AMERICAN ORATORY PROLOGUE1 DANIEL WEBSTER (1826) DANIEL WEBSTER (1782-1852), statesman and orator, was born at Salisbury, New Hampshire. He was educated at Dartmouth College, taught school, and studied law. He served several terms in the national House of Repre sentatives, and was three times elected United States senator from Massachusetts. During the first term as senator he made his historical argument and reply to Senator Hayne of South Carolina against nullification. He was secretary of state under the first President Harrison, and also under President Fillmore. True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshaled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. 1 From an oration on Adams and Jefferson delivered at Faneuil Hall, Boston, 1826. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire after it; they cannot reach it. It comes, if it come at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force. The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments, and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men, when their lives, and the fate of their wives, their children, and their country, hang on the decision of the hour. Then words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then patriotism is eloquent; then self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, to his object, this, this, is eloquence; or, rather, it is something greater and higher than eloquence; it is action, noble, sublime, godlike action. WRITS OF ASSISTANCE 1 JAMES OTIS (1761) JAMES OTIS (1725–1783), orator and patriot, was born at West Barnstable, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard College in 1743; was admitted to the Bar and began practice in Plymouth. He removed to Boston and was elected to the Massachusetts legislature, serving several terms. He participated in the battle of Bunker Hill. He was killed by lightning. May it please your honors: I was desired by one of the court to look into the books, and consider the question now before them concerning writs of assistance. I have, accordingly, considered it, and now appear not only in obedience to your order, but likewise in behalf of the inhabitants of this town, who have presented another petition, and out of regard to the liberties of the subject. And I take this opportunity to declare that, whether under a fee or not (for in such a cause as this I despise a fee), I will to my dying day oppose with all the powers and faculties God has given me all such instruments of slavery on the one hand, and villainy on the other, as this writ of assistance is. It appears to me the worst instrument of arbitrary power, the most destructive of English liberty and the fundamental principles of law that ever was found in an English law book. I must, therefore, beg your honors' 1 From an argument delivered before the Superior Court in Boston, February, 1761. In this oration American independence was born. |