Select Speeches of Daniel Webster, 1817-1845Webster, Daniel
General
Select Speeches of Daniel Webster, 1817-1845
Webster, Daniel
Speeches, addresses, etc., American
The gentleman, Sir, has spoken at large of former parties, now no
longer in being, by their received appellations, and has undertaken to
instruct us, not only in the knowledge of their principles, but of
their respective pedigrees also. He has ascended to their origin, and
run out their genealogies. With most exemplary modesty, he speaks of
the party to which he professes to have himself belonged, as the true
Pure, the only honest, patriotic party, derived by regular descent,
from father to son, from the time of the virtuous Romans! Spreading
before us the _family tree_ of political parties, he takes especial
care to show himself snugly perched on a popular bough! He is wakeful
to the expediency of adopting such rules of descent as shall bring him
in, to the exclusion of others, as an heir to the inheritance of all
public virtue, and all true political principle. His party and his
opinions are sure to be orthodox; heterodoxy is confined to his
opponents. He spoke, Sir, of the Federalists, and I thought I saw some
eyes begin to open and stare a little, when he ventured on that ground.
I expected he would draw his sketches rather lightly, when he looked on
the circle round him, and especially if he should cast his thoughts to
the high places out of the Senate. [18] Nevertheless, he went back to
Rome, _ad annum urbis condita_, and found the fathers of the
Federalists in the primeval aristocrats of that renowned--city! He
traced the flow of Federal blood down through successive ages and
centuries, till he brought it into the veins of the American Tories, of
whom, by the way, there were twenty in the Carolinas for one in
Massachusetts. From the Tories he followed it to the Federalists; and,
as the Federal party was broken up, and there was no possibility of
transmitting it further on this side the Atlantic, he seems to have
discovered that it has gone off collaterally, though against all the
canons of descent, into the Ultras of France, and finally become
extinguished, like exploded gas, among the adherents of Don Miguel! [19]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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