Select Speeches of Daniel Webster, 1817-1845Webster, Daniel
General
Select Speeches of Daniel Webster, 1817-1845
Webster, Daniel
Speeches, addresses, etc., American
more abusive or scurrilous never saw the light, than were sent forth
against Washington, and all his leading measures, from presses south of
New England. But I shall not look them up. I employ no scavengers, no
one is in attendance on me, furnishing such means of retaliation; and
if there were, with an ass's load of them, with a bulk as huge as that
which the gentleman himself has produced, I would not touch one of
them. I see enough of the violence of our own times, to be no way
anxious to rescue from forgetfulness the extravagances of times past.
Besides, what is all this to the present purpose? It has nothing to do
with the public lands, in regard to which the attack was begun; and it
has nothing to do with those sentiments and opinions which, I have
thought, tend to disunion and all of which the honorable member seems
to have adopted himself, and undertaken to defend. New England has, at
times, so argues the gentleman, held opinions as dangerous as those
which he now holds. Suppose this were so; why should _he_ therefore
abuse New England? If he finds himself countenanced by acts of hers,
how is it that, while he relies on these acts, he covers, or seeks to
cover, their authors with reproach? But, Sir, if, in the course of
forty years, there have been undue effervescences of party in New
England, has the same thing happened nowhere else? Party animosity and
party outrage, not in New England, but elsewhere, denounced President
Washington, not only as a Federalist, but as a Tory, a British agent, a
man who, in his high office, sanctioned corruption. But does the
honorable member suppose, if I had a tender here who should put such an
effusion of wickedness and folly into my hand, that I would stand up
and read it against the South? Parties ran into great heats again in
1799 and 1800. What was said, Sir, or rather what was not said, in
those years, against John Adams, one of the committee that drafted the
Declaration of Independence, and its admitted ablest defender on the
floor of Congress? If the gentleman wishes to increase his stores of
party abuse and frothy violence, if he has a determined proclivity to
such pursuits, there are treasures of that sort south of the Potomac,
much to his taste, yet untouched. I shall not touch them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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