you now uttered them with lips of flesh and blood. Your example teaches us, your affectionate addresses teach us, your public life teaches us, your sense of the value of the blessings of the Union. Those blessings our fathers have tasted, and we have tasted, and still taste. Nor do we intend that those who come after us shall be denied the same high fruition. Our honor, as well as our happiness, is concerned. We cannot, we dare not, we will not, betray our sacred trust. We will not filch from posterity the treasure placed in our hands to be transmitted to other generations. The bow that gilds

the clouds in the Heavens, the pillars that uphold the firmament, may disappear and fall away in the hour appointed by the will of God; but, until that day comes, or so long as our lives may last, no ruthless hand shall undermine that bright arch of Union and Liberty which spans the continent from Washington to California!

23. THE POWER OF PUBLIC OPINION, 1852. — Webster.

WE are too much inclined to underrate the power of moral influence, and the influence of public opinion, and the influence of principles to which great men, the lights of the world and of the age, have given their sanction. Who doubts that, in our own struggle for liberty and independence, the majestic eloquence of Chatham, the profound reasoning of Burke, the burning satire and irony of Col. Barré, had influences upon our fortunes here in America? They had influences both ways. They tended, in the first place, somewhat to diminish the confidence of the British Ministry in their hopes of success, in attempting to subjugate an injured People. They had influence another way, because, all along the coasts of the country,— and all our people in that day lived upon the coast, there was not a reading man who did not feel stronger, bolder, and more determined in the assertion of his rights, when these exhilarating accounts from the two Houses of Parliament reached him from beyond the seas. He felt that those who held and controlled public opinion elsewhere were with us; that their words of eloquence might produce an effect in the region where they were uttered; and, above all, they assured them that, in the judgment of the just, and the wise, and the impartial, their cause was just, and they were right; and therefore they said, We will fight it out to the last.

Now, Gentlemen, another great mistake is sometimes made. We think that nothing is powerful enough to stand before autocratic, monarchical, or despotic power. There is something strong enough, quite strong enough, and, if properly exerted, will prove itself so,and that is the power of intelligent public opinion in all the Nations of the earth. There is not a monarch on earth whose throne is not liable to be shaken by the progress of opinion, and the sentiment of the just and intelligent part of the People. It becomes us, in the station which we hold, to let that public opinion, so far as we form it, have a free course. Let it go out; let it be pronounced in thunder tones; let it open the ears of the deaf; let it open the eyes of the blind; and let it everywhere be proclaimed what we of this great Republic think of the general principle of human liberty, and of that oppression which all abhor. Depend upon it, Gentlemen, that between these two rival powers,- the autocratic power, maintained by arms and force, and the popular power, maintained by opinion, the former is constantly decreasing, and, thank God, the latter is constantly increasing! Real human liberty and human rights are gaining the ascendant; and the part which we have to act, in all this great drama, is to

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show ourselves in favor of those rights, to uphold our ascendency, and to carry it on until we shall see it culminate in the highest Heaven over our heads.

24. THE FUTURE OF THE UNITED STATES. - President King.

I HAVE faith in the future, because I have confidence in the present. With our growth in wealth and in power, I see no abatement in those qualities, moral and physical, to which so much of our success is owing; and, while thus true to ourselves, true to the instincts of freedom, and to those other instincts which, with our race, seem to go hand in hand with Freedom, love of order and respect for law (as law, and not because it is upheld by force), we must continue to prosper.

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The sun shines not upon, has never shone upon, a land where human happiness is so widely disseminated, where human government is so little abused, so free from oppression, so invisible, intangible, and yet so strong. Nowhere else do the institutions which constitute a State rest upon so broad a base as here; and nowhere are men so powerless, and institutions so strong. In the wilderness of free minds, dissensions will occur; and, in the unlimited discussion in writing and in speech, in town-meetings, newspapers, and legislative bodies, angry and menacing language will be used; irritations will arise and be aggravated; and those immediately concerned in the strife, or breathing its atmosphere, may fear, or feign to fear, that danger is in such hot breath and passionate resolves. But outside, and above, and beyond all this, is the People, steady, industrious, self-possessed, caring little for abstractions, and less for abstractionists, but, with one deep, common sentiment, and with the consciousness, calm, but quite sure and earnest, that, in the Constitution and the Union, as they received them from their fathers, and as they themselves have observed and maintained them, is the sheet-anchor of their hope, the pledge of their prosperity, the palladium of their liberty; and with this, is that other consciousness, not less calm and not less earnest, that, in their own keeping exclusively, and not in that of any party leaders, or party demagogues, or political hacks, or speculators, is the integrity of that Union and that Constitution. It is in the strong arms and honest hearts of the great masses, who are not members of Congress, nor holders of office, nor spouters at town-meetings, that resides the safety of the State; and these masses, though slow to move, are irresistible, when the time and the occasion for moving come.

I have faith, therefore, in the Future; and when, at the close of this half-century, which so comparatively few of us are to see, the account shall again be taken, and the question be asked, What has New York done since 1850? I have faith that the answer will be given in a City still advancing in population, wealth, morals, and knowledge, in a City free, and deserving, by her virtues, her benevolent institutions, her schools, her courts and her temples, to continue free, and still part and parcel of this great and glorious Union,which may God preserve till Time shall be no more!

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