The Works of Daniel Webster Part 32

"_New York, March 1, 1837._

"SIR:--It having been currently reported that you have signified your intention to resign your seat in the Senate of the United States, a number of the friends of the Union and the Const.i.tution in this city were convened on the evening of the 21st of last month, to devise measures whereby they might signify to you the sentiments which they, in common with all the Whigs in this city, entertain for the eminent services you have rendered to the country. At this meeting, the Hon.

James Kent was called to the chair, and resolutions, a copy of which I inclose you, were adopted, not only with entire unanimity, but with a feeling of warm and hearty concurrence. On behalf of the committee appointed under one of these resolutions, I now have the honor to address you. It will be gratifying to the committee to learn from you at what time you expect to arrive in this city on your return to Ma.s.sachusetts. If informed of the time of your arrival, it will afford the committee pleasure to meet you, and, in behalf of the Whigs of New York, to welcome you, and to offer you, in a more extended form than the resolutions present, their views of your public services. I am instructed by the committee to say, that, whether you shall choose to appear among us as a public man or a private citizen, you will be warmly greeted by every sound friend of that Const.i.tution for which you have been so distinguished a champion. Should your resolution to resign your seat in the Senate be relinquished, you will, in the opinion of the committee, impose new obligations upon the friends of the Union and the Const.i.tution.

"I have the honor to be, very truly, your obedient servant,

"D. B. OGDEN.

"To Hon. DANIEL WEBSTER, Washington."

"_Washington, March 4th, 1837._

"MY DEAR SIR:--I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 1st instant, communicating the resolutions adopted at a meeting of a number of political friends in New York.

"The character of these resolutions, and the kindness of the sentiments expressed in your letter, have filled me with unaffected grat.i.tude. I feel, at the same time, how little deserving are any political services of mine of such commendation from such a source. To the discharge of the duties of my public situation, sometimes both anxious and difficult, I have devoted time and labor without reserve; and have made sacrifices of personal and private convenience not always unimportant. These, together with integrity of purpose and fidelity, const.i.tute, I am conscious, my only claim to the public regard; and for all these I find myself richly compensated by proofs of approbation such as your communication affords.

"My desire to relinquish my seat in the Senate for the two years still remaining of the term for which I was chosen, would have been carried into execution at the close of the present session of the Senate, had not circ.u.mstances existed which, in the judgment of others, rendered it expedient to defer the fulfilment of that purpose for the present.

"It is my expectation to be in New York early in the week after next; and it will give me pleasure to meet the political friends who have tendered me this kind and respectful attention, in any manner most agreeable to them.

"I pray you to accept for yourself, and the other gentlemen of the committee, my highest regard.

"DANIEL WEBSTER.

"To D. B. OGDEN, Esq., New York."

"At a meeting of the committee appointed under the above resolution, Philip Hone, Robert Smith, John W. Leavitt, Egbert Benson, Ira B.

Wheeler, Caleb Bartow, Simeon Draper, Jr., and Wm. S. Johnson, Esqrs., were appointed a sub-committee to make arrangements for the reception of Mr. Webster. The committee have corresponded with Mr. Webster, and ascertained that he will leave Philadelphia on the morning of Wednesday next. He will be met by the committee, and, on landing at Whitehall, at about two o'clock on Wednesday afternoon, will thence be conducted by the committee, accompanied by such other citizens as choose to join them, to a place hereafter to be designated. In the evening, at half past six o'clock, he will be addressed by the committee, in a public meeting of citizens, at Niblo's Saloon.

"D. B. OGDEN, _Chairman_."

On the subsequent day, March 15th, the committee appointed for that purpose met Mr. Webster at Amboy, and accompanied him to the city, where he was met, on landing, by a very numerous a.s.semblage of citizens, who thronged to see the distinguished Senator, and give him a warm welcome; after landing, he was attended by the committee and a numerous cavalcade through Broadway, which was crowded with the most respectable citizens, to lodgings provided for him at the American Hotel. Here he made a short address to the a.s.sembled citizens, and in the evening was accompanied by the committee to Niblo's Saloon. One of the largest meetings ever held in the city of New York a.s.sembled in the Saloon, and at half past six o'clock was called to order by AARON CLARK; DAVID B.

OGDEN was called to the chair as President of the meeting; Robert C. Cornell, Jonathan Goodhue, Joseph Tucker, and Nathaniel Weed were nominated Vice-Presidents; and Joseph Hoxie and George S.

Robbins, Secretaries.

After the meeting was organized, PHILIP HONE introduced Mr. Webster with a few appropriate remarks, and he was received with the most enthusiastic greetings. Mr. OGDEN then addressed him as follows:--

"On behalf of a committee, appointed at a meeting of a number of your personal and political friends in this city, I have now the honor of addressing you.

