generous sentiment in his bosom, that be elsewhere. The honorable member, would not be disposed, in the language of Burke, to exclaim, "You must pardon something to the spirit of liberty?'

Following Mr. Hayne in the debate, Mr. Webster addressed the Senate as follows:

Mr. President: When the mariner has been tossed, for many days, in thick weather, and on an unknown sea, he naturally avails himself of the first pause in the storm, the earliest glance of the sun, to take his latitude, and ascertain how far the elements have driven him from his true course. Let us imitate this prudence, and before we float farther, refer to the point from which we departed, that we may at least be able to conjecture where we now are. I ask for the reading of the resolu

tion.

[The Secretary read the resolution as follows:

แ

"Resolved, That the committee on public lands be instructed to inquire and report the quantity of the public lands remaining unsold within each state and territory, and whether it be expedient to limit, for a certain period, the sales of the public lands to such lands only as have heretofore been offered for sale, and are now subject to entry at the minimum price. And, also, whether the office of surveyor general, and some of the land offices, may not be abolished without detriment to the public interest; or whether it be expedient to adopt measures to hasten the sales, and extend more rapidly the surveys of the public lands."]

however, did not incline to put off the discussion to another day. He had a shot, he said, to return, and he wished to discharge it. That shot, sir, which it was kind thus to inform us was coming, that we might stand out of the way, or prepare ourselves to fall before it, and die with decency, has now been received. Under all advantages, and with expectation awakened by the tone which preceded it, it has been discharged, and has spent its force. It may become me to say no more of its effect than that, if nobody is found, after all, either killed or wounded by it, it is not the first time in the history of human affairs that the vigor and success of the war have not quite come up to the lofty and sounding phrase of the manifesto.

The gentleman, sir, in declining to postpone the debate, told the Senate, with the emphasis of his hand upon his heart, that there was something rankling here, which he wished to relieve. [Mr. Hayne rose and disclaimed having used the word rankling.] It would not, Mr. President, be safe for the honorable member to appeal to those around him, upon the question whether he did, in fact, make use of that word. But he may have been unconscious of it. At any rate, it is enough that he disclaims it. But still, with or without the use of that particular word, he had yet something here, he said, of which he wished to rid himself by an immediate reply. In this respect, sir, I have a great advantage over the honorable gentleman. There is nothing here, sir, which gives me the slightest uneasiness; neither fear, nor anger, nor that which is sometimes more troublesome than either, the consciousness of having been in the wrong. There is nothing either originating here, or now received here, by the gentleman's shot. Nothing original, We have thus heard, sir, what the reso- for I had not the slightest feeling of disre lution is, which is actually before us for spect or unkindness towards the honorable consideration; and it will readily occur to member. Some passages, it is true, had every one that it is almost the only subject occurred, since our acquaintance in this about which something has not been said body, which I could have wished might in the speech, running through two days, have been otherwise; but I had used philby which the Senate has been now enter-osophy, and forgotten them. When the tained by the gentleman from South Caro- honorable member rose, in his first speech, lina. Every topic in the wide range of our I paid him the respect of attentive listenpublic affairs, whether past or present,- ing; and when he sat down, though surevery thing, general or local, whether be-prised, and I must say even astonished, at longing to national politics or party politics, seems to have attracted more or less of the honorable member's attention, save only the resolution before us. He has spoken of every thing but the public lands. They have escaped his notice. To that subject, in all his excursions, he has not paid even the cold respect of a passing glance.

When this debate, sir, was to be resumed, on Thursday morning, it so happened that it would have been convenient for me to

I

some of his opinions, nothing was farther from my intention than to commence any personal warfare; and through the whole of the few remarks I made in answer, avoided, studiously and carefully, every thing which I thought possible to be construed into disrepect. And, sir, while there is thus nothing originating here, which I wished at any time, or now wish to discharge, I must repeat, also, that nothing has been received here which rankles, lor in any way gives me annoyance. I will

not accuse the honorable member of violat- | bate from the consciousness that I should ing the rules of civilized war-I will not find an overmatch if I ventured on a consay that he poisoned his arrows. But test with his friend from Missouri. If, sir, whether his shafts were, or were not, dipped in that which would have caused rankling if they had reached, there was not, as it happened, quite strength enough in the bow to bring them to their mark. If he wishes now to find those shafts, he must look for them elsewhere; they will not be found fixed and quivering in the object at which they were aimed.

taunt and disparagement, a little of the loftiness of asserted superiority, which does not allow me to pass it over without notice. It was put as a question for me to answer, and so put as if it were difficult for me to answer, whether I deemed the member from Missouri an overmatch for myself in debate here. It seems to me, sir, that is extraordinary language, and an extraordinary tone for the discussions of this body.

