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ized press. Of all things in a popular government, a govern ment press is the most to be dreaded. The press furnishes the only usual means of public address; and if government, by supporting, comes to control it, then they take to themselves, at the public expense, the great channel of all communication with the people. Unless France be an exception, where the minister regularly demands so many thousand francs for the management of the public press, I know of no government in the world where the press is avowedly patronized to the same extent as it is in this country. Have not you, men of Virginia, been mortified to witness the importance which is attached, at Washington, to the election of a public printer? to observe the great anxiety and solicitude which even your own friends have been obliged to exercise to keep that appointment out of the hands of executive power? One of the first things which, in my opinion ought to be done, is, when a new administration shall come in, to separate the government press from the politics of the country. I don't want the government printer to preach politics to the people; beause I know beforehand what politics he will preach; it will all be one Io triumphe from the beginning of the first page to the end of the last paragraph. I am for cutting off this power from the executive. Give the people fair play. I say, give the people fair play. If they think the government is in error, or that better men may be found to administer it, give them a chance to turn the present men out, and put better men in; but don't let them be compelled to give their money to pay a man to persuade them not to change the government.

Well, there are still other modes by which executive power is established and confirmed. The first thing it seeks to do is to draw strict lines of party distinction, and then to appeal to the party feelings of men. This is a topic which might lead me very far into an inquiry as to the causes which have overturned all popular governments. It is the nature of men to be credulous and confiding toward their friends. If there exists in the country a powerful party, and if the head of that party be the head of the government, and, avowing himself the head of that party, gives thanks for the public honors he has received, not to the country, but to his party, then we can see the causes in operation, which, according to the well-known character and tendencies of man, lead us to give undue trust and confidence to

party favorites. Why, Gentlemen, kings and queens of old, and probably in modern times, have had their favorites, and they have placed unbounded trust in them. Well, there are sometimes among the people persons who are no wiser than kings and queens, who have favorites also, and give to those favorites the same blind trust and confidence. Hence it is very difficult, nay, sometimes impossible, to convince a party that the man at its head exercises an undue amount of power. They say, "He is our friend; the more power he wields, the better for us, because he will wield it for our benefit." There are two sorts of republicans in the world: one is a very good sort; the other, I think, quite indifferent. The latter care not what power persons in office possess, if they have the election of those persons. They are quite willing their favorites should exercise all power, and are perfectly content with the tendencies of government to an elective despotism, if they may choose the man at the head of it, and more especially if they have a chance of being chosen themselves. That is one sort of republicanism. But that is not our American liberty; that is not the republicanism of the United States, and especially of the State of Virginia. Virginians do not rush out into that extravagant confidence in men; they are for restraining power by law; they are for hedging in and strictly guarding all who exercise it. They look upon all who are in office as limited agents, and will not repose too much trust in any. That is American republicanism. What was it that Thomas Jefferson said with so much emphasis? "Have we found angels in the form of men to govern us?" However it might have been then, we of this day may answer, No! No! We have found them at least like others, "a little lower than the angels." In the same spirit he has said, an elective despotism is not the government we fought for. And that is true. Our fathers fought for a limited government, a government hedged all round with securities, or, as I heard an eminent son of Virginia say, a government fenced in with ten rails and a top-rider.

Gentlemen, a distinguished lover of liberty of our own time, in another hemisphere, said, with apparent paradox, that the quantity of liberty in any country is exactly equal to the quantity of restraint; because, if government is restrained from putting its hand upon you, to that extent you are free; and all

regular liberty consists in putting restraints upon government and individuals, so that they shall not interfere with your freedom of action and purpose. You may easily simplify government; shallow thinkers talk of a simple government; Turkey is the simplest government in the world. But if you wish to secure entire personal liberty, you must multiply restraints upon the government, so that it cannot go farther than the public good requires. Then you may be free, and not otherwise.

