The great cheering and applause with which Mr. Webster's address had been received having subsided, he rose and remarked that he was happy to see, among the guests and sons of South Carolina around this festive board, a distinguished gentleman (General James Hamilton) with whom he had the honor to serve many years since, (he did not mean to insinuate that the gentleman was an old man any more than to put himself in that category,) in the national councils, and to whose gallantry, vigor, and courtesy in debate, he took pleasure in bearing ample testimony. He proposed, therefore, "The health of General Hamilton."

This toast was acknowledged by General Hamilton in the following speech.

"MR. PRESIDENT and Gentlemen of the New England SOCIETY,— Although I have retired from public life during the last three or four years, and hence am in no small degree out of the practice of public speaking, I nevertheless feel, under the inspiring invocation of our distinguished guest, that I am not absolutely bereft of the faculty of speech, although overwhelmed with the value of the compliment he has paid me, and the large addition you have made to it by the enthusiasm with which it has been received.

"I deem myself peculiarly fortunate, that, in a brief and accidental visit I have paid to this city, I should be present to unite with you in those just, and to yourselves eminently honorable tributes, which you have paid to the distinguished genius and estimable private worth of the Senator from Massachusetts.

"It is true that I served some four or five years on the floor of the House of Representatives in the Congress of the United States with this gentleman, during the discussion of many interesting, and I may say some heart-burning questions.

"I have often witnessed, and sometimes felt, his extraordinary vigor in debate. But if I have been made sensible of this, I have likewise recognized the gentlemanly courtesy, amiable temper, and generous spirit of contest which he uniformly carried into every discussion, surpassed, if it was possible, alone by those fine social qualities around the festive board, in the atmosphere of which, the torch of party spirit, if it was not at once extinguished, at least was lost in the blaze of his genius, or in the broad glare of the convivial sympathies which flowed from his kind

and benevolent heart.

"I am happy to greet him, Sir, in the home of my fathers. It is right and fitting that he should come among us; that the favored son of old Massachusetts Bay should at last see how old South Carolina stands, and what sort of people we are, after a lapse of more than eighty years

since those two then heroic Colonies were united in common league to achieve the independence of our common country.

"This remark, Sir, recalls to my recollection a cherished tradition in my own family. A fact which you will find confirmed in the biographical history of our country, in a highly interesting life of Josiah Quincy, Jr., written by his son, the late distinguished President of Harvard University.

"When John Hancock and Samuel and John Adams determined to resist the oppressions of the mother-country, they sent Josiah Quincy, Jr. (than whom a more gallant and accomplished spirit our Revolution did not produce) to South Carolina, to obtain the support of this Cavalier and Huguenot Colony, the very pet of the British crown, to stand by them in the coming struggle. The first person on whom Mr. Quincy called was my grandfather, Thomas Lynch, Sen., who, with a princely fortune, had staked every thing from the jump in the glorious contest, and who, as early as the first Congress after the passage of the Stamp Act, wrote and reported, as a delegate from South Carolina, one of the addresses of the Colonies to the Imperial Parliament. Mr. Quincy, coming by land from Boston, drove up to my grandfather's residence on South Santee, then and now called Peach-Tree. After communicating his mission, which met with the warm concurrence of my distinguished relative, they both instantly started for Charleston, and in the house of Miles Brewton (the late residence of the late Colonel William Alston, in King Street), then an opulent and patriotic merchant, whose wealth greatly depended on peace with England, met John Rutledge, Christopher Gadsden, Miles Brewton, and the other patriots of South Carolina, and there was concocted the grand scheme of colonial resistance, which was afterwards uttered in the war-shout at Bunker Hill, and reëchoed in the thunders from our own Palmetto fort on the 28th of June following.*

"I glory that my noble old ancestor thus received the young Boston emissary and rebel. I would rather have sprung, as I have sprung, from his loins, than that the blood of all the Howards should flow in my veins.

There is some inaccuracy in these details, which were evidently stated from general recollection. Mr. Quincy's visit to South Carolina took place several years after the patriots of Massachusetts "had determined to resist the oppressions of the mother country." He arrived in Charleston on the 28th of February, 1773. The voyage (for he went by sea) was undertaken purely from motives of health, it being decided that "his only hope of life depended upon an immediate change to a more southern climate." It is quite true, however, that during his visit to South Carolina he lost no opportunity of conferring with the patriots of Charleston and the vicinity, and of giving and receiving encouragement in reference to the approaching crisis. See Memoir of Josiah Quincy, Jr., by his son, Josiah (President) Quincy, p. 72.

"I ask, then, our distinguished guest, whether Massachusetts and South Carolina ought not ever to be indissolubly united? Fast friends, then, in the hour of utmost need, may they never be irreconcilable adversaries in the hour of the utmost exasperation.

"May we not hope, my friends, that our distinguished guest will recognize, in his journey through the South, some things to esteem and regard, and fresh cement, in his own cordial sympathies with the warm greetings which everywhere await him, to bind his cherished union of the States more closely to his heart?

