Page images
PDF
EPUB

DANIEL WEBSTER.

THERE is no possession which a free people should guard with greater vigilance than the reputation of such a statesman as Mr. Webster. At a time when party and personal malice has assailed him with even unwonted virulence, (but happily meeting a most signal defeat,) we shall discharge only a plain public duty by a brief sketch, to remind the country of what indeed it knows, but cannot too often ponder and celebrate.

Mr. Webster was born in Salisbury, a small farming town in New Hampshire, in 1782. His father, who was a farmer, had served both in the old French War and in the War of the Revolution. No other advantages of education were within the reach of the son than the common schools, for which New England has long been famous; and at one of these primitive institutions Mr. Webster was fitted for Dartmouth College, where he was entered at the age of fifteen, and where he was graduated in 1801. The circumstances of his family compelled him to exert himself for his own support, and in these exertions his professional studies were often interrupted. Some of the labors and personal sacrifices to which he then voluntarily submitted, for the sake of his own and a brother's education, are among the most remarkable achievements of even his remarkable life. While engaged in these arduous efforts, and at what may be called a tender age, he went to reside in Boston, and entered the office of the late Gov. Gore, a lawyer of great eminence, a statesman and a gentleman of the loftiest elevation, dignity and purity of character. When Mr. Gore presented his young pupil for admission to the bar, in 1805, he predicted his future eminence in a few words addressed to the court, which have since been more than fulfilled. Mr. Webster began the practice of his profession in Boscawen, in his native State, near the residence of his father, then living but, in 1807, after the death of his father, he removed to Portsmouth. There his mind received its remarkable direction and attained its characteristic strength, in the legal training into which he was at once brought, by immediate and daily conflict with one of the greatest

[blocks in formation]

lawyers this couutry has produced, the Hon. Jeremiah Mason. In 1812, when scarcely thirty, and soon after the declaration of war, he was elected a Representative in Congress from the State of New Hampshire. The first important

measure in which he took a prominent part was the Bill for "encouraging volunteers." Although he represented a people strongly opposed to the war, he felt it to be his duty to promote measures essential to the dignity, honor and safety of the country; and, in his speech on this occasion, he called upon the Government to build and equip a navy, as the first and highest of duties. "In time," said he, you may be enabled to redress injuries in the place where they may be offered; and, if need be, to accompany your own flag throughout the world with the protection of your own cannon."

Later, in the same Congress, he contended strenuously and successfully against the establishment of a mere paper currency; and it is to his exertions and his early views, maintained with singular zeal and foresight, that we owe the establishment of a sound currency and the overthrow of the paper-bank system. In 1816, he introduced and carried a Resolution, still part of the law of the United States, the effect of which was to require the revenue to be received only in the legal currency of the United States, or in bills equal to that currency in value.

Mr. Webster at this time retired from Congress, and went to Boston to reside, to practice his profession. For six or eight years he devoted himself exclusively to the law; and the Massachusetts Reports, and the Reports in the Circuit and Supreme Courts of the United States, show the great professional income which must then have begun to flow in upon him, and what opportunities for the acquisition of fortune he soon sacrificed at the call of public duty. The people of Boston demanded, however, that such talents and acquirements should again be in the service of the country. He had already declined an offer of a seat in the Senate, but, in 1822, he accepted a seat as their Representative in Congress. But before he came again into the national councils, his mind had received that peculiar bias, if we may so

call it, to Constitutional law, which has made him the great Constitutional statesman of the country. He had, in the interim, taken his place at the Bar of the Supreme Court of the United States, in the discussion of those great questions of public and Constitutional law, to which such a system of government as ours gives rise; and henceforth he was destined to be the champion of that public liberty which has its seat and citadel in the Constitution of a free country.

We must wholly pass over his labors in the years 1823-4, and his great work of digesting and causing to be adopted the Crimes Act in 1825. In 1826, a vacancy in the Senate having occurred, he was chosen to fill it by a very large majority of both houses in the Legislature of Massachusetts.

Few intelligent persons in this country are so young or so ill-informed, as not to know the events of his career from this period down to the time when he was appointed Secretary of State, and thence to the present hour. To give in detail the public services of such a life as Mr. Webster has devoted to the services of his country, in the pages of a magazine, would be impossible. We must devote our brief space to two great transactions, in which he is to be regard ed as a public benefactor for what he has prevented, as well as for what he has accomplished.

