Select Speeches of Daniel Webster, 1817-1845Webster, Daniel
General
Select Speeches of Daniel Webster, 1817-1845
Webster, Daniel
Speeches, addresses, etc., American
something which shall remind him of the liberty and the glory of his
country. Let it rise! let it rise, till it meet the sun in his coming;
let the earliest light of the morning gild it, and parting day linger
and play on its summit.
We live in a most extraordinary age. Events so various and so important
that they might crowd and distinguish centuries are, in our times,
compressed within the compass of a single life. When has it happened
that history has had so much to record in the same term of years, as
since the 17th of June, 1775? Our own Revolution, which, under other
circumstances, might itself have been expected to occasion a war of
half a century, has been achieved; twenty-four sovereign and
independent States erected; and a general government established over
them, so safe, so wise, so free, so practical, that we might well
wonder its establishment should have been accomplished so soon, were it
not far the greater wonder that it should have been established at all.
Two or three millions of people have been augmented to twelve, [3] the
great forests of the West prostrated beneath the arm of successful
industry, and the dwellers on the banks of the Ohio and the Mississippi
become the fellow-citizens and neighbors of those who cultivate the
hills of New England. [4] We have a commerce, that leaves no sea
unexplored; navies, which take no law from superior force; revenues,
adequate to all the exigencies of government, almost without taxation;
and peace with all nations, founded on equal rights and mutual respect.
Europe, within the same period, has been agitated by a mighty
revolution, which, while it has been felt in the individual condition
and happiness of almost every man, has shaken to the centre her
political fabric, and dashed against one another thrones which had
stood tranquil for ages. On this, our continent, our own example has
been followed, and colonies have sprung up to be nations. Unaccustomed
sounds of liberty and free government have reached us from beyond the
track of the sun; and at this moment the dominion of European power in
this continent, from the place where we stand to the south pole, is
annihilated forever.
In the mean time, both in Europe and America, such has been the general
progress of knowledge, such the improvement in legislation, in
commerce, in the arts, in letters, and, above all, in liberal ideas and
the general spirit of the age, that the whole world seems changed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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