To this address Mr. Webster made the following reply.
PRESENTATION OF A VASE.[104]
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen:—I accept, with grateful respect, the present which it is your pleasure to make. I value it. It bears an expression of your regard for those political principles which I have endeavored to maintain; and though the material were less costly, or the workmanship less elegant, any durable evidence of your approbation could not but give me high satisfaction.
This approbation is the more gratifying, as it is not bestowed for services connected with local questions, or local interests, or which are supposed to have been peculiarly beneficial to yourselves, but for efforts which had the interests of the whole country for their object, and which were useful, if useful at all, to all who live under the blessings of the Constitution and government of the United States.
It is twelve or thirteen years, Gentlemen, since I was honored with a seat in Congress, by the choice of the citizens of Boston. They saw fit to repeat that choice more than once; and I embrace, with pleasure, this opportunity of expressing to them my sincere and profound sense of obligation for these manifestations of confidence. At a later period, the Legislature of the State saw fit to transfer me to another place;[105] and have again renewed the trust, under circumstances which I have felt to impose upon me new obligations of duty, and an increased devotion to the political welfare of the country. These twelve or thirteen years, Gentlemen, have been years of labor, and not without sacrifices; but both have been more than compensated 326 by the kindness, the good-will, and the favorable interpretation with which my discharge of official duties has been received. In this changing world, we can hardly say that we possess what is present, and the future is all unknown. But the past is ours. Its acquisitions, and its enjoyments, are safe. And among these acquisitions, among the treasures of the past most to be cherished and preserved, I shall ever reckon the proofs of esteem and confidence which I have received from the citizens of Boston and the Legislature of Massachusetts.
In one respect, Gentlemen, your present oppresses me. It overcomes me by its tone of commendation. It assigns to me a character of which I feel I am not worthy. “The Defender of the Constitution” is a title quite too high for me. He who shall prove himself the ablest among the able men of the country, he who shall serve it longest among those who may serve it long, he on whose labors all the stars of benignant fortune shall shed their selectest influence, will have praise enough, and reward enough, if, at the end of his political and earthly career, though that career may have been as bright as the track of the sun across the sky, the marble under which he sleeps, and that much better record, the grateful breasts of his living countrymen, shall pronounce him “the Defender of the Constitution.” It is enough for me, Gentlemen, to be connected, in the most humble manner, with the defence and maintenance of this great wonder of modern times, and this certain wonder of all future times. It is enough for me to stand in the ranks, and only to be counted as one of its defenders.
The Constitution of the United States, I am confident, will protect the name and the memory both of its founders and of its friends, even of its humblest friends. It will impart to both something of its own ever memorable and enduring distinction; I had almost said, something of its own everlasting remembrance. Centuries hence, when the vicissitudes of human affairs shall have broken it, if ever they shall break it, into fragments, these very fragments, every shattered column, every displaced foundation-stone, shall yet be sure to bring them all into recollection, and attract to them the respect and gratitude of mankind.
Gentlemen, it is to pay respect to this Constitution, it is to manifest your attachment to it, your sense of its value, and your 327 devotion to its true principles, that you have sought this occasion. It is not to pay an ostentatious personal compliment. If it were, it would be unworthy both of you and of me. It is not to manifest attachment to individuals, independent of all considerations of principles; if it were, I should feel it my duty to tell you, friends as you are, that you were doing that which, at this very moment, constitutes one of the most threatening dangers to the Constitution itself. Your gift would have no value in my eyes, this occasion would be regarded by me as an idle pageant, if I did not know that they are both but modes, chosen by you, to signify your attachment to the true principles of the Constitution; your fixed purpose, so far as in you lies, to maintain those principles; and your resolution to support public men, and stand by them, so long as they shall support and stand by the Constitution of the country, and no longer.
“The Constitution of the country!” Gentlemen, often as I am called to contemplate this subject, its importance always rises, and magnifies itself more and more, before me. I cannot view its preservation as a concern of narrow extent, or temporary duration. On the contrary, I see in it a vast interest, which is to run down with the generations of men, and to spread over a great portion of the earth with a direct, and over the rest with an indirect, but a most powerful influence. When I speak of it here, in this thick crowd of fellow-citizens and friends, I yet behold, thronging about me, a much larger and more imposing crowd. I see a united rush of the present and the future. I see all the patriotic of our own land, and our own time. I see also the many millions of their posterity, and I see, too, the lovers of human liberty from every part of the earth, from beneath the oppressions of thrones, and hierarchies, and dynasties, from amidst the darkness of ignorance, degradation, and despotism, into which any ray of political light has penetrated; I see all those countless multitudes gather about us, and I hear their united and earnest voices, conjuring us, in whose charge the treasure now is, to hold on, and hold on to the last, by that which is our own highest enjoyment and their best hope.