Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

DANIEL WEBSTER.

49

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
Contending to be seen, then making room
For greater multitudes that were to come;"
that life was the life of an American citizen.

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!

35.

DANIEL WEBSTER.

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF AMERICANS.

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 genOur erations 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 We act wisely and faithfully in the relation which we sustain. 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.

[ocr errors]

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

[ocr errors]

4

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

perate undertaking, and landed at last, after a five months' passage, on the ice-clad rocks of Plymouth: weak and weary from the voyage, poorly armed, scantily provisioned: depending on the charity of their shipmaster for a draught of beer on board; drinking nothing but water on shore: without shelter: without means: surrounded by hostile tribes.

Shut now the volume of history, and tell me, on any principle of human probability, what shall be the fate of this handful of adventurers. Tell me, man of military science! in how many months were they all swept off by the thirty savage tribes enumerated within the early limits of New England? Tell me, politician! how long did the shadow of a colony, on which your conventions and treaties had not smiled, languish on the distant coast? Student of history! compare for me the baffled projects, the deserted settlements, the abandoned adventures of other times, and find the parallel of this. Was it the winter's storm, beating upon the houseless heads of women and children, was it hard labor and spare meals, was it disease, was it the tomahawk, was it the deep malady of a blighted hope, a ruined enterprise and a broken heart, aching in its last moments at the recollection of the loved and left, beyond the sea,—was it some, or all of these united, that hurried this forsaken company to their melancholy fate? And is it possible that neither of these causes, that not all combined, were able to blast this bud of hope? is it possible, that from a beginning so feeble, so frail, so worthy, not so much of admiration as of pity, there has gone forth a progress so steady, a growth so wonderful, an expansion so ample, a reality so important, a promise, yet to be fulfilled, so glorious?

EDWARD EVERETT.

37. THE LAND OF OUR FATHERS.

(These parts may be spoken together, or separately.)

WHAT American does not feel proud that he is descended from the countrymen of Bacon, of Newton, and of Locke? Who does not know, that while every pulse of civil liberty in the heart of the British empire beat warm and full in the bosom of our fathers, the sobriety, the firmness, and the dignity with which the cause of free principles struggled into existence here, constantly found encouragement and countenance from the sons of liberty there? Who does not remember that when the Pil

grims went over the sea, the prayers of the faithful British confessors, in all the quarters of their dispersion, went over with them, while their aching eyes were strained, till the star of hope should go up in the western skies? And who will ever forget that in that eventful struggle which severed this mighty empire from the British crown, there was not heard, throughout our continent in arms, a voice which spoke louder for the rights of America, than that of Burke or of Chatham, within the walls of the British parliament, and at the foot of the British throne? No, for myself I can truly say, that after my native land, I feel a tenderness and a reverence for that of my fathers. The pride I take in my own country makes me respect that from which we are sprung. EDWARD EVERETT.

38. THE SAME.-PART SECOND.

IN touching the soil of England, I seem to return like a descendant to the old family seat; to come back to the abode of an aged, the tomb of a departed parent. I acknowledge this great consanguinity of nations. The sound of my native language, beyond the sea, is a music to my ear beyond the richest strains of Tuscan softness, or Castilian majesty. I am not yet in a land of strangers while surrounded by the manners, the habits, the forms in which I have been brought up. I wander delighted through a thousand scenes, which the historians, the poets, have made familiar to us,-of which the names are interwoven with our earliest associations. I tread with reverence the spots where I can retrace the footsteps of our suffering fathers: the pleasant land of their birth has a claim on my heart. It seems to me a classic, yea, a holy land, rich in the memories of the great and good; the martyrs of liberty, the exiled heralds of truth; and richer, as the parent of this land of promise in the west.

I am not, I need not say I am not, the panegyrist of England. I am not dazzled by her riches, nor awed by her power. The sceptre, the mitre, and the coronet, stars, garters, and blue ribbons, seem to me poor things for great men to contend for. Nor is my admiration awakened by her armies, mustered for the battles of Europe; her navies, overshadowing the ocean; nor her empire, grasping the furthest East. It is these, and the price of guilt and blood by which they are maintained, which

EDWARD EVERETT.

53

are the cause why no friend of liberty can salute her with undivided affections. But it is the refuge of free principles, though often persecuted; the school of religious liberty, the more precious for the struggles to which it has been called; the tombs of those who have reflected honor on all who speak the English tongue; it is the birthplace of our fathers, the home of the Pilgrims;—it is these which I love and venerate in England. I should feel ashamed of an enthusiasm for Italy and Greece, did I not also feel it for a land like this. In an American it would seem to me degenerate and ungrateful; to hang with passion upon the traces of Homer and Virgil, and follow without emotion the nearer and plainer footsteps of Shakspeare and Milton; and I should think him cold in his love for his native land, who felt no melting in his heart for that other native land, which holds the ashes of his forefathers. EDWARD EVERETT.

39. THE INFLUENCE OF LAFAYETTE.

WHAT young man that reflects on the history of Lafayette, that sees him, in the morning of his days, the associate of sages, the friend of Washington, but will start with new vigor on the path of duty and renown?

And what was it which gave to our Lafayette his spotless fame? The love of liberty. What has consecrated his memory in the hearts of good men? The love of liberty. What nerved his youthful arm with strength, and inspired him, in the morning of his days, with sagacity and counsel? The living love of liberty. To what did he sacrifice power, and rank, and country, and freedom itself? To the horror of licentiousness; to the sanctity of plighted faith; to the love of liberty protected by law. Thus the great principle of your revolutionary fathers, of your pilgrim sires, the great principle of the age, was the rule of his life: The love of Liberty protected by Law.

You have now assembled within these renowned walls to perform the last duties of respect and love, on the birthday of your benefactor, beneath that roof which has resounded, of old, with the master voices of American renown. The spirit of the departed is in high communion with the spirit of the place;the temple worthy of the new name which we now behold inscribed on its walls.

Listen, Americans, to the lesson which seems borne to us on

« AnteriorContinuar »