Another great power by which executive influence augments itself, especially when the man who wields it stands at the head of a party, consists in the use of names. Mirabeau said that words are things; and so they are. But I believe that they are often fraudulent things, though always possessed of real power. The faculty of taking to ourselves a popular name, and giving an unpopular name to an adversary, is a matter of very great concern in politics. I put it to you, Gentlemen, whether, for the last month or two, the activity of this government has not consisted chiefly in the discharge of a shower of hard names. Have you, for a month past, heard any man defend the subtreasury? Have you seen any man, during that time, burn his fingers by taking hold of Mr. Poinsett's militia project? Their whole resort has been to pour out upon us a tide of denunciation as aristocrats, aristocrats; taking to themselves, meanwhile, the well-deserved designation of true Democrats. How cheering, how delightful, that a man, independent of any regard to his own character or worth, may thus range himself under a banner the most acceptable of all others to his fellow-citizens! It is with false patriotism as with base money; it relies on the stamp. It does not wish to be weighed; it hates the scales; it is thrown into horrors at the crucible; it must all go by tale; it holds out the king's head, with his name and superscription, and, if challenged, replies, Do you not see the stamp on my forehead? I belong to the Democratic family; make me current. But we live in an age too enlightened to be gulled by this business of stamping; we have learned to inquire into the true nature and value of things. Democracy most surely is not a term. of reproach, but of respect. Our government is a constitutional, democratic, republican government; and if they mean that only, there is none will dispute that they are good Democrats. But if they set up qualifications and distinctions, if there are genera

and species, it may require twenty political Linnæuses to say to which class they belong.

There is another contrivance for the increase of executive power, which is utterly abhorrent to all true patriots, and against which, in an especial manner, General Washington has left us his farewell injunction; I mean, the constant recurrence to local differences, prejudices, and jealousies. That is the great bane and curse of this lovely country of ours. That country extends over a vast territory. There are few from among us in Massachusetts who enjoy the advantage of a personal intercourse with our friends in Virginia, and but few of you who visit us in Massachusetts. The farther South is still more remote. The difference which exists in habits and pursuits between us enables the enemy to sow tares, by exciting local prejudices on both sides. Sentiments are mutually ascribed to us which neither ever entertained. By this means a party press is enabled to destroy that generous spirit of brotherhood which should exist between us. All patriotic men ought carefully to guard themselves against the effects of arts like these.

And here I am brought to advert for one moment to what I constantly see in all the administration papers, from Baltimore south. It is one perpetual outcry, admonishing the people of the South that their own State governments, and the property they hold under them, are not secure, if they admit a Northern man to any considerable share in the administration of the general government. You all know that that is the universal cry. Now, I have spoken my sentiments in the neighborhood of Virginia, though not actually within the State, in June last, and again in the heart of Massachusetts in July, so that it is not now that I proclaim them for the first time. But further, ten years ago, when obliged to speak on this same subject, I uttered the same sentiment in regard to slavery, and to the absence of all power in Congress to interfere, in any manner whatever, with that subject. I shall ask some friend connected with the press to circulate in Virginia what I said on this subject in the Senate of the United States, in January, 1830. I have nothing to add

Mr. Webster had reference here to the remarks on the subject of slavery contained in his speech delivered in the Senate of the United States, in reply to Mr. Hayne, on the 21st of January, 1830, which will be found in a subsequent volume of this collection.

to or subtract from what I then said. I commend it to your attention, or, rather, I desire you to look at it. I hold that Congress is absolutely precluded from interfering in any manner, direct or indirect, with this, as with any other of the institutions of the States. [The cheering was here loud and long continued, and a voice from the crowd exclaimed, "We wish this could be heard from Maryland to Louisiana, and we desire that the sentiment just expressed may be repeated. Repeat! Repeat!"] Well, I repeat it; proclaim it on the wings of all the winds, tell it to all your friends,- [cries of "We will! We will!"] — tell it, I say, that, standing here in the Capitol of Virginia, beneath an October sun, in the midst of this assemblage, before the entire country, and upon all the responsibility which belongs to me, I say that there is no power, direct or indirect, in Congress or the general government, to interfere in the slightest degree with the institutions of the South.

And now, fellow-citizens, I ask you only to do me one favor. I ask you to carry that paper home; read it; read it to your neighbors; and when you hear the cry, "Shall Mr. Webster, the Abolitionist, be allowed to profane the soil of Virginia?" that you will tell them that, in connection with the doctrine in that speech, I hold that there are two governments over us, each possessing its own distinct authority, with which the other may not interfere. I may differ from you in some things, but I will here say that, as to the doctrines of State rights, as held by Mr. Madison in his last days, I do not know that we differ at all; yet I am one, and among the foremost, to hold that it is indispensable to the prosperity of these governments to preserve, and that he is no true friend to either who does not labor to preserve, a true distinction between both.

We may not all see the line which divides them alike; but all honest men know that there is a line, and they all fear to go either on the one or the other side of it. It is this balance between the general and the State governments which has preserved the country in unexampled prosperity for fifty years; and the destruction of this just balance will be the destruction of our government. What I believe to be the doctrine of State rights, I hold as firmly as any man. Do I not belong to a State? and, may I not say, to a State which has done something to give herself renown, and to her sons some little share

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