Of course, every reader will recur at once to the overthrow of the doctrines of Nullification, and to the treaty of Washington. With respect to these transactions, we affirm no less a proposition than this-that Mr. Webster is at this moment a living statesman, who has saved his country from a civil war, at one period of his life, and from a war with England, with honor, at another period. Separate Mr. Webster from all other doings, erase the record of all his other public acts, overlook all his history in its many bearings upon the peace and prosperity of his country, and seek acquaintance with no facts in the formation of his character and opinions, except such as are necessary to understand his adaptation for these great tasks; and contemplate him solely as the statesman successfully concerned in these two acts, and we know not where to look for a greater debt of gratitude due from the people of the United States to any living individual, than is due to him.

It happened, by a singular good for

tune, that when the doctrines of nullification were first boldly and confidently asserted in the Senate of the United States, by a person of great respectability, talent and ingenuity, the whole past history of Mr. Webster had singularly quali fied him for the duty of defending the Constitution. This Government of the United States-this Union is now in existence, with its 'paramount powers unimpaired, because Mr. Webster's intellectual and moral relation to the Constitution, at that critical moment, enabled him to encounter and defeat the peril of that hour. It was in debate, that the Constitution was to be saved. It was a great argument on the floor of the Senate, that was demanded by the exigency of the discussion, to convince the country that a law of Congress could not and therefore would not be nullified by a law of a State. Mr. Webster had for years been trained in the school of the Constitution. He required no especial preparation, for his whole life had been a course of preparation for such an argument. The Constitution, in its true, broad and genuine spirit-the instrument that constitutes a government and not a collection of States, which embraces the whole people under one National Union, and is subject to no defeat or dismemberment by local power or sectional jealousy-this and nothing less than this had been the object of his legal and political studies for years. He had read it by no other light than good sense and the truth of history, faithful to its genuine text. He had imbued himself with the opinions of its great founders. With the doctrines of Washington and Jay and Hamilton and Madison, in the past; with those of Marshall and Story, in the present; with all former and all modern means of genuine exposition, with the study of its powers, with the contemplation of its vast benefits and blessings; with its grand and transcendently important history, out of which our political destiny must be forever shaped, his mind was as familiar as with the most ordinary knowledge- Some of the brightest laurels he had ever won, had been gained in the forum, in causes involving the questions that spring from the Constitution of the United States and touch the sources of State power and State Legislation. When therefore he was suddenly called upon to enter into a debate upon nullification, he was beyond all other men the most fit person to defend the Constitution. It was also just

such a defence as he made, that was to save and did save the country from a civil war.

It was on the 21st and 22d of January, 1830, that General Hayne formally developed in the Senate the doctrines of nullification. His speech was grave, argumentative and plausible. It required an answer. Every one who heard it, or heard of it, or read it, felt that a crisis for the Constitution had arrived. If the speech had remained unanswered; above all, if the answer had not been a triumphant refutation, the Administration, with all the force of General Jackson's personal character, could not afterwards have encountered the menaced resistance, without a civil war. South Carolina afterwards actually stood with arms in the hands of her citizens, ready to resist the collection of revenue by the General Government, within her borders. But the battle of the Constitution had been fought in the Senate; and the moral victory having been won there, the Government could proceed with its demonstrations of force without the otherwise inevitable result of bloodshed: When a faction is proceeding to rebellion upon professed grounds of doctrine and principle, it is more than half disarmed, in a country of intelligence and a free press, as soon as its doctrines are morally overthrown, though the outward attitude of resistance may even grow more belliger

ent.

Mr. Webster answered General Hayne. The world knows the history of that answer by heart. It was a demonstration of the principle that a State cannot, and therefore the country felt that South Carolina would not, nullify a Law of Congress. A remarkable eagerness seized on the public mind to read this speech. It was spread over the country, from Maine to Missouri; vastly more copies of it having been printed than of any other speech in the history of the Government. What followed was a necessary attitude of preparation and compulsion taken by the Government, when occasion called for it-an attitude which it owed the power to take to Mr. Webster's great and successful argumentation. It was said, soon after, in a periodical of high standing, published at Philadelphia, that Mr. Webster might regard this achievement as the chief honor of his life. But who shall set limits to the power of a great statesman to do good, as long as Providence continues him in

