country, where yet no habits are formed
which render it indispensable, what is it but to encourage that
rapacity and fraud and violence against which we have so long
pointed the denunciation of our penal code? What is it but to
tarnish the proud fame of the country? What is it but to render
questionable all its professions of regard for the rights of
humanity and the liberties of mankind."

A year later Mr. Webster again spoke on one portion of this subject, and in
the same tone of deep hostility and reproach. This second instance was that
famous and much quoted passage of his Plymouth oration in which he
denounced the African slave-trade. Every one remembers the ringing words:--

"I hear the sound of the hammer, I see the smoke of the furnaces
where manacles and fetters are still forged for human limbs. I see
the visages of those who, by stealth and at midnight, labor in this
work of hell,--foul and dark as may become the artificers of such
instruments of misery and torture. Let that spot be purified, or
let it cease to be of New England. Let it be purified, or let it be
set aside from the Christian world; let it be put out of the circle
of human sympathies and human regards, and let civilized man
henceforth have no communion with it."

This is directed against the African slave-trade, the most hideous feature,
perhaps, in the system. But there was no real distinction between slavers
plying from one American port to another and those which crossed the ocean
for the same purpose. There was no essential difference between slaves
raised for the market in Virginia--whence they were exported and sold--and
those kidnapped for the same object on the Guinea coast. The physical
suffering of a land journey might be less than that of a long sea-voyage,
but the anguish of separation between mother and child was the same in all
cases. The chains which clanked on the limbs of the wretched creatures,
driven from the auction block along the road which passed beneath the
national capitol, and the fetters of the captured fugitive were no softer
or lighter than those forged for the cargo of the slave-ships. Yet the man
who so magnificently denounced the one in 1820, found no cause to repeat
the denunciation in 1850, when only domestic traffic was in question. The
memorial of 1819 and the oration of 1820 place the African slave-trade and
the domestic branch of the