Select Speeches of Daniel Webster, 1817-1845Webster, Daniel
General
Select Speeches of Daniel Webster, 1817-1845
Webster, Daniel
Speeches, addresses, etc., American
The gentleman had remarked on the analogy of other cases, and quoted
the conduct of European governments towards their own subjects settling
on this continent, as in point, to show that we had been harsh and
rigid in selling, when we should have given the public lands to
settlers without price. I thought the honorable member had suffered his
judgment to be betrayed by a false analogy; that he was struck with an
appearance of resemblance where there was no real similitude. I think
so still. The first settlers of North America were enterprising
spirits, engaged in private adventure, or fleeing from tyranny at home.
When arrived here, they were forgotten by the mother country, or
remembered only to be oppressed. Carried away again by the appearance
of anology, or struck with the eloquence of the passage, the honorable
member yesterday observed, that the conduct of government towards the
Western emigrants, or my representation of it, brought to his mind a
celebrated speech in the British Parliament. It was, Sir, the speech of
Colonel Barre. On the question of the stamp act, or tea tax, I forget
which, Colonel Barre had heard a member on the treasury bench argue,
that the people of the United States, being British colonists, planted
by the maternal care, nourished by the indulgence, and protected by the
arms of England, would not grudge their mite to relieve the mother
country from the heavy burden under which she groaned. The language of
Colonel Barre, in reply to this, was: "They planted by your care? Your
oppression planted them in America. They fled from your tyranny, and
grew by your neglect of them. So soon as you began to care for them,
you showed your care by sending persons to spy out their liberties,
misrepresent their character, prey upon them, and eat out their
substance."
And how does the honorable gentleman mean to maintain, that language
like this is applicable to the conduct of the government of the United
States towards the Western emigrants, or to any representation given by
me of that conduct? Were the settlers in the West driven thither by our
oppression? Have they flourished only by our neglect of them? Has the
government done nothing but prey upon them, and eat out their
substance? Sir, this fervid eloquence of the British speaker, just when
and where it was uttered, and fit to remain an exercise for the
schools, is not a little out of place, when it is brought thence to be
applied here to the conduct of our own country towards her own
citizens. From America to England, it may be true; from Americans to
their own government, it would be strange language. Let us leave it, to
be recited and declaimed by our boys against a foreign nation; not
introduce it here, to recite and declaim ourselves against our own.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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