Chapter V: Part 5

Only through these exchange offices can correspondence go from one country to another, as no other offices are provided with the clerical force and system necessary to the handling of international mails. It is at times difficult to explain to business people that a North German Lloyd steamer calling at Gibraltar and Naples will carry mail for Naples only, and that a letter addressed to Gibraltar by that particular steamer cannot be delivered at that port, but will be carried all the way to Naples, whence it will be re-despatched to Gibraltar through a more or less circuitous route. This is because Gibraltar is not an "exchange office" with New York, and "closed mails" are not sent thereto from New York. A "closed mail," as the name indicates, is a mail duly tied up, sealed, and labelled with the name of the exchange office to which it is sent, and not to be opened until it gets there, passing sometimes through four or five countries before reaching its destination. No other kind of mails is carried by steamers, yet the answer will often be made to inquiries, that a certain letter would have been sent "in open mail" to London or elsewhere. This does not mean that the mail in which the letter in question would be sent is despatched "opened," but that it is sent in the "closed" mail for London, there to be opened and disposed of by the London clerks, just as if it had been mailed in London. This course is followed with all correspondence for offices abroad, or even entire countries, which is not in sufficient quantity to justify the establishment of an exchange; and the mails for these offices or countries is sent to the foreign exchange office with the best facilities for disposing of it. Thus mail for Liberia will be sent sometimes to Hamburg, Germany, and at other times to Liverpool, England.

Belgian label--string made fast through wooden block with
wax seal and a second block of compressed lead.
Paraguay label--plain linen.
Austrian label--wooden block, string sealed with wax.
German white leather label.
Argentine label--strong, ordinary leather.
Norwegian label--cardboard--string sealed on back with wax.]

A closed mail consists of ordinary letters, printed matter, and other articles, and of registered articles. Sometimes all these elements will be enclosed in the same sack, or they may be despatched in separate sacks, when in sufficient quantity. The registered mail is tied up and sealed in distinctive red-striped sacks, and then these sacks are enclosed in ordinary mail-sacks, tied up and labelled in exactly the same manner as the sacks containing ordinary letters, so that it is impossible to tell from the outside which sack contains registered matter. A mail may consist of one sack only, containing all classes of correspondence, or it may be composed of a large number of sacks. In either case it is accompanied by a letter bill, enclosed in one of the sacks. This letter bill is one of a series beginning on January 1st of each year, being numbered with consecutive numbers to each foreign exchange office. Thus when Naples receives a mail from New York containing the letter bill numbered 65, and the previous mail received at that office had Letter Bill No. 63, Naples knows that mail with Letter Bill No. 64 is missing, and immediately notifies New York of the fact in a form called "Bulletin of Verification." This form is in use for official correspondence between all offices in the Postal Union regarding irregularities of all sorts discovered in the mails of one office for another. A record of the number of each mail and the particulars of its despatch being kept by each office, the inquiry from Naples in the above instance would immediately be investigated, and that office notified that the missing mail had been sent on such a date, by such a steamer, etc.; or, if more was known concerning its fate, as in the case of the mails sent per La Bourgogne last July, mention would be made of the fact. The Russian travelling exchange office of Kibarty to St. Petersburg frequently receives the mails sent from this office every Wednesday in inverted order, that is, the mail sent by a fast White Star liner at noon on Wednesday, may be received a few hours ahead of the mail sent by a slower American line steamer which sailed at 10 A.M. on the same day. The occurrence is so often repeated that one would think it would go unnoticed, and the Russian office would wait a few hours anyway before notifying New York that a mail is missing, but such is not the case, and the bulletin "Your mail No. ---- is missing," is immediately sent to New York, followed next day by another bulletin, "Your mail No. ---- has arrived." At the New York office the first bulletin is always held until receipt of the second, which is sure to follow and renders investigation unnecessary; they are called "Katie didn't," and "Katie did." Many bulletins are received subsequent to the holidays with best wishes for Christmas or New Year from one office to another. They are mostly all in English, French, or Spanish, and are, at times, more or less humorous, if not pathetic, as was one received from Martinique about the time Cervera's ill-fated fleet was hovering near that island. A mail from New York had just been received at St. Pierre, and in one of the sacks the horrified French Director of Posts had found a cat in the last stages of decomposition. He had sent for the American Consul to view the remains, and his bulletin to the New York office regarding this irregularity was a model of official French. It stated how the smell of that dead cat had penetrated every corner of his office, and one could read between the lines that he suspected the whole affair to be a joke played upon him by the Yankee postal clerks. The event was duly investigated in the New York office, but beyond the fact that one member of the numerous pussy tribe in the mail building was missing, little else could be positively ascertained. That the cat could have been sent in that bag as a joke was not to be thought of for an instant, but it was presumed that in its wandering among the piles of mail-sacks in the basement, pussy had found the sack for Martinique awaiting to be sealed, and had concluded to take a nap therein. The sack was probably tied up and sealed soon afterward, and the unwilling stow-away had been sent to the steamer. Later on it was reported by the purser of the steamer that he suspected there was something alive in one of the mail-bags, but such is the respect for postal seals that he never thought to open the sack in the presence of witnesses and release the animal. Thrown in the mail-room with other sacks on top of it, there could be no doubt that poor pussy had been smothered before passing the Hook, and his condition when landed at Martinique must have been such as to fully justify and explain the ill-disguised indignation of the French officials.

