The Works of Daniel Webster, Volume 1

RECEPTION AT MADISON. 109

If, fellow-citizens, I can make myself heard by this numerous assembly, speaking, as I do, in the open air, I will return to you my heartfelt thanks for the kindness you have shown me. I come among you a stranger. On the day before yesterday I placed my foot, for the first time, on the soil of the great and growing State of Indiana. Although I have lived on terms of great intimacy and friendship with several Western gentlemen, members of Congress, among whom is your estimable townsman near me, (Governor Hendricks,) I have never before had an opportunity of seeing and forming an acquaintance for myself with my fellow-citizens of this section of the Union. I travel for this purpose. I confess that I regard with astonishment the evidences of intelligence, enterprise, and refinement everywhere exhibited around me, when I think of the short time that has elapsed since the spot where I stand was a howling wilderness. Since I entered public life, this State was unknown as a political government. All the country west of the Alleghanies and northwest of the Ohio constituted but one Territory, entitled to a single delegate in the counsels of the nation, having the right to speak, but not to vote. Since then, the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and the long strip of country known as the Territory of Wisconsin, have been carved out of it. Indiana, which numbers but twenty years since the commencement of her political existence, contains a population of six hundred thousand, equal to the population of Massachusetts, a State of two hundred years’ duration. In age she is an infant; in strength and resources a giant. Her appearance indicates the 402 full vigor of maturity, while, measured by her years, she is yet in the cradle.

Although I reside in a part of the country most remote from you, although I have seen you spring into existence and advance with rapid strides in the march of prosperity and power, until your population has equalled that of my own State, which you far surpass in fertility of soil and mildness of climate; yet these things have excited in me no feelings of dislike, or jealousy, or envy. On the contrary, I have witnessed them with pride and pleasure, when I saw in them the growth of a member of our common country; and with feelings warmer than pride, when I recollect that there are those among you who are bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, who inherit my name and share my blood. When they came to me for my advice, before leaving their hearths and homes, I did not oppose their desires or suggest difficulties in their paths. I told them, “Go and join your destinies with those of the hardy pioneers of the West, share their hardships, and partake their fortunes; go, and God speed you; only carry with you your own good principles, and whether the sun rises on you, or sets on you, let it warm American hearts in your bosoms.”

Though, as I observed, I live in a part of the country most remote from you, fellow-citizens, I have been no inattentive observer of your history and progress. I have heard of the reports made in your legislature, and the acts passed in pursuance thereof. I have traced on the map of your State the routes marked out for extensive turnpikes, railroads, and canals. I have read with pleasure the acts providing for their establishment and completion. I do not pretend to offer you my advice; it would perhaps be presumptuous; but you will permit me to say, that, as far as I have examined them, they are conceived in wisdom, and evince great political skill and foresight. You have commenced at the right point. To open the means of communication, by which man may, when he wishes, see the face of his friend, should be the first work of every government. We may theorize and speculate about it as we please,—we may understand all the metaphysics of politics; but if men are confined to the narrow spot they inhabit, because they have not the means of travelling when they please, they must go back to a state of barbarism. Social intercourse is the corner-stone of 403 good government. The nation that provides no means for the improvement of its communications, has not taken the first step in civilization. Go on, then, as you have begun; prosecute your works with energy and perseverance; be not daunted by imaginary difficulties, be not deterred by exaggerated calculations of their cost. Go on; open your wilderness to the sun; turn up the soil; and in the wide-spread and highly-cultivated fields, the smiling villages, and the busy towns that will spring up from the bosom of the desert, you will reap a rich reward for your investment and industry.

Another of the paramount objects of government, to which I rejoice to see that you have turned your attention, is education. I speak not of college education, nor of academy education, though they are of great importance; I speak of free-school education, common-school education.

Among the luminaries in the sky of New England, the burning lights which throw intelligence and happiness on her people, the first and most brilliant is her system of common schools. I congratulate myself that my first speech on entering public life was in their behalf. Education, to accomplish the ends of good government, should be universally diffused. Open the doors of the school-house to all the children in the land. Let no man have the excuse of poverty for not educating his own offspring. Place the means of education within his reach, and if they remain in ignorance, be it his own reproach. If one object of the expenditure of your revenue be protection against crime, you could not devise a better or cheaper means of obtaining it. Other nations spend their money in providing means for its detection and punishment, but it is the principle of our government to provide for its never occurring. The one acts by coercion, the other by prevention. On the diffusion of education among the people rest the preservation and perpetuation of our free institutions. I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe. The prospect of a war with any powerful nation is too remote to be a matter of calculation. Besides, there is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear 404 that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing. Make them intelligent, and they will be vigilant; give them the means of detecting the wrong, and they will apply the remedy.

