May I most respectfully ask Mr. Webster on what authority he says there was, “in classical times,” any such “set” of “small but rapacious critics,” as he here speaks of—or exemplifies? In my ignorance, I have always supposed the “captator” of classical times, to be a kind of “genius” the very opposite of what Mr. Webster describes. Horace, Juvenal, and Livy represent him as a selfish, sycophantic gift-seeker, or fortune-hunter; not a twister, torturer, or interpolator, even, of words and phrases. If captator meant a cavilling, cynical critic, then captatrix should mean a scold, a vixen, or virago; but its true meaning was “a fawning gossip,” or “mean flatterer.”
No mistake could well be greater than that the old captatores “expended their strength on the disjecta membra of language,” or “gorged themselves with the garbage of phrases, chopped, dislocated, and torn asunder, by themselves.” On the contrary, they were “gentle as a sucking dove.” The accompanying words descriptive of the “captator” were not torve, ringi, and so forth; but collide, blande, or blandicule. There was nothing like the harpy about them, as Mr. Webster seems to suppose, in this remarkable description of his, which is as rhetorically unsavory as it is classically untrue.
So far from there being any “set” of critics, in classic times, denominated and known as captatores verborum, I doubt whether even the abstract noun “captatio” occurs half a dozen times, in all the classics, in connection with the genitive of his pretended appellation. He could hardly have made a greater or more ludicrous mistake. It is exceedingly to be regretted, after the numerous instances we have lately had of Mr. Webster’s bad logic, and bad humanity, and bad discoveries of natural law, that he should now offend the classical taste of the country, and bring discredit upon the New England colleges, by his bad Latin. This whole anti-classical paragraph about “disjecta membra,” and “chopping,” and “gorging,” and “uncleanness,” is an unclean conception of his own; not a pure but an impure invention, and seems more epigastric than intellectual in its origin.[12]
3. I will now give a specimen or two of Mr. Webster’s errors in geography, and of his false citation of authorities. It will then be seen that his geographical statements are worthy to be placed side by side with his classical. In the same letter, he says the extent of New Mexico, north and south, on the line of the Rio Grande, “can hardly be less than a thousand miles.” This makes a little more than fourteen degrees of latitude. Now, as its northern boundary is in 42°, its southern must be as low as 28°. This is four degrees below El Paso del Norte. Yet Mr. Webster, on the 13th of June last, declared himself in favor of fixing the northern boundary of Texas at or near El Paso, and more than four degrees of latitude north of what he here says is the southern boundary of New Mexico. He also supported that part of the compromise bill which proposes to give Texas, not only these four degrees of latitude, but millions of money also, for taking what, as he now says, belongs to New Mexico and the United States. How can these views stand together?
In his 7th of March speech, Mr. Webster declared it to be a natural impossibility that African slavery could ever exist “in California or New Mexico.” (p. 42.) He now defines the southern boundary of New Mexico. It can hardly be less, says he, than “a thousand miles” from the forty-second degree of north latitude. This places it four degrees south of El Paso. He is in favor of that part of the bill which gives these four degrees to Texas. According to him, therefore, should Texas get possession of these four degrees of what is now New Mexican territory, slavery will exist, as far up as the old southern boundary line of New Mexico, by virtue of the laws of Texas, but beyond this line, although within the bounds of Texas, it will not exist, because forbidden by the “will of God.” Hence the extraordinary spectacle will be exhibited, of the existence of slavery coming plump up to the south side of an imaginary line, by the laws of Texas, while on the north side of the said imaginary line, its existence will be cut square off by the “will of God,” although both sides are within the same political jurisdiction. This will be a miracle, compared with which the supposed miraculous preservation of the Jewish feature and complexion, for two thousand years, will be unworthy to be mentioned. It remains to be seen, however, whether this miracle will be vouchsafed to Mr. Webster, as a proof of the divine favor.
On the 5th of June, Mr. Webster voted against incorporating the “Proviso” into the governments for New Mexico and Utah, because slavery was already prohibited there by “Asiatic scenery” and the law of “physical geography.” On the next day, too, he voted against the following amendment, offered by Mr. Walker: “And that peon servitude is forever abolished and prohibited.” Whether he so voted because this species of slavery, (which is an existing institution at the present time,) was prohibited by “scenery” and “geography,” does not appear.
But on the 17th of June, Mr. Webster, in the Senate, suggested a qualification of his doctrine as laid down on the 7th of March, viz., that “every foot of territory of the United States has a fixed character for slavery.” An uncertainty as to the boundary line between New Mexico and Texas, gave rise to this qualification. “Let me say to gentlemen,” said Mr. Webster, “that if any portion which they or I do not believe to be Texas, should be considered to become Texas, then, so far, that qualification of my remark is applicable.” (Cong. Globe, 31st Cong., 1st session, p. 1239.) That is, if the compromise bill should so establish the boundary line between New Mexico and Texas, as that “any portion [of New Mexico] which they or I [other gentlemen or Mr. Webster,] do not believe to be Texas, should be considered to become Texas,” then as Texan territory, it might lose its “fixed character,” and become slave territory, notwithstanding the “ordinance of Nature” and the “will of God,” to the contrary. But, strange to say, on this same 17th of June, the Kennebec letter was written, which carries the southern boundary of Mexico, on the east side of the Rio Grande, four degrees below El Paso, and, of course, includes all that region within New Mexico, and therefore within the “ordinance of Nature” and the “will of God!” So that, after all, he acknowledges that the “ordinance of Nature” and the “will of God,” as he expounds them, may be overridden by the laws of Texas;—in which view he is undoubtedly right.
But his citation of authorities is among the most surprising of all his aberrations from fact. He first quotes Major Gaines, who, as he says, “traversed a part of this country during the Mexican war.” By “this country,” I suppose he means New Mexico. If he does not mean New Mexico, then the citation has no relation to the subject. If he does mean New Mexico, then he asserts what is untrue. Major Gaines did not go within four or five hundred miles of New Mexico during the war; and if the quotation from him was designed to create the belief that, in what Major Gaines said, he was speaking of New Mexico, it was as gross an imposition as could well be made.
The next citation is from Colonel Hardin. Two sentences are taken. I transcribe the first with Mr. Webster’s italics.
“The whole country is miserably watered; large districts have no water at all. The streams are small, and at great distances apart. One day we marched on the road from Monclova to Parras, thirty-five miles, without water; a pretty severe day’s march for infantry.”