The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,778 pages of information about The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster.

The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,778 pages of information about The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster.

The ultimate effect of this alliance of sovereigns, for objects personal to themselves, or respecting only the permanence of their own power, must be the destruction of all just feeling, and all natural sympathy, between those who exercise the power of government and those who are subject to it.  The old channels of mutual regard and confidence are to be dried up, or cut off.  Obedience can now be expected no longer than it is enforced.  Instead of relying on the affections of the governed, sovereigns are to rely on the affections and friendship of other sovereigns.  There are, in short, no longer to be nations.  Princes and people are no longer to unite for interests common to them both.  There is to be an end of all patriotism, as a distinct national feeling.  Society is to be divided horizontally; all sovereigns above, and all subjects below; the former coalescing for their own security, and for the more certain subjection of the undistinguished multitude beneath.  This, Sir, is no picture drawn by imagination.  I have hardly used language stronger than that in which the authors of this new system have commented on their own work.  M. de Chateaubriand, in his speech in the French Chamber of Deputies, in February last, declared, that he had a conference with the Emperor of Russia at Verona, in which that august sovereign uttered sentiments which appeared to him so precious, that he immediately hastened home, and wrote them down while yet fresh in his recollection.  “The Emperor declared,” said he, “that there can no longer be such a thing as an English, French, Russian, Prussian, or Austrian policy; there is henceforth but one policy, which, for the safety of all, should be adopted both by people and kings.  It was for me first to show myself convinced of the principles upon which I founded the alliance; an occasion offered itself,—­the rising in Greece.  Nothing certainly could occur more for my interests, for the interests of my people, nothing more acceptable to my country, than a religious war in Turkey.  But I have thought I perceived in the troubles of the Morea the sign of revolution, and I have held back.  Providence has not put under my command eight hundred thousand soldiers to satisfy my ambition, but to protect religion, morality, and justice, and to secure the prevalence of those principles of order on which human society rests.  It may well be permitted, that kings may have public alliances to defend themselves against secret enemies.”

These, Sir, are the words which the French minister thought so important that they deserved to be recorded; and I, too, Sir, am of the same opinion.  But if it be true that there is hereafter to be neither a Russian policy, nor a Prussian policy, nor an Austrian policy, nor a French policy, nor even, which yet I will not believe, an English policy, there will be, I trust in God, an American policy.  If the authority of all these governments be hereafter to be mixed and blended, and to flow in one augmented current of prerogative

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The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.