The gentleman who has just addressed me in such flattering, but unmerited terms, has been pleased to make kind mention of my devotion to the Constitution, and my humble efforts in its support. I claim no merit on that account. It results from my sense of its surpassing excellences, which must strike every man who attentively and impartially examines it. I regard it as the work of the purest patriots and wisest statesmen that ever existed, aided by the smiles of a benignant Providence; for when we regard it as a system of government growing out of the discordant opinions and conflicting interests of thirteen independent States, it almost appears a Divine interposition in our behalf. I have always, with the utmost zeal and the moderate abilities I possess, striven to prevent its infraction in the slightest particular. I believed, if that bond of union were broken, we should never again be a united people. Where, among all the political thinkers, the constitution-makers and the constitution-menders of the day, could we find a man to make us another? Who would even venture to propose a reunion? Where would be the starting-point, and what the plan? I do not expect miracles to follow each other. No plan could be proposed that would be adopted; the hand that destroys the Constitution rends our Union asunder for ever.

My friend has been pleased to remember, in his address, my humble support of the constitutional right of Congress to improve the navigation of our great internal rivers, and to construct roads through the different States. It is well known that few persons entertain stronger opinions on this subject than myself. Believing that the great object of the Union is to secure the general safety and promote the general welfare, and that the Constitution was designed to point out the means of accomplishing these ends, I have always been in favor of such measures as I deemed for the general benefit, under the restrictions and limitations prescribed by the Constitution itself. I supported them with my voice, and my vote, not because they were 405 for the benefit of the West, but because they were for the benefit of the whole country. That they are local in their advantages, as well as in their construction, is an objection that has been and will be urged against every measure of the kind. In a country so widely extended as ours, so diversified in its interests and in the character of its people, it is impossible that the operation of any measure should affect all alike. Each has its own peculiar interest, whose advancement it seeks; we have the sea-coast, and you the noble river that flows at your feet. So it must ever be. Go to the smallest government in the world, the republic of San Marino, in Italy, possessing a territory of but ten miles square, and you will find its citizens, separated but by a few miles, having some interests which, on account of local situation, are separate and distinct. There is not on the face of the earth a plain, five miles in extent, whose inhabitants are all the same in their pursuits and pleasures. Some will live on a creek, others near a hill, which, when any measure is proposed for the general benefit, will give rise to jarring claims and opposing interests. In such cases, it has always appeared to me that the point to be examined was, whether the principle was general. If the principle were general, although the application might be partial, I cheerfully and zealously gave it my support. When an objection has been made to an appropriation for clearing the snags out of the Ohio River, I have answered it with the question, “Would you not vote for an appropriation to clear the Atlantic Ocean of snags, were the navigation of your coast thus obstructed? The people of the West contribute their portion of the revenue to fortify your sea-coast, and erect piers, and harbors, and light-houses, from which they derive a remote benefit, and why not contribute yours to improve the navigation of a river whose commerce enriches the whole country?”

It may be expected, fellow-citizens, that I should say something on a topic which agitates and distracts the public mind, I mean the deranged state of the currency, and the general stagnation of business. In giving my opinions on this topic, I wish it to be distinctly understood, that I force them on no man. I am an independent man, speaking to independent men. I think for myself; you, of course, enjoy and exercise the same right. I cheerfully concede to every one the liberty of differing 406 with me in sentiment, readily granting that he has as good chance of being right as myself, perhaps a better. But I have some respect for my character as a public man. The present state of things has grown out of a series of measures, to which I have been in uniform opposition. In speaking of their consequences, I am doing but justice to myself in showing them in justification of my conduct. I am performing a duty to my fellow-citizens, who have a right to know the opinions of every public man. The present state of things is unparalleled in the annals of our country. The general suspension of specie payments by the banks, beginning I know not where, and ending I know not where, but comprehending the whole country, has produced wide-spread ruin and confusion through the land. To you the scene is one as yet of apprehension; to us, of deep distress. You cannot understand, my fellow-citizens, nor can I describe it so as to enable you to understand, the embarrassment and suffering which are depressing the spirit and crushing the energies of the people of the sea-girt States of the East. You are agriculturists, you produce what you consume, and always have the means of living within your reach. We depend on others for their agricultural productions; we live by manufactures and commerce, of which credit is the lifeblood. The destruction of credit is the destruction of our means of living. The man who cannot fulfil his daily engagements, or with whom others fail to fulfil theirs, must suffer for his daily bread. And who are those who suffer? Not the rich, for they can generally take care of themselves. Capital is ingenious and far-sighted, ready in resources and fertile in expedients to shelter itself from impending storms. Shut it out from one source of increase, and it will find other avenues of profitable investment. It is the industrious, working part of the community, men whose hands have grown hard by holding the plough and pulling the oar, men who depend on their daily labor and their daily pay, who, when the operations of trade and commerce are checked and palsied, have no prospect for themselves and their families but beggary and starvation,—it is these who suffer. All this has been attributed to causes as different as can be imagined; over-trading, over-buying, over-selling, over-speculating, over-production, terms which I acknowledge I do not very well understand. I am at a loss to conceive how a nation can become 407 poor by over-production, producing more than she can sell or consume. I do not see where there has been over-trading, except in public lands; for when every thing else was up to such an enormous price, and the public land tied down to one dollar and a quarter an acre, who would not have bought it if he could?