The letter bill describes minutely the mail it accompanies, states how many sacks of letters, how many sacks of papers, and how many articles registered, describing each registered article separately, except in cases of heavy registered mails, when a separate descriptive list is sent in addition to the letter bill. Thus it is easy for the office of destination to verify the mail it receives and ascertain whether any is missing.

Small closed mails are at times enclosed inside of closed mails for other offices; for instance, the mails made up at Paris for Guatemala are in a sack duly sealed and labelled as aforesaid, but this sack is put inside of one of the bags for the New York office, and in such cases the fact is noted on the letter bill sent with the New York mail.

The business of the foreign clerks when a foreign mail is received in the manner described in our first lines is to open promptly every sack received, inspect and dispose of contents, and report to the chief clerk the result from each sack thus opened. Each clerk takes hold of one of the sacks piled on the table, and throws it on another table used for opening the mails. He cuts open the fastenings, keeping the label separate, and also the letter-bill, if he happens to find it in the sack; if several classes of mail matter are found therein, he pushes the ordinary letters over to one side, sweeps the newspapers into large four-wheeled baskets near by, takes to another place the smaller enclosed mails addressed to other offices, and lays the registered sack on the chief clerk's desk, where a man from the registry division will receive it and give a receipt for it. The clerk then calls out to the chief clerk the result of his examination, "Lisbon-Reg.-Bill and 1 Honolulu"--which means that in the sack just opened he found the mail from Lisbon for New York with the letter-bill, registered articles and a smaller closed mail for Honolulu. Like the rattle of musketry these calls are fired at the chief clerk, who marks everything on a tally-sheet, which will later on be compared with the advices received from the foreign offices on each letter-bill; and if any discrepancy is found it will be investigated, resulting in a bulletin of verification to office of origin, or in something worse for the foreign clerk who made an erroneous announcement of the contents, if the fault is laid to him. In a few minutes, sometimes an hour or more, an entire mail is opened and the room cleared, the registry man getting away to his department with all the registered mails, and the newspaper force wheeling away the baskets full of newspapers and packages. The letters are then divided into four parts--those for New York City proper, those for the rest of the United States and Canada, those for foreign countries which have been sent in open mail to New York, and those which are unpaid or partially prepaid. Many foreign offices make a separation of the mails for New York City from those for other places, but this is a matter of accommodation and reciprocal arrangements between exchange offices; and the work of separation is, strictly speaking, that of the foreign clerks in any office. The newspapers are treated in the same manner as the letters. All city mail is then sent to the city department for final distribution and delivery, and that for other parts of the United States and Canada is sent to the domestic mail division for despatch. All letters and mail addressed to other countries are retained in the foreign division, and included in the next mail for these countries. The unpaid and short-paid mail is "rated up" before delivery to other divisions. This mail is put up under distinctive labels. The despatching offices have marked on each article the amount of deficiency in prepayment. No matter where originating, this amount is marked in French money (centimes). The letter "T" (initial of French word "tax") is also stamped on covers. The foreign clerks at the receiving office calculate, in the money of their country, the amount of deficiency and double it up, stamping this charge on the covers for collection by office of delivery.

