PROF. HITHCOOCK'S EULOGY ON DANIEL WEBSTER, "n_ _ ___ ___________ _i~ —- -~ A EULOGY ON DANIEL WEBSTER, DELIVERED BEFORE THE STUDENTS OF BOWDOIN COLLEGE, Da Airhq, Tou. 2f0, 1852. BY ROSWELL D. HITCHCOCK, COLLINS PROFESSOR OF NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION. BRUNSWICK: PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY J. GRIFFIN. 1852, BOWDOIN COLLEGE, NOV. 13th, 1852. DEAR SIR,Agreeably to a vote of the Students we have the pleasure of thanking you on their behalf for your impressive discourse of yesterday, and requesting a copy for publication. Very truly yours, MELVILLE W. FULLER, I EPH. C. CUMMINGS, I GEO. W. BARTLETT, i COMMITTEE. S. M. EATON, GEO. R. WILLIAMSON, J REV. PROF. R. D. HITCHCOCK. BOWDOIN COLLEGE, NOV. 15th, 1852. GENTLEMEN,The Discourse, such as it is, is at your service. Would it were worthier. But I have done what I could within the limits prescribed, and with the time allowed me for preparation. If now, in a printed form, it may serve as a memento, both of my lively interest in the young men of the College, and our united interest in the great names and the great memories of our Common Country, my desires will all be met. Yours very truly, R. D. HITCHCOCK. To MESSRS. MELVILLE W. FULLER, and others. YOUNG GENTLEMEN OF BOWDOIN COLLEGE: IT seems to be a law of history, seldom set aside, that great men shall come and go, not singly, but in companies. Just as great mountains commonly stand in groups, or stretch in ranges. Just as the stars at night march over us in constellations. Sometimes it so happens, that this occasional advent of new greatness into the world is to several nations at once. Solomon, for example, mounted his father's throne in Jerusalem while Minos was giving laws to Crete, while the Ionian settlements were planting themselves in Asia Minor, and Codrus had but recently inaugurated, by the baptism of his own blood, the independent and matchless career of Athens. In our modern history, Mohammed Ali, Napoleon Bonaparte and the 6 Duke of Wellington were all born in the same year, Egypt, France and England thus cradling their great captains in company. With individual nations the law referred to is more signal still. Exceptions to it are extremely rare. Great men, it is obvious, are nowhere a very frequent product of nature. They come at intervals, longer or shorter, as it best pleases the Divine munificence. But when to any nation they do come, they come in groups, each illustrating, and each enhancing the greatness of all the rest. Such certainly has been our own national experience. When British authority first began to totter on our soil, there had sprung up among the colonies a goodly fellowship of Statesmen and Soldiers, such as no youthful nation had ever produced before. Over the battle-fields of the Revolution, and over the Council Chambers of the Confederacy and the Constitution, there stood a regnant constellation, which bye and bye faded entirely from the heavens. Franklin, Henry and Otis; Washington, Adams and Jefferson; Hamilton, Jay and Madison, were the master lights of that blazing company. But while these were yet moving down our western sky, and sinking one by one beneath the 7 horizon, other stars were already seen kindling in the Orient. We need not enumerate them all. Four at least claim a special commemoration, since they outshine all others:-Marshall, Clay, Calhoun, Webster. Marshall, it is true, took part in some of the battles of the Revolution; but the more historic portion of his life belongs rather to the generation which inherited the Constitution, and became responsible, before God and man, for the integrity and the continuance of it. He died only seventeen years ago, leaving on the heart of this nation a debt of gratitude increasing now every day with our rapidly increasing greatness. The other three came a little behind him; and have but just vanished from our sight. Two years ago, Calhoun sank almost on the very floor of the Senate Chamber. Last summer, bending his lordly brow beneath the shadow of the Capitol, Clay followed him. And now at last the noblest Roman of them all has closed up this mournful procession, casting back a shadow which darkens the whole firmament. Human greatness, as an abstract conception, is not easily defined. But truly great men, when they do actually appear, make their own way into history, and cannot fail to be recognized. Even before he died, Daniel Webster had taken his place in 8 the Ages, and, by the clear suffrage of his contemporaries, had been crowned as the ablest man this Continent has ever reared; while his own countrymen thought it no rashness to pronounce him the foremost man of all the world. The impression has gone abroad, that he died partly of a broken heart. But could the wail of grief, which rolled on over this whole continent, and over the sea, in company with the tidings of his death, break through the iron fastenings of his tomb, and reanimate that prostrate form, well might he accept such bitterness of universal sorrow as a sufficient atonement for the past. Only twice before, in our entire history as a people, has there been such a demonstration of deep national emotion as now. Once, over the bier of Washington. And again, when Adams and Jefferson joined hands in their exit out of life, as, half a century before, they had joined hands over the cradle of American Independence. In some features of it, the scene just enacted among us is altogether without a parallel. Recent triumphs of science, spreading railways and telegraphs from one extremity of the country to another, North and South, East and West, had strung the whole Union, as it were, with living nerves. Intelligence could fly like thought over almost every latitude, and nearly every longitude of our vast domain. It was known, therefore, from Eastport to New Orleans, from Boston to St. Louis, when Webster, on his bed at Marshfield, lay awaiting hourly and momently the dread summons to go. And there crept a solemn hush over the Continent as the greatest man upon it was felt to be closing his eyes on it forever. Not