THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONFLICT.
581
has turned every dinner-table into a debating-club and made one sole subject for conversation and painful thought throughout the continent, namely, Mr. Webster must learn that those to slavery.
whom
name was once dear and honored diswho was their pride in the woods and mountains of New England is now their morhis
own him
that he
;
Mr. Webster, perhaps, is only following and constitution. I suppose
tification.
the laws of his blood his pledges
a
man who
were not quite natural to him. He is lives by his memory a man of the ;
man
and of hope. All the drops of his blood have eyes that look downward, and his finely developed understanding only works truly and with all its force when it stands for ania
past, not
of faith
mal good that is, for property. He looks at the Union as an estate, a large farm, and is excellent ;
in the completeness
of his defence of
it
so far.
What
he finds already written he will defend. Lucky that so much had got well written when he came, for he has no faith in the power of self-gov-
Not the smallest municipal provision, if were new, would receive his sanction. In Mas-
ernment. it
sachusetts in 1776, he would,
beyond
all question,
have been a refugee. He praises Adams and Jefferson, but it is a past Adams and Jefferson.
A
present
Adams
The destiny and
is
or Jefferson he would denounce.
of this country
is
great and liberal,
to be greatly administered
;
according to