This work, and also that of separating New York mail and mail for the principal States and cities, is done by the sea post-offices in steamers of the North German Lloyd, Hamburg-American, and American Lines; and when mails are received by either of these steamers they are ready for delivery in a much shorter time than when received by other vessels. In addition to the sea post-office service, the transfer service has also in the last two or three years materially reduced the work at the foreign department in the New York office.

No sooner has the "ticker" reported the Campania or other big liner "off Fire Island" than a veteran of the transportation department, accompanied by a few clerks and porters, hastens to the foot of Cortlandt Street and boards the Postmaster-General, the flag-ship of the post-office fleet. The boat was built for this service, and is equipped with spacious mail-rooms, chutes for transboarding sacks, and other expediting appliances. Steam is up, and she is off down the bay to meet the big steamer. She makes fast to her sides, and the mails are received aboard through the chutes, while the clerks check and verify the number received on a sort of invoice called "way bill," prepared by the London, Havre, or sea post-office. Frequently the passengers are still awaiting the quarantine doctor while the mails are speeding on their way to the Battery, where the New York City sacks are landed; then to the Pennsylvania Railroad, then to the foot of Forty-second Street, where wagons await the mails for the Grand Central Depot. Thus a great saving in time is often made, while formerly the whole mail went first to the docks of the several transatlantic lines, then by wagons to the General Post-Office, then again by wagons to the different depots. When the mails are handled by sea post-offices during the sea-trip, they generally arrive ready for the trains, and little but what is for New York City proper comes to the general office; but the large and heavy mails on the Cunard and White Star Lines, also on the French Line, are not thus assorted, and fully two-thirds has to come to the foreign division to be handled as previously described.

We have explained to a great extent so far what seems to pertain to the incoming mails only; but we said at the start that the foreign mail is worked throughout the world in every exchange office very much after the same pattern, and it will now be easier to explain the handling of mail going from the United States to other countries. There are in the United States several exchange offices besides New York, but, with the exception of New Orleans and San Francisco, the mails they make up consist only of matter originating at each of these offices. Mail for some of the Central American republics is sent to New Orleans, and mail for transpacific countries goes mostly to San Francisco. All other mail, no matter where dropped in the letter-box, comes to the New York office through the instrumentality of the Railway Mail Service. Letters for abroad are tied up in bundles, and labelled "New York Foreign." Some of the railway mail offices make a preliminary separation by countries, and many bundles reach New York labelled "Russia," "Switzerland," etc.; but as there are many exchange offices in these foreign countries, these bundles have again to be opened at New York, and assorted, although this first separation facilitates the process. The bundles are cut open, and the letters are all passed through the electric machine or stamped by hand, the "back-stamp" thus impressed showing their date of arrival in New York.

