The Works of Daniel Webster, Volume 1

With respect to implements of husbandry, I am of opinion that the English, upon the whole, have no advantage over us. Their wagons and carts are no better; their ploughs, I thought, not better anywhere, and in some counties far inferior, because unnecessarily heavy. The subsoil plough, for which we have little use, is esteemed a useful invention, and the mole plough, which I have seen in operation, and the use of which is to make an underground drain, without disturbing the surface, is an ingenious contrivance, likely to be useful in clay soils, free from stone and gravel, but which can be little used in Massachusetts. In general, the English utensils of husbandry seemed to me unnecessarily cumbrous and heavy. The ploughs, especially, require a great strength of draught. But as drill husbandry is extensively practised in England, and very little with us, the various implements, or machines, for drill-sowing in that country quite surpass all we have. I do not remember 454 to have seen the horse-rake used in England, although I saw in operation implements for spreading hay from the swath to dry, or rather, perhaps, for turning it, drawn by horses.

There are other matters connected with English agriculture, upon which I might say a word or two. Crops are cultivated in England, of which we know little. The common English field bean, a small brown bean, growing not on a clinging vine, like some varieties of the taller bean, runs in what is called with us the bush form, like our common white bean, upon a slight, upright stalk, two or two and a half feet high, and producing from twenty to forty bushels to the acre. It is valuable as food for animals, especially for horses. This bean does not grow well in thin soils, or what is called a hot bottom. A strong, stiff, clayey land, well manured, suits it best. Vetches, or tares, a sort of pea, are very much cultivated in England, although almost unknown here, and are there either eaten green, by sheep, on the land, or cut and carried for green food.

The raising of sheep in England is an immense interest. England probably clips fifty millions of fleeces this year, lambs under a year old not being shorn. The average yield may be six or seven pounds to a fleece. There are two principal classes of sheep in England, the long-wooled and the short-wooled. Among these are many varieties, but this is the general division or classification. The Leicester and the South Down belong, respectively, to these several families. The common clip of the former may be estimated from seven to eight pounds; and of the last, from three to three and a half, or four. I mention these particulars only as estimates; and much more accurate information may doubtless be obtained from many writers. In New England, we are just beginning to estimate rightly the importance of raising sheep. England has seen it much earlier, and is pursuing it with far more zeal and perseverance. Our climate, as already observed, differs from that of England; but the great inquiry, applicable in equal force to both countries, is, How can we manage our land in order to produce the largest crops, while, at the same time, we keep up the condition of the land, and place it, if possible, in a course of gradual improvement? The success of farming must depend, in a considerable degree, upon the animals produced and supported on 455 the farm. The farmer may calculate, in respect to animals, upon two grounds of profit, the natural growth of the animal, and the weight obtained by fattening. The skilful farmer, therefore, expects, where he gains one pound in the fattening of his animal, to gain an equal amount in the growth. The early maturity of stock is consequently a point of much importance.

Oxen are rarely reared in England for the yoke. In Devonshire and Cornwall, ox teams are employed; but in travelling one thousand miles in England, I saw only one ox team, and in that case they were driven one before the other, and in harnesses similar to those of horses. Bullocks are raised for the market. It is highly desirable, therefore, both in respect to neat cattle and sheep, that their growth should be rapid, and their fattening properties favorable, that they may be early disposed of, and the expense of production proportionably lessened.

Is it practicable, on the soil and in the climate of Massachusetts, to pursue a succession of crops? I cannot question it; and I have entire confidence in the improvements to our husbandry, and the other great advantages, which would accrue from judicious rotation of products. The capacities of the soil of Massachusetts are undoubted. One hundred bushels of corn to an acre have been repeatedly produced, and other crops in like abundance. But this will not effect the proper ends of a judicious and profitable agriculture, unless we can so manage our husbandry that, by a judicious and proper succession of the crops, land will not only be restored after an exhausting crop, but gradually enriched by cultivation. It is of the highest importance that our farmers should increase their power of sustaining live stock, that they may obtain in that way the means of improving their farms.

The breed of cattle in England is greatly improved, and still improving. I have seen some of the best stocks, and many individual animals from others, and think them admirable. The short-horned cattle brought to this country are often very good specimens. I have seen the flocks from which some of them have been selected, and they are certainly among the best in England. But in every selection of stock, we are to regard our own climate, and our own circumstances. We raise oxen for work, as well as for beef; and I am of opinion that the Devonshire stock furnishes excellent animals for our use 456 We have suffered that old stock, brought hither by our ancestors, to run down, and be deteriorated. It has been kept up and greatly improved in England, and we may now usefully import from it. The Devonshire ox is a hardy animal, of size and make suited to the plough, and though certainly not the largest for beef, yet generally very well fattened. I think quite well, also, of the Ayrshire cows. They are good milkers, and, being a hardy race, are on that account well suited to a cold climate and to the coarse and sometimes scanty pasturage of New England. After all, I think there can be no doubt that the improved breed of short horns are the finest cattle in the world, and should be preferred wherever plenty of good fodder and some mildness of climate invite them. They are well fitted to the Western States, where there is an overflowing abundance, both of winter and summer fodder, and where, as in England, bullocks are raised for beef only. I have no doubt, also, that they might be advantageously raised in the rich valleys of the Connecticut, and perhaps in some other favored parts of the State. But for myself, as a farmer on the thin lands of Plymouth County, and on the bleak shores of the sea, I do not feel that I could give to animals of this breed that entertainment which their merit deserves.

