went to war against a preamble. They fought seven years against a declaration. They poured out their treasures and their blood like water, in a contest, in opposition to an assertion, which those less sagacious and not so well schooled in the prin ciples of civil liberty would have regarded as barren phraseology, or mere parade of words. They saw in the claim of the British parliament a seminal principle of mischief, the germ of unjust power; they detected it, dragged it forth from underneath its plausible disguises, struck at it, nor did it elude ether their steady eye, or their well-directed blow, till they had extirpated and destroyed it, to the smallest fibre. On this question of principle, while actual suffering was yet afar off, they raised their flag against a power to which, for purposes of foreign conquest and subjugation, Rome, in the height of her glory, is not to be compared; a power which has dotted over the surface of the whole globe with her possessions and military posts; whose morning drum-beat, following the sun, and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth daily with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England. DANIEL WEBSTER. 32. THE SENTINELS OF LIBERTY. WHEN the members of this house shall lose the freedom of speech and debate; when they shall surrender the right of publicly and freely canvassing all important measures of the executive; when they shall not be allowed to maintain their own authority and their own privileges by vote, declaration, or resolution, they will then be no longer free representatives of a free people, but slaves themselves, and fit instruments to make slaves of others. Sir, if the people have a right to discuss the official conduct of the executive, so have their representatives. We have been taught to regard a representative of the people as a sentinel on the watch-tower of liberty. Is he to be blind, though visible danger approaches? Is he to be deaf, though sounds of peril fill the air? Is he to be dumb, while a thousand duties impel him to raise the cry of alarm? Is he not, rather, to catch the lowest whisper which breathes intention or purpose of encroachment on the public liberties, and to give his voice breath and utterance at the first appearance of danger? Is not his eye to traverse the whole horizon, with the keen and cager vision of an unhooded hawk, detecting, through all disguises, every enemy advancing, in any form, towards the citadel which he guards? Sir, this watchfulness for public liberty, this duty of foreseeing danger and proclaiming it, this promptitude and boldness in resisting attacks on the constitution from any quarter, this defence of established landmarks, this fearless resistance of whatever would transcend or remove them, all belong to the representative character, are interwoven with its very nature, and of which it cannot be deprived, without converting an active, intelligent, faithful agent of the people. into an unresisting and passive instrument of power. A representative body which gives up these rights and duties, gives itself up. It is a representative body no longer. It has broken the tie between itself and its constituents, and henceforth is fit only to be regarded as an inert, self-sacrificed mass, from which all appropriate principle of vitality has departed forever. DANIEL WEBSTER. 33. BUNKER-HILL MONUMENT. THE Bunker-Hill monument is finished. Here it stands Fortunate in the natural eminence on which it is placed,-higher, infinitely higher, in its objects and purpose, it rises over the land, and over the sea; and visible, at their homes, to three hundred thousand citizens of Massachusetts,-it stands, a memorial of the last, and a monitor to the present, and all succeeding generations. I have spoken of the loftiness of its purpose. If it had been without any other design than the creation of a work of art, the granite of which it is composed would have slept in its native bed. It has a purpose; and that purpose gives it character. That purpose enrobes it with dignity and moral grandeur. That well-known purpose it is which causes us to look up to it with a feeling of awe. It is itself the orator of this occasion. It is not from my lips, it is not from any human lips, that that strain of eloquence is this day to flow, most competent to move and excite the vast multitudes around. The potent speaker stands motionless before them. It is a plain shaft. It bears no inscriptions, fronting to the rising sun, from which the future antiquarian shall wipe the dust. Nor does the rising sun cause tones of music to issue from its summit. But at the rising of the sun, and at the setting of the sun, in the blaze of noon-day, and beneath the milder effulgence of lunar light, it looks, it speaks, it acts, to the full comprehension of every American mind, and the awakening of glowing enthusiasm in every American heart. Its silent, but awful utterance; its deep pathos, as it brings to our contemplation the 17th of June, 1775, and the consequences which have resulted to us, to our country, and to the world, from the events of that day, and which we know must continue to rain influence on the destinies of mankind, to the end of time; the elevation with which it raises us high above the ordinary feelings of life; surpass all that the study of the closet, or even the inspiration of genius, can produce. To-day, it speaks to us. Its future auditories will be through successive generations of men, as they rise up before it, and gather round it. Its speech will be of patriotism and courage; of civil and religious liberty; of free government; of the moral improvement and elevation of mankind; and of the immortal memory of those who, with heroic devotion, have sacrificed their lives for their country. DANIEL WEBSTER. 34. THE CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON. AMERICA has furnished to the world the character of Washington! And if our American institutions had done nothing else, that alone would have entitled them to the respect of mankind. Washington!" First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen!"