Wednesday, December 14, 2011

A vast and splendid monument

Let our object be, our country, our whole country and nothing but our country. May that country itself become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror, but of wisdom, of peace, and of liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration forever. Daniel Webster (1782 -1852)




Daniel Webster, (born January 18, 1782, Salisbury, New Hampshire, U.S.—died October 24, 1852, Marshfield, Massachusetts), American orator and politician who practiced prominently as a lawyer before the U.S. Supreme Court and served as a U.S. congressman (1813–17, 1823–27), a U.S. senator (1827–41, 1845–50), and U.S. secretary of state (1841–43, 1850–52). He is best known as an enthusiastic nationalist and as an advocate of business interests during the period of the Jacksonian agrarianism.   https://www.britannica.com/biography/Daniel-Webster

A dollop of Daniel:

Justice, sir, is the great interest of man on earth. It is the ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together.

The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power.

A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue.

Let us not forget that the cultivation of the earth is the most important labor of man. When tillage begins, other arts will follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of civilization.

There is nothing so powerful as truth, and often nothing so strange.

I mistrust the judgment of every man in a case in which his own wishes are concerned.

We are all agents of the same supreme power, the people.

Let it be borne on the flag under which we rally in every exigency, one country, one Constitution, one destiny.

I was born an American; I will live an American; I shall die an American.

12/14/11









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