Beadle's Dime National Speaker, Embodying Gems of Oratory and Wit, Particularly Adapted to American Schools and Firesides. Various
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of the extension of the Capitol – the thirteen colonies that accomplished the Revolution multiplied to thirty-two independent States, a single one of them exceeding in population the old thirteen; the narrow border of settlement along the coast, fenced in by France and the native tribes, expanded to the dimensions of the continent; Louisiana, Florida, Texas, New Mexico, California, Oregon – territories equal to the great monarchies of Europe – added to the Union; and the two millions of population which fired the imagination of Burke, swelled to twenty-four millions, during the lifetime of Mr. Webster, and in seven short years, which have since elapsed, increased to thirty!
With these stupendous results in his own time as the unit of calculation; beholding under Providence with each decade of years, a new people, millions strong, emigrants in part from the Old World, but mainly bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, the children of the soil, growing up to inhabit the waste places of the continent, to inherit and transmit the rights and blessings which we have received from our fathers; recognizing in the Constitution and in the Union established by it the creative influence which, as far as human agencies go, has wrought these miracles of growth and progress, and which wraps up in sacred reserve the expansive energy with which the work is to be carried on and perfected, he looked forward with patriotic aspiration to the time, when, beneath its ægis, the whole wealth of our civilization would be poured out, not only to fill up the broad interstices of settlement, if I may so express myself, in the old thirteen and their young and thriving sister States, already organized in the West, but, in the lapse of time, to found a hundred new republics in the valley of the Missouri and beyond the Rocky Mountains, till our letters and our arts, our schools and our churches, our laws and our liberties, shall be carried from the arctic circle to the tropics, "from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof."
THE STATESMAN'S LABORS. – Ibid
This prophetic glance, not merely at the impending, but the distant future, this reliance on the fulfillment of the great design of Providence, illustrated through our whole history, to lavish upon the people of this country the accumulated blessings of all former stages of human progress, made Webster more tolerant of the tardy and irregular advances and temporary wanderings from the path of what he deemed a wise and sound policy, than those fervid spirits, who dwell exclusively in the present, and make less allowance for the gradual operation of moral influences. This was the case in reference to the great sectional controversy, which now so sharply divides and so violently agitates the country. He not only confidently anticipated, what the lapse of seven years since his decease has witnessed and is witnessing, that the newly acquired and the newly organized territories of the Union would grow up into free States; but in common with all or nearly all the statesmen of the last generation, he believed that free labor would ultimately prevail throughout the country. He thought he saw that, in the operation of the same causes which have produced this result in the Middle and Eastern States, it was visibly taking place in the States north of the cotton-growing region; and he inclined to the opinion that there also, under the influence of physical and economical causes, free labor would eventually be found more productive, and would therefore be ultimately established.
For these reasons, bearing in mind, what all admit, that the complete solution of the mighty problem, which now so greatly tasks the prudence and patriotism of the wisest and best in the land, is beyond the delegated powers of the general government; that it depends, as far as the States are concerned, on their independent legislation, and that it is of all others a subject, in reference to which public opinion and public sentiment will most powerfully influence the law; that much in the lapse of time, without law, is likely to be brought about by degrees, and gradually done and permitted, as in Missouri, at the present day, while nothing is to be hoped from external interference, whether of exhortation or rebuke; that in all human affairs controlled by self-governing communities extreme opinions and extreme courses, on the one hand, generally lead to extreme opinions and extreme courses on the other; and that nothing will more contribute to the earliest practicable relief of the country from this most prolific source of conflict and estrangement, than to prevent its being introduced into our party organizations, he deprecated its being allowed to find a place among the political issues of the day, north or south, and seeking a platform on which honest and patriotic men might meet and stand, he thought he had found it, where our fathers did, in the Constitution.
It is true that, in interpreting the fundamental law on this subject, a diversity of opinion between the two sections of the Union presents itself. This has ever been the case, first or last, in relation to every great question which has divided the country. It is the unfailing incident of constitutions, written or unwritten; an evil to be dealt with in good faith, by prudent and enlightened men, in both sections of the Union, seeking, as Washington sought, the public good, and giving expression to the patriotic common-sense of the people.
Such, I have reason to believe, were the principles entertained by Mr. Webster; not certainly those best calculated to win a temporary popularity in any part of the Union, in times of passionate sectional agitation which, between the extremes of opinion, leaves no middle ground for moderate counsels. If any one could have found and could have trodden such ground with success, he would seem to have been qualified to do it, by his transcendent talent, his mature experience, his approved temper and calmness, and his tried patriotism. If he failed of finding such a path for himself or the country – while we thoughtfully await what time and an all-wise Providence has in store for ourselves and our children – let us remember that his attempt was the highest and the purest which can engage the thoughts of a Statesman and a Patriot: peace on earth, good-will toward men, harmony and brotherly love among the children of our common country.
TRUE IMMORTALITY. – Ibid
It has been the custom, from the remotest antiquity, to preserve and to hand down to posterity, in bronze and in marble, the counterfeit presentment of illustrious men.
Your long rows of quarried granite may crumble to the dust; the cornfields in yonder villages, ripening to the sickle, may, like the plains of stricken Lombardy, a short time ago, be kneaded into bloody clods, by the maddening wheels of artillery; this populous city, like the old cities of Etruria and the Campagna Romana, may be desolated by the pestilence which walketh in darkness, may decay with the lapse of time, and the busy mart, which now rings with the joyous din of trade, become as lonely and still as Carthage or Tyre, as Babylon and Nineveh, but the names of the great and good shall survive the desolation and the ruin; the memory of the wise, the brave, the patriotic, shall never perish. Yes, Sparta is a wheat field; a Bavarian prince holds court at the foot of the Acropolis; the traveling virtuoso digs for marbles in the Roman Forum and beneath the ruins of the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus; but Lycurgus and Leonidas, and Miltiades and Demosthenes, and Cato and Tully "still live;" and Webster still lives, and all the great and good shall live in the heart of ages, while marble and bronze shall endure; and when marble and bronze have perished, they shall "still live" in memory so long as men shall reverence Law, and honor Patriotism, and love Liberty!
That solemn event, which terminates the material existence, becomes by the sober revisions of contemporary judgment, aided by offices of respectful and affectionate commemoration, the commencement of a nobler life on earth. The wakeful eyes are closed, the feverish pulse is still, the tired and trembling limbs are relieved from their labors, and the aching head is laid to rest on the lap of its mother earth, like a play-worn child at the close of a summer's day; but all that we honored and loved in the living man begins to live again in a new and higher being of influence and fame. It was given but to a limited number to listen to the living voice of Daniel Webster, and they can never listen to it again; but the wise teachings, the grave admonitions, the patriotic exhortations which fell from his tongue will be gathered together and garnered up in the memory of millions. The cares, the toils, the sorrows; the conflicts with others, the conflicts of the fervent spirit with itself; the sad accidents of humanity, the fears of the brave, the follies of the wise, the errors of the learned; all that dashed the cup of enjoyment with bitter drops and strewed sorrowful ashes over the beauty of expectation and promise; the treacherous friend, the ungenerous rival, the mean and malignant foe; the uncharitable prejudice which withheld the just tribute of praise, the human frailty which wove sharp thorns into the wreath of solid merit – all these in ordinary cases are buried in the grave of the illustrious dead; while their brilliant talents, their