alone that honored circle of relatives and friends gathered in his mansion, but the assembled nation stood holding their breath in speechless suspense at his chamber door. When, in the early gray of that Sabbath morning, the last sigh fluttered up from those dying lips, it was audible over all the land. In thousands of Christian Congregations, men and women that day mingled their prayers with weeping. And when, on Friday the 29th of October, that long procession moved forth to the burial, headed by those ancient men bearing the sombre pall, their slow tread thrilled the Continent. No such day ever before rose and set upon our people. No such pageant ever before shadowed our annals. For the present generation at least, it was a scene which only our Mother Country can rival, when, within these next few days, those three bereaved Kingdoms take up their 2 10 Hero of a hundred battles, and bear him down the Strand to the place appointed him by the side of Nelson. The death of such a man as Daniel Webster, taken away forever from the councils of the nation, taken away forever from the mind and heart and genius of the world, is indeed an epoch in our history. It comes like some rare convulsion in nature, shaking the very ground we stand upon. We are summoned by it to a solemn pause in our prosperous and proud career. We are challenged to consider, that the pillars of society have lost their strongest supporting hand. It is well, therefore, Young Gentlemen, that to-day the routine of our ordinary life is broken, that we have entered the House of God, and do now submit our hearts to this impressive lesson of His Providence. And yet a sore national bereavement like this carries its own lofty and sacred alleviations. It was an ancient saying, that the day of one's death is the birth-day of Eternity. It ushers all virtuous and noble souls into more resplendent scenes, and a more sublime activity. So that anthems are fitter for it by far than dirges. For a great man like him whom we have just followed to his burial, there are two Eternities prepared: the Eter 11 nity of his own personal existence beyond the grave, and, in a qualified sense, the Eternity of his influence left behind him upon earth. And now for our Hero these Eternities have both begun. Before him and behind him stretches a broad path of light; and no cloud henceforward shall ever darken either the one or the other. Onward and upward into that profounder knowledge of God, for which, in his happier moments, he always panted, is he making now swift progress. While the path, so often stormy, along which he trod among us with his reserved and lion heart, has gathered, as in a moment, a double grandeur. His character, so long and so bitterly traduced, is already vindicated. The deeds he wrought, lifted from the dust of the arena, have passed up into history. His words, so fitly treasured in ample volumes, soon to be followed by other products of his prolific and princely mind, are bonds to fate itself, that his memory and his influence shall never die. Indeed, he has now but just entered, even here in this world, upon his own proper car reer of fame and power. His rightful empire has but just begun. The sceptre given him could be grasped only by a dying hand. A longer life on earth, even though it had been gladdened and 12 adorned by the highest honors of office which the nation could bestow, would have been a paltry satisfaction compared with what he has now obtained. As in the old Roman legend, Romulus by apotheosis became Quirinus, dying as a King, that he might come back to the faith of his embarrassed and struggling people as a Divinity, so now with us. We have lost a Statesman; but we have gained a Sage. And for generations to come, neither President, nor Senate, nor Judicial Bench, shall wield half the power of this giant Shade. Death has crowned him more than Emperor. He sits now on Olympian Heights. His Opinions have swelled into Oracles. His words, which before were battles, shall henceforth be victories. Not but that our fondness for him would long have stayed the stroke, by which he was swept away. But since he had filled up so roundly the appointed measure of human life, and had immensely more than filled all ordinary measures of human greatness and glory, and the hour had struck for him to go, it is with loftiest salutations, and a solemn joy, that we dismiss him to his large inheritance of power on earth and blessedness in Heaven. You will not expect me, on the present occa 13 sion, to rehearse minutely the story of his life. The history of this one man involves, for thirty years at least, the history of the country. You know it all by heart. The leading dates of it, and all its grand salient events and epochs, are emblazoned in your grateful memories. The public journals, ever since he breathed his last, have been freighted with the theme. Indeed, they have brought us but little else. This one name has filled them from day to day, from week to week. The shadow of it has lain heavily upon the land. A national election, resulting in the unexampled defeat of one great party, and triumph of another, has come and gone, exciting comparatively little interest. The American people, of all parties, have seemed resolved, to hear, to speak, to think of nothing but their recent overwhelming loss. Our Achilles slain, we have hardly inquired for the fate of Troy. It is frequently remarked of eminent men, in the freshness of the public grief for them, that the time to write their memoirs, and settle the just boundaries of their fame, will be slow to come. But the name of Daniel Webster solicits no such long delay. His true historical position, by a special felicity of fortune, was determined by him 14 self. He anticipated, as it were, his own posthumous renown. With his own hand, he built his own monument, and carved his own epitaph. History, eager to recount his achievements, could not wait for him to die. At any time, these ten years back, he might have said of himself as he once said of Massachusetts, "The past at least is secure." And now that his life is ended, and his errand done, it is all secure. Already do we know enough to ensure for him the place he coveted by the side of Washington. And we await what farther revelations are yet to come, only that we may take him still more closely to our hearts, and breathe on his memory a still livelier benediction as we pass it down on its way to future generations. The grand charm of Webster's biography consists in this, that he was so entirely, and so intensely, American. We can hold him up to the nations as a specimen of what may be produced,on this new soil. The Old World had as little as possible to do in making him. His ancestors, of;Scottish blood, came over here among the earliest immigrations. They were found in Hampton, on the seaboard in New Hampshire, within sixteen years after the settlement of Plymouth. 