wer to return the
calls of his friends, or to pay his respects to their families. It was
accordingly proposed that the ladies who might desire to do so should
assemble in the "Log Cabin," and that he should there pay his respects
to them collectively. The meeting was large, and the building quite
full. On being introduced to them in a few appropriate remarks, by Mr.
Lyons, Mr. Webster addressed them in the following speech.]

Ladies,--I am very sure I owe the pleasure I now enjoy to your kind
disposition, which has given me the opportunity to present my thanks and
my respects to you thus collectively, since the shortness of my stay in
the city does not allow me the happiness of calling upon those,
severally and individually, from members of whose families I have
received kindness and notice. And, in the first place, I wish to express
to you my deep and hearty thanks, as I have endeavored to do to your
fathers, your husbands, and your brothers, for the unbounded hospitality
I have received ever since I came among you. This is registered, I
assure you, in a grateful heart, in characters of an enduring nature.
The rough contests of the political world are not suited to the dignity
and the delicacy of your sex; but you possess the intelligence to know
how much of that happiness which you are entitled to hope for, both for
yourselves and for your children, depends on the right administration of
government, and a proper tone of public morals. That is a subject on
which the moral perceptions of woman are both quicker and juster than
those of the other sex. I do not speak of that administration of
government whose object is merely the protection of industry, the
preservation of civil liberty, and the securing to enterprise of its due
reward. I speak of government in a somewhat higher point of view; I
speak of it in regard to its influence on the morals and sentiments of
the community. We live in an age distinguished for great benevolent
exertion, in which the affluent are consecrating the means they possess
to the endowment of colleges and academies, to the building of churches,
to the support of religion and religious worship, to the encouragement
of schools, lyceums, and athenaeums, and other means of general popular
instruction. This is all well; it is admirable; it augurs well for the
prospects of ensuing generations. But I have sometimes thought, that,
amidst all this activity and zeal of the good and the benevolent, the
i