I am bound to make my acknowledgments to other classes of citizens who assemble here to join with the mechanics in the purpose of this meeting. I see with pleasure the successors and followers of the Mathers, of Clarke, and of Cooper; and I am gratified, also, by the presence of those of my own profession, in whose immediate presence and society so great a portion of my life has been passed. It is natural that I should value highly this proof of their regard. We have walked the same paths, we have listened to the same oracles, we have been guided together by the lights of Dana, and Parsons, and Sewall, 431 and Parker, not to mention living names, not unknown or unhonored either at home or abroad. As I honor the profession, so I honor and respect its worthy members, as defenders of truth, as supporters of law and liberty, as men who ever act on steady principles of honor and justice, and from whom no one, with a right cause, is turned away, though he may come clothed in rags.
Mingling in this vast assembly, I perceive, Gentlemen, many citizens who bear an appellation which is honored, and which deserves to be honored, wherever a spirit of enlightened liberality, humanity, and charity finds regard and approbation among men, I mean the appellation of Boston merchants. In a succession of generations, they have contributed uniformly to great objects of public interest and advantage. They have founded institutions of learning, of piety, and of charity. They have explored the field of human misfortune and calamity; they have sought out the causes of vice, and want, and ignorance, and have sought them only that they might be removed and extirpated. They have poured out like water the wealth acquired by their industry and honorable enterprise, to relieve the necessities of poverty, administer comfort to the wretched, soothe the ravings of distressed insanity, open the eyes of the blind, unstop the ears of the deaf, and shed the light of knowledge, and the reforming influences of religion where ignorance and crime have abounded. How am I to commend, not only single acts of benevolence, but whole lives of benevolence, such as this? May He reward them,—may that Almighty Being reward them, in whose irreversible judgment, in that day which is to come, the merit even of the widow’s mite shall outweigh the advantages of all the pomp and grandeur of the world!
Gentlemen, citizens of Boston, I have been in the midst of you for twenty years. It is nearly sixteen years since, quite unexpectedly to myself, you saw fit to require public service at my hands and to place me in the national legislature. If, in that long period, you have found in my public conduct something to be approved, and more to be forgiven than to be reprehended, and if we meet here to-day better friends for so many years of acquaintance and mutual confidence, I may well esteem myself happy in the enjoyment of a high reward.
I offer you again, fellow-citizens, my grateful acknowledgments, 432 and all my sincere and cordial good wishes; and I propose to you as a toast:—
“The City of Boston: May it continue to be the head-quarters of good principles, till the blood of the Revolutionary patriots shall have run through a thousand generations!”
FOOTNOTES
Speech delivered at a Public Dinner in Faneuil Hall, given by the Citizens of Boston to Mr. Webster, at the Close of the Session of Congress, on the 24th of July, 1838.
An extra session of Congress had been called by President Van Buren, in September, 1837, in consequence of the general suspension of specie payments by the banks.