regular liberty consists in putting restraints upon government and individuals, so that they shall not interfere with your freedom of action and purpose. You may easily simplify government; shallow thinkers talk of a simple government; Turkey is the simplest government in the world. But if you wish to secure entire personal liberty, you must multiply restraints upon the government, so that it cannot go farther than the public good requires. Then you may be free, and not otherwise.

Another great power by which executive influence augments itself, especially when the man who wields it stands at the head of a party, consists in the use of names. Mirabeau said that words are things; and so they are. But I believe that they are often fraudulent things, though always possessed of real power. The faculty of taking to ourselves a popular name, and giving an unpopular name to an adversary, is a matter of very great concern in politics. I put it to you, Gentlemen, whether, for the last month or two, the activity of this government has not consisted chiefly in the discharge of a shower of hard names. Have you, for a month past, heard any man defend the subtreasury? Have you seen any man, during that time, burn his fingers by taking hold of Mr. Poinsett's militia project? Their whole resort has been to pour out upon us a tide of denunciation as aristocrats, aristocrats; taking to themselves, meanwhile, the well-deserved designation of true Democrats. How cheering, how delightful, that a man, independent of any regard to his own character or worth, may thus range himself under a banner the most acceptable of all others to his fellow-citizens! It is with false patriotism as with base money; it relies on the stamp. It does not wish to be weighed; it hates the scales; it is thrown into horrors at the crucible; it must all go by tale; it holds out the king's head, with his name and 'superscription, and, if challenged, replies, Do you not see the stamp on my forehead? I belong to the Democratic family; make me current. But we live in an age too enlightened to be gulled by this business of stamping; we have learned to inquire into the true nature and value of things. Democracy most surely is not a term of reproach, but of respect. Our government is a constitutional, democratic, republican government; and if they mean that only, there is none will dispute that they are good Democrats. But if they set up qualifications and distinctions, if there are genera

and species, it may require twenty political Linnæuses to say to which class they belong.

There is another contrivance for the increase of executive power, which is utterly abhorrent to all true patriots, and against which, in an especial manner, General Washington has left us his farewell injunction; I mean, the constant recurrence to local differences, prejudices, and jealousies. That is the great bane and curse of this lovely country of ours. That country extends over a vast territory. There are few from among us in Massachusetts who enjoy the advantage of a personal intercourse with our friends in Virginia, and but few of you who visit us in Massachusetts. The farther South is still more remote. The difference which exists in habits and pursuits between us enables the enemy to sow tares, by exciting local prejudices on both sides. Sentiments are mutually ascribed to us which neither ever entertained. By this means a party press is enabled to destroy that generous spirit of brotherhood which should exist between us. All patriotic men ought carefully to guard themselves against the effects of arts like these.

And here I am brought to advert for one moment to what I constantly see in all the administration papers, from Baltimore south. It is one perpetual outcry, admonishing the people of the South that their own State governments, and the property they hold under them, are not secure, if they admit a Northern man to any considerable share in the administration of the general government. You all know that that is the universal cry. Now, I have spoken my sentiments in the neighborhood of Virginia, though not actually within the State, in June last, and again in the heart of Massachusetts in July, so that it is not now that I proclaim them for the first time. But further, ten years ago, when obliged to speak on this same subject, I uttered the same sentiment in regard to slavery, and to the absence of all power in Congress to interfere, in any manner whatever, with that subject. I shall ask some friend connected with the press to circulate in Virginia what I said on this subject in the Senate of the United States, in January, 1830.* I have nothing to add

Mr. Webster had reference here to the remarks on the subject of slavery contained in his speech delivered in the Senate of the United States, in reply to Mr. Hayne, on the 21st of January, 1830, which will be found in a subsequent volume of this collection.

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to or subtract from what I then said. I commend it to your attention, or, rather, I desire you to look at it. I hold that Congress is absolutely precluded from interfering in any manner, direct or indirect, with this, as with any other of the institutions of the States. [The cheering was here loud and long continued, and a voice from the crowd exclaimed, "We wish this could be heard from Maryland to Louisiana, and we desire that the sentiment just expressed may be repeated. Repeat! Repeat!"] Well, I repeat it; proclaim it on the wings of all the winds, tell it to all your friends,- [cries of "We will! We will!"]tell it, I say, that, standing here in the Capitol of Virginia, beneath an October sun, in the midst of this assemblage, before the entire country, and upon all the responsibility which belongs to me, I say that there is no power, direct or indirect, in Congress or the general government, to interfere in the slightest degree with the institutions of the South.