This is not done with letters originating in New York City, the date and time of mailing being in that case shown in the stamp-mark cancelling the postage-stamps, and being held sufficient for records. The mail having been "back-stamped," goes on a low shelf in front of each distributor, and is then assorted according to destination. The "separating case" consists of nine rows of boxes, ten boxes in each row. Many of the boxes bear the names of exchange offices in Europe or those reached by steamers for Europe. There are also boxes for other parts of the world, in which letters are deposited to be later on taken to another special "separating case" for these countries. In each separating case there is a box where unpaid or short-paid letters are deposited. A special clerk takes them out, weighs them, marks thereon the deficient postage, and stamps them "T," when they are assorted on a separate case and tied up in bundles under labels indicating that the contents of the bundles consist of short-paid mail. They go in the same sacks as ordinary letters. When a box bearing the name of an exchange office is full (about one hundred and fifty letters), the contents are taken out, divided into two parts, the largest letters being laid across both parts, and the whole is tied up in a sheet of strong manila paper. String is not spared in this process, and so securely and strongly are these packages tied that they have been known to remain in the water for days and weeks at times, and when found, with the exception of the top letters and the edges, they were yet in a condition to permit delivery to persons for whom they were intended. Many people, no doubt, some weeks after the Elbe disaster, remember having received letters with a paster attached, stating that the letter had been found in the North Sea, in a bag originating in Norway and sunk with the Elbe. This was the only sack of mail ever recovered from that steamer. The same was true of the mail recovered from the Oregon, sacks being found far down the Jersey coast days after the wreck of that steamer, and forwarded to New York, where, after being dried, most of the letters were found to be deliverable.

The package thus wrapped and tied is labelled with the printed name of the exchange office for which its contents are intended, and thrown into a large basket. When the basket is full, it is wheeled over to the pouching rack, an iron frame divided into sections, each section bearing the name of an exchange office, and provided with four hooks which hold open a mail sack. The pouching clerk takes the packages of letters, reads the labels thereon, and throws them into the proper sack. When full (about seventy-five pounds), the sack is taken down and ready for tying and sealing up. The last sack taken down receives the letter-bill for the exchange office of destination. The sack is tied, and a label bearing the name of the office for which it is destined is inserted in the string. After several turns have been taken, both ends of the string are passed through the holes at the bottom of a small tin cup which is subsequently filled with hot wax, so that the string cannot be removed without its being cut open (see illustration on page 71). In this country labels made of good Holland linen are used fresh for each sack. In other countries other material is employed, some using leather, some wood, some strong cardboard. The return of labels of any value is generally requested, and they are used over and over until worn out. Great Britain does not use labels of any kind, but has the address of each sack stencilled on the sack itself, thus: "London for New York." This, of course, renders the sack useless for any other service. In the United States the labels are white for letter sacks, buff for papers, and cardinal red for registered mails.

The newspapers are assorted in the basement of the Post-office, very much in the same fashion as letters, but they are not tied up in bundles. The separating cases into which they are thrown are so made that a sack hanging at the lower end of the box receives the mail thrown therein, and when full, it is ready for tying, labelling, and sealing up. In this department are received the queerest odds and ends going through the mails to foreign countries, newspapers especially being selected to hide in their folds sundry articles of every description sent to friends "in the auld country." Jewelry, from the penny kind to really valuable articles, handkerchiefs galore, baby's dressing outfits, rattlesnake skins, plugs of tobacco, cucumbers--these and many other curios of every description are found and stopped. If the address of the sender appears on the package, it is returned to him direct. Otherwise it goes to the Dead Letter Office, where it is kept a certain length of time awaiting to be claimed. The unclaimed part is finally sold at auction.

In the letter department there are also curiosities, but of another kind. The greatest part of the letters addressed to Santa Claus in Greenland, or other Northern lands, are treated by the foreign clerks. There are also many mysteries to be unravelled in the queer hieroglyphics which are supposed to be the addresses of letters, especially those going to Russia, Turkey, Hungary, and even Italy. Clerks of the foreign department are not linguists; but the same characters recurring so constantly soon appear familiar, and they experience no trouble in "boxing" the letters to the proper office.