15 His grandmother, from whom on his father's side, he inherited his swarthy complexion, was the daughter of a New England clergyman. His father was a soldier in the Old French War; and served also in the armies of the Revolution. He was a pioneer of new settlements in the wilderness, going first from Hampton to what is now East Kingston, and from East Kingston to Salisbury. A tall, dignified and handsome man; "The handsomest man I ever saw," said Daniel, "except my brother Ezekiel"; endowed with native talent enough for wider spheres than he ever filled, but well content to be a plain New Hampshire farmer; his hands hardened by daily toil for his daily bread, while he kept his heart reverent towards God, and gentle to his wife and children. By a second marriage he had two sons: Ezekiel and Daniel. Ezekiel, the elder by birth, though second in the order of his public education, if not quite equal to his more famous brother, was yet well worthy of the relationship existing between them. The affection, which united them, was uncommonly fervid and tender; each craving the applause of the other as the keenest possible stimulant to his genius. At Concord, in 1829, in the midst of a brilliant address to the jury, Ezekiel fell dead in 16 the Court Room. "The very finest human forms" wrote the surviving brother, seventeen years later, "that ever I laid eyes on. I saw him in his coffin -a white forehead, a tinged cheek, and a complexion as clear as heavenly light." Daniel inherited the Batchelder complexion, and was as dark almost as an Indian. He was born just as the Revolutionary War was closing in 1782. He came into the world, therefore, under the Stripes and the Stars. No British authority was ever over him. He was cradled in a cottage farm-house of the plainest New England pattern. He went to the district school when there was one, none too good at the best; and spent his Summers in working upon the farm. Till he was fourteen years of age, he had hardly stirred away from the homely fire-side. In 1796, he rode down on horseback, forty or fifty miles, to Exeter, and entered the Phillips Academy there, then under the management of Dr. Benjamin Abbot-that famous teacher of so many famous men. The year following, he entered Dartmouth College, and took high rank there as a scholar; excelling especially in Mathematics, in Latin and in Logic. At nineteen years of age, he was graduated. Shortly after, he had charge of the Academy at Fryeburg in our own 17 State; earning about a dollar a day, all of which he saved, partly for himself that he might complete his professional studies, and partly for his brother Ezekiel, then in College at Hanover; prying his own expenses meanwhile by copying deeds in the Recorder's office. In 1805 he was admitted to the Bar in Boston, introduced by the Hon. Christopher Gore, who predicted a brilliant career for him. The next year, having refused the Clerkship of the Courts in his native County, with the offer of a tempting salary, which he needed sorely enough, intimating, as a reason for it, his purpose to be Lan actor rather than a register of other men's actions' he nailed up his sign, and established himself in practice, close by his father, that he might be a help and a comfort to him in his infirm old age. In the course of a few months, his father having died, he moved down to Portsmouth, where, for nine years, he measured his strength with some of the first lawyers of the day, during this time going twice to Congress; till, in 1816, he removed to Boston, and Massachusetts thenceforward claimed him as her own. The rest you all know-how he mounted from the House to the Senate; from the Senate to the Cabinet; and ought, in historic justice, and for the 3 18 credit of our institutions, to have mounted higher still; and how, all along this brilliant and climbing path, he shed down a glory, such as no American has rivalled, on his Country and his Age. A life more purely American was never lived here upon our Continent. Not till he was sixty years of age, did he ever set foot upon another soil. Cradled among our mountains on acres just rescued from the forest, he gave his days on earth to the Republic, and chose his grave by the seaside, amid the graves of the Pilgrim Fathers of New England. From first to last, in blood, in birth, in his traditions, in his cherished habits, in the very structure of his mind, in every thing, American. And nobly has he been rewarded for it. His name is now blended indissolubly with the proudest objects of his patriotic idolatry. The Rock at Plymouth; the Shaft on Bunker Hill; the Capitol at Washington; the iron pillars of our Boundary upon the North; our Flag on the High Seas unchallenged in its march, are all but so many mementoes of his masterly career. Hence to you, Young Gentlemen, and to all of us, the peculiar magic of his name. Pericles was an Athenian; and, through the mists of two thousand years, another language, and the atmosphere 19 of other institutions, it is not so easy to measure him. Burke was a Briton of a hundred years ago, drawing breath amid Cathedrals, and the pomps of Royalty, and the slowly decaying abuses of Feudalism; and must seem, therefore, a little alien to us. But Webster is of our own kith and kin. He has climbed our granite