deration, and on that full, perfect, and exhausting. In the few specimens which we give, and the reader must remember that the whole of his speeches fill six octavo volumes, there will be yet enough to judge of the effect of the oratory of Daniel Webster. Sorry enough must be the chronicler of his life, to find that this oratory was time-serving, and used both for and against, that traffic which is the curse of America. In 1820, standing on Plymouth Rock he declaimed as follows: : Let it be purified, or let it be set aside from the Christian world; let it be put out of the circle of human sympathies and human regards, and let civilized man henceforth have no communion with it." But yet on the 7th of March, 1850, thirty years afterwards, a space of time which should have made so great a man wiser and more humane, he could reverse all this, and plead for the Fugitive Slave Bill. Well can we sympathise with the indignation of Theodore Parker on such a theme. I deem it my duty on this occasion to suggest, that the land is not yet wholly "You know the Fugitive Slave Bill free from the contamination of a traffic, too well. It is bad enough now; then at which every feeling of humanity must it was far worse, for then every one of for ever revolt,-I mean the African the seventeen thousand postmasters of slave-trade. Neither public sentiment, America became a legal kidnapper by nor the law, has hitherto been able en- that bill. He pledged our Massachutirely to put an end to this odious and setts to support it, and that with alacabominable trade. At the moment rity. My friends, you all know the when God in his mercy has blessed the speech of the 7th of March-you know Christian world with a universal peace, how men felt when the telegraph brought there is reason to fear, that, to the dis- the first news. They could not believe grace of the Christian name and cha- the lightning; you know how the Whig racter, new efforts are making for the party and the Democratic party, and extension of this trade by subjects and the newspapers, treated the report. citizens of Christian states, in whose When the speech came in full you hearts there dwell no sentiments of know the effect. One of the most conhumanity or of justice, and over whom spicuous men of the State, then in high neither the fear of God nor the fear of office, declared that Mr. Webster 'seemed man exercises a control. In the sight inspired by the devil to the extent of his of our law, the African slave-trader is intellect.' You know the indignation a pirate and a felon and in sight of men felt, the sorrow and anguish. Heaven, an offender far beyond the or- think not a hundred prominent men in dinary depth of human guilt. There is all New England acceded to the speech. no brighter page of our history than But such was the power of that giganthat which records the measures which tic intellect that, eighteen days after his have been adopted by the government speech, 983 men of Boston sent him a at an early day, and at different times letter telling him that he had 'pointed out since, for the suppression of this trade; the path of duty, convinced the underand I would call on all the true sons of standing, and touched the conscience New England to co-operate with the of the nation;' and they expressed to laws of man, and the justice of Heaven. him their entire coincidence in the If there be, within the extent of our sentiments of that speech,' and their knowledge or influence, any participa-heartfelt thanks for the inestimable aid tion in this traffic, let us pledge our- it afforded to the preservation of the selves here, upon the rock of Plymouth, to extirpate and destroy it. It is not fit that the land of the pilgrims should bear the shame longer. I hear the sound of the hammer, I see the smoke of the furnaces where manacles and fetters are still forged for human limbs. I see the visage of those who by stealth and at midnight labour in this work of hell, foul and dark, as may become the artificers of such instruments of misery and torture. Let that spot be purified, or let it cease to be of New England. Union." More than this, he declared that "discussion on slavery ought to be suppressed," and at a dinner after the toast, and sentiment (?) of "The Fugitive Slave Law-on its execution depends the perpetuity of the Union," Mr. Webster said distinctly, "You of the South have as much right to secure your fugitive slaves, as the North has to any of its rights and privileges of navigation and commerce." The audience answered this with six-and-twenty cheers!!! This speech luckily for his fame, is not compared to Webster, were as a single printed in the six volume collection. maggot measured by an eagle. Look As we are upon this fugitive slave ques- at his speeches; look at his forehead; tion, we may as well quote, from a look at his face. The 293 delegates powerful authority, the reason of this came together and voted. They gave total abandonment of principle in Web-him thirty-three votes, and that only ster. We do it the more readily, as it is from the pen of an enthusiastic admirer and one of his own countrymen : once! Where were the men of the lower law,' who made denial of God the first principle of their politics"Here is the reason. He wanted to where were