many things that suggested the Cavalier and did not suggest the Puritan, I shall not say I was sorry. But among other things, I found there a civilization perfect in its union of the art of living with the grace of life; an Americanism ideal in its simple strength. Grady told us, and told us truly, of that typical American who, in Dr. Talmage's mind's eye, was coming, but who, in Abraham Lincoln's actuality, had already come. In some recent studies into the career of that great man, I have encountered many startling confirmations of this judgment; and. from that rugged trunk, drawing its sustenance from gnarled roots, interlocked with Cavalier sprays and Puritan branches deep beneath the soil, shall spring, is springing, a shapely tree -symmetric in all its parts-under whose sheltering boughs this nation shall have the new birth of freedom Lincoln promised it, and mankind the refuge which was sought by the forefathers when they fled from oppression. Thank God, the ax, the gibbet, and the stake have had their day. They have gone, let us hope, to keep company with the lost arts. It has been demonstrated that great wrongs may be redressed and great reforms be achieved without the shedding of one drop of human blood; that vengeance does not purify, but brutalizes; and that tolerance, which in private transactions is reckoned a virtue, becomes in public affairs a dogma of the most far-seeing statesmanship. Else how could this noble city have been redeemed from bondage? It was held like a castle of the Middle Ages by robber barons, who levied tribute right and left. Yet have the mounds and dykes of corruption been carried-from buttress to bell tower the walls of crime have fallen-without a shot out of a gun, and still no fires of Smithfield to light the pathway of the victor, no bloody assizes to vindicate the justice of the cause; nor need of any. So I appeal from the men in silken hose who danced to music made by slaves-and called it freedom-from the men in bellcrowned hats, who led Hester Prynne to her shame-and called it religion-to that Americanism which reaches forth its arms to smite wrong with reason and truth, secure in the power of both. I appeal from the patriarchs of New England to the poets of New England; from Endicott to Lowell; from Winthrop to Longfellow; from Norton to Holmes; and I appeal in the name and by the rights of that common citizenship of that common origin-back both of the Puritan and the Cavalier-to which all of us owe our being. Let the dead past, consecrated by the blood of its martyrs, not by its savage hatreds-darkened alike by kingcraft and priestcraft-let the dead past bury its dead. Let the present and the future ring with the song of the singers. Blessed be the lessons they teach, the laws they make. Blessed be the eye to see, the light to reveal. Blessed be Tolerance, sitting ever on the right hand of God to guide the way with loving word, as blessed be all that brings us nearer the goal of true religion, true Republicanism and true patriotism, distrust of watchwords and labels, shams and heroes, belief in our country and ourselves. It was not Cotton Mather, but John Greenleaf Whittier, who cried : Dear God and Father of us all, Cast down our idols—overturn [Applause and cheers.] DANIEL WEBSTER THE CONSTITUTION AND THE UNION Speech of Daniel Webster at the dinner of the New England Society in the city of New York, December 23, 1850. The early published form of this address is very rare. It bears the following title-page: "Speech of Mr York New England So printed by Gideon & Co bration, Moses H. Grinne toast not on the catalogue bster at the Celebration of the New December 23, 1850. Washington: The presiding officer of the celedtention of the company to a "The Constitution and the Union, and their Chief Defender." This sentiment was received with great applause, which became most tumultuous when Mr. Webster rose to respond. Other speeches by Mr. Webster are given in Volume XI. MR. PRESIDENT, AND GENTLEMEN OF THE NEW YORK NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY:-Ye sons of New England! Ye brethren of the kindred tie! I have come hither to-night, not without some inconvenience, that I might behold a congregation whose faces bear lineaments of a New England origin, and whose hearts beat with full New England pulsations. [Cheers.] I willingly make the sacrifice. I am here, to meet this assembly of the great off-shoot of the Pilgrim Society of Massachusetts, the Pilgrim Society of New York. And, gentlemen, I shall begin what I have to say, which is but little, by tendering to you my thanks for the invitation extended to me, and by wishing you, one and all, every kind of happiness and prosperity. Gentlemen, this has been a stormy, a cold, a boisterous and inclement day. The winds have been harsh, the skies have been severe; and if we had no houses over our heads; if we had no shelter against this howling and freezing