These causes could not have produced all those consequences which have occasioned such general lamentation. They must have proceeded from some other source. And I now request you, my fellow-citizens, to bear witness, that here, in this good city, on the banks of the Ohio, on the first day of June, 1837, beneath the bright sun that is shining upon us, I declare my conscientious conviction that they have proceeded from the measures of the general government in relation to the currency. I make this declaration in no spirit of enmity to its authors; I follow no man with rebukes or reproaches. To reprobate the past will not alleviate the evils of the present. It is the duty of every good citizen to contribute his strength, however feeble, to diminish the burden under which a people groans. To apply the remedy successfully, however, we must first ascertain the causes, character, and extent of the evil.

Let us go back, then, to its origin. Forty-eight years have elapsed since the adoption of our Constitution. For forty years of that time we had a national bank. Its establishment originated in the imperious obligation imposed on every government to furnish its people with a circulating medium for their commerce. No matter how rich the citizen may be in flocks and herds, in houses and lands, if his government does not furnish him a medium of exchange, commerce must be confined to the petty barter suggested by mutual wants and necessities, as they exist in savage life. The history of all commercial countries shows that the precious metals can constitute but a small part of this circulating medium. The extension of commerce creates a system of credit; the transmission of money from one part of the country to the other gives birth to the business of exchange. To keep the value of this medium and the rates of exchange equal and certain, was imperiously required by the necessities of the times when the bank was established. Under the old confederacy, each of the thirteen States established and regulated its own money, which passed for its full value within 408 the State, and was useless the moment it crossed the State border. The little State of Rhode Island, for instance, (I hope no son of hers present will take offence at what I say,) so small that an Indiana man might almost cover her territory with his hand, was crowded with banks. A man might have been rich at Providence, but before he could travel to Boston, forty miles distant, he would starve for want of money to pay for his breakfast.

Had this state of things continued, some of the provisions of the Constitution would have been of no force or virtue. Of what value to Congress would have been the right to levy taxes, imposts, and duties, and to regulate commerce among different States, and of what effect or consequence the prohibition on the different States of levying and collecting imposts, if each and every one of them had possessed the right of paying her taxes and duties in a currency of her own, which would not pass one hundred miles, perhaps, from the bank whence it was issued? The creation of a national bank presented the surest means of remedying these evils, and accomplishing one of the principal objects of the Constitution, the establishment and maintenance of a currency whose value would be uniform in every part of the country. During the forty years it existed, under the two charters, we had no general suspension of specie payments, as at present. We got along well with it, and I am one of those who are disposed to let well alone. I am content to travel along the good old turnpike on which I have journeyed before with comfort and expedition, without turning aside to try a new track. I must confess that I do not possess that soaring self-respect, that lofty confidence in my own political sagacity and foresight, which would induce me to set aside the experience of forty years, and risk the ruin of the country for the sake of an experiment. To this is all the distress of the country attributable. This has caused such powerful invasions of bank paper, like sudden and succeeding flights of birds of prey and passage, and the rapid disappearance of specie at its approach. You all know that bank-notes have been almost as plenty as the leaves of the forest in the summer. But of what value are they to the holder, if he is compelled to pay his debts in specie? And who can be expected to pay his debts in this way, when the government has withdrawn the specie from circulation?