hills; he has traced our mountain brooks; he has talked with us in our streets; he has argued in our Court Rooms; he has harangued our crowds; awed our Senates; and inflamed us with enthusiasm for our Flag, wherever floating, on the land or on the sea. He is one of us. We understand him, root and branch. And if Miltiades at Marathon stirred up Themistocles to win for Greece another crown of glory at Salamis, it were strange indeed if the fame of this farmer's son of Salisbury kindled none of his young countrymen to emulate his greatness. One of his intimate friends has said, it has often occurred to him, that if other men could only think as long, as closely and as patiently as Webster, their public efforts might equal his. This sounds too much like praising his wonderful diligence, at the expense of his still more wonderful genius. It cannot be so. There is, doubtless, a native and radical difference in the intellectual 20 endowments of men. Great original power is grounded in the very constitution; is wrought into the brain and nerves and muscular fibres of the body. And if ever there was a man who carried empire in his step, on his forehead, and in his eye, it was Daniel Webster. Though lean and apparently of a delicate habit in his earlier life, he inherited at bottom a peculiar vitality and toughness of constitution. He came of a race of sturdy farmers. The toils and hardships of five generations, on rough lands, under a bracing climate, had packed his system with hidden strength. So that when, in the progress of years, his form came to be rounded out to its full proportions, no such man trod the Continent. It was the testimony of all who met him, whether in America or in England, that they had never looked upon his equal, or his like. He seemed to belong to another race and order of beings. He had the port of some superior intelligence, sent down here to win an easy supremacy. His brain exceeded in size the common average by at least one third. Only two such heads had ever been noticed in the world before. The glance of his eye was marvellous, searching as light itself; and when strong feeling roused him, it was terrible. Those who 21 came the closest to him, were the most delighted and amazed. The impression always made, was that of vast powers never yet called out. For one, I may be permitted to say, that I could imagine only one emergency at all equal to his genius. Seemingly nothing short of an actual invasion of our soil by foreign armies, sent here to overturn the institutions and crush the spirit of Republican Liberty, and, in their march, trampling on the graves of his kindred, could have roused that Titanic nature to the full swing of its tremendous but slumbering energies. And yet it was his own opinion, that he owed his success in life to his diligence. The only genius, which he acknowledged to himself, was a genius for hard work. A more industrious and untiring student never fastened himself down to his books. A more careful, severe and unflinching thinker never put his faculties to the stretch. How far back in his life it first occurred to him, that he was possibly superior to other men, we have not yet been told. But we know very well, that he set out in his career with a rare determination to make the most of himself and his opportunities, and leave his mark upon the world. There was certainly no very extraordinary stimulus in his 22 circumstances. He inhaled the same air, ate the same food, studied the same books as other men. But he had a towering ambition, and an iron will, with an iron diligence in working it. And here, in the very heart of our common New England Society, our prosaic and homely life, he carried himself up to this majestic height. A genuine product was he of our own soil, and our own institutions. The whole make and the whole genius of him was American. The national life culminated in him. What Philip was to Macedon, Caesar to Rome, and Hannibal to Carthage, such is Webster to us-our Representative and Foremost man. To look now a little more closely at him, we may take notice of him, first, as a Lawyer. The humble country office, where he entered upon his legal discipline with Coke upon Littleton, is still standing. Lord Eldon's rule for distinction — to live like a hermit, and work like a horse", was exemplified in his case from the beginning. His practice was, to read law closely for six or eight hours in the morning, and then in the afternoon to recreate and enrich his mind over such sterling authors as Bacon, Shakspeare and Milton. Boswell's Johnson, I have been told, was always a favorite book with him. 23 When he came into practice in his native State, the Bar of New Hampshire, especially that of Rockingham County, was second, perhaps, to none in the Union. Jeremiah Smith was upon the Bench; and Jeremiah Mason and George Sullivan in the full renown and full vigor of their professional career. They were mature, acute, learned and powerful lawyers. And the young man had to close in with them as an equal. His first appearance was in Hillsborough County in 1806. He had been admitted to practice as an Attorney only; not yet as a Counsellor. He was not entitled, therefore, to address the jury, but merely prepared the brief, examined the witnesses, and then turned the case over to the Senior Counsel to be argued. But the Senior Counsel had next to nothing left for him to do. Webster had swept the ground before him. His luminous statement of the points at issue and his masterly examination of the witnesses, had virtually settled the whole question, and borne off the verdict in advance. Judge Smith, then Chief Justice of New Hampshire, was charmed by this display of address and power, and on coming out of the Court Room remarked to Gen. Miller, who tells the story, that c he had never before met such a young man as that." The nine or ten years that followed, finished the making of him as a lawyer. He had his office in Portsmouth, close by Mason, travelled with him into most of the Counties in the State, and was engaged, oftener against him than with him, in a great portion of all