The Works of Daniel Webster, Volume 1

by Daniel Webster

I speak, Gentlemen, on this subject, without reserve. I have not intended heretofore, and elsewhere, and do not now intend here, to stint my commendation of the conduct of the President in regard to the proclamation and the subsequent measures. I have differed with the President, as all know, who know any thing of so humble an individual as myself, on many questions of great general interest and importance. I differ with him in respect to the constitutional power of internal improvements; I differ with him in respect to the rechartering of the Bank, and I dissent, especially, from the grounds and reasons on which he refused his assent to the bill passed by Congress for that purpose. I differ with him, also, probably, in the degree of protection which ought to be afforded to our agriculture and manufactures, and in the manner in which it may be proper to dispose of the public lands. But all these differences afforded, in my judgment, not the slightest reason for opposing him in a measure of paramount importance, and at a moment of great public exigency. I sought to take counsel of nothing but patriotism, 294 to feel no impulse but that of duty, and to yield not a lame and hesitating, but a vigorous and cordial, support to measures which, in my conscience, I believed essential to the preservation of the Constitution. It is true, doubtless, that if myself and others had surrendered ourselves to a spirit of opposition, we might have embarrassed, and probably defeated, the measures of the administration. But in so doing, we should, in my opinion, have been false to our own characters, false to our duty, and false to our country. It gives me the highest satisfaction to know, that, in regard to this subject, the general voice of the country does not disapprove my conduct.

I ought to add, Gentlemen, that, in whatever I may have done or attempted in this respect, I only share a common merit. A vast majority of both houses of Congress cordially concurred in the measures. Your own great State was seen in her just position on that occasion, and your own immediate representatives were found among the most zealous and efficient friends of the Union.

Gentlemen, I hope that the result of that experiment may prove salutary in its consequences to our government, and to the interests of the community. I hope that the signal and decisive manifestation of public opinion, which has, for the time at least, put down the despotism of nullification, may produce permanent good effects. I know full well that popular topics may be urged against the proclamation. I know it may be said, in regard to the laws of the last session, that, if such laws are to be maintained, Congress may pass what laws they please, and enforce them. But may it not be said, on the other side, that, if a State may nullify one law, she may nullify any other law also, and, therefore, that the principle strikes at the whole power of Congress? And when it is said, that, if the power of State interposition be denied, Congress may pass and enforce what laws it pleases, is it meant to be contended or insisted, that the Constitution has placed Congress under the guardianship and control of the State legislatures? Those who argue against the power of Congress, from the possibility of its abuse, entirely forget that, if the power of State interposition be allowed, that power may be abused also. What is more material, they forget the will of the people, as they have plainly expressed it in the Constitution. They forget that the people have 295 chosen to give Congress a power of legislation, independent of State control. They forget that the Confederation has ceased, and that a Constitution, a government, has taken its place. They forget that this government is a popular government, that members of Congress are but agents and servants of the people, chosen for short periods, periodically removable by the people, as much subservient, as much dependent, as willingly obedient, as any other of their agents and servants. This dependence on the people is the security that they will not act wrong. This is the security which the people themselves have chosen to rely on, in addition to the guards contained in the Constitution itself.

I am quite aware, Gentlemen, that it is easy for those who oppose measures deemed necessary for the execution of the laws, to raise the cry of consolidation. It is easy to make charges, and to bring general accusations. It is easy to call names. For one, I repel all such imputations. I am no consolidationist. I disclaim the character altogether, and, instead of repeating this general and vague charge, I will be obliged to any one to show how the proclamation, or the late law of Congress, or, indeed, any measure to which I ever gave my support, tends, in the slightest degree, to consolidation. By consolidation is understood a grasping at power, on behalf of the general government, not constitutionally conferred. But the proclamation asserted no new power. It only asserted the right in the government to carry into effect, in the form of law, power which it had exercised for forty years. I should oppose any grasping at new powers by Congress, as zealously as the most zealous. I wish to preserve the Constitution as it is, without addition, and without diminution, by one jot or tittle. For the same reason that I would not grasp at powers not given, I would not surrender nor abandon powers which are given. Those who have placed me in a public station placed me there, not to alter the Constitution, but to administer it. The power of change the people have retained to themselves. They can alter, they can modify, they can change the Constitution entirely, if they see fit. They can tread it under foot, and make another, or make no other; but while it remains unaltered by the authority of the people, it is our power of attorney, our letter of credit, our credentials; and we are to follow it, and obey its injunctions, and maintain its just powers, to the best of our abilities. 296 I repeat, that, for one, I seek to preserve to the Constitution those precise powers with which the people have clothed it. While no encroachment is to be made on the reserved rights of the people or of the States, while nothing is to be usurped, it is equally clear that we are not at liberty to surrender, either in fact or form, any power or principle which the Constitution does actually contain.