You have not yet felt the evil in its full extent. It is mostly in prospect, and you are watching its approach. While you are endeavoring to guard against it, strive to prevent its future recurrence. As you would hunt down, with hound and horn, the wolf who is making nightly havoc of your flocks and herds, pursue and keep down those who would make havoc in your business and property by experiments on our currency.

Although the country has bowed beneath the pressure, I do not fear that it will be broken down and prostrated in the dust. Depress them as it may, the energy and industry of the people will enable them to rise again. We have for a long time carried a load of bad government on our shoulders, and we are still able to bear up under it. But I do not see that, for that reason, we should be willing and eager to carry it. I do not see why it should prevent us from wishing to lessen it as much as possible, if not to throw it off altogether, when we know that we can get along so much easier and faster without it. While we are exerting ourselves with renewed industry and economy to recover from its blighting effects, while we plough the land and plough the sea, let us hasten the return of things to their proper state, by such political measures as will best accomplish the desired end. Let us inform our public servants of our wishes, and pursue such a course as will compel them to obey us.

In conclusion, my fellow-citizens, I return you my thanks for the patience and attention with which you have listened to me, and pray the beneficent Giver of all good, that he may keep you under the shadow of his wing, and continue to bless you with peace and prosperity.

PUBLIC DINNER IN FANEUIL HALL

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

On the return of Mr. Webster from the session in which he had particularly signalized himself by the delivery of his masterly speeches on the sub-treasury bill, and in reply to Mr. Calhoun (contained in a subsequent volume of this collection), a large number of his fellow-citizens of Boston could not be restrained from manifesting their sense of his extraordinary efforts, in exhibiting the true character of the odious sub-treasury project, and in procuring its ultimate rejection by Congress. He was accordingly invited to meet them at a public dinner, on the 24th of July, 1838. More than fifteen hundred persons attended it, every ticket having been eagerly taken as soon as issued. Every portion of the Hall, floor and galleries, was filled. The Governor of the Commonwealth (Hon. Edward Everett) presided at the table, and the spirit of the occasion and of the company may be gathered from the following remarks with which he introduced Mr. Webster to the assembly:

“And now, fellow-citizens,” said he, “I rise to discharge the most pleasing part of my duty, which I fear you will think I have too long postponed; the duty which devolves on me, as the organ of your feelings toward our distinguished guest, the senior Senator of the Commonwealth. And yet, fellow-citizens, I appeal to you, that I have approached this duty through the succession of ideas which most naturally conducts our minds and hearts to the grateful topic. I have proposed to you, Our country and its prosperity. Who among the great men, his contemporaries, has more widely surveyed and comprehended the various interests of all its parts? I have proposed, The Union of the States. What public man is there living, whose political course has been more steadily consecrated to its perpetuity? I have proposed to you, The Constitution. And who of our statesmen, from the time of its framers, has more profoundly investigated, more clearly expounded, more powerfully vindicated and sustained it? But these topics I may pass over. They are matters which have been long familiar to you; they need not any comment from me.

“The events of the last year, and of the last session of Congress, and the present state of the country, invite our attention more particularly to 414 the recent efforts of our distinguished guest on the subject of the currency. I know not but some persons may think that undue importance has been attached to the questions which have divided parties on this subject; that these questions are not so vital to liberty as they have been represented. But such an opinion would be erroneous. Undoubtedly there are countries, not free ones, in which money questions, as connected with the government, are of minor consequence. In China, in Turkey, in Persia, I presume they are very little discussed. In these countries the great question is, whether a man’s head at night will be found in the same pleasing and convenient proximity to his shoulders that it was in the morning; and this is a kind of previous question, which, if decided against him, cuts off all others. Under those arbitrary governments of Europe, where the prince takes what he pleases, and when he pleases, it is of very little moment where he deposits it, on its way from the pockets of the people to his own. But it was remarked by Edmund Burke, more than seventy years ago, that in England, (and a fortiori in the United States, that is, under constitutional governments,) the great struggles for liberty had been almost always money questions, and on this ground he excused the Americans for the stand they took in opposition to a paltry tax. But, most certainly, the money question, as it has been agitated among us, is vastly more important, more intimately connected with constitutional liberty, than that which brought on the Revolution. The question with our fathers was one of a small tax; ours, of the entire currency. Theirs concerned three pence per pound on tea, illegally levied; ours, the entire currency illegally disposed of, the entire medium of circulation deranged, and for a period annihilated, the whole business of the country, in all its great branches, brought under the control of the treasury. The noble stand, therefore, taken by our distinguished Senator in this controversy has been upon points which concern the dearest interests of the people, and the elemental principles of the government.