and ill-will
against that government of which its author is the official head. It
raises a cry, that liberty is in danger, at the very moment when it puts
forth claims to powers heretofore unknown and unheard of. It affects
alarm for the public freedom, when nothing endangers that freedom so
much as its own unparalleled pretences. This, even, is not all. It
manifestly seeks to inflame the poor against the rich; it wantonly
attacks whole classes of the people, for the purpose of turning against
them the prejudices and the resentments of other classes. It is a state
paper which finds no topic too exciting for its use, no passion too
inflammable for its address and its solicitation.

Such is this message. It remains now for the people of the United States
to choose between the principles here avowed and their government. These
cannot subsist together. The one or the other must be rejected. If the
sentiments of the message shall receive general approbation, the
Constitution will have perished even earlier than the moment which its
enemies originally allowed for the termination of its existence. It will
not have survived to its fiftieth year.

THE CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON

A SPEECH DELIVERED AT A PUBLIC DINNER IN THE CITY OF WASHINGTON ON THE
22D OF FEBRUARY, 1832, THE CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY OF WASHINGTON'S
BIRTHDAY.

[On the 22d of February, 1832, being the centennial birthday of GEORGE
WASHINGTON, a number of gentlemen, members of Congress and others, from
different parts of the Union, united in commemorating the occasion by a
public dinner in the city of Washington.

At the request of the Committee of Arrangements, Mr. Webster, then a
Senator from Massachusetts, occupied the chair. After the cloth was
removed, he addressed the company in the following manner.]

I rise, Gentlemen, to propose to you the name of that great man, in
commemoration of whose birth, and in honor of whose character and
services, we are here assembled.

I am sure that I express a sentiment common to every one present, when I
say that there is something more than ordinarily solemn and affecting in
this occasion.

We are met to testify our regard for him whose name is intimately
blended with whatever belongs most essentially to the prosperity, the
liberty, the free institutions, and the renown of our country. That name
was of power to rally a nation, in the hour of thick-thronging public
disasters and calamities; that name shone, amid