And what is the ground for this cry of consolidation? I maintain that the measures recommended by the President, and adopted by Congress, were measures of self-defence. Is it consolidation to execute laws? Is it consolidation to resist the force that is threatening to upturn our government? Is it consolidation to protect officers, in the discharge of their duty, from courts and juries previously sworn to decide against them?

Gentlemen, I take occasion to remark, that, after much reflection upon the subject, and after all that has been said about the encroachment of the general government upon the rights of the States, I know of no one power, exercised by the general government, which was not, when that instrument was adopted, admitted by the immediate friends and foes of the Constitution to have been conferred upon it by the people. I know of no one power, now claimed or exercised, which every body did not agree, in 1789, was conferred on the general government. On the contrary, there are several powers, and those, too, among the most important for the interests of the people, which were then universally allowed to be conferred on Congress by the Constitution of the United States, and which are now ingeniously doubted, or clamorously denied.

Gentlemen, upon this point I shall detain you with no further remarks. It does, however, give me the most sincere pleasure to say, that, in a long visit through the State west of you, and the great State north of you, as well as in a tour of some days’ duration in the respectable State to which you belong, I find but one sentiment in regard to the conduct of the government upon this subject. I know that those who have seen fit to intrust to me, in part, their interests in Congress, approve of the measures recommended by the President. We see that he has taken occasion, during the recess of Congress, to visit that part of the country; and we know how he has been received. Nowhere have hands been extended with more sincerity of 297 friendship; and for one, Gentlemen, I take occasion to say, that, having heard of his return to the seat of government with health rather debilitated, it is among my most earnest prayers that Providence may spare his life, and that he may go through his administration and come out of it with as much success and glory as any of his predecessors.

Your worthy chief magistrate has been kind enough, Gentlemen, to express sentiments favorable to myself, as a friend of domestic industry. Domestic industry! How much of national power and opulence, how much of individual comfort and respectability, that phrase implies! And with what force does it strike us, as we stand here, at the confluence of the two rivers whose united currents constitute the Ohio, and in the midst of one of the most flourishing and distinguished manufacturing cities in the Union! Many thousand miles of inland navigation, running through a new and rapidly-improving country, stretch away below us. Internal communications, completed or in progress, connect the city with the Atlantic and the Lakes. A hundred steam-engines are in daily operation, and nature has supplied the fuel which feeds their incessant flames on the spot itself, in exhaustless abundance. Standing here, Gentlemen, in the midst of such a population, and with such a scene around us, how great is the import of these words, “domestic industry”!

Next to the preservation of the government itself, there can hardly be a more vital question, to such a community as this, than that which regards their own employments, and the preservation of that policy which the government has adopted and cherished for the encouragement and protection of those employments. This is not, in a society like this, a matter which affects the interest of a particular class, but one which affects the interest of all classes. It runs through the whole chain of human occupation and employment, and touches the means of living and the comfort of all.

Gentlemen, those of you who may have turned your attention to the subject know, that, in the quarter of the country with which I am more immediately connected, the people were not early or eager to urge the government to carry the protective policy to the height which it has reached. Candor obliges me to remind you, that, when the act of 1824 was passed, 298 neither he who now addresses you, nor those with whom he usually acted on such subjects, were ready or willing to take the step which that act proposed. They doubted its expediency. It passed, however, by the great and overwhelming influence of the central States, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. New England acquiesced in it. She conformed to it, as the settled policy of the country, and gave to her capital and her labor a corresponding direction. She has now become vitally interested in the preservation of the system. Her prosperity is identified, not perhaps with any particular degree of protection, but with the preservation of the principle; and she is not likely to consent to yield the principle, under any circumstances whatever. And who would dare to yield it? Who, standing here, and looking round on this community and its interests, would be bold enough to touch the spring which moves so much industry and produces so much happiness? Who would shut up the mouths of these vast coal-pits? Who would stay the cargoes of manufactured goods, now floating down a river, one of the noblest in the world, and stretching through territories almost boundless in extent and unequalled in fertility? Who would quench the fires of so many steam-engines, or check the operations of so much well-employed labor? Gentlemen, I cannot conceive how any subversion of that policy which has hitherto been pursued can take place, without great public embarrassment and great private distress.