tempest; if we were wan and worn out; if half of us were sick and tired, and ready to descend into the grave; if we were on the bleak coast of Plymouth, houseless, homeless, with nothing over our heads but the heavens, and that God who sits above the heavens; if we had distressed wives on our arms, and hungry and shivering children clung to our skirts, we should see something, and feel something, of that scene, which, in the providence of God, was enacted at Plymouth on December 22, 1620. Thanks to Almighty God, who from that distressed, early condition of our fathers, has raised us to a height of prosperity and of happiness, which they neither enjoyed, nor could have anticipated! We have learned much of them; they could have foreseen little of us. Would to God, my friends, would to God, that when we carry our affections and our recollections back to that period, we could arm ourselves with something of the stern virtues which supported them, in that hour of peril, and exposure, and suffering. Would to God that we possessed that unconquerable resolution, stronger than bars of brass or iron, which nerved their hearts; that patience, "sovereign o'er transmuted ill," and, above all, that faith, that religious faith, which, with eyes fast fixed upon heaven, tramples all things earthly beneath her triumphant feet! [Applause.] Gentlemen, the scenes of this world change. What our ancestors saw and felt, we shall not see nor feel. What they achieved, it is denied to us even to attempt. The severer duties of life, requiring the exercise of the stern and unbending virtues, were theirs. They were called upon for the exhibition of those austere qualities, which, before they came to the Western wilderness, had made them what they were. Things have changed. In the progress of society, the fashions, the habits of life, and all its conditions, have changed. Their rigid sentiments, and their tenets, apparently harsh and exclusive, we are not called on, in every respect, to imitate or commend; or rather to imitate, for we should commend them always, when we consider that state of society in which they had been adopted, and in which they seemed necessary. Our fathers had that religious sentiment, that trust in Providence, that determination to do right, and to seek, through every degree of toil and suffering, the honor of God, and the preservation of their liberties, which we shall do well to cherish, to imitate, and to equal, so far as God may enable us. It may be true, and it is true, that in the progress of society the milder virtues have come to belong more especially to our day and our condition. The Pilgrims had been great sufferers from intolerance; it was not unnatural that their own faith and practice, as a consequence, should become somewhat intolerant. This is the common infirmity of human nature. Man retaliates on man. It is to be hoped, however, that the greater spread of the benignant principles of religion, and of the divine charity of Christianity, has, to some extent, improved the sentiments which prevailed in the world at that time. No doubt the "first comers," as they were called, were attached to their own forms of public worship and to their own particular and strongly cherished religious sentiments. No doubt they esteemed those sentiments, and the observances which they practiced, to be absolutely binding on all, by the authority of the word of God. It is true, I think, in the general advancement of human intelligence, that we find what they do not seem to have found, that a greater toleration of religious opinion, a more friendly feeling toward all who profess reverence for God, and obedience to His commands, is not inconsistent with the great and fundamental principles of religion-I might rather say is, itself, one of those fundamental principles. So we see in our day, I think, without any departure from the essential principles of our fathers, a more enlarged and comprehensive Christian philanthropy. It seems to be the American destiny, the mission which God has intrusted to us here on this shore of the Atlantic, the great, conception and the great duty to which we are born, to show that all sects, and all denominations, professing reverence for the authority of the Author of our being, and belief in His revelations, may be safely tolerated without prejudice either to our religion or to our liberties. [Cheers.] We are Protestants, generally speaking; but you all know that there presides at the head of the Supreme Judicature of the United States a Roman Catholic; and no man, I suppose, through the whole United States, imagines that the judicature of the country is less safe, that the administration of public justice is less respectable or less secure, because the Chief Justice of the United States has been, and is, an ardent adherent to that religion. And so it is in every department of society amongst us. In both Houses of Congress, in all public offices, |