As to sheep, the Leicesters are like the short-horned cattle. They must be kept well; they should always be fat; and, pressed by good keeping to early maturity, they are found very profitable. “Feed well,” was the maxim of the great Roman farmer, Cato; and that short sentence comprises much of all that belongs to the profitable economy of live stock. The South Downs are a good breed, both for wool and mutton. They crop the grass that grows on the thin soils, over beds of chalk, in Wiltshire, Hampshire, and Dorsetshire. They ought not to scorn the pastures of New England.

When we turn our thoughts to the condition of England, we must perceive of what immense importance is every, even the smallest, degree of improvement in its agricultural productions. Suppose that, by some new discovery, or some improved mode of culture, only one per cent. could be added to the annual results of English cultivation; this, of itself, would materially affect the comfortable subsistence of millions of human beings. It is often said that England is a garden. This 457 is a strong metaphor. There is poor land and some poor cultivation in England. All people are not equally industrious, careful, and skillful. But, on the whole, England is a prodigy of agricultural wealth. Flanders may possibly surpass it. I have not seen Flanders; but England quite surpasses, in this respect, whatever I have seen. In associations for the improvement of agriculture we have been earlier than England. But such associations now exist there. I had the pleasure of attending the first meeting of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, and I found it a very pleasant and interesting occasion. Persons of the highest distinction for rank, talents, and wealth were present, all zealously engaged in efforts for the promotion of the agricultural interest. No man in England is so high as to be independent of the success of this great interest; no man so low as not to be affected by its prosperity or its decline. The same is true, eminently and emphatically true, with us. Agriculture feeds us; to a great degree it clothes us; without it we could not have manufactures, and we should not have commerce. These all stand together, but they stand together like pillars in a cluster, the largest in the centre, and that largest is agriculture. Let us remember, too, that we live in a country of small farms and freehold tenements; a country in which men cultivate with their own hands their own fee-simple acres, drawing not only their subsistence, but also their spirit of independence and manly freedom, from the ground they plough. They are at once its owners, its cultivators, and its defenders. And, whatever else may be undervalued or overlooked, let us never forget that the cultivation of the earth is the most important labor of man. Man may be civilized, in some degree, without great progress in manufactures and with little commerce with his distant neighbors. But without the cultivation of the earth, he is, in all countries, a savage. Until he gives up the chase, and fixes himself in some place and seeks a living from the earth, he is a roaming barbarian. When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization.

END OF VOLUME FIRST

1

Fifty dollars. The knowledge of this fact is derived from the “Gloucester News,” to which it was no doubt communicated by Master Tappan.

2

Belknap’s History of New Hampshire, Vol. III. p. 328.

3

The old school-house was burned down many years ago. The spot on which it stood belongs to Mr. Robert J. Bradley, who has inherited from his father a devoted friendship for Mr. Webster, and who would never suffer any other building to be erected on the spot, and says that none shall be during his life.

4

Lives of the Chancellors, Vol. VII. p. 218; see also p. 301.

5

The friend to whom the letter referred to by Mr. March was written, was Mr. Justice Story, who adds: “Such praise from such a man ought to be very gratifying. Consider that he is now seventy-five years old, and that he speaks of his recollections of some eighteen years ago with a freshness which shows how deeply your reasoning impressed itself upon his mind. Keep this in memoriam rei.”

6

1 New Hampshire Reports, p. 113.

7

American Review, Vol. IX. p. 434.

8

“Crescit enim cum amplitudine rerum vis ingenii, nec quisquam claram et inlustrem orationem efficere potest, nisi qui causam parem invenit.” The dialogue De Oratoribus, § 37, usually printed with the works of Tacitus.

9

Mr. Webster makes the following playful allusion to this circumstance in a speech at a public dinner in Syracuse (New York), in the month of May of the present year:—

10

“It has so happened that all the public services which I have rendered in the world, in my day and generation, have been connected with the general government. I think I ought to make an exception. I was ten days a member of the Massachusetts legislature, and I turned my thoughts to the search for some good object in which I could be useful in that position; and, after much reflection, I introduced a bill which, with the general consent of both houses of the Massachusetts legislature, passed into a law, and is now a law of the State, which enacts that no man in the State shall catch trout in any other manner than in the old way, with an ordinary hook and line.”