the more important trials of the day. And Mason himself was frank enough to admit that the young man was a match for him at any time. While Webster, on his part, confessed that he had to study for it. It was then he formed that habit of early rising, which, in later life, he reckoned so essential to him as a scholar. Nothing short of all the law which bore upon the case in hand, and a perfect mastery of all the points to be made, could serve his purpose, and prepare him to stand the tug with his athletic adversary. He used, therefore, to rise at the break of day, that he might marshal his authorities, settle his principles, mark out his line of argument, and go armed at every point for the encounter. By such a regimen, he put himself very shortly into the front rank of lawyers and advocates. So that when he appeared before the Supreme Court in Washington, to argue the Dartmouth College Case, Judge Marshall pronounced him one of the very first lawyers in the Union. And so he stood from 25 that day till he died. One after another, the great lawyers passed away: Pinkney, Parsons, Wirt, Story and Mason. But Webster still stood towering in the Forum. The generation which sprang up around him, brought no rival to his side. He stood alone. For many years his supremacy was not contested. And when he died, the Profession with one voice declared him its proudest ornament. The reputation of an eminent lawyer, beyond that of most other distinguished men, is apt to rest very much upon mere tradition. So large a part of what has to be done in order to the success of an important cause, is either out of sight, or is not to be reported. Wellington has said that it requires more generalship to feed armies and get them well into a battle, than to get them through it. So of lawyers. Their real strength is laid out most effectively in the preparation of their cases. While much of what is done in the Court Room, either from the very nature of the work, or for want of skilful reporters, perishes with the occasion. Webster, in this regard, has fared better than the majority. Some ten or twelve of his legal arguments and speeches have been preserved in the recent edition of his works. In criminal 4 26 practice, his successful defence of the Kennistons against what seemed an inevitable though unjust conviction on a charge of highway robbery; and his argument in the Salem murder case, are models in their kind. Commercial law he mastered early in life, and with a large practice in this direction got large revenues. Constitutional law, however, was his favorite department; and the perfect ease with which he handled all such questions may help us, perhaps, to our truest appreciation of his proper intellectual rank. His first great effort, if not his finest, in this kind, was in defence of his Alma Mater, when her chartered rights were struck at through legislative enactments. A crisis had come, not in the history of that one College alone, but of all the Colleges alike. The point to be established, was the inviolability of charters. That point is now settled beyond the ordinary chances of annulment; and the credit of it for all time to come will belong to Webster. But his whole career as a Lawyer was in every respect remarkable. Men were never tired of admiring the amplitude of his legal attainments; his complete digestion of all the facts in a case; the denseness of his logic; the rich variety of his resources; and, most of all, that native magna 27 nimity of tone, and judicial breadth and fairness of statement, which gained the confidence of juries, and lifted the Bar, for the time being, to a level with the Bench. In fine, had he been, like Parsons, or Mason, nothing but a lawyer, his reputation would have been sufficient for any man. But when we consider that this was only a fraction of what he was, and what he accomplished, our wonder at him is hardly to be expressed. This brings us to take notice of him as a Statesman. Carlyle is reported to have said, that Webster was the only man he ever met with who realized to him his idea of a Statesman. There was such a vast breadth to him; such comprehensiveness; such solidity; and withal such a serene and easy movement of his strength. If his Statesmanship lacked any thing to make it perfect, and of the highest kind, it was the originating and creative element. This defect was foreshadowed in his earliest literary tastes. Of the two great languages of antiquity studied in our Colleges, he strongly preferred the Latin to the Greek. The native subtlety and fine ideal temper of the Greek mind, were not germane and genial to him. Plato he seems not to have 28 relished, or noticed much. Had he crossed the Adriatic for instruction, Aristotle would have been his master rather. This betrays the native bent of his mind, and furnishes a clue to his Statesmanship. He was not speculative, but practical. He could expound better than he could originate. He could uphold better than he could build. He could carry on a government better than he could make one. His genius was distinctively more conservative than constructive. In a word, he was first of all and preeminently a Lawyer. Calhoun in this respect had the advantage of him. Perhaps also Clay. The kind of mind that was in him is sometimes attempted to be set forth by parallels. Several names out of English History have been cited. But most frequently the name of Burke. And the resemblance is certainly worth noticing. With diffidence I venture to suggest a still statelier name for comparison. I refer to Bacon, the great originator of the modern inductive movement in philosophy; at once Philosopher, Lawyer, Statesman and most accomplished Master of Sentences. With many diversities, no doubt, both of mind and temper, both of judgment and of culture, there are yet some points of strong resemblance between the two; regarding Bacon, 29 of course, not as we are told he might have been, a keenly speculative thinker, but as we see he was, a man of the world and an Englishman. We find in both of them the same disinclination to refined and curious subtleties of