bereaved family, by wearing the usual badge of mourning for thirty days.

Resolved, That these proceedings be communicated to the House of Representatives.

VI.

MR. DAVIS.

Mr. SPEAKER: I rise for the purpose of proposing some action of this House in response to that which, we learn, has taken place in the Senate in reference to the death of Mr. Webster; and I have little to add to the proposition itself beyond a brief expression of reverence and of affectionate recollection. At this seat of Government, where thirty years of Mr. Webster's life were spent -in this Capitol, still populous with the echoes of his voice to this House, of which there is not an individual member but can trace something of his intellectual wealth, or political faith, to the fountain of that mighty intellectit would be useless, and worse, to pass in review the various acts of spoken and written thought by which he impressed himself ineffaceably upon his time. Master of the great original ideas of which our social institutions are but the coarse material expression; master of a style which clothed each glorious thought in a garb of appropriate beauty; possessed of a conquering nature, that, "like the west wind, brought the sunshine with it," and gave us, wherever he was, the sense of security and power, he has run his appointed race, and has left us to feel that our day of life. will henceforth be more wintry now that that light has been withdrawn.

"But he was ours. And may that word of pride

Drown, with its lofty tone, pain's bitter cry!"

I have no intention of undertaking here to measure his labors or interpret his ideas; but I feel tempted to say that his great field of action-the greatest which any statesman

can have was in undertaking to apply general principles to an artificial and complicated system; to reconcile liberty with law; to work out the advance of liberty and civilization through and under the rules of law and government; to solve that greatest problem of human government, how much of the ideal may safely be let into the practical.

He sought these objects, and he sought the political power which would enable him to carry out these objects, and he threw into the struggle the great passions of a great nature-the quidquid vult, valde vult, of the elder Brutus. He sought, and not unsuccessfully, to throw around the cold impersonal idea of a constitution the halo of love and reverence which in the Old World gathers round the dynasties of a thousand years; for, in the attachment thus created, he thought he saw the means of safety and permanence for his country. His large experience and broad forecast gave him notice of national dangers which all did not see, as the wires of the electric telegraph convey news of startling import, unknown to the slumbering villages through which they pass. Whether his fears were well or ill founded, the future, the best guardian of his fame, will show; but whether well or ill founded matters nothing now to him. He has passed through the last and sternest trial, which he has himself in anticipation described in words never to be forgotten:

"One may live (said he) as a conqueror, a hero, or a magistrate, but he must die as a man. The bed of death brings every human being to his pure individuality; to the intense contemplation of that, the deepest and most solemn of all relations-the relation between the creature and his Creator. Here it is that fame and renown cannot assist us; that all external things must fail to aid us; that friends, affection, and human love and devotedness cannot succor

This relation, the true foundation of all duty-a relation perceived and felt by conscience and confirmed by revelation our illustrious friend, now deceased, always acknowledged. He reverenced the Scriptures of truth, honored the pure morality which they teach, and clung to the hopes of future life which they impart."

Mr. Webster died in accordance with the prevailing sentiment of his life, in the spirit of prayer to God, and

of love to man.

Well might the nation that watched his dying bed say, in the words which the greatest English poet applies to a legendary hero who also had been the stay of his country in peril:

"Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail

Or knock the breast; no weakness, no contempt,
Dispraise or blame: nothing but well and fair,
And what may comfort us in a death so noble."

VII.

MR. APPLETON, of Maine.

Mr. SPEAKER: I do not know that I ought to add any thing to what has already been said upon the resolutions before us; yet, since the death of Mr. Webster was a national calamity, it is fit that all classes and all parties in the community should unite to testify their full appreciation of it. The people themselves have admonished us of this, as they have gathered recently with mournful reverence around his tomb; and we should be unworthy of them, if, here in the Capitol, where he won so much of his fame, we did not add our tribute to his memory. It is a GREAT MEMORY, sir, and will go down to posterity, as one of the country's heirlooms, through I know not how many successive generations. We are not here, Mr. Speaker, to build his monument. He builded that for himself before he died; and, had he failed to do so, none among us could supply the deficiency. We are here, rather, to recognise his labors, and to inscribe the marble with his

name.

That we have not all sympathized with him in his political doctrines, or been ready to sanction every transaction of his public life, need not, and, I am sure, does not, abate any thing from our respect for his services, or our regret for his loss. His character and his works,-what he was and what he did,-constitute a legacy which no sound-hearted American can contemplate without emotions

of gratitude and pride. There is enough of Daniel Webster, sir, to furnish a common ground upon which all his countrymen can mingle their hearty tributes to his memory.

He was a man to be remarked anywhere. Among a barbarous people he would have excited reverence by his very look and mien. No one could stand before him without knowing that he stood in a majestic presence, and admiring those lineaments of greatness with which his Creator had enstamped, in a manner not to be mistaken, his outward form. If there ever was such an instance on earth, his was the appearance described by the great dramatist:

"The combination and the form indeed,

Where every god did seem to set his seal,
To give the world assurance of a man."

No one could listen to him, in his happier moments, without feeling his spirit stirred within him by those deep, cathedral tones which were the fit vehicles of his grave and earnest thoughts.

No one can read his writings without being struck by the wonderful manner in which they unite a severe simplicity of style with great warmth of fancy, and great affiuence of diction.

We, Mr. Speaker, remember his look and his spoken words; but, by those who are to come after us, he will be chiefly known through that written eloquence which is gathered in our public records, and enshrined among the pages of his published works. By these, at least, he still lives, and by these, in my judgment, he will continue to live, after these pillars shall have fallen, and this Capitol shall have crumbled into ruin. Demosthenes has survived the Parthenon, and Tully still pleads before the world the cause of Roman culture and Roman oratory; but there is nothing, it seems to me, either in Tully or in Demosthenes, which, for conception, or language, or elevation of sentiment, can exceed some passages in the writings which remain of Daniel Webster. His fame, indeed, is secure, for it is guarded by his own works; and, as he himself said of Mr. Calhoun, "he has lived long enough, he has

done enough, and he has done it so well, so successfully, so- honorably, as to connect himself for all time with the records of his country."

In no respect, Mr. Speaker, is this an occasion of lamentation for him. Death was not meant to be regarded as an evil, or else it would not come alike to all; and about Mr. Webster's death there were many circumstances of felicity and good fortune. He died in the maturity of his intellect, after long public service, and after having achieved a great name for himself, and a great memory for his country. He died at home; his last wants supplied by the hands of affection; his last hours cheered by the consolations of friendship; amidst those peaceful scenes which he had himself assisted to make beautiful, and within hearing of that ocean-anthem to which he always listened with emotions of gratitude and joy. He died, too, conscious of the wonderful growth and prosperity and glory of his native land. His eloquent prayer had been answered-the prayer which he breathed forth to Providence at the greatest era of his life, when he stood side by side with Andrew Jackson, and they both contended for what was, in their belief, the cause of the Constitution and the Union.

I pause, Mr. Speaker, at the combination of those two names. Andrew Jackson and Daniel Webster! Daniel Webster and Andrew Jackson! With the clear intellect and glorious oratory of the one, added to the intuitive sagacity and fate-like will of the other, I will not ask what wrong is there which they could not successfully crush, but what right is there, rather, which could withstand their united power?

"When my eyes," he said on that great occasion, "are turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, with fraternal blood. Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or

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