The leading ideas in this and the following paragraph may be found in a review of Mr. Webster’s Speeches, in the North American Review, Vol. XLI. p. 241, written by the author of this Memoir.

11

See North American Review, Vol. XVII. p. 414.

12

This case is known as that of Carver’s Lessees against John Jacob Astor, and is reported in 4 Peters, I.

13

Mr. Chambers referred to the case in court just mentioned, in which Mr. Webster was engaged, and in which the argument had already begun.

14

Mr. Hayne subsequently disclaimed having used this word.

15

Reminiscences of Congress.

16

Chancellor Kent’s remarks are given entire in the introduction to Mr. Webster’s Speech at the New York Dinner, Vol. I. p. 194.

17

Mr. Geo. P. A. Healey.

18

North American Review, Vol. XXXI. p. 537.

19

This passage does not appear in the report preserved in the volume containing his Select Speeches.

20

It is not wholly unworthy of remark in this place, as illustrating the dependence on Mr. Webster’s aid which was felt at the White House, that, on the day of his reply to Mr. Calhoun, the President’s carriage was sent to Mr. Webster’s lodgings, as was supposed with a message borne by the President’s private secretary. Happening to be still at the door when Mr. Webster was about to go to the Capitol, it conveyed him to the Senate-chamber.

21

March’s Reminiscences of Congress, pp. 291, 292.

22

Not long after the publication of this speech, the present Lord Overstone, then Mr. S. Jones Lloyd, one of the highest authorities upon financial subjects in England, was examined upon the subject of banks and currency before a committee of the House of Commons. He produced a copy of the speech of Mr. Webster before the committee, and pronounced it one of the ablest and most satisfactory discussions of these subjects which he had seen. In writing afterwards to Mr. Webster, he spoke of him as a master who had instructed him on these subjects.

23

This chapter is republished, with but slight modifications, from the volume of Mr. Webster’s Diplomatic and Official Papers which appeared in 1848, to which it served as the Introduction.

24

Mr. Stevenson.

25

Senate Papers, Twenty-seventh Congress, First Session, No. 33.

26

Younger son of Mr. Webster, who died in Mexico, in 1848, being a major in the regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers.

27

The authorities are given in Story’s Commentaries Vol. III. pp. 675, 676; Conflict of Laws, pp. 520, 522; and in Kent’s Commentaries, Vol. I. pp. 36, 37.

28

The following passage from a letter of Robert Walsh, Esq., to the editors of the National Intelligencer, dated Paris, 28th October, 1842, furnishes confirmation of the remark in the text:—

“The former journal [The Times], of the 18th instant, acknowledges that Mr. Webster ‘has not exaggerated the hardships and evils which the practice of impressment occasioned in the last war.’ It ratifies his ideas of the probable aggravation of them, if the practice should be ever renewed; it would even dispense with press-warrants at home, as adverse to the general principles of British liberty and law: it advises some general measure for the entire abolition of arbitrary impressment both at home and abroad, and it expresses its belief of a very strong probability, that, in the event of a war, no instructions for the impressment of British seamen found in American merchant-vessels will be issued to her Majesty’s cruisers. The Standard chimes with the great oracle, and concludes in this strain: ‘We may infer that, whatever may be the plan hereafter for managing our navy, impressment will never again be resorted to; this is beyond a doubt: the practice complained of by Mr. Webster will be abandoned.’”

29

Mr. Cushing.

30

In compiling this narrative much use has been made of the third volume of the work entitled “The Statesman’s Manual,” a most useful work of reference.

31

This idea is beautifully expressed in the following passage of a late letter from Mr. Webster, in reply to an invitation from the citizens of Macon, Georgia:—

“The States are united, not consolidated;

‘Not, chaos-like, together crashed and bruised,But, like the world, harmoniously confused,Where order in variety we see;And where, though all things differ, all agree.’”

32

M. Tulli Ciceronis de Re Publica quæ supersunt, edente Angelo Maio. Lib. I. § 7.

33

A Discourse delivered at Plymouth, on the 22d of December, 1820.

34

An interesting account of the Rock may be found in Dr. Thacher’s History of the Town of Plymouth, pp. 29, 198, 199.

35

See Note A, at the end of the Discourse.

36

For notices of Carver, Bradford, Standish, Brewster, and Allerton, see Young’s Chronicles of Plymouth and Massachusetts; Morton’s Memorial, p. 126; Belknap’s American Biography, Vol. II.; Hutchinson’s History, Vol. II., App., pp. 456 et seq.; Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society; Winthrop’s Journal; and Thacher’s History.