thought; the same straight honest outlook upon things as they actually are; the same downright common sense; the same ease of discursive sweep; the same solidity of mental fibre, griping a subject as in the jaws of an iron vice; and, brightening all, a beauty as of the morning sky. So much for the mental structure of the great American. As for his training, he took his way to the Senate and the Cabinet through the Forum. He was first a Lawyer; and then a Statesman. But a Lawyer of the largest mould. We may add, too, without fear of having the climax questioned, an American Lawyer. Mr. Justice Coleridge, now one of the brightest ornaments of the English Bench, has remarked that the position of an American Lawyer is peculiarly favorable to an extended and scientific knowledge of Law. The English practice, he says, is more technical. The English Books are too often wanting in the statement of philosophical and scientific principles; they deal more with cases. The American Con 30 stitution and Policy of government force upon the Bar in our country, as he thinks, a better knowledge of International and Roman Law. What is thus true of all our Lawyers in a measure, was preeminently true of Webster. He was not a Lawyer merely, but a Constitutional Lawyer. His instinct was to search for the broadest principles, and set every case on its true basis of propriety and right, while, at the same time, he held fast by the letter of the Constitution and the Laws. And so he passed by an easy stride from the Court Room to the Capitol. He found enthroned there as Supreme Regent in all national affairs, domestic and foreign, the Constitution handed down to us from our Fathers. It was familiar to him. Tradition says that he first read it, when a boy in Salisbury, printed on a cheap cotton handkerchief. It had been his study from the beginning of his legal course. He had pondered every chapter and every section of it. He knew it almost by heart. He admired it as a masterpiece of political sagacity. In his own solemn style of speech, he revered it as " A Divine interposition in our behalf." And he loved it, too, with a profound and glowing passion, as the legacy of heroic sires. It was on this Document that he 31 planted his firm and vigorous feet. He knew its history, as he knew the history of his own father's family. He knew just what it had cost. In imagination he had traversed again and again all that perilous wilderness of the Confederacy; had repeated all those doubtful struggles of prejudice and selfish passion; and now that he had crossed the Jordan, and was standing on the Soil of Promise, he had no thought of being driven back again into Egypt. The madness of breaking up the existing order of things, and taking the risk of a new construction of the States, seemed stupendous to him. His conviction was that if the present Union were once dissolved, we should never get another; but that anarchy and ruin would slide down upon us like an avalanche. This was his creed. The Union, as now established, was sacred to him. The Constitution was the rock of his hope, against which he hurled his adversaries with a concussion which shook the Senate Chamber. Whoever lifted his hand against it, perished at its base. In no one of our Statesmen, has there been so strong a sense of History; always, from the beginning of his public life, did he set himself in the light of it, and invoke its scrutiny. The presence of the departed Patriots and Fathers 32 of the Country seemed as real to him as the presence of his contemporaries. He saw their "venerable forms bending down to behold him from the abodes above." He gazed, too, on the long line of coming generations, and coveted their just applause. The great problem and the great embarrassment of his career as a Statesman, was the perplexing question of Slavery. As a moral question, he could dispose of it at once. From Plymouth Rock he proclaimed to the world his abhorrence of it as a wrong. Repeatedly did he bear witness against it as a burden and a blight. Up to 1850 he stood against it, on all proper occasions, with the calm but determined front of a New England man. On the 7th of March of that year he changed, I will not say his ground, but certainly he changed his aspect and his voice. Thousands charged him with ambition, and treachery to the North. He was accused of bidding for the Presidency. True or false, it was the tragedy of his life. Prodigious labors, indeed, ensued. Never before was his great strength so manifest, as during the months which immediately followed that effort in the Senate. But multitudes, once his worshippers, were grieved; and their hearts cooled 33 towards him. The iron now entered his soul. And though he drew his mantle over the wound, and still kept on his way, it seemed as though his brow was gathering sadness, and the great fountains of power within him were breaking up. I would raise here no question on which we are likely, any of us, to differ. I will only say, that for myself I prefer the side of charity, and a generous construction of his course. That he hated Slavery, he had declared again and again in words as sure of immortality as any words ever committed to the keeping of our mother tongue. And gladly, at any cost of national treasure, would he have seen his country cleared of this grievous burden. But he had always maintained that the question belonged exclusively to the States in which the evil exists, and not at all to the Federal Government. The Constitution, at all events, he loved as a man loves his own mother, or his own child. And in his honest judgment, as he declared, he looked upon the Constitution and the Union as just ready to be crushed. He leaped down, therefore, into the breach, and, with a brow now bared of its raven locks, but an arm not in the least wasted of its strength, he breasted what seemed to him the impending ruin, and rolled it 5 34 back. The question of Slavery he was willing to adjourn to more propitious and temperate days for a settlement. Then and there the Union of the States was menaced, and must first of all be saved and