ideas; but over all,
submerging all, drowning all, is that great sentiment, that always, and
nevertheless, we are all Americans. It is as Americans that we are
known, the whole world over. Who asks what State you are from, in
Europe, or in Africa, or in Asia? Is he an American--is he of us? Does
he belong to the flag of the country? Does that flag protect him? Does
he rest under the eagle and the Stars and Stripes? If he does, if he is,
all else is subordinate and worthy of little concern. [Cheers.]

Now it is our duty, while we live on the earth, to cherish this
sentiment, to make it prevail over the whole country, even if that
country should spread over the whole continent. It is our duty to carry
English principles--I mean, sir [said Mr. Webster turning to Sir Henry
Bulwer], Anglo-Saxon American principles, over the whole continent--the
great principles of Magna Charta, of the English revolution, and
especially of the American Revolution, and of the English language. Our
children will hear Shakespeare and Milton recited on the shores of the
Pacific. Nay, before that, American ideas, which are essentially and
originally English ideas, will penetrate the Mexican--the Spanish mind;
and Mexicans and Spaniards will thank God that they have been brought to
know something of civil liberty, of the trial by jury, and of security
for personal rights.

As for the rest, let us take courage. The day-spring from on high has
visited us; the country has been called back, to conscience and to duty.
There is no longer imminent danger of dissolution in these United
States. [Loud and repeated cheers.] We shall live, and not die. We shall
live as united Americans; and those who have supposed that they could
sever us, that they could rend one American heart from another, and that
speculation and hypothesis, that secession and metaphysics, could tear
us asunder, will find themselves dreadfully mistaken. [Cheers.]

Let the mind of the sober American people remain sober. Let it not
inflame itself. Let it do justice to all. And the truest course, and
the surest course, to disappoint those who meditate disunion, is just to
leave them to themselves, and see what they can make of it. No,
gentlemen; the time for meditated secession is past. Americans, North
and South, will be hereafter more and more united. There is a sternness
and severity in the public mind lately aroused. I believe that, North
and South, there has been, in the last year, a r