they who in Faneuil Hall be President. That was all of it. He scoffed and jeered at the higher law?' must concilate the South. This was or at Capron Springs who laughed' his bid for the Presidency-50,000 when he scoffed at the law higher than square miles of territory and 10,000,000 the Virginian Hills? Where were the of dollars to Texas; four new Slave kidnappers? States; slavery in California and New Mexico; the Fugitive Slave Bill; and 200,000,000 of dollars offered to Virginia to carry free men of colour to Africa. The lower law' men, and the kidnappers, strained themselves to the utmost, and he had thirty-three votes. Where was the South? Fiftythree times did the Convention ballot, and the South never gave him a vote. "He never so laboured before, and No. Not one! Northern friends-I he was always a hard-working man. honour their affection for the great man, What speeches he made at Boston, New there was nothing else left in them for York, Philadelphia, Albany, Buffalo, me to honour-went round to the South Syracuse, Anapolis! What letters he and begged for the poor and paltry pitwrote! His intellect was never so ac- tance of a seeming vote in order to tive before, nor gave such proofs of such break the bitterness of the fall! They Herculean power. The fountains of went with tears in their eyes, and in his great deep were broken up-he mercy's name asked that crumb from rained forty days and forty nights, and the Southern Board. But the cruel brought a flood of Slavery over this South-treacherous to him she beguiled whole land; it covered the market, and to treason against God-she answered, the factory, and court-house, and ware-Not a vote!"" house, and the college, and rose high up over the tops of the tallest steeples! But the ark of freedom went on the face of the waters-above the market, above the court-house, above the factory, over the college, higher than the tops of the tallest steeples, it floated securefor it bore the religion that is to save the world, and the Lord God of Hosts had shut it in." But the time came when this venal but great man should be punished for his venality, when the misery which he had been the powerful instrument to bring to the homes of the coloured population of America, should be brought to himself. The "juggling fiend" that "paltered to the sense," like other fiends of unholy ambition, broke it to the promise, all his vaulting ambition had overreached itself, and he fell indeed. "But what was the recompense? Ask Massachusetts-ask the North. Let the Baltimore convention tell. He was the greatest candidate before it. General Scott is a little man when the feathers are gone. Fillmore, you know him. Both of these, for greatness of intellect, We turn from such a humiliating lesson, deeper from the contrast, to a speech on the Presidential Protest, delivered in 1837, which is replete with a manly good sense which does honour to the statesman, and which contains a lesson to the ultra reformers of any country or time. "Nothing is more deceptive or more dangerous than the pretence of a desire to simplify government. The simplest governments are despotisms; the next simplest, limited monarchies; but all republics, all governments of law, must impose numerous limitations and qualifications of authority, and give many positive and qualified rights. In other words they must be subject to rule and regulation,-this is the very essence of free political institutions. The spirit of liberty is indeed a bold and fearless spirit; but it is also a sharp-sighted spirit; it is a cautious, sagacious, farseeing intelligence; it is jealous of encroachment, jealous of power, jealous of man. It looks before and after, and building on the experience of ages which are past, it labours dili gently for the benefit of ages to come. This is the nature of constitutional liberty; and this is our liberty if we will rightly understand and preserve it. Every free government is naturally complicated, because all such governments establish restraints as well on the power of government itself as on that of individuals. If we will abolish the distinction of branches and have but one branch; if we abolish jury trials and leave all to the judge; if we then ordain that the legislator himself be that judge; and if we place the executive power in the same hands, we may readily simplify government. We may easily bring it to the simplest of all possible forms, a pure despotism." their batteries on some useless abstraction, some false dogma, or some gratuitous assumption. Or, perhaps, it may be more proper to say, that they look at it with microscopic eyes, seeking for some spot, or speck, or blot, or blur, and if they find anything of this kind, they are at once for overturning the whole fabric. And, when nothing else will answer, they invoke religion and speak of a higher law. Gentlemen, this North Mountain is high, the Blue Ridge higher still; the Alleghany higher than either; and yet this higher law ranges farther than an eagle's flight above the highest peaks of the Alleghany. No common vision can discern it; no conscience, not transcenIn the same speech there is a figure dental and ecstatic, can feel it; the which has often been quoted, but which hearing of common men never listens is so beautiful