strengthened. This done, we remain a vigorous nation, and may hope, by the blessing of Heaven, to outgrow our maladies. But with the Union shattered, black and white, bond and free must all wallow in misery together. Such was his belief. And he stood by it like a martyr. If mistaken in regard to this matter, he was not alone. If disingenuous and selfish, the retribution has been severe. If wholly right, conscientious and patriotic, it was the most gallant chapter in his life. The question is one on which public opinion has been much divided among us. We leave it all to the judgment of History. To this Tribunal he himself appealed. And the appeal must stand. The greater part of his labor as a Statesman was laid out upon questions of finance and commerce. Commercial Law had engaged a good deal of his time and study while in practice at the Bar. And the commercial ideas of society and government had always great weight with him. "Government," he was fond of saying, "is 35 established for the protection of property." This tangible, material end and advantage of it always impressed him forcibly. As a matter of fact, the fortunes of a State do hinge, as he saw very clearly, on these material interests. And his aim was, to lift the whole subject up to the dignity of a science. He wished to rest the legislation of the country on its just and proper basis. He had consequently much to say of Banks and Tariffs. And if he changed sides on any questions, they were questions merely of industrial and commercial expediency, on which other leading Statesmen changed their position as well as he. For years it was a favorite outcry against him, that he was sectional and narrow. But without good reason. For while he gave his first thoughts, as in duty bound, to that part of the country from which he came, he embraced every part of the country in his large regard, and aimed at nothing less than the solid prosperity and enduring glory of the whole. Of his foreign policy we have now no time to speak. Greece, Hungary and the South American Republics were all cheered by his trumpet voice. Towards England and the other leading Powers of Europe, he maintained at all times the lofty 36 bearing of an equal. Injustice he would neither do nor brook. Peace was his avowed and honest preference. But in a just quarrel, he would have challenged the strongest of them to the shock of arms. It was the pride of his patriotic heart to behold our Flag, with fearless cannon under it, riding the High Seas in the pomp of conscious power. He settled boundaries for us; and laid down important principles of Maritime Law. He opened China to our trade. He set on foot the expedition to Japan. Towards Austria and Russia, in their trampling down of European Freedom on the plains of Hungary, he employed a tone of majestic rebuke which electrified the nations. It was in these outward relations that he appeared to the best advantage. He seemed to grasp in its completeness the great problem now working out upon this Continent; he felt the responsibility imposed upon us as a nation among the nations; and, profoundly grateful to God for what had already been accomplished in the name of Republican Freedom, he was determined, to the full extent of the power conferred upon him, to hold his country to the path of duty and to her place in history. My design was, in the next place, to speak of 37 Webster as an Orator. But the time proper to be taken on the present occasion is fast wearing away, and we can touch the topic but lightly. There is nothing more intensely coveted among us than the power of cogent and persuasive discourse. The demand for it seems not to have been diminished materially by the multiplication of books and journals. The voice of the living speaker is a necessity of Republics since the invention of printing, almost as much as before. In our own country, at all events, a very high estimate is put upon eloquence. On our young men especially the ambition of it strikes powerfully. And if it be genuine eloquence that is sought for, the ambition is commendable. True eloquence, in its highest kind, may be regarded as the last and finest product of our rational faculties. For the substance of it, there must be precious and weighty thought. For the form of it, a perfection like that of sculptured marble. For the inspiration of it, a soul of fire. And he who attains to this rare and wonderful result, or in any good degree approaches it, will surely mount to power in Society and in the State. The fascination of such gifts is irresistible. Mankind almost worship their orators. The fame of Demosthenes is as highly 38 enviable as that of any mortal in all the tide of time. That Webster was truly a great Orator, cannot now need to be proved. It is universally conceded. Not that he possessed all those externals of oratory, which an ideal completeness might require. For, to name no other limitation, the inertia of his constitution was great, and he warmed but slowly to his themes. And yet there was that in his eye, his voice, his bearing, which made him sometimes, even in his elocution, a matchless speaker. But the mind and the soul of eloquence were in him to a marvel. His nature demanded grave occasions. In mere holiday oratory he seldom indulged. It was indispensable to him, that there should be something for him to accomplish; and then he had something to say. First of all, his Tule was, to master his subject; to lay it open to the bottom; to exhaust the learning pertaining to it, so far as seemed desirable; and then to set himself to the task of building up his materials, begrudging neither time nor toil, till the whole oration rose before him as a living thing. One rule which he worked by, he has himself made known to us. Prof. Woodward of Dartmouth, he once remarked, "taught him how much he could 39 strike out of whatever he wrote or spoke, and still have enough to communicate all he desired to say." Hence that well nigh inimitable style; remarkable at once for its beautiful simplicity, its extreme condensation, and its sinewy vigor. As an Orator, his best work was done between