Words That Men Live By
Cong. Daniel Webster (1825)
BOSTON, Mass., June 17, 1825 - The power of ideas, of minds communicating grand thoughts to be later translated into the tangibles of action, inspired Daniel Webster to soar today to rare heights of inspiration as the "orator" at the laying of the cornerstone of Bunker Hill Monument, exactly 50 years after Bunker and nearby Breed's Hill were baptized in patriots' blood as an early sacrifice to our freedom.
"Mind is the great lever of all things," exclaimed this stentorian spokesman of liberty from the green hills of New Hampshire; "human thought is the process by which human ends are ultimately answered."
And those who heard him-the thousands of holiday makers who had come to picnic and to celebrate this vital anniversary in the history of liberty - received for a fleeting instant a glimpse of the inner mind of this man who by words alone is becoming a giant among giants in this growing period of our nation.
The thoughts expressed by Congressman Webster, and the inspiring and thought-provoking theme he erected upon what otherwise might have been a sentimental and mawkish occasion, were particularly gratifying to the sponsors of his talk, who had passed over numerous natives of Massachusetts to award this honor to a transplanted statesman resident in Boston only since 1816. The choice, however, was not an accident: in Washington, Mr. Webster's, voice and thought stand as high or higher than those of Mr. Henry Clay and Mr. John C. Calhoun and the coterie of other great speakers. Some think it a pity that our own John Quincy Adams, although now President, is not numbered among them, but his feebleness of delivery diminishes his power of thought and action.
Nevertheless, whether Boston's greatness as an intellectual cradle be founded upon native progeny or adoptive sons, there is no minimizing the power of the intellect as it today strides out to round and refine these days of our country's years.
It is high time!
We are at peace, and no enemy of national security threatens from outside our borders. The Doctrine by President Monroe defining the interests of all of the Americas as our special interest has not been seriously challenged in the almost two years since it was proclaimed. Our western boundaries have been extended to the towering rocky Sierras in the West. Our population has grown from less than 4,000,000 in the first census of 1790 to more than 10,000,000 souls, and tides of immigration are helping to swell our own fecund birth rate.
Mr. Webster indeed is right when he cautions us that it is time to turn from these visible symbols of physical welfare to a nurturing of the mental growth so essential to well rounded development as a country.
The leading reflection to which the occasion seems to invite us respects the great changes which have occurred in the fifty years since the battle of Bunker Hill was fought . . . In looking at these changes, and in estimating their effect on our condition, we are obliged to consider not what has been done in our own country only, but in others also. In these interesting times, while nations are making separate and individual advances in improvement, they make, too, a common progress. ...
A chief distinction of the present day is a community of opinions, and knowledge, amongst men, in different nations, existing in a degree heretofore unknown. Knowledge has, in our time, triumphed and is triumphing over distance, over differences of language, over diversity of habits, over prejudice and over bigotry. ... The whole world is becoming a common field of intellect to act in. Energy of mind, genius, power, wherever it exists, may speak out in any tongue, and the world will hear it.
There is a vast commerce of ideas. There are marts and exchanges for intellectual discoveries, and a wonderful fellowship of these individual intelligences, which make up the mind and opinion of the age.
Mind is the great lever of all things; human thought is the process by which human ends are ultimately answered; and the diffusion of knowledge, so astounding in the last half century, has rendered innumerable minds, variously gifted by nature, competent to be competitors, or fellow-workers, on the theatre of intellectual operation.
From these causes important improvements have taken place in the personal condition of individuals. Generally speaking, mankind are not only better fed and better clothed, but they are able also to enjoy more leisure; they possess more refinement and self-respect. ...This remark, most true in its application to our own country, is also partly true when applied else- where.
Under the influence of this rapidly increasing knowledge, the people have begun, in all forms of government, to think, and to reason, on affairs of state. Regarding government as an institution for the public good, they demand a knowledge of its operation, and a participation in its existence.
A call for the representative system, wherever it is not enjoyed, and where there is already intelligence enough to estimate its value, is perseveringly made.
Where men speak out, they demand it; where the bayonet is at their throats, they pray for it.
~ Postlogue ~
This oration by Daniel Webster, here cut to the sinews of pure expression and freed of the verbiage that to modem eyes sometimes obscures his finest thoughts, ranks high in the eloquence of great thinkers who sparked , the genius of expression through the next hundred years.
A Plymouth Address by Webster in 1820 had served as a trial effort for this oration. A year later he would wrap many more ideas into an epochal address on the lives of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, and in 1843 he would return to Bunker Hill to restate his old thesis.
As a lawyer and politician, Webster needs little description here. And this talk has been chosen rather than his great speeches in the slavery debates of later years.
The thoughts that developed in the granite convictions of his mind, the words that poured fourth from his craggy face - these were his heritage to us.Printable version