the great questions at
issue can be settled or not. If you, who represent the stronger portion,
cannot agree to settle on the broad principle of justice and duty, say
so; and let the States we both represent agree to separate and part in
peace. If you are unwilling we should part in peace, tell us so, and
we shall know what to do, when you reduce the question to submission or
resistance. If you remain silent, you will compel us to infer by your
acts what you intend. In that case, California will become the test
question. If you admit her, under all the difficulties that oppose her
admission, you compel us to infer that you intend to exclude us from
the whole of the acquired territories, with the intention of destroying,
irretrievably, the equilibrium between the two sections. We would be
blind not to perceive in that case, that your real objects are power and
aggrandizement, and infatuated, not to act accordingly.

I have now, Senators, done my duty in ex-pressing my opinions fully,
freely and candidly, on this solemn occasion. In doing so, I have been
governed by the motives which have governed me in all the stages of the
agitation of the slavery question since its commencement. I have exerted
myself, during the whole period, to arrest it, with the intention of
saving the Union, if it could be done; and if it could not, to save
the section where it has pleased Providence to cast my lot, and which I
sincerely believe has justice and the Constitution on its side. Having
faithfully done my duty to the best of my ability, both to the Union and
my section, throughout this agitation, I shall have the consolation, let
what will come, that I am free from all responsibility.

[Illustration: Daniel Webster]

DANIEL WEBSTER,

OF MASSACHUSETTS. (BORN, 1782, DIED, 1852.)

ON THE CONSTITUTION AND THE UNION;

SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, MARCH 7, 1850.

MR. PRESIDENT:

I wish to speak to-day, not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a northern
man, but as an American, and a member of the Senate of the United
States. It is fortunate that there is a Senate of the United States; a
body not yet moved from its propriety, nor lost to a just sense of its
own dignity and its own high responsibilities, and a body to which
the country looks, with confidence, for wise, moderate, patriotic, and
healing counsels. It is not to be denied that we live in the midst of
strong agitations and are surrounded by very considerable dangers to