admitted, the city which had opened its arms to the pious and learned men banished by an English throne, and an English hierarchy, was a republic. In the giant hands of guardian mountains, ascending from their "silent sea of pines," above the thunder-clouds, and reposing there, calmly, amidst their encircling stars, while the storm raved by below, before which forests and cathedral-tombs of kings went down; on the banks of a contrasted lake, lovelier than a dream of fairyland, in a valley which might have been hollowed out to enclose the last home of liberty, there smiled an independent, peaceful, law-abiding and prosperous commonwealth. There was a state without king or nobles; there was a church without a bishop; there was a people, governed by laws of their own making, and by rulers of their own choosing.

CLVI.-THE SAME-CONTINUED.

RUFUS CHOATE,

To the eye of these exiles, bruised and pierced through, by the accumulated oppressions of a civil and spiritual tyranny, to whom there were coming tidings every day, out of England, that another victim had been struck down, on whose still dear home in the sea there fell, every day, a gloomier shadow from the frowning turrets of power;-was not that republic of Geneva the brightest image in the whole transcendent scene? Do you doubt that they turned from Alpine beauty and Alpine grandeur, to look, with a loftier emotion, for the first time in their lives, on the serene, unveiled statue of Classical Liberty? Do you not think that this spectacle, in their circumstances, and in their moods, prompted pregnant doubts, daring hopes, new ideas, thoughts that wake to perish never," doubts, hopes, ideas and thoughts, of which a new age is born? Was it not then and there that the dream of Republican Liberty, a dream to be realized somewhere, perhaps in England, perhaps in some region of the western sun, first mingled itself with the general impulses and the general hopes of the Reformation? Was that dream ever

let go, down to the morning of that day, when the Pilgrim Fathers met in the cabin of their shattered bark, and then, as she rose and fell on the stern New England sea, and the

SECRET OF THE MURDERER.

207

voices of the November forests rang through her torn topmost rigging, subscribed the first Republican Constitution of the New World? I confess myself to be of the opinion of those who trace to that spot and that time the Republicanism of the Puritans. I confess, too, that I love to trace the pedigree of our transatlantic liberty, thus backward, through Switzerland, to its native land of Greece. I think this is the true line of succession, down which it has descended. I agree with Swift, and Dryden, and Bishop Burnett, in that hypothesis. There was a liberty, no doubt, which the Puritans found, and kept, and improved, in England. They would have changed it, but were not able. But that was a kind of liberty, which admitted and demanded an inequality of man, an insubordination of ranks, a favored eldest son, the ascending orders of a hierarchy, the vast and constant pressure of a superincumbent crown. It was the liberty of Feudalism. It was the liberty of a united monarchy, overhung and shaded by the imposing architecture of great antagonist elements of the State. Such was not the form of liberty which our fathers brought with them. Allowing, of course, for that anomalous relation to the English crown, three thousand miles off, it was republican freedom as perfect the moment they stepped on the rock as it is to-day. It has not all been born in the woods of Germany, or between the Elbe and the Ider, or on the level of Runnymede. It was the child of other climes, and other days. It sprang to life in Greece. It gilded, next, the early and middle age of Italy. It then reposed in the hollow breast of the Alps. It descended, at length, on the iron-bound coast of New England, "and set the stars of glory there."

CLVII-SECRET OF THE MURDERER.

DANIEL WEBSTER.

He has done the murder-no eye has seen him, no ear has heard him. The secret is his own, and it is safe! Ah! gentlemen, that was a dreadful mistake. Such a secret can be safe nowhere. The whole creation of God has neither nook nor corner, where the guilty can bestow it, and say it is safe. Not to speak of that eye which glances through all disguises, and beholds everything, as in the splendor of noon,

such secrets of guilt are never safe from detection, even by men. True is it, generally speaking, that "murder will out.' True it is, that Providence hath so ordained, and doth so govern things, that those who break the great law of heaven, by shedding man's blood, seldom succeed in avoiding discovery. Especially, in a case exciting so much attention as this, discovery must come, and will come, sooner or later. A thousand eyes turn at once to explore every man, every thing, every circumstance, connected with the time and place; a thousand ears catch every whisper; a thousand excited minds intensely dwell on the scene, shedding all their light, and ready to kindle the slightest circumstance into a blaze of discovery. Meantime, the guilty soul cannot keep its own secret. It is false to itself; or rather it feels an irresistible impulse of conscience to be true to itself. It labors under its guilty possession, and knows not what to do with it. The human heart was not made for the residence of such an inhabitant. It finds itself preyed on by a torment, which it dares not acknowledge to God or man. A vulture is devouring it, and it can ask no sympathy or assistance, either from heaven or earth. The secret which the murderer possesses, soon comes to possess him; and, like the evil spirits of which we read, it overcomes him, and leads him whithersoever it will. He feels it beating at his heart, rising to his throat, and demanding disclosure. He thinks the whole world sees it in his face, reads it in his eyes, and almost hears its workings in the very silence of his thoughts. It has become his master. It betrays his discretion; it breaks down his courage; it conquers his prudence. When suspicions from without begin to embarrass him, and the net of circumstances to entangle him, the fatal secret struggles with still greater violence to burst forth. It must be confessed: it will be confessed there is no refuge from confession but suicide; and suicide is confession.