-Washington is all our own! The enthusiastic veneration and regard in which the people of the United States hold him, prove them to be worthy of such a countryman; while his reputation abroad reflects the highest honor on his country and its institutions. I would cheerfully put the question to-day to the intelligence of Europe and the world, what character of the century, upon the whole, stands out in the relief of history, most pure, most respectable, most sublime; and I doubt not, that, by a suffrage approaching to unanimity, the answer would be, Washington! * This structure, by its uprightness, its solidity, its durability, is no unfit emblem of his character. His public virtues and public principles were as firm as the earth on which it stands; his personal motives as pure as the serene heaven in which its summit is lost. But, indeed, though a fit, it is an inadequate emblem. Towering high above the column which our hands have builded, beheld, not by the inhabitants of a single city, er a single State, ascends the colossal grandeur of his character, *Bunker-Hill Monument. and his life. In all the constituents of the one, in all the acts of the other, in all its titles to immortal love, admiration, and renown, it is an American production. It is the embodiment and vindication of our transatlantic liberty. Born upon our soil, of parents also born upon it, never for a moment having had a sight of the old world, instructed, according to the modes of his time, only in the spare, plain, but wholesome elementary knowledge which our institutions provide for the children of the people, growing up beneath and penetrated by the genuine influences of American society, growing up amidst our expanding, but not luxurious, civilization, partaking in our great destiny of labor, our long contest with unreclaimed nature and uncivilized man, our agony of glory, the war of independence, our great victory of peace, the formation of the Union and the establishment of the Constitution, he is all, all our own! That crowded and glorious life, "Where multitudes of virtues pass along, Each pressing foremost, in the mighty throng I claim him for America. In all the perils, in every darkened moment of the State, in the midst of the reproaches of enemies and the misgiving of friends, I turn to that transcendent name for courage and for consolation. To him who denies, or doubts, whether our fervid liberty can be combined with law, with order, with the security of property, with the pursuit and advancement of happiness,-to him who denies that our institutions are capable of producing exaltation of soul, and the passion of true glory, to him who denies that we have contributed any thing to the stock of great lessons and great examples,—to all these I reply by pointing to WASHINGTON ! DANIEL WEBSTER. 35. THE RESPONSIBILITY OF AMERICANS. Our THIS lovely land, this glorious liberty, these benign institutions, the dear purchase of our fathers, are ours; ours to enjoy, ours to preserve, ours to transmit. Generations past, and generations to come, hold us responsible for this sacred trust. fathers, from behind, admonish us, with their anxious paternal voices; posterity calls out to us, from the bosom of the future the world turns hither its solicitous eyes-all, all conjure us to act wisely and faithfully in the relation which we sustain. We can never, indeed, pay the debt which is upon us; but by virtue, by morality, by religion, by the cultivation of every good principle and every good habit, we may hope to enjoy the blessing, through our day, and to leave it unimpaired to our children. Let us feel deeply how much of what we are and of what we possess, we owe to this liberty, and these institutions of government. Nature has, indeed, given us a soil which yields bounteously to the hands of industry; the mighty and fruitful ocean is before us, and the skies over our heads shed health and vigor. But what are lands, and seas, and skies, to civilized men, without society, without knowledge, without morals, without religious culture; and how can these be enjoyed, in all their extent, and all their excellence, but under the protection of wise institutions and a free government? There is not one of us, there is not one of us here present, who does not, at this moment, and at every moment, experience in his own condition, and in the condition of those most near and dear to him, the influence and the benefit of this liberty, and these institutions. Let us then acknowledge the blessing; let us feel it deeply and powerfully; let us cherish a strong affection for it, and resolve to maintain and perpetuate it. The blood of our fathers-let it not have been shed in vain; the great hope of posterity-let it not be blasted. DANIEL WEBSTER. 36. THE VOYAGE OF THE MAYFLOWER. METHINKS I see it now: that one solitary, adventurous vessel, the Mayflower of a forlorn hope, freighted with the prospects of a future state, and bound across the unknown sea. I behold it pursuing, with a thousand misgivings, the uncertain, tedious voyage. Suns rise and set, and weeks and months pass, and winter surprises them on the deep, but brings them not the sight of the wished-for shore. I see them now, scantily supplied with provisions, crowded almost to suffocation in their illstored prison, delayed by calms, pursuing a circuitous route; and now driven in fury, before the raging tempest, on the high and giddy waves. The awful voice of the storm howls through the rigging: the laboring masts seem straining from their base: the dismal sound of the pumps is heard: the ship leaps, as it were, madly from billow to billow: the ocean breaks and settles with ingulfing floods over the floating deck, and beats with deadening, shivering weight, against the staggered vessel. I see them, escaped from these perils, pursuing their all but des |