Webster’s speeches are likely to live for their style alone, outside their truths, like those of Cicero and Demosthenes, like the histories of Voltaire and Macaulay, like the essays of Pascal and Rousseau; and they will live, not only for both style and matter, but for the exalted patriotism which burns in them from first to last, for those sentiments which consecrate cherished institutions.  How nobly he recognizes Christianity as the bulwark of national prosperity!  How delightfully he presents the endearments of home, the certitudes of friendship, the peace of agricultural life, the repose of all industrial pursuits, however humble and obscure!  It was this fervid patriotism, this public recognition of what is purest in human life, and exalted in aspirations, and profound in experience,—­teaching the value of our privileges and the glory of our institutions,—­which gave such effect to his eloquence, and endeared him to the hearts of the people until he opposed their passions.  If we read any of these speeches, extending over thirty years, we shall find everywhere the same consistent spirit of liberty, of union, of conciliation, the same moral wisdom, the same insight into great truths, the same recognition of what is sacred, the same repose on what is permanent, the same faith in the expanding glories of this great nation which he loved with all his heart.  In all his speeches one cannot find a sentence which insults the consecrated sentiments of religion or patriotism.  He never casts a fling at Christianity; he never utters a sarcasm in reference to revealed truths; he never flippantly aspires to be wiser than Moses or Paul in reference to theological dogmas.  “Ah, my friends,” said he, in 1825, “let us remember that it is only religion and morals and knowledge that can make men respectable and happy under any form of government; that no government is respectable which is not just; that without unspotted purity of public faith, without sacred public principle, fidelity, and honor, no mere form of government, no machinery of laws, can give dignity to political society.”

Thus did he discourse in those proud days when he was accepted as a national idol and a national benefactor,—­those days of triumph and of victory, when the people gathered around him as they gather around a successful general.  Ah! how they thronged to the spot where he was expected to speak,—­as the Scotch people thronged to Edinboro’ and Glasgow to hear Gladstone:—­

     “And when they saw his chariot but appear,
      Did they not make an universal shout,
      That Tiber trembled underneath her banks
      To hear the replication of their sounds
      Made in her concave shores?”

But it is time that I allude to those great services which Webster rendered to his country when he was a member of Congress,—­services that can never be forgotten, and which made him a national benefactor.

There were three classes of subjects on which his genius pre-eminently shone,—­questions of finance, the development of American industries, and the defence of the Constitution.