"I know that none of us can go to New England, that garden of modern civilization, without instruction and delight. If we can learn much from the victorious industry of her sons in building up the finest social structure in the world, we must be captivated by the generous and gushing hospitality of her noble capital, where literature and the arts form the classic architrave which adorns the granite pillars of the religion and morals of that singularly interesting people.

"I have, Sir, some right to speak thus of New England. It was there that I acquired the rudiments of almost all I know in this world. On the banks of the beautiful Charles River, as it winds its silvery current through the county of Norfolk, I passed the hours of my childhood, under the parental instruction of a kind and gifted old clergyman, who has long since gone to his bright and easily adjusted account.

"All these scenes of my childhood, even at this moment, when approaching age has not chilled its fires, come gushing to my heart to receive a renewed vitality from its tenderness and warmth. There is not 'a bosky bourne or alley green' for miles around the humble parsonage of my revered preceptor, that I do not remember with fond affection. Yes, I now feel that these images of the past have come as it were again with throbbing tenderness to tell me that, next to my own native land, I perhaps love old Massachusetts best; for next to her who gives us life, we ought to love those who nurture. At least I think so. Perhaps the coming of our friend from this land has created this illusion. But if these are illusions, I find these emotions, these natural instincts of the human heart, are stronger than the strifes of party spirit, even in the hour of their utmost inflammation. If these, indeed, are delusions, they ought to be encouraged, for it is only by getting clear in this way of the dust and turmoil of this world, that we really seem to recover a part of the forgotten value of existence."

"I have, however, Mr. President, sufficiently trespassed on the kind and flattering attention of this assembly. It is time that I should conclude.

"I know not that I can conclude more appropriately than by an allusion to a great event in the public history of our guest. When the

Greeks decreed to Achilles the greatest of his ovations, I am sure he would have greeted with cordial salutations a just tribute of respect to the memory of Hector. I know when I bring the name of Hayne to the recollection of our friend, his heart stands ready, unbidden, to unite in our tribute of sorrow, admiration, and esteem, to the shade of that gifted spirit.

"In the celebrated debate on Foot's Resolutions, (which was but a foreshadowing of coming events of far deeper interest,) the greatest and by far the ablest discussion of the principles of the Constitution of the United States which ever took place, occurred, as you well know, in the Senate of the United States, in the session of 1830.

"Our deeply lamented Hayne, our comparatively youthful champion, was pitted against the gentleman now honoring and honored by this festival. It is not for me, with all my strong sympathies, personal and political, to say in this 'War of Giants' who had the better part, either in his great argument, or in the mode or manner of enforcing it. A proper feeling of courtesy to our distinguished guest induces me to be silent on their relative merits, and on the relative value of the great truths involved in the discussion.

"But I can well say this, that I have often heard my deceased friend, in the hours of our unreserved confidence, bear testimony to the preëminent powers that his opponent brought to bear in that debate, the brilliancy of which he was not the last to recognize and acknowledge. Nor was he backward in likewise acknowledging his belief in the sincerity with which opinions thus entertained were thus so ably enforced.

"May I not thus likewise, my friends, say to such as knew our gifted and deceased countryman, that, if he had been spared to us and stood where I now stand, he would have been the first among us with an outstretched hand and willing heart to receive his great antagonist on his arrival on our shores ?

"The accents of my voice almost reach the spot where he rests in his mourned and untimely grave. But, dear and never to be forgotten friend, thou canst not hear these accents which hail you with the tender and recollected association of a long-cherished friendship. Methinks I almost hear the music of thy once unrivalled voice in all the compass of its melody and power. Yes, I seem to gaze once more with unspeakable delight on that countenance which beamed in life with the blended rays of genius, virtue, and spotless honor, cheering and greeting our guest on his kindly advent among us. But, alas! thou art as silent, my friend, as thy thrice honored-grave.

“Let us, however, my friends, as a consecrated office of friendship and affection, approach his urn in a spirit of just pride, as well as with a feeling of unfeigned sorrow, and offer this libation to his shade.

"The memory of Robert Y. Hayne: A champion worthy to have contended with Daniel Webster, and to have borne on high the glorious banner of our State."

This toast was drank standing and in silence. On the company being again seated, Mr. Webster rose and said,

The gentleman who has just taken his seat has anticipated me in the tribute he has paid to the memory of his friend, in what I intended to say in the course of the evening. I cordially concur, from the bottom of my heart, in every sentiment he has so eloquently and feelingly uttered. If it was my fortune to be opposed to that gentleman in debate, on an important national question, it only gave me a better opportunity of recognizing his very eminent ability, which was not even surpassed by his gentlemanly accomplishments. I am happy in this assembly to have an opportunity of bearing testimony to his elevated patriotism, his high honor, and incorruptible integrity. No one out of the circle of his immediate relatives and friends more sincere. ly sympathized in the great public loss that his death occasioned. With this appreciation, we can then well afford to offer another tribute to his distinguished worth. I will give you

The memory of Robert Y. Hayne: A gentleman of courteous and polished manners, of irreproachable life, a lawyer of distinc tion and eminence, a statesman of ability and talent, and a highly favored son of his native State.