the ages of 38 and 48. His masterpieces were the Address at Plymouth in 1820; the Oration at Bunker Hill in 1825; the Eulogy on Adams and Jefferson in 1826; and his Reply to Hayne in 1830. And yet there is eloquence of the purest quality scattered throughout all his writings. Indeed, his common talk was eloquent; so clear, so forcible, so felicitous in phrase. He was quite as good a talker, it is thought, as Dr. Johnson himself. Much is yet to come to us from his busy pen; treatises, it may be hoped, on government, on morals, on religion; at any rate, a large store of letters to private friends and to public men; which, with the six noble volumes already published, will furnish our students with a model of severe and masterly, yet highly finished eloquence, such as may well excuse them from looking too humbly either towards England or towards Greece. Young 40 Gentlemen, I commend you to the close and diligent study of this American Demosthenes. Finally, it is incumbent on us to take some notice of Webster as a Man. To have been a great Lawyer, a great Statesman, or a great Orator, is not enough; even though it were possible to be all these, without being also something more and something better than these. But the truth is, that power of the highest kind in any direction must have character to underlie it. There must be private worth and manliness, social integrity, and the fear of God. In Webster's own language, "there can be no true greatness without religion." It is not to be disguised to-day, that the private character of Daniel Webster has been much questioned for many years. It has been the fashion of the public press, and of society in its careless and random talk, to speak lightly of him in this regard. But now at last it is beginning to be discovered, that society and the public press have been doing him a grievous wrong. Not that he was without his frailties and his faults. He never tried to cloak them. He was no hypocrite. But every step was followed, every motion watched, and every word repeated. And who among us, I 41 beg to know, could pass undamaged through such an ordeal? Only once or twice during his whole life did he take the trouble to vindicate his good name. He permitted libels to circulate unrebuked; remarking once in homely phrase, as a reason for it, that "he did not think it well to shovel out his paths till it had done snowing." One story, particularly scandalous, starting on plausible authority, apparently well vouched for, and filling the country with its echoes, he rose against in his indignation, and nailed it to the wall. Scores of stories, I have no doubt, might have been served in the same way. And yet it must probably be allowed, that there was at times an inexcusable variance between his conduct and his convictions. And could he now speak back to us from beyond the vail, he would charge us on no account to deny or extenuate the fault. But what means all this clamor now ringing against his infractions of the moral law? Who are they that take it upon themselves to cast these stones? Who is perfect? On what footing are mortals saved? In the Book of God I find it written, that we are saved by grace; and that none shall ever walk in white upon the Heavenly Plains, but such as have washed their 6 42 garments in the blood of Christ. Human guiltiness, moreover, is not to be measured mercilessly, without regard to the temptations which assailed the sinning soul. Great men must needs have great susceptibility to evil. The fire within burns through. Over against these frailties we have to set an unwonted nobleness of nature; family affections of the greatest depth and tenderness a patriotism as unmixed with littleness as ever filled a human bosom; a dignity in public life, which never dragged its mantle in the dust; a tone of seriousness pervading all his thoughts; and a singular immaculateness of social and public speech, giving forth to the world no sentence, which dying he could have wished to blot. Nay, more. Webster, we have every reason to believe, was a christian man. He had by nature a strong sense of religious things. He was built on that grand scale of being, which makes religious faith a necessity. He could no more do without it than Bacon or Kepler. In the kind of doctrine which his nature craved, Jonathan Edwards was not more a Puritan than he. And then he underwent the experience which consists of repentance and faith in the Redeemer. Just after commencing practice in Salisbury, he 43 joined himself to the Church there. The clear and highly satisfactory account which he then gave of the work of grace in his soul is remembered to this day. That early covenant he never disowned. The strong currents of life swept him hither and thither; but he never lost sight of the pole-star. And for several years past it has been plain to those who knew him best, that his course was lying straighter and straighter towards Heaven. His exit out of life was eminently worthy of him, both as a christian and a man. He set his house in order with calmness, as though he had been merely starting on a journey. The business of the nation, the affairs of his family, and the eternal interests of his own soul, all occupied his mind by turns without distraction. No humblest duty was too lowly for him; no highest duty too lofty. He prayed audibly for the pardon of his sins; he laid hold upon the hope set before him in the Gospel; he exhorted his relatives and friends not to neglect the one thing needful; and then he turned his soul for a strong, steady, solemn gaze into the Eternity, which was opening its portals to receive him. As life ebbed out, he sounded his way along with measured and careful step, as though he would know the grand and 44 solitary path. That cry of his, in the stillness of the night, piercing every chamber of his house"Life! life! Death! death! How curious it is!" betrays the solemn working of his thoughts. Presently his breast stops heaving; his foot strikes through the vail; and the mighty man stands face to face with the GOD he feared. Ours, ours only is the loss. The gain is his.