And now, fellow-citizens, I ask you only to do me one favor. I ask you to carry that paper home; read it; read it to your neighbors; and when you hear the cry, "Shall Mr. Webster, the Abolitionist, be allowed to profane the soil of Virginia?" that you will tell them that, in connection with the doctrine in that speech, I hold that there are two governments over us, each possessing its own distinct authority, with which the other may not interfere. I may differ from you in some things, but I will here say that, as to the doctrines of State rights, as held by Mr. Madison in his last days, I do not know that we differ at all; yet I am one, and among the foremost, to hold that it is indispensable to the prosperity of these governments to preserve, and that he is no true friend to either who does not labor to preserve, a true distinction between both.

We may not all see the line which divides them alike; but all honest men know that there is a line, and they all fear to go either on the one or the other side of it. It is this balance between the general and the State governments which has preserved the country in unexampled prosperity for fifty years; and the destruction of this just balance will be the destruction of our government. What I believe to be the doctrine of State rights, I hold as firmly as any man. Do I not belong to a State? and, may I not say, to a State which has done something to give herself renown, and to her sons some little share

of participated distinction? I say again, that the upholding of State rights, on the one hand, and of the just powers of Congress, on the other, is indispensable to the preservation of our free republican government.

And now, Gentlemen, permit me to address to you a few words in regard to those measures of the general government which have caused the existing excitement throughout the country. I will pass rapidly over them. I need not argue to you Democrats the question of the sub-treasury, and I suppose it is hardly necessary to speak to you of Mr. Poinsett's militia bill. Into which of your mountains has not its discussion penetrated? Up which of all your winding streams has not its echo floated? I am sure he must be very tired of it himself. Remember always that the great principle of the Constitution on that subject is, that the militia is the militia of the States, and not of the general government; and being thus the militia of the States, there is no part of the Constitution worded with greater care, and with a more scrupulous jealousy, than that which grants and limits the power of Congress over it. Does it say that Congress may make use of the militia as it pleases? that it may call them out for drill and discipline under its own pay? No such thing. The terms used are the most precise and particular:-"Congress may provide for calling out the militia to execute the laws, to suppress insurrection, and to repel invasion." These three cases are specified, and these are all. Call out the militia to drill them! to discipline them! March the militia of Virginia to Wheeling to be drilled! Why, such a thing never entered into the head of any man, never, never. What is not very usual in the Constitution, after this specific enumeration of powers, it adds a negative in those golden words reserving to the States the appointment of officers and the training of the militia. That's it. Read this clause, and then read in Mr. Poinsett's project that the militia are to be trained by the President! Look on this picture, and on that. I do Virginia no more than justice when I say, that she first laid hold upon this monstrous project, and has continued to denounce it, and will never consent to it, by whatever weight of authority it may be urged on the country.

As to the sub-treasury, the subject is worn out. The topic is almost as empty of new ideas as the treasury itself is of money

I had, the other day, the honor to address an assemblage of the merchants of New York. I asked them, among other things, whether this eternal cry about a separation of bank and state was not all mockery and humbug; and thousands of merchants, intimately acquainted with the whole subject, cried, "Yes, yes; it is!" The fact unquestionably is, that the funds of the government are just as much in the custody of the banks at this moment as they ever were; yet at the same time I believe that, under the law, there does exist, whenever the revenues of the country shall be uncommonly large, a power to stop at pleasure all the solvent banks in the community. Such is the opinion uniformly held by the best-informed men in the commercial parts of the country.

There is another expedient to augment executive power, quite novel in its character. I refer to the power conferred upon the President to select from among the appropriations of Congress such as he may consider entitled to preference, if the treasury is unable to meet them all, and to give or withhold the public money accordingly. This is certainly a marvellously democratic doctrine. Do you not remember the emphasis with which Mr. Jefferson expressed himself on the subject of specific appropriations? The law, as it now stands, requires them to be specific. If Congress, for instance, appropriate so many dollars for the building of ships, no part of the money may be applied to the pay of sailors or marines. This is the common rule. But how has this subject been treated in regard to those objects over which this Presidential discretion extends? The appropriations are specific still; but then a specific power is given to the President to dispense with the restriction; and thus one specific is set against the other. Let this process be carried but one step farther, and, although there may be a variety of appropriations made by Congress, yet, inasmuch as we have entire trust and confidence in the executive discretion, that the President will make the proper selections from among them, therefore we may enact, or say it shall be enacted, that what little money there may at any time be found in the treasury, the President may expend very much according to his own pleasure.

There is one other topic I must not omit. I am now endeavoring to prove, that, of all men on the face of the earth, you of Virginia, the descendants and disciples of some of the greatest