Select Speeches of Daniel Webster | Page 3

Venice rather than of our noisy and wrangling generation.-- Hallam.
Coleridge used to say that he had seldom known or heard of any great man who had not much of the woman in him. Even so the large intellect of Daniel Webster seemed to be coupled with all softer feelings; and his countenance and bearing, at the very first, impressed me with this. A commanding brow, thoughtful eyes, and a mouth that seemed to respond to all humanities. He deserves his fame, I am sure.--John Kenyon.
He is a magnificent specimen. You might say to all the world, "This is our Yankee Englishman; such limbs we make in Yankee-land!" As a parliamentary Hercules one would incline to back him at first sight against all the extant world. The tanned complexion; that amorphous craglike face; the dull black eyes under the precipice of brows, like dull anthracite furnaces needing only to be _blown_; the mastiff mouth, accurately closed; I have not traced so much of silent Berserkir rage that I remember of in any other man.--Thomas Carlyle.
When the historian shall look back upon the first century of the American Republic, the two names that will shine with most unfading lustre and the serenest glory, high above all others, are Washington and Webster.-- Professor Felton.
Consider the remarkable phenomenon of excellence in three unkindred, one might have thought incompatible, forms of public speech,--that of the forum, with its double audience of bench and jury, of the halls of legislation, and of the most thronged and tumultuous assemblies of the people. Consider, further, that this multiform eloquence, exactly as his words fell, became at once so much accession to permanent literature in the strictest sense,--solid, attractive, rich,--and ask how often in the history of public life such a thing has been exemplified.--Rufus Choate.
The noblest monument to Daniel Webster is in his works. As a repository of political truth and practical wisdom, applied to the affairs of government, I know not where we shall find their equal. The works of Burke naturally suggest themselves to the mind, as the only writings in our language that can sustain the comparison.--Edward Everett.
He writes like a man who is thinking of his subject, and not of his style, and thus he wastes no time upon the mere garb of his thoughts. His style is Doric, not Corinthian. His sentences are like shafts hewn from the granite of his own hills,--simple, massive, strong. We may apply to him what Quinctilian says of Cicero, that a relish for his writings is itself a mark of good taste.--George S. Hillard.
He taught the people of the United States, in the simplicity of common understanding, the principles of the Constitution and government of the country, and he wrought for them, in a style of matchless strength and beauty, the literature of statesmanship. He made his language the very household words of a nation. They are the library of the people. They are the school-book of the citizen.--John D. Long.
Take him for all in all, he was not only the greatest orator this country has ever known, but in the history of eloquence his name will stand with those of Demosthenes and Cicero, Chatham and Burke.--Henry Cabot Lodge.
It may be said that the style of Webster is pre-eminently distinguished by manliness. The intellect and moral manliness of Webster underlies all his great orations and speeches; and this plain force of manhood, this sturdy grapple with every question that comes before his understanding for settlement, leads him to reject all the meretricious aids and ornaments of mere rhetoric, and is prominent, among the many exceptional qualities of his large nature, which have given him a high position among the prose- writers of his country as a consummate master of English style.--Edwin P. Whipple.
His broad, wise statesmanship is to be the ample and refreshing shade, his character the bright and breezy presence, in which all the members of this great and illustrious Republic may meet and sit down and feast together.-- H. N. Hudson.

Contents.

Defence of the Kennistons The Dartmouth College Case First Settlement of New England The Bunker Hill Monument The Reply to Hayne The Murder of Captain Joseph White The Constitution Not a Compact Between Sovereign States Speech at Saratoga Eulogy on Mr. Justice Story Biographical Notes

Defence of the Kennistons.

Gentlemen of the Jury,--It is true that the offence charged in the indictment in this case is not capital; but perhaps this can hardly be considered as favorable to the defendants. To those who are guilty, and without hope of escape, no doubt the lightness of the penalty of transgression gives consolation. But if the defendants are innocent, it is more natural for them to be thinking upon what they have lost by that alteration of the law which has left highway robbery no longer capital, than upon