And, finally, Mr. President, I implore, as the best blessing which Heaven can bestow upon me on earth, that if the direful and sad event of the dissolution of the Union shall happen, I may not survive to behold the sad and heartrending spectacle.

WEBSTER

DANIEL WEBSTER was born at Salisbury, New Hampshire, in 1782. His

father had risen to the rank of captain in the "French and Indian War." After an imperfect preparation, he graduated at Dartmouth College in 1801, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in Boston four years later. Out of regard for his father, the young man began practice near his early home, but he subsequently removed to Portsmouth, and there took a leading place in his profession. In May, 1813, he entered Congress as a Representative from New Hampshire, but being a Federalist, he was unable to exert much influence. In 1816 he gave up political life for some years, and removed to Boston, where his reputation as a lawyer soon became national. The foundation of his fame as an orator, in contradistinction to his legal eminence, may be said to have been laid by his address at Plymouth in 1820, on the two hundredth anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims. He next delivered the address at the laying of the cornerstone of the Bunker Hill monument in 1825, on the fiftieth anniversary of the battle, and then that which commemorated in 1826 the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and the coincident deaths of Jefferson and John Adams. His finest subsequent speeches, outside of legislative halls, were made on the completion of the Bunker Hill monument in 1843 and at the laying of the cornerstone of the addition to the Capitol at Washington in 1851. In December, 1823, Webster returned to Congress as a Representative from Massachusetts, and his earliest speech was held to have made him the first of Congressional speakers. In 1827 he was sent from Massachusetts to the United States Senate, wherein he remained until his death, with the exception of the period of his service in the Cabinet. In January, 1830, he delivered the speech known as the "Reply to Hayne," which made him illustrious, and put him forward for twenty years as the champion of Northern sentiment regarding the nature of the Union. Throughout those decades he was continually pitted against John C. Calhoun. When the Whig party came into power in 1841, Webster was appointed Secretary of State, and he retained the post under Tyler, after his colleagues had broken with the new President and resigned. It was he who settled the boundary of Maine by the treaty negotiated with Lord Ashburton in 1842. He opposed the annexation of Texas and the Mexican war. The speech delivered by him on the 7th of March, 1850, in which he advocated the compromise measures proposed in that year by Henry Clay, stamped him, in

the opinion of many of his former Northern worshippers, as a recreant bidding for Southern votes for the Presidency. As a matter of fact, it was not he, but it was they, who had changed. He failed to receive the Whig nomination for that office in 1852, and died at his home in Marshfield, Massachusetts, in October of that year.

THE REPLY TO HAYNE

DELIVERED IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE, IN REPLY TO HAYNE ON THE FOOT RESOLUTION, JANUARY 26, 1830

Mr. President:

W"

HEN the mariner has been tossed for many days, in thick weather, and on an unknown sea, he naturally avails himself of the first pause in the storm, the earliest glance of the sun, to take his latitude, and ascertain how far the elements have driven him from his true course. Let us imitate this prudence, and, before we float further on the waves of this debate, refer to the point from which we departed, that we may at least be able to conjecture where we now are. I ask for the reading of

the resolution.

The Secretary read the resolution, as follows:

"Resolved, That the Committee on Public Lands be instructed to inquire and report the quantity of public lands remaining unsold within each State and Territory, and whether it be expedient to limit, for a certain period, the sales of the public lands to such lands only as have heretofore been offered for sale, and are now subject to entry at the minimum price. And, also, whether the office of Surveyor-General, and some of the land offices, may not be abolished without detriment to the public interest; or whether it be expedient to adopt measures to hasten the sales and extend more rapidly the surveys of the public lands."

We have thus heard, sir, what the resolution is, which is actually before us for consideration; and it will readily occur to every one that it is almost the only subject about which something has not been said in the speech, running through two days, by which the Senate has now been entertained by the gentleman from South Carolina. Every topic in the wide range of our public affairs, whether past or present-everything, general or local, whether belonging to national politics, or party politics, seems to have attracted more or less of the honorable member's attention, save only the resolution before the Senate. He has spoken of everything but the public lands. They have escaped his notice. To that subject, in all his excursions, he has not paid even the cold respect of a passing glance.

When this debate, sir, was to be resumed on Thursday morning, it so happened that it would have been convenient for me to be elsewhere. The honorable member, however, did not incline to put off the discussion to another day. He had a shot, he said, to return, and he wished to discharge it. That shot, sir, which it was kind thus to inform us was coming, that we might stand out of the way, or prepare ourselves to fall before it, and die with decency, has now been received. Under all advantages, and with expectation awakened by the tone which preceded it, it has been discharged, and has spent its force. It may become me to say no more of its effect than that if nobody is found, after all, either killed or wounded by it, it is not the first time, in the history of human affairs, that the vigor and success of the war have not quite come up to the lofty and sounding phrase of the manifesto.

The gentleman, sir, in declining to postpone the debate, told the Senate, with the emphasis of his hand upon his

heart, that there was something rankling here, which he wished to relieve.

Mr. Hayne rose, and disclaimed having used the word "rankling."

It would not, Mr. President, be safe for the honorable member to appeal to those around him upon the question whether he did, in fact, make use of that word. But he may have been unconscious of it. At any rate, it is enough that he disclaims it. But still, with or without the use of that particular word, he had yet something here, he said, of which he wished to rid himself by an immediate reply. In this respect, sir, I have a great advantage over the honorable gentleman. There is nothing here, sir, which gives me the slightest uneasiness; neither fear, nor anger, nor that which is sometimes more troublesome than either -the consciousness of having been in the wrong. There is nothing, either originating here, or now received here by the gentleman's shot. Nothing original, for I had not the slightest feeling of disrespect or unkindness toward the honorable member. Some passages, it is true, had occurred since our acquaintance in this body, which I could have wished might have been otherwise; but I had used philosophy and forgotten them. When the honorable member rose, in his first speech, I paid him the respect of attentive listening; and when he sat down, though surprised, and, I must say, even astonished, at some of his opinions, nothing was further from my intention than to commence any personal warfare: and through the whole of the few remarks I made in answer, I avoided, studiously and carefully, everything which I thought pos sible to be construed into disrespect. And, sir, while there