that we shall lay it be to its high behests; and therefore one fore our readers. It is, the reader will should think it not a safe law to be perceive, an expansion of a well-known acted on, in matters of the highest expression, but more beautiful than the practical moment. It is the code, original; Webster is speaking of Eng-however, of the fanatical and factious land as 66 a power to which Rome in the abolitionists of the North. height of her glory is not to be compared; a power which has dotted over the surface of the whole globe with her possessions and military hosts, whose morning drum-beat, following the sun, and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England." It was such passages as this which caused men to hang delighted on the lips of Webster, and another cause was his thorough nationality, which, like that of Shakespere, seemed ever to pervade his words, for America, the one whole and undivided nation, he would have perilled everything,-how well he could declaim on the beauties of union, the following, from a speech at a dinner given to him in 1851, and at which Sir H. Bulwer was present, will testify: "The secessionists of the South take a different course of remark. They are learned and eloquent; they are animated and full of spirit; they are highminded and chivalrous; they state their supposed injuries and causes of complaint in elegant phrases and exalted tones of speech. But these complaints are all vague and general. I confess to you, gentlemen, that I know no hydrostatic pressure strong enough to bring them into any solid form, in which they could be seen or felt. They think otherwise, doubtless. But, for one, I can discern nothing real or wellgrounded in their complaints. If I may be allowed to be a little professional, I would say that all their complaints and alleged grievances are like a very insufficient plea in the law; they are bad on general demurrer for "The support of the Union is a great want of substance. But I am not dispractical subject, involving the pros-posed to reproach these gentlemen, or pects and glory of the whole country, to speak of them with disrespect. I and affecting the prosperity of every prefer to leave them to their own reindividual in it. We ought to take a flections. I make no arguments against large and comprehensive view of it; to resolutions, conventions, secession look to its vast results, and to the con- speeches, or proclamations. Let these sequences which would flow from its things go on. The whole matter, it is overthrow. It is not a mere topic for to be hoped, will blow over, and men ingenious disquisition, or theoretical or will return to a sounder mode of thinkfanatical criticism. Those who assailing. But one thing, gentlemen, be the Union at the present day seem to be persons of one idea only, and many of them but half an idea. They plant assured of, the first step taken in the programme of secession, which shall be an actual infringement of the Con stitution or the Laws, will be promptly met. And I would not remain an hour in any administration that should not immediately meet any such violation of the Constitution and the Law effectually, and at once." adjusted to states, and a minister who can secure the permanent approbation of his own countrymen with as fair a renown abroad as was enjoyed by Daniel Webster, has achieved as much glory as even the best politicians are likely to obtain. The disappointment of defeat was poignant, and Webster lived not long after it, he went home to Marshfield to die, and died better in good honest truth, than latterly he had lived. We have not touched upon his private vices, nor will we; his neighbours loved him for his farmerlike manners and kindly presence and voice, and there are few more touching scenes than that which follows: The speech quoted, however, savours of slavery, which was the rock upon which Webster split. He seems to have been a man supremely suited to his age and country. An age which worships intellect more than any other age, and which also counts upon riches as the greatest good. To lead it and conquer its vanity and to guide it to a higher aim, the great man should be gifted above all, with a fine conscience, and a great heart, great in affection, and greatest in all in his religion, and "He had started small and poor, had his dependence on his God. Daniel Web-risen great and high, and honourably ster seems to have been in his last days fought his way alone. He was a farmer, little else than intellect, and intellect and took a countryman's delight in of the most busy and bustling kind country things-in loads of hay, in without God, bending to expediency, trees, turnips and the noble Indian corn, be forgot the eternal law of right; in monstrous swine. He had a patritruckling for the Presidential chair, he arch's love of sheep-choice breeds gave an absolute negation to his nobler thereof he had. He took delight in speeches, and sought to aggrandize cows-short-horned Durhams, Herehimself by the misery of his fellows. fordshires, Ayrshires, Alderneys. These are grave faults; but even those tilled paternal acres with his own more base in the eyes of the world, are oxen. He loved to give the kine fodder. laid to his charge. "A senator of the It was pleasant to hear his talk of oxen. United States," says Theodore Parker, And but three days before he left the "he was pensioned by the manufac-earth, too ill to visit them, his oxen, turers of Boston. Their gifts in his lowing, came to see their sick lord, and hands, how could he dare be just? as he stood in his door his great cattle His later speeches smelt of bribes." were driven up, that he might smell Alas! the student of history is not their healthy breath, and look his last comforted by recalling the rapacious-on those broad generous faces that were ness of Raleigh, and the venality of never false to him." He Francis Bacon, or the blot which a We have told how he died, broken and bribe has fixed upon the name of Sid-worn with storms of state and wrecked ney. Webster is one more fallen from ambition, and after his death all his bright hopes and brilliant beginnings, | backslidings were forgotten, and the one more example that the heaven people mourned for him as they might which "lies about us in our infancy," for a great and mighty voice which and still glows in our youth and honest manhood, grows dark and sullen as we near the grave. Weighing well these facts, we shall concur in the estimate given by one who has no interest to praise or blame. He presents a marked resemblance to Daniel O'Connell, but he enjoys this superiority of the great Agitator, that he never seriously designed to lead his countrymen astray. . . . He was beyond all doubt an acute lawyer, an accomplished scholar, an experienced diplomatist and a great statesman.... It must be remembered that ministers are henceforth was to be silent amongst them. They showed respect in every possible way, the ships lowered their flags half-mast high, the papers went in mourning. Before the interment took place, the body was removed to a lawn in front of the mansion, and placed on a bier beneath one of the large poplar trees, and from nine to half-past one the assembled multitudes took a last look. The countenance was serene and life-like. Two garlands of acorns and oak leaves, and two bouquets of flowers were placed on the coffin. Many shed tears and grieved for the loss, as for a departed father or dear friend. The funeral procession contained no carriages, nor were there any ladies, but to such a length did it extend, that the corpse had reached the grave before scarcely two-thirds had left the house. The burial took place exactly at half-past two o'clock, and an eloquent prayer was offered up by the Rev. Mr. Olden, the parish minister. The funeral was attended by upwards of 10,000 persons; among whom were Gen. Franklin Peirce, (now President,) Governor Massy, the Hon. Abbott Lawrence, the Hon. Edward Everett, the Hon. Charles Ashman, Chancellor Jones, &c. The whole of the proceed. ings were solemn, appropriate, and affecting. Mr. Webster was buried on his own grounds, by the side of his At New York a general feel children. ing of mourning was perceptible; the ships of all nations lying along the course of the north and east rivers displayed their flags at half mast, and minute guns were fired throughout the day. And so passed away from amongst his people Daniel Webster, bearing once the proud title of "Expounder and Defender of his Nation's Laws;" and if accomplishing little, yet reverenced as he was for his intellectual power, leaving a great name which will long be heard of in America. Hurl'd into fragments by the tempest blast The Rhodian monster lies; the obelisk That with sharp line divided the broad disc THE CARICATURISTS. Ir is much to be regretted that to many | written about poetically? asked the minds certain objects which excite scoffers; and so they scoffed down mirth, should be looked upon as weak, Wordsworth, whilst they allowed poetry frivolous, and beneath notice, as if He- to a pirate as in "Lara," or a rake as raclitus were the true philosopher, and Democritus none. Books which are amusing have been too often set down as the very reverse of instructive, and dry uninteresting treatises have been deemed the proper garb of science. Yet few dogmas have less of truth in them than the foregoing; Horace perceived this long ago, and boldly asks, "Ridentem dicere verum and some bold spirits in our own day "Don Juan." But Wordsworth won the battle which he fought, and brought poetry to the humblest hearth, and we are rapidly winning ours. The truth is, that wisdom is sometimes clothed in the jester's motley, and as deep morality and meaning lies in the gibes of the gravedigger, or the jests of Yorick, as in the melancholy of Hamlet. These remarks will perhaps be found necessary to introduce an article upon "Caricature" in a work intended for the student and the closet; we shall find that many grave affairs have been brought about by the pencil of a Gilray, and many a lesson taught by the etching point of a Cruikshank, whilst to the Historian, such notices illustrating as they do a very important portion of our history, will not be found uninteresting. But, whilst thus insisting upon the dignity of our paper, we must not be thought to countenance in any way undue, stupid and frivolous levity. A wit of our own day has endeavoured to render history comic. The grand legends of Rome have been made the vehicle for word-play and pun; and the |