"It has afforded the committee, and, I may add, all your political friends, unmingled pleasure to learn that you have, at least for the present, relinquished the intention which I know you had formed of resigning your seat in the Senate of the United States. While expressing their feelings upon this change in your determination, the committee cannot avoid congratulating the country that your public services are not yet to be lost to it and that the great champion of the Const.i.tution and of the Union is still to continue in the field upon which he has earned so many laurels, and has so n.o.bly a.s.serted and defended the rights and liberties of the people.

"The effort made by you, and the honorable men with whom you have acted in the Senate, to resist executive encroachments upon the other departments of the government, will ever be remembered with grat.i.tude by the friends of American liberty. That these efforts were not more successful, we shall long have reason to remember and regret. The administration of General Jackson is fortunately at an end. Its effects upon the Const.i.tution and upon the commercial prosperity of the country are not at an end. Without attempting to review the leading measures of his administration, every man engaged in business in New York feels, most sensibly, that his experiment upon the currency has produced the evils which you foretold it would produce. It has brought distress, to an extent never before experienced, upon the men of enterprise and of small capital, and has put all the primary power in the hands of a few great capitalists.

"Upon the Senate our eyes and our hopes are fixed; we know that you and your political friends are in a minority in that body, but we know that in that minority are to be found great talents, great experience, great patriotism, and we look for great and continued exertions to maintain the Const.i.tution, the Union, and the liberties of this people. And we take this opportunity of expressing our entire confidence, that whatever men can do in a minority will be done in the Senate to relieve the country from the evils under which she is now laboring, and to save her from being sacrificed by folly, corruption, or usurpation.

"It gives me, Sir, pleasure to be the organ of the committee to express to you their great respect for your talents, their deep sense of the importance of your public services, and their gratification to learn that you will still continue in the Senate."

To this address Mr. WEBSTER replied in the following speech.

RECEPTION AT NEW YORK.[106]

MR. CHAIRMAN, AND FELLOW-CITIZENS:--It would be idle in me to affect to be indifferent to the circ.u.mstances under which I have now the honor of addressing you.

I find myself in the commercial metropolis of the continent, in the midst of a vast a.s.sembly of intelligent men, drawn from all the cla.s.ses, professions, and pursuits of life.

And you have been pleased, Gentlemen, to meet me, in this imposing manner, and to offer me a warm and cordial welcome to your city. I thank you. I feel the full force and importance of this manifestation of your regard. In the highly-flattering resolutions which invited me here, in the respectability of this vast mult.i.tude of my fellow-citizens, and in the approbation and hearty good-will which you have here manifested, I feel cause for profound and grateful acknowledgment.

To every individual of this meeting, therefore, I would now most respectfully make that acknowledgment; and with every one, as with hands joined in mutual greeting, I reciprocate friendly salutation, respect, and good wishes.

But, Gentlemen, although I am well a.s.sured of your personal regard, I cannot fail to know, that the times, the political and commercial condition of things which exists among us, and an intelligent spirit, awakened to new activity and a new degree of anxiety, have mainly contributed to fill these avenues and crowd these halls. At a moment of difficulty, and of much alarm, you come here as Whigs of New York, to meet one whom you believe to be bound to you by common principles and common sentiments, and pursuing, with you, a common object Gentlemen, I am proud to admit this community of our principles, and this ident.i.ty of our objects. You are for the Const.i.tution of the country; so am I. You are for the Union of the States: so am I. You are for equal laws, for the equal rights of all men, for const.i.tutional and just restraints on power, for the substance and not the shadowy image only of popular inst.i.tutions, for a government which has liberty for its spirit and soul, as well as in its forms; and so am I. You feel that if, in warm party times, the executive power is in hands distinguished for boldness, for great success, for perseverance, and other qualities which strike men's minds strongly, there is danger of derangement of the powers of government, danger of a new division of those powers, in which the executive is likely to obtain the lion's part; and danger of a state of things in which the more popular branches of the government, instead of being guards and sentinels against any encroachments from the executive, seek, rather, support from its patronage, safety against the complaints of the people in its ample and all-protecting favor, and refuge in its power; and so I feel, and so I have felt for eight long and anxious years.

You believe that a very efficient and powerful cause in the production of the evils which now fall on the industrious and commercial cla.s.ses of the community, is the derangement of the currency, the destruction of the exchanges, and the unnatural and unnecessary _misplacement_ of the specie of the country, by unauthorized and illegal treasury orders. So do I believe. I predicted all this from the beginning, and from before the beginning. I predicted it all, last spring, when that was attempted to be done by law which was afterwards done by executive authority; and from the moment of the exercise of that executive authority to the present time, I have both foreseen and seen the regular progress of things under it, from inconvenience and embarra.s.sment, to pressure, loss of confidence, disorder, and bankruptcies.

Gentlemen, I mean, on this occasion, to speak my sentiments freely on the great topics of the day. I have nothing to conceal, and shall therefore conceal nothing. In regard to political sentiments, purposes, or objects, there is nothing in my heart which I am ashamed of; I shall throw it all open, therefore, to you, and to all men.

[That is right, said some one in the crowd; let us have it, with no non-committal.] Yes, my friend, without non-committal or evasion, without barren generalities or empty phrase, without _if_ or _but_, without a single touch, in all I say, bearing the oracular character of an Inaugural, I shall, on this occasion, speak my mind plainly, freely, and independently, to men who are just as free to concur or not to concur in my sentiments, as I am to utter them. I think you are ent.i.tled to hear my opinions freely and frankly spoken; but I freely acknowledge that you are still more clearly ent.i.tled to retain, and maintain, your own opinions, however they may differ or agree with mine.

It is true, Gentlemen, that I have contemplated the relinquishment of my seat in the Senate for the residue of the term, now two years, for which I was chosen. This resolution was not taken from disgust or discouragement, although some things have certainly happened which might excite both those feelings. But in popular governments, men must not suffer themselves to be permanently disgusted by occasional exhibitions of political harlequinism, or deeply discouraged, although their efforts to awaken the people to what they deem the dangerous tendency of public measures be not crowned with immediate success. It was altogether from other causes, and other considerations, that, after an uninterrupted service of fourteen or fifteen years, I naturally desired a respite. But those whose opinions I am bound to respect saw objections to a present withdrawal from Congress; and I have yielded my own strong desire to their convictions of what the public good requires.

Gentlemen, in speaking here on the subjects which now so much interest the community, I wish in the outset to disclaim all personal disrespect towards individuals. He whose character and fortune have exercised such a decisive influence on our politics for eight years, has now retired from public station. I pursue him with no personal reflections, no reproaches. Between him and myself, there has always existed a respectful personal intercourse. Moments have existed, indeed, critical and decisive upon the general success of his administration, in which he has been pleased to regard my aid as not altogether unimportant I now speak of him respectfully, as a distinguished soldier, as one who, in that character, has done the state much service; as a man, too, of strong and decided character, of unsubdued resolution and perseverance in whatever he undertakes. In speaking of his civil administration, I speak without censoriousness or harsh imputation of motives; I wish him health and happiness in his retirement; but I must still speak as I think of his public measures, and of their general bearing and tendency, not only on the present interests of the country, but also on the well-being and security of the government itself.

There are, however, some topics of a less urgent present application and importance, upon which I wish to say a few words, before I advert to those which are more immediately connected with the present distressed state of things.

My learned and highly-valued friend (Mr. Ogden) who has addressed me in your behalf, has been kindly pleased to speak of my political career as being marked by a freedom from local interests and prejudices, and a devotion to liberal and comprehensive views of public policy.

I will not say that this compliment is deserved. I will only say, that I have earnestly endeavored to deserve it. Gentlemen, the general government, to the extent of its power, is national. It is not consolidated, it does not embrace all powers of government. On the contrary, it is delegated, restrained, strictly limited.

But what powers it does possess, it possesses for the general, not for any partial or local good. It extends over a vast territory, embracing now six-and-twenty States, with interests various, but not irreconcilable, infinitely diversified, but capable of being all blended into political harmony.

He, however, who would produce this harmony must survey the whole field, as if all parts were as interesting to himself as they are to others, and with that generous, patriotic feeling, prompter and better than the mere dictates of cool reason, which leads him to embrace the whole with affectionate regard, as const.i.tuting, altogether, that object which he is so much bound to respect, to defend, and to love,--his country. We have around us, and more or less within the influence and protection of the general government, all the great interests of agriculture, navigation, commerce, manufactures, the fisheries, and the mechanic arts. The duties of the government, then, certainly extend over all this territory, and embrace all these vast interests. We have a maritime frontier, a sea-coast, of many thousand miles; and while no one doubts that it is the duty of government to defend this coast by suitable military preparations, there are those who yet suppose that the powers of government stop at this point; and that as to works of peace and works of improvement, they are beyond our const.i.tutional limits. I have ever thought otherwise. Congress has a right, no doubt, to declare war, and to provide armies and navies; and it has necessarily the right to build fortifications and batteries, to protect the coast from the effects of war. But Congress has authority also, and it is its duty, to regulate commerce, and it has the whole power of collecting duties on imports and tonnage. It must have ports and harbors, and dock-yards also, for its navies. Very early in the history of the government, it was decided by Congress, on the report of a highly respectable committee, that the transfer by the States to Congress of the power of collecting tonnage and other duties, and the grant of the authority to regulate commerce, charged Congress, necessarily, with the duty of maintaining such piers and wharves and light-houses, and of making such improvements, as might have been expected to be done by the States, if they had retained the usual means, by retaining the power of collecting duties on imports. The States, it was admitted, had parted with this power; and the duty of protecting and facilitating commerce by these means had pa.s.sed, along with this power, into other hands. I have never hesitated, therefore, when the state of the treasury would admit, to vote for reasonable appropriations, for breakwaters, light-houses, piers, harbors, and similar public works, on any part of the whole Atlantic coast or the Gulf of Mexico, from Maine to Louisiana.

But how stands the inland frontier? How is it along the vast lakes and the mighty rivers of the North and West? Do our const.i.tutional rights and duties terminate where the water ceases to be salt? or do they exist, in full vigor, on the sh.o.r.es of these inland seas? I never could doubt about this; and yet, Gentlemen, I remember even to have partic.i.p.ated in a warm debate, in the Senate, some years ago, upon the const.i.tutional right of Congress to make an appropriation for a pier in the harbor of Buffalo. What! make a harbor at Buffalo, where Nature never made any, and where therefore it was never intended any ever should be made! Take money from the people to run out piers from the sandy sh.o.r.es of Lake Erie, or deepen the channels of her shallow rivers! Where was the const.i.tutional authority for this? Where would such strides of power stop? How long would the States have any powers at all left, if their territory might be ruthlessly invaded for such unhallowed purposes, or how long would the people have any money in their pockets, if the government of the United States might tax them, at pleasure, for such extravagant project as these? Piers, wharves, harbors, and breakwaters in the Lakes! These arguments, Gentlemen, however earnestly put forth heretofore, do not strike us with great power, at the present day, if we stand on the sh.o.r.es of Lake Erie, and see hundreds of vessels, with valuable cargoes and thousands of valuable lives, moving on its waters, with few shelters from the storm, except what is furnished by the havens created, or made useful, by the aid of government. These great lakes, stretching away many thousands of miles, not in a straight line, but with turns and deflections, as if designed to reach, by water communication, the greatest possible number of important points through a region of vast extent, cannot but arrest the attention of any one who looks upon the map. They lie connected, but variously placed; and interspersed, as if with studied variety of form and direction, over that part of the country. They were made for man, and admirably adapted for his use and convenience. Looking, Gentlemen, over our whole country, comprehending in our survey the Atlantic coast, with its thick population, its advanced agriculture, its extended commerce, its manufactures and mechanic arts, its varieties of communication, its wealth, and its general improvements; and looking, then, to the interior, to the immense tracts of fresh, fertile, and cheap lands, bounded by so many lakes, and watered by so many magnificent rivers, let me ask if such a MAP was ever before presented to the eye of any statesman, as the theatre for the exercise of his wisdom and patriotism? And let me ask, too, if any man is fit to act a part, on such a theatre, who does not comprehend the whole of it within the scope of his policy, and embrace it all as his country?

Again, Gentlemen, we are one in respect to the glorious Const.i.tution under which we live. We are all united in the great brotherhood of American liberty. Descending from the same ancestors, bred in the same school, taught in infancy to imbibe the same general political sentiments, Americans all, by birth, education, and principle, what but a narrow mind, or woful ignorance, or besotted selfishness, or prejudice ten times blinded, can lead any of us to regard the citizens of any part of the country as strangers and aliens?

The solemn truth, moreover, is before us, that a common political fate attends us all.

Under the present Const.i.tution, wisely and conscientiously administered, all are safe, happy, and renowned. The measure of our country's fame may fill all our b.r.e.a.s.t.s. It is fame enough for us all to partake in _her_ glory, if we will carry her character onward to its true destiny. But if the system is broken, its fragments must fall alike on all. Not only the cause of American liberty, but the grand cause of liberty throughout the whole earth, depends, in a great measure, on upholding the Const.i.tution and Union of these States. If shattered and destroyed, no matter by what cause, the peculiar and cherished idea of United American Liberty will be no more for ever. There may be free states, it is possible, when there shall be separate states. There may be many loose, and feeble, and hostile confederacies, where there is now one great and united confederacy. But the n.o.ble idea of United American Liberty, of _our_ liberty, such as our fathers established it, will be extinguished for ever. Fragments and shattered columns of the edifice may be found remaining; and melancholy and mournful ruins will they be. The august temple itself will be prostrate in the dust. Gentlemen, the citizens of this republic cannot sever their fortunes. A common fate awaits us. In the honor of upholding, or in the disgrace of undermining the Const.i.tution, we shall all necessarily partake. Let us then stand by the Const.i.tution as it is, and by our country as it is, one, united, and entire; let it be a truth engraven on our hearts, let it be borne on the flag under which we rally, in every exigency, that we have ONE COUNTRY, ONE CONSt.i.tUTION, ONE DESTINY.