the world. Years passed on-years of constant, faithful public service, of great toil and sacrifice, of perpetual good accomplished-and found him in a high office, with the foreign relations of the country entrusted to his care. Those relations were entangled with a Power, from whose people our blood, language, laws, letters and civilization are derived; who must be the most formidable enemy on earth to us, as she ought to be the dearest friend. Diplomacy had exhausted its resources and done its mischiefs. Dark and angry clouds lowered in the horizon, and the point of honor, that delicate and irritable spot in the passions of nations, had been almost reached and wounded. Intricate controversies, crossing each other in a singular confusion, conflicting rights and interests, principles of public law and objects of national policy had for more than twenty years been woven into a "mesh," that might have appalled the clearest vision and the steadiest hand. But there was a frank and sincere disposition on the part of the brave people with whom we were in this web of difficulties, to use conciliation; and, above all, a profound respect and confidence towards the person and character of the American Secretary. Let us pause here, for a moment, to consider the consequences, if the Secretary had demeaned himself otherwise than as he did.

We will not for an instant make the smallest concession to that spirit, which regards a war with England as anything less than a crime and a calamity for these United States if wantonly and carelessly produced. That hoarse and vulgar patriotism, which cannot find in honorable peace the highest honor of one's country, and does not regard war as the last dread evil for nations, will never learn "to hate the cowardice of doing wrong." But in the judgment of the vast majority of mankind, in their cool and reflecting moments, he who saves his country from a war, by skillful, able and upright negotiation; who gains for her by the pen more than all that she could have gained by the sword; who averts, without loss of dignity, and with a vast accession of honor, the crimes, and misery, and ruin, that follow in the train of hostile armies, achieves a distinction and a praise, higher than all other earthly honors. His reputation will be dear to his country, beyond all price, for it is bound up with the sources of her prosperity and happi

ness-it is established on the broad and imperishable foundations of the public good.

made, is an assertion on which none but the foolhardy will now venture, and which none can maintain. Every inquiry, therefore, as to the propriety and greatness of Mr. Webster's course in that negotiation must come back to this: Shall a statesman, who can with perfect honor save his country from a war by negotiation, exercise his whole power to that end, or shall he assume that war is a result of no importance compared with the gratification of a false patriotism and an exaggerated sense of the value of what is immediately in dispute? The world, the Christian world, has but one answer to give to such a question. It has given this answer to Mr. Websteran answer which he cannot mistake, and which the malice of envy and detraction can never take away.

Let any American sit down and follow out the consequences of a different line of conduct from that pursued by Mr. Webster. Let him suppose that a war had been suffered to grow out of the Caroline and McLeod affair. No man at this day can be found to assert that upon the question of international law, respecting McLeod, we were not clearly and wholly in the wrong. Let then a war have grown out of his individual fate, by the refusal of the United States to admit the true principle applicable to his case. For the sake of an obstinate adherence to wrong, let the commerce of this vast country have been exposed to the British Navy, let towns have been burned, let lives and treasure have been squandered, let Anglo-Saxon Christians have met for each other's blood on land and sea, let the fierce struggle of kindred nations have commenced, to end God knows when and how. Wheresoever victory might have perched, is there anything within the range of the human imagination more bitter, than the curses of millions, that would have followed the name of that statesman, who should have been too weak and too cowardly to meet his duty on a question so paltry in its details, but fraught with such consequences from the principles involved? Or take the North-eastern Boundary as a cause for war between England and America. Title to a wild and unsettled country-mere title, capable of fair adjustment by compromise and agreement -as a cause for war, presents an idea that no honest mind can contemplate without a shudder. National honor, if it become involved in a question of title, so that it cannot be extricated without an appeal to arms, is one thing. But it is the business of statesmen, for which they may be said to be furnished with. Then and there, in the City of Washpower, to prevent national honor from ington, Anno Domini 1842, in the heats becoming so entangled. The assailants of a Southern Summer, an earnest man, of Mr. Webster on the Treaty are, there- of deep wisdom and vast capacity for fore, driven to answer this question: labor, held the peace of his country in What would have been the judgment of his hand. It could not but be known to mankind, if he had refused to make a him, that a failure in the undertaking boundary by agreement, and standing at would be followed by a war begun inall points on the extreme verge of our gloriously, if it should end with what claim, had presented the alternative of war, may be called success. It could not but and thereby made it inevitable? This is be known to him that his country looked the true issue. It is a moral question; to him for an issue out of a perplexing for that we did not get the most ample and hazardous business, that should save equivalent for every concession that we both its interests and its honor.