Matches and overmatches? Those terms are more applicable elewhere than here, and fitter for other assemblies than this. Sir, the gentleman seems to forget where and what we are. This is a Senate; a Senate of equals; of men of individual honor and personal character, and of absolute independence. We know no masters; we acknowledge no dictators. This

the honorable member, ex gratia modestia, had chosen thus to defer to his friend, and to pay him a compliment, without intentional disparagement to others, it would have been quite according to the friendly courtesies of debate, and not at all ungrateful to my own feelings. I am not one of those, sir, who esteem any tribute of regard, whether light and occasional, or more seriThe honorable member complained that ous and deliberate, which may be beI had slept on his speech. I must have stowed on others, as so much unjustly withslept on it, or not slept at all. The mo- holden from themselves. But the tone ment the honorable member sat down, his and manner of the gentleman's question, friend from Missouri arose, and, with much forbid me thus to interpret it. I am not at honeyed commendation of the speech, sug-liberty to consider it as nothing more than gested that the impressions which it had a civility to his friend. It had an air of produced were too charming and delightful to be disturbed by other sentiments or other sounds, and proposed that the Senate should adjourn. Would it have been quite amiable in me, sir, to interrupt this excellent good feeling? Must I not have been absolutely malicious, if I could have thrust myself forward to destroy sensations thus pleasing? Was it not much better and kinder, both to sleep upon them myself, and to allow others, also, the pleasure of sleeping upon them? But if it be meant, by sleeping upon his speech, that I took time to prepare a reply to it, it is quite a mistake owing to other engagements, I could not employ even the interval between the adjournment of the Senate and its meeting the next morning in attention to the subject of this debate. Nevertheless, sir, the mere matter of fact is undoubtedly is a hall of mutual consultation and distrue-I did sleep on the gentleman's speech, and slept soundly. And I slept equally well on his speech of yesterday, to which I am now replying. It is quite possible that, in this respect, also, I possess some advantage over the honorable member, attributable, doubtless, to a cooler temperament on my part; for in truth I slept upon his speeches remarkably well. But the gentleman inquires why he was made the object of such a reply. Why was he singled out? If an attack had been made on the east, he, he assures us, did not begin it-it was the gentleman from Missouri. Sir, I answered the gentleman's speech, because I happened to hear it; and because, also, I choose to give an answer to that speech, which, if unanswered, I thought most likely to produce injurious impressions. I did not stop to inquire who was the original drawer of the bill. I found a responsible endorser before me, and it was my purpose to hold him liable, and to bring him to his just responsibility without delay. But, sir, this interrogatory of the honorable member was only introductory to another. He proceeded to ask me whether I had turned upon him in this de

cussion, not an arena for the exhibition of champions. I offer myself, sir, as a match for no man; I throw the challenge of debate at no man's feet. But, then, sir, since the honorable member has put the question in a manner that calls for an answer, I will give him an answer; and I tell him that, holding myself to be the humblest of the members here, I yet know nothing in the arm of his friend from Missouri, either alone or when aided by the arm of his friend from South Carolina, that need deter even me from espousing whatever opinions I may choose to espouse, from debating whenever I may choose to debate, or from speaking whatever I may see fit to say on the floor of the Senate. Sir, when uttered as matter of commendation or compliment, I should dissent from nothing which the honorable member might say of his friend. Still less do I put forth any pretensions of my own. But when put to me as a matter of taunt, I throw it back, and say to the gentleman that he could possibly say nothing less likely than such a comparison to wound my pride of personal character. The anger of its tone rescued the remark from