CLVIII-BUNKER HILL MONUMENT.

DANIEL WEBSTER.

LET it not be supposed that our object is to perpetuate national hostility, or even to cherish a mere military spirit. It is higher, purer, nobler. We consecrate our work to the

MORAL POWER OF PUBLIC OPINION.

209

spirit of national independence, and we wish that the light of peace may rest upon it forever. We rear a memorial of our conviction of that unmeasured benefit, which has been conferred on our own land, and of the happy influences, which have been produced, by the same events, on the general interests of mankind. We come, as Americans, to mark a spot, which must forever be dear to us and our posterity. We wish, that whosoever, in all coming time, shall turn his eye hither, may behold that the place is not undistinguished, where the first great battle of the Revolution was fought. We wish, that this structure may proclaim the magnitude and importance of that event, to every class and every age. We wish, that infancy may learn the purpose of its erection from maternal lips, and that weary and withered age may behold it, and be solaced by the recollections which it suggests. We wish, that labor may look up here, and be proud, in the midst of its toil. We wish, that, in those days of disaster, which, as they come on all nations, must be expected to come on us also, desponding patriotism may turn its eyes hitherward, and be assured that the foundations of our national power still stand strong. We wish, that this column, rising toward heaven among the pointed spires of so many temples dedicated to God, may contribute also to produce, in all minds, a pious feeling of dependence and gratitude. We wish, finally, that the last object on the sight of him who leaves his native shore, and the first to gladden his who revisits it, may be something which shall remind him of the liberty and the glory of his country. Let it rise, till it meet the sun in its coming; let the earliest light of the morning gild it, and parting day linger and play on its summit.

CLIX.-MORAL POWER OF PUBLIC OPINION.

DANIEL WEBSTER.

Ir may, in the next place, be asked, perhaps, supposing all this to be true, what can we do? Are we to go to war ? Are we to interfere in the Greek cause, or any other European cause? Are we to endanger our pacific relations ?No, certainly not. What, then, the question recurs, remains If we will not endanger our own peace; if we will

for us.

neither furnish armies, nor navies, to the cause which we think the just one, what is there in our power? Sir, this reasoning mistakes the age. The time has been, indeed, when fleets, and armies, and subsidies, were the principal reliances, even in the best cause. But, happily for mankind, there has arrived a great change in this respect. Moral causes come into consideration, in proportion as the progress of knowledge is advanced; and the public opinion of the civilized world is rapidly gaining an ascendency over mere brutal force. It is already able to oppose the most formidable obstruction to the progress of injustice and oppression; and, as it grows more intelligent and more intense, it will be more and more formidable. It may be silenced by military power, but it cannot be conquered. It is elastic, irrepressible, and invulnerable to the weapons of ordinary warfare. It is that impassible, unextinguishable enemy of mere violence and arbitrary rule, which, like Milton's angels, "Vital in every part,

Cannot, but by annihilating, die.”

Until this be propitiated or satisfied, it is in vain for power to talk of triumphs or of repose. No matter what fields are desolated, what fortresses surrendered, what armies subdued, or what provinces overrun. In the history of the year that has passed by us, and in the instance of unhappy Spain, we have seen the vanity of all triumphs, in a cause which violates the general sense of justice of the civilized world. It is nothing, that the troops of France have passed from the Pyrenees to Cadiz; it is nothing that an unhappy and prostrate nation has fallen before them; it is nothing that arrests, and confiscation, and execution, sweep away the little remnant of national resistance. There is an enemy that still exists to check the glory of these triumphs. It follows the conqueror back to the very scene of his ovations; it calls upon him to take notice that Europe, though silent, is yet indignant; it shows him that the sceptre of his victory is a barren sceptre; that it shall confer neither joy nor honor, but shall moulder to dry ashes in his grasp. In the midst of his exultation, it pierces his ear with the cry of injured justice, it denounees against him the indignation of an enlightened and civilized age, it turns to bitterness the cup of his rejoicing, and wounds him with the sting which belongs to the consciousness of having outraged the opinion of mankinů.