Whatever the future may have in store for us, whoever may be entrusted with power, the people of these United States have witnessed one great example of peace honorably preserved from the haz ards created by previous mismanagement. Few men, probably, are aware how great those hazards were. But they passed away. Uninterrupted commerce rolled its treasures of sea and land through the wonted channels of public and pri vate enterprise. The ship sailed on, the loom remained active on every stream, the plough on every hill-side and in every valley stood not still. The harvest was gathered; the pulsations that beat along every artery in the life of trade, through a great land of production and consumption, were undisturbed. The quivering fibres of domestic life and love, throughout millions of homes, were torn by no anguish of "war's alarums," no news of the slain and wounded on deck or field. Peace, with its countless blessings and its anthems of thanksgiving, remained upon the earth. How came it to be so?

He

could not but feel that the civilized world looked with interest on his position, and would hold America and him to a solemn account for the opportunities before him. What anxious nights, what laborious days were his; he who runs may read in the results that have since come forth. Never found unequal to any part in human affairs, the Secretary was equal to himself; and he who seeks to detract from the merit of that great deed, seeks his country's dishonor, and will be sure to accomplish his own infamy.

which this has occurred, have been those which spring from the great propensity of England to give the utmost force and extension to her own municipal law. A citizen of the world, looking_calmly upon English Diplomacy and English Jurisprudence, in some features, would be likely to infer that the Law of England, by some peculiar power, is able to operate proprio rigore farther than the municipal codes of other countries; and that it can even override, by its own eminent virtue, in case of conflict, any other sysWhile the American negotiator aimed tem of law, in any place where the conat the preservation of peace, he preserved flict may occur. But it would be manithe country in an attitude of the utmost fest to such an observer, that however dignity. Nothing is more striking delicately such a pretension may be exthroughout the whole correspondence, ercised, however magnanimous and highthan the American tone, temper and feel- principled the power that puts it forth, ing, that pervade Mr. Webster's discus- the doctrine is utterly inconsistent with sions. By no diplomatist, at home or the equality and independence of nations abroad, have American rights been up--that great millennial state, to which the held with a firmer hand, and by none have they been farther advanced. Would that it were in our power, through the length and breadth of this broad land, to go into every honest man's dwelling, where such documents seldom penetrate, and there sit down to show how safe the national honor was, in the hands of Daniel Webster. Those who have heard him reviled for making a Treaty about boundary, are they aware that against the greatest maritime power in the world, he has maintained our rights, with a spirit and a force which will cause them to be respected as they have never been before?

[ocr errors]

The Law of Nations has made great progress within the last fifty years; but in the Treaty of Washington and in the Correspondence connected therewith, it advanced farther than it had during the whole of the fifty years that preceded. We can make this apparent by a very few remarks.

It is not to be denied that the true scope and tendency of the Law of Nations consist in promoting and securing the national independence of every separate people on the globe. It is also not to be denied, that while the policy and measures of England have, in some cases of intervention and the like, proceeded upon and enforced this great leading object of the Christian States, her policy and measures have in other instances trenched upon the independence of other powers, and tended to its exclusion, as a principle, from the system of public law. Some of the most remarkable cases in

public law ought to be made to tend. Two instances of this pretension on the part of England have been quite remarkable. The one is, the English doctrine of Impressment, founded on the idea that a British subject owes perpetual allegiance to the British Crown, which may claim his services in war wherever he may be found, and therefore, it was said, a British officer may enter an American ship, carrying with him this principle of British law, to search for and remove British subjects. All this implies the notion that the municipal law of England can operate in the territory of another nation. The other instance is the English doctrine, more recently promulgated, that slaves, the property of an American citizen of a slaveholding State, on board a vessel driven by stress of weather into a British port, there become free, because the municipal law of England does not tolerate slavery. This again involves the notion that the municipal law of England, in a British port, enters such a vessel and governs the relations of those on board, to the exclusion of the municipal law of their own country, a part of which, by the law of nations, such vessel actually is.

Now, it is in no boastful or triumphant spirit, but with that satisfaction which springs from the belief that mankind are to be benefited by the result, that we say, that Mr. Webster met and abolished these pretensions. He has abolished them, so far as America is concerned, inasmuch as they cannot hereafter be advanced and acted upon, without giving cause for war,

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »