In the mean while, as oppression, civil wars, internal disaffection, anarchy, and expatriation of wealth and numbers, all combined, are gradually undermining the strength of Europe, and draining her veins, the new world will be, in all human probability, every day acquiring what the old is losing. If she once pass the other, if it be only by the breadth of a single hair, it is scarcely to be anticipated that age and decrepitude will ever be able to regain the vantage ground, against the primitive energies of vigorous youth. Once ahead, and the new world will remain so, until the ever revolving course of time, and the revolutions it never fails to accomplish, shall perhaps again transfer to Asia the sceptre of arts, science, literature, power, and dominion, which was wrested from her by Europe.
To realize these bold anticipations, nothing seems necessary but for the people of the United States to bear in mind, that they are the patriarchs of modern emancipation—that the spark which animates the people of Europe was caught from them—that they led the way in the great common cause of all mankind—that the eyes of the world are upon them—and that they stand under a solemn obligation to do nothing themselves, to suffer their leaders to do nothing, which shall bring the sacred name of liberty into disgrace, or endanger the integrity of our great confederation. "While other nations are moulding their governments after ours, may we not destroy the pattern."
[4] Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts, Vol. I, pages 84, 85.
Art. VII.—Speeches and Forensic Arguments, by Daniel Webster: 8vo. pp. 520. Boston: 1830.
It has often enough been objected to books written and published in the United States, that they want a national air, tone, and temper. Unhappily, too, the complaint has not unfrequently been well founded; but the volume before us is a striking exception to all such remarks. It consists of a collection of Mr. Webster's Public Addresses, Speeches in Congress, and Forensic Arguments, printed chiefly from pamphlets, already well known; and it is marked throughout, to an uncommon degree, with the best characteristics of a generous nationality. No one, indeed, can open it, without perceiving that, whatever it contains, must have been the work of one born and educated among our free institutions,—formed in their spirit, and animated and sustained by their genius and power. The subjects discussed, and the interests maintained in it, are entirely American; and many of them are so important, that they are already become prominent parts of our history. As we turn over its pages, therefore, and see how completely Mr. Webster has identified himself with the great institutions of the country, and how they, in their turn, have inspired and called forth the greatest efforts of his uncommon mind, we feel as if the sources of his strength, and the mystery by which it controuls us, were, in a considerable degree, interpreted. We feel that, like the fabulous giant of antiquity, he gathers it from the very earth that produced him; and our sympathy and interest, therefore, are excited, not less by the principle on which his power so much depends, than by the subjects and occasions on which it is so strikingly put forth. We understand better than we did before, not only why we have been drawn to him, but why the attraction that carried us along, was at once so cogent and so natural.
When, however, such a man appears before the nation, the period of his youth and training is necessarily gone by. It is only as a distinguished member of the General Government,—probably in one of the two Houses of Congress, that he first comes, as it were, into the presence of the great mass of his countrymen. But, before he can arrive there, he has, in the vast majority of cases, reached the full stature of his strength, and developed all the prominent peculiarities of his character. Much, therefore, of what is most interesting in relation to him,—much of what goes to make up his individuality and momentum, and without which, neither his elevation nor his conduct can be fully understood or estimated, is known only in the circle of his private friends, or, at most, in that section of the country from which he derives his origin. In this way, we are ignorant of much that it concerns us to know about many of our distinguished statesmen; but about none, probably, are we more relatively ignorant than about Mr. Webster, who is eminently one of those persons, whose professional and political career cannot be fairly or entirely understood, unless we have some acquaintance with the circumstances of his origin, and of his early history, taken in connection with his whole public life. We were, therefore, disappointed, on opening the present volume, not to find prefixed to it a full biographical notice of him. We were, indeed, so much disappointed and felt so fully persuaded, that neither the contents of the volume itself, nor the sources of its author's power, nor his position before the nation, could be properly comprehended without it, that we determined at once to connect whatever we should say on any of these subjects, by such notices of his life, as we might be able to collect under unfavourable circumstances. We only regret that our efforts have not been more successful,—and that our notices, therefore, are few and imperfect.
Mr. Webster was born in Salisbury, a farming town of New-Hampshire, at the head of the Merrimack, in 1782. His father, always a farmer, was a man of a strongly marked and vigorous character,—full of decision, integrity, firmness, and good sense. He served under Lord Amherst, in the French war, that ended in 1763; and, in the war of the Revolution, he commanded a company chiefly composed of his own towns-people and friends, who gladly fought under his leading nearly every campaign, and at whose head he was found, in the battle of Bennington, at the White Plains, and at West-Point, when Arnold's treason was discovered. He died about the year 1806; and, at the time of his death, had filled, for many years, the office of Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, for the state of New-Hampshire.
But, during the early part of Mr. Webster's life, the place of his birth, now the centre of a flourishing and happy population, was on the frontiers of civilization. His father had been one of the very first settlers, and had even pushed further into the wilderness than the rest, so that the smoke sent up amidst the solitude of the forest, from the humble dwelling in which Mr. Webster was himself born, marked, for some time, the ultimate limit of New England adventure at the North. Undoubtedly, in any other country, the sufferings, privations, and discouragements inevitable in such a life, would have precluded all thought of intellectual culture. But, in New England, ever since the first free school was established amidst the woods that covered the peninsula of Boston, in 1636, the school-master has been found on the border line between savage and civilized life, often indeed with an axe to open his own path, but always looked up to with respect, and always carrying with him a valuable and preponderating influence.
It is to this characteristic trait of New England policy, that we owe the first development of Mr. Webster's powers, and the original determination of his whole course in life; for, unless the school had sought him in the forest, his father's means would not have been sufficient to send him down into the settlements to seek the school. The first upward step, therefore, would have been wanting; and it is not at all probable, that any subsequent exertions on his own part, would have enabled him to retrieve it. The value of such a benefit cannot, indeed, be measured; but it seems to have been his good fortune to be able in part, at least, to repay it; for no man has explained with such simplicity and force as he has explained them, the very principles and foundations on which the free schools of New England rest, or shown, with such a feeling of their importance and value, how truly the free institutions of our country must be built on the education of all. We allude now to his remarks in the Convention of Massachusetts, where, speaking of the support of schools, he says:—