MATCHES AND OVERMATCHES. 81 attack has been made on the East he, he assures us, did not begin it; it was made by the gentleman from Missouri. Sir, I answered the gentleman's speech because I happened to hear it, and because I chose to answer that speech, which if unanswered I thought most likely to produce injurious impressions. I did not stop to inquire who was the original drawer of the bill. I found a responsible endorser before me and it was my purpose to hold him liable, and to bring him to his just responsibility without delay. But, sir, this interrogatory of the honorable member was only introductory to another. He proceeded to ask, whether I had turned upon him in this debate from the consciousness that I should find an overmatch, if I ventured on a contest with his friend from Missouri. Matches and overmatches! Those terms are more applicable elsewhere than here, and fitter for other assemblies than this. Sir, the gentleman seems to forget where and what we are. This is a senate, a senate of equals, of men of individual honor and personal character, and of absolute independence. We know no masters, we acknowledge no dictators. This is a hall for mutual consultation and discussion, not an arena for the exhibition of champions. I offer myself, sir, as a match for no man; I throw the challenge of debate at no man's feet. But, sir, since the honorable member has put the question in a manner that calls for an answer, I will give him an answer, and I tell him, that, holding myself to be the humblest of the members here, I yet know nothing in the arm of his friend from Missouri, either alone or when aided by the arm of his friend from South Carolina, that need deter me from espousing whatever opinions I may choose to espouse, from debating whenever I may choose to debate, or from speak ing whatever I may see fit to say on the floor of the Senate. Sir, when uttered as matter of commendation or compliment, I should dissent from nothing which the honorable member might say of his friend. Still less do I put forth any pretensions of my own; but, when put to me as matter of taunt, I throw it back and say to the gentleman that he could possibly say nothing more likely than such a comparison to wound my pride of personal character. The anger of its tone rescued the remark from intentional irony, which otherwise, probably, would have been its general acceptation. But, sir, if it be imagined that by this mutual quotation and commendation, if it be supposed, that by casting the characters of the drama, assigning to each his part, to one the attack, to another the cry of onset, or if it be thought that, by a loud and empty vaunt of anticipated victory, any laurels are to be won here, if it be imagined, especially, that any or all these things will shake any purpose of mine, I can tell the honorable member, once for all, that he is greatly mistaken, and that he is dealing with one of whose temper and character he has yet much to learn. Sir, I shall not allow myself, on this occasion, I hope on no occasion, to be betrayed into any loss of temper, but if provoked, as I trust I never shall be, into crimination and recrimination, the honorable member may perhaps find, that in that contest there will be blows to take as well as blows to give; that others can state comparisons as significant, at least, as his own; and that his impunity may possibly demand of him whatever powers of taunt and sarcasm he may possess. I commend him to a prudent husbandry of his resources. A CENTURY FROM WASHINGTON. 83 A CENTURY FROM WASHINGTON. DANIEL WEBSTER. SIR, we are at the point of a century from the birth of Washington, and what a century it has been! During its course the human mind has seemed to proceed with a sort of geometric velocity, accomplishing for human intelligence and human freedom more than had been done in fives or tens of centuries preceding. Washington stands at the commencement of a new era, as well as at the head of the New World. A century from the birth of Washington has changed the world. The country of Washington has been the theatre on which a great part of that change has been wrought, and Washington himself a principal agent by which it has been accomplished. His age and his country are equally full of wonders, and of both he is the chief. If the poetical pre diction uttered a few years before his birth be true, if indeed, it be designed by Providence that the grandest exhibition of human character and human affairs, shall be made on this theatre of the Western world, if it be true that "The four first acts already past, A fifth shall close the drama with the day. how could this imposing, swelling, final scene be appropriately opened, how could its intense interest be adequately sustained, but by the introduction of just such a character as our Washington? Washington had attained his manhood when that spark of liberty was struck out in his own country which has since kindled into a flame and shot its beams over the earth. In the flow of a century from his birth, the world has changed in science, in arts, in extent of commerce, in improvement of navigation, and in all that relates to the civilization of man. But it is the spirit of human freedom, the new elevation of individual man, in his moral, social, and political character, leading the whole long train of other improvements, which has most remarkably distinguished the era. Society in this century has not made its progress like Chinese skill, by a greater acuteness of ingenuity in trifles, it has not merely lashed itself to an increased speed round the old circles of thought and action, but it has assumed a new character, it has raised itself from beneath governments to a participation in governments; it has mixed moral and political objects with daily pursuits of individual men; and, with a freedom and strength before altogether unknown, it has applied to these objects the whole power of human understanding. It has been the era in short, when the social principle has triumphed over the feudal principle; when society has maintained its rights against military power, and established on foundations, never hereafter to be shaken, its competency to govern itself. THE REPRESENTATIVE. DANIEL WEBSTER. SIR, if the people have a right to discuss the official conduct of the executive, so have their representatives. We have been taught to regard a representative of the people as a sentinel on the watch-tower of liberty. Is he to be blind, though visible danger approaches? Is he to be deaf, though |