When a mail has closed, no more letters or papers are put in the assorting boxes, but everything that was there is taken out, tied, labelled, and sacked. The letter-bills are then prepared, and after all the sacks are sealed the way-bills are made up in duplicate copies. A full European mail _via_ Queenstown or _via_ Southampton averages nine to twelve hundred sacks, fully two-thirds of which have been made up in the New York office. The way-bill describes this large mail only as so many letter-sacks and so many paper-sacks from the New York office, or the Chicago, or other office of origin, for Paris, or for Dublin, etc., and when the steamers land the mail at its port of arrival, the way-bills are used to check and verify the number of sacks landed. One copy of the way-bill is returned to New York with a receipt from the official at the port of destination, and the responsibility of this office for the mails ceases. Their further transportation will be the business of the administration which has received them.

The Parcels Post system is also taken care of by the clerks of the foreign department, but as it is a system based on special conventions or agreements between any two countries, it is not within the sphere of an article relating to the international mail service as regulated by the Postal Union Conventions. The exchange of large parcels, however, as well as of ordinary correspondence, is one of the improvements which remain for future postal congresses to introduce in the system. At present, the United States parcels' post exchange is confined to the West Indies, Central America, Mexico, Hawaii, and Newfoundland. Ordinary merchandise not exceeding eleven pounds can be forwarded under that system for twelve cents a pound.

The general supervision over all American exchange offices is centred in the Office of Foreign Mails, in Washington, but the fact that over ninety per cent. of foreign mail matter is handled, or passes through the New York office would make exceedingly advantageous, especially for business interests all over the country, the transfer to New York of the supreme direction of that service. Many times questions have to be decided and steps taken at short notice, delay being the great bugaboo of postal officials, and in such cases constant and daily touch with a system ever increasing and improving would be of incalculable benefit. The New York force, however, is so well trained, its superintendents and clerks are so completely acquainted with every detail of the system, that so far the business world has not suffered from the present arrangement. It certainly has not gained. A flattering testimonial of this efficiency of the New York foreign force is found in a report to his government of the New Zealand Postal Agent residing at San Francisco and in charge of the important British-Australian Mail Service. "I find," says he, "that the New York officials are extremely anxious to make the best connections and are indefatigable in their efforts to expedite the transfer of mails. Messrs. Maze and Boyle,[1] Superintendent and Assistant Superintendent of mails in New York City, are particularly energetic and watchful, and no stone is left unturned at that office to further our interests in that direction, and the mails are often transferred to tugs and sent after the Atlantic liners when late."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Lately appointed Post-office Inspector.

NEMESIS

_"Vicisti, Galilæo"_

I

Above the fallen sculpture
Of the pantheon of the Past,
One haggard face looks heavenward
A challenge to the last.
Behold that levelling NEMESIS,
Who rears her balance still,
Scorning a Good that flowers
From roots of good and ill:
A Tonic from the mixture
Of mortal gall and balm!
A foam of their equation--
Fume of waste and compensation,
Which the Cup of trituration
Wreathes with victory and calm!

But oh, thou ruthless goddess,
With never-favoring eyes,
Is Heaven so poor that justice
Metes the bounty of the skies?
So poor that every blessing
Fills the debit of a cost!
That all process is returning,
And all gain is of the lost!

How shalt thou poise the courage
That covets all things hard?
How pay the love unmeasured
That could not brook reward?
How prompt self-loyal honor--
Supreme above desire,
That bids the strong die for the weak,
The martyr sing in fire?
Why do I droop in bower,
And sigh in sacred hall?
Why stifle under shelter,
Yet where through forest tall
The rime of hoary winter
In stinging spray resolves,
I sing to the northwind's fury,
And shout with the starving wolves?

Up through a hundred tumults
I won to fields of peace:
A veteran scarred and grizzled,
On furlough, or release.

I roam the heights of freedom,
And through the mists of death
I hail the thrones supernal
With bold and jovial breath.

What of thy priests confuting
Of fate, and form and law--
Of being and essence, and counterpoise
Of poles that drive and draw?
Ever a compensation