When God shall send his Angel to us, Mr. Speaker, bearing the scroll of death, may we be able to bow our heads to his mission with as much of gentleness and resignation as marked the last hours of DANIEL WEBSTER! VIII. MR. PRESTON. Mr. SPEAKER: I have been requested, by some of the gentlemen who compose the delegation from my State, to make some remarks upon the subject of the message and resolutions received from the Senate, which have been laid upon your table this morning, in relation to the death of Mr. Webster. It was, in their opinion, peculiarly appropriate that Kentucky-a State so long associated with Massachusetts in political sympathy, as well as in reciprocal admiration entertained for two of the most eminent men of their day-should come forward and add her testimonial of the esteem in which she held his life and great public. services, and the regret she experienced at the calamity which has befallen the country. The mind naturally goes back, in looking over the great career of Daniel Webster, to the period of his birth-seventy years ago. In the northern part of the State of New Hampshire, beneath the roof of his pioneer father, the future statesman first drew the breath of life, and imbibed, amid its picturesque scenery and wild mountains, that freedom of thought, that dignity, and that intellectual health which left so indelible a mark upon his oratory and public career in after-life. No man has earned a greater reputation, in the present time, in forensic endeavor, than Mr. Webster, nor any whose reputation could challenge comparison, unless it be one who was also born in a similar obscure station of life, amid the marshes of Hanover, and whose future led him to cross the summit of the Appalachian range with the great tide of population which poured from Virginia upon the fertile plains of Kentucky. Their destiny has been useful, great, and brilliant. From that period to this, these celebrated contemporaries have been conspicuous in the career of publi utility to which they devoted their lives, and by their intellectual superiority and dignified statesmanship have commanded not only the respect of their several States, but of the nation and of mankind. For forty years they swayed the councils of their country, and the same year sees them consigned to the grave. The statesman of Ashland died in this city, before the foliage of summer was sere, and was sent, with the honors of his country, back to the resting-place which he now occupies in the home of his early adoption. The winds of autumn have swept the stern New England shores-the shores of Plymouth, where the Pilgrim Fathers landed-and caught up the expiring breath of Daniel Webster as he terminated his life of honorable service. The dirges that the night-winds now utter through the primeval forests of Ashland lament for one; the surges of the wintry ocean, as they beat upon the shores of Marshfield, are a fitting requiem to the other. There are two points of particular prominence in the life of Webster to which I will allude. All remember the celebrated struggle of 1830. The greatest minds of the country, seeing the constitutional questions involved from different points of view, were embroiled in controversy. The darkest apprehensions were entertained. A gallant and gifted Senator from South Carolina, (General Hayne,) with a genius and fire characteristic of the land of his birth, had expressed the views of his party with great ability, and, as it was thought, with irresistible eloquence. The eyes of the country were directed to Webster as the champion of the Constitution and the Union. Crowds of beautiful women and anxious men on that day thronged the other wing of this Capitol. What patriotic heart in the nation has yet forgotten that noble and memorable reply? A deep and enthusiastic sentiment of admiration and respect thrilled through the heart of the people, and even yet the triumph of that son of New England is consecrated in the memory of his countrymen. Subsequently the Chief Magistrate of the Union, President Jackson, announced opinions of a similar character in his celebrated Proclamation, and men of all parties felt that a new rampart had been erected for the defence of the Constitution. At a period more recent, within the remembrance of all, Daniel Webster again appeared in another critical emergency that imperilled the safety of the Republic. It was the 7th of March, 1850. Excited by the Territorial questign, the spirit of fanaticism broke forth with fearful violence from the North. But it did not shake his undaunted soul. He gazed with majestic serenity at the storm, and, sublime in his self-reliance, as Virgil describes Mezentius surrounded by his enemies, "He, like a solid rock by seas enclosed, To raging winds and roaring waves exposed, A great portion of the fame of Daniel Webster rests upon the events of that day, and his patriotism having endured the tempest, his reputation shone with fresh lustre after it had passed. Clay and Webster on that day stood linked hand in hand, and averted the perils