intentional irony, which otherwise, probably, would have been its general acceptation. But, sir, if it be imagined that by this mutual quotation and commendation; if it be supposed that, by casting the characters of the drama, assigning to each his part, to one the attack, to another the cry of onset, or if it be thought that by a loud and empty vaunt of anticipated victory any laurels are to be won here; if it be imagined, especially, that any or all these things will shake any purpose of mine, I can tell the honorable member, once for all, that he is greatly mistaken, and that he is dealing with one of whose temper and character he has yet much to learn. Sir, I shall not allow myself, on this occasion-I hope on no occasion-to be betrayed into any loss of temper; but if provoked, as I trust I never shall allow myself to be, into crimination and recrimination, the honorable member may, perhaps, find that in that contest there will be blows to take as well as blows to give; that others can state comparisons as significant, at least, as his own; and that his impunity may, perhaps, demand of him whatever powers of taunt and sarcasm he may possess. I commend him to a prudent husbandry of his resources.

is not now, sir, in the power of the honora ble member to give it dignity or decency, by attempting to elevate it, and to introduce it into the Senate. He cannot change it from what it is an object of genera! disgust and scorn. On the contrary, the contact, if he choose to touch it, is more likely to drag him down, down, to the place where it lies itself.

But, sir, the honorable member was not, for other reasons, entirely happy in his allusion to the story of Banquo's murder and Banquo's ghost. It was not, I think, the friends, but the enemies of the murdered Banquo, at whose bidding his spirit would not down. The honorable gentleman is fresh in his reading of the English classics, and can put me right if I am wrong; but according to my poor recollection, it was at those who had begun with caresses, and ended with foul and treacherous murder, that the gory locks were shaken. The ghost of Banquo, like that of Hamlet, was an honest ghost. It disturbed no innocent man. It knew where its appearance would strike terror, and who would cry out A ghost! It made itself visible in the right quarter, and compelled the guilty, and the conscience-smitten, and none others, to start, with,

"Prithee, see there! behold!-look! lo!
If I stand here, I saw him!"

But, sir, the coalition! The coalition! Aye, "the murdered coalition!" The gentleman asks if I were led or frighted into this debate by the spectre of the coali- Their eyeballs were seared-was it not so, tion. "Was it the ghost of the murdered sir?-who had thought to shield themcoalition," he exclaims, "which haunted selves by concealing their own hand and the member from Massachusetts, and laying the imputation of the crime on a which, like the ghost of Banquo, would low and hireling agency in wickedness; never down?" "The murdered coali- who had vainly attempted to stifle the tion!" Sir, this charge of a coalition, in workings of their own coward consciences, reference to the late administration, is not by circulating, through white lips and original with the honorable member. It chattering teeth, "Thou canst not say I did not spring up in the Senate. Whether did it!" I have misread the great poet, as a fact, as an argument, or as an embel- if it was those who had no way partaken lishment, it is all borrowed. He adopts in the deed of the death, who either found it, indeed, from a very low origin, and a still that they were, or feared that they should lower present condition. It is one of the be, pushed from their stools by the ghost of thousand calumnies with which the press the slain, or who cried out to a spectre teemed during an excited political can- created by their own fears, and their own vass. It was a charge of which there was remorse, "Avaunt! and quit our sight! not only no proof or probability, but which was, in itself, wholly impossible to be true. No man of common information ever believed a syllable of it. Yet it was of that class of falsehoods which, by continued repetition through all the organs of detraction and abuse, are capable of misleading those who are already far misled, and of further fanning passion already kindling into flame. Doubtless it served its day, and, in a greater or less degree, the common fate of vaulting ambition the end designed by it. Having done that, overleaping itsself? Did not even-handed it has sunk into the general mass of stale justice, ere long, commend the poisoned and loathed calumnies. It is the very cast- chalice to their own lips? Did they not off slough of a polluted and shameless soon find that for another they had "filed press. Incapable of further mischief, it their mind?" that their ambition though lies in the sewer lifeless and despised. It apparently for the moment successful, had

There is another particular, sir, in which the honorable member's quick perception of resemblances might, I should think, have seen something in the story of Banquo, making it not altogether a subject of the most pleasant contemplation. Those who murdered Banquo, what did they win by it? Substantial good? Permanent power? Or disappointment, rather, and sore mortification-dust and ashes