WEBSTER of long existing, if some mode had not been pro- vided in which those doubts, as they should arise, might be peaceably, but authoritatively, solved. Mr. President, I have thus stated the reasons of my dissent to the doctrines which have been advanced and maintained. I am conscious of having detained you and the Senate much too long. I was drawn into the debate with no previous deliberation, such as is suited to the discussion of so grave and importaat a subject. But it is a subject of which my heart is full, and I have not been willing to suppress the utterance of its spontaneous sentiments. I can not, even now, persuade myself to relinquish it, without expressing once more my deep conviction that, rfinee it respects nothing less than the Union of the States, it is of most vital and essential im- portance to the public happiness. I profess, sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept steadily in view the prosperity and honoi of the whole country, and the preservation oi our federal Union. It is to that Union we owo our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that Union that we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country. That Union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues in the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, prostrate com- merce, and ruined credit. Under its benign in- fluences, these great interests immediately awoke, as from the dead, and sprang forth with new- 61