37

For the original name of what is now Plymouth, see Lives of American Governors, p. 38, note, a work prepared with great care by J. B. Moore, Esq.

38

The twenty-first is now acknowledged to be the true anniversary. See the Report of the Pilgrim Society on the subject.

39

Herodot. VI. § 109.

40

For the compact to which reference is made in the text, signed on board the Mayflower, see Hutchinson’s History, Vol. II., Appendix, No. I. For an eloquent description of the manner in which the first Christian Sabbath was passed on board the Mayflower, at Plymouth, see Barnes’s Discourse at Worcester.

41

The names of the passengers in the Mayflower, with some account of them, may be found in the New England Genealogical Register, Vol. I. p. 47, and a narration of some of the incidents of the voyage, Vol. II. p. 188. For an account of Mrs. White the mother of the first child born in New England, see Baylies’s History of Plymouth, Vol. II. p. 18, and for a notice of her son Peregrine, see Moore’s Lives of American Governors, Vol. I. p. 31, note.

42

See the admirable letter written on board the Arbella, in Hutchinson’s History, Vol. I., Appendix, No. I.

43

In reference to the British policy respecting Colonial manufactures, see Representations of the Board of Trade to the House of Lords, 23d Jan., 1734; also, 8th June, 1749. For an able vindication of the British Colonial policy, see “Political Essays concerning the Present State of the British Empire.” London, 1772.

44

Many interesting papers, illustrating the early history of the Colony, may be found in Hutchinson’s “Collection of Original Papers relating to the History of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay.”

45

In reference to the fulfilment of this prediction, see Mr. Webster’s Address at the Celebration of the New England Society of New York, on the 23d of December, 1850.

46

John Adams, second President of the United States.

47

See Note B, at the end of the Discourse.

48

Oratio pro Flacco, § 7.

49

The first free school established by law in the Plymouth Colony was in 1670-72. One of the early teachers in Boston taught school more than seventy years. See Cotton Mather’s “Funeral Sermon upon Mr. Ezekiel Cheever, the ancient and honorable Master of the Free School in Boston.”

For the impression made upon the mind of an intelligent foreigner by the general attention to popular education, as characteristic of the American polity, see Mackay’s Western World, Vol. III. p. 225 et seq. Also, Edinburgh Review, No. 186.

50

By a law of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, passed as early as 1647, it was ordered, that, “when any town shall increase to the number of one hundred families or householders, they shall set up a grammar school, the master thereof being able to instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for the University.”

51

In reference to the opposition of the Colonies to the slave-trade, see a representation of the Board of Trade to the House of Lords, 23d January, 1733-4.

52

General Warren, at the time of his decease, was Grand Master of the Masonic Lodges in America.

53

An Address delivered at the Laying of the Corner-stone of the Bunker Hill Monument at Charlestown, Massachusetts, on the 17th of June, 1825.

54

An interesting account of the voyage of the early emigrants to the Maryland Colony, and of its settlement, is given in the official report of Father White, written probably within the first month after the landing at St. Mary’s. The original Latin manuscript is still preserved among the archives of the Jesuits, at Rome. The “Ark” and the “Dove” are remembered with scarcely less interest by the descendants of the sister Colony, than is the “Mayflower” in New England, which, thirteen years earlier, at the same season of the year, bore thither the Pilgrim Fathers.

55

Mr. Webster was at this time President of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, chosen on the decease of Governor John Brooks, the first President.

56

That which was spoken of figuratively in 1825 has, in the lapse of a quarter of a century, by the introduction of railroads and telegraphic lines, become a reality. It is an interesting circumstance, that the first railroad on the Western Continent was constructed for the purpose of accelerating the erection of this monument.

57

See President Monroe’s Message to Congress in 1823, and Mr. Webster’s speech on the Panama mission, in 1828.

58

It is necessary to inform those only who are unacquainted with the localities, that the United States Navy Yard at Charlestown is situated at the base of Bunker Hill.

59

See the North American Review, Vol. XLI. p. 242.

60

Among the earliest of the arrangements for the celebration of the 17th of June, 1825, was the invitation to General Lafayette to be present; and he had so timed his progress through the other States as to return to Massachusetts in season for the great occasion.

61

An Address delivered on Bunker Hill, on the 17th of June, 1843.

62

William Tudor died at Rio de Janeiro, as Chargé d’Affaires of the United States, in 1830.

63

William Sullivan died in Boston in 1839, George Blake in 1841, both gentlemen of great political and legal eminence.

64

William Sullivan died in Boston in 1839, George Blake in 1841, both gentlemen of great political and legal eminence.

65

William Prescott (since deceased, in 1844), son of Colonel William Prescott, who commanded on the 17th of June, 1775, and father of William H. Prescott, the historian.

66

See the Note at the end of the Address.