that menaced their common country. In the last great act of their lives in the Senate, they drew closer the bonds of union between the North and South, like those lofty Cordilleras that, stretching along the Isthmus of Panama, bind in indissoluble bonds Northern and Southern America, and alike beat back from their rocky sides the fury of either ocean. These, Mr. Speaker and gentlemen of the House, are the memories that make us in our Western homes revere the names of Clay and Webster. The gentleman from Massachusetts, (Mr. Davis,) in his eloquent tribute to the genius and fame of Daniel Webster, has chosen to apply to him the remark by which Cicero characterizes Brutus-" Quidquid vult, valde vult." If he will pardon me, I think the description applied by the great orator whom he has quoted to Gracchus is more striking: "Eloquentia quidem nescio an habuisset parem: grandis est verbis, sapiens sententiis, genere toto gravis." If, however, a resemblance prevailed in this respect between Caius Gracchus and Webster, it did not in others. Gracchus, as we are told, was the first Roman orator who turned his back to the capitol and his face to the people; the popular orators of Rome, anterior to that time, having always turned their faces to the Senate and their backs to the Forum. Webster never sought to subvert the judgment of the people by inflaming their passions. His sphere was among men of intellect. His power was in convincing the minds of the cultivated and intellectual, rather than by fervid harangues to sway the ignorant or excite the multitude. Clay-bold, brilliant, and dashing, rushing at results with that intuition of common sense that outstrips all the processes of logic-always commanded the heart and directed the action of his party. Webster seemed deficient in some of these great qualities, but surpassed him in others. He appeared his natural auxiliary. Clay, the most brilliant parliamentary leader, and probably unequalled, save by the Earl of Chatham, whom he resembled, swept with the velocity of a charge of cavalry on the ranks of his opponents, and often won the victory before others were prepared for the encounter. Webster, with his array of facts, his power of statement, and logical deductions, moved forward like the disciplined and serried infantry, with the measured tread of deliberate resolution and the stately air of irresistible power. Daniel Webster is dead. He died without ever having been elevated to the Presidency of the nation. Camillus, the second founder of Rome, never enjoyed the Consulate; but he was not less illustrious because he was not rewarded by the fasces and the consular purple. Before the lustre of Webster's renown, a merely Presidential reputation must grow pale. He has not only left a reputation of unsurpassed lustre in the Senate, but he will also pass down to posterity as the ablest and most profound jurist of his day. As an orator, he had not, as has been correctly observed by a Senator from New York, the vehemence of Demosthenes, nor the splendor of Cicero; but still Daniel Webster was an orator-an orator marked by the characteristics of the Teutonic race-bold, massive, and replete with manly force and vigor. His writings are marked by a deep philosophy which will cause them to be read when the issues that evoked them have passed away, and the splendor of an imagination, almost as rich as that of Burke, will invest them with at tractions alike for the political scholar and the man of letters. We should not deplore the death of Webster. It is true the star has shot from the sphere it illuminated, and is lost in the gloom of death; but he sank full of years and honors, after he had reached the verge of human life, and before his majestic intellect was dimmed or his body bowed down by old age. He did not sink into his grave, like Marlborough, amid the mists of dotage; but he went while his intellect was unclouded, and the literary remembrances of his youth came thronging to the dying bed of their votary. Napoleon, when he was expiring at St. Helena, muttered disconnected words of command and battle, that showed his turbulent mind still struggled in imaginary conflicts; but gentler spirits brought to the death-bed of the statesman of Marshfield more consoling memories as he murmured, "The curfew tolls the knell of parting day," and all the tender and mournful beauties of that inimitable elegy clustered around his soul. But, sir, I will not venture to say more on this theme. I have said thus much in the name of my native State, to testify her veneration for worth, patriotism, and departed greatness, and to add with proper reverence a handful of earth to the mound a nation raises to the memory of the GREAT SECRETARY, and to say, Peace be to the manes of Webster. IX. MR. SEYMOUR, of New York, said:- Mr. SPEAKER: I rise in support of the resolutions offered by the gentleman from Massachusetts, and in that connection propose to submit a few remarks. Sir, our great men are the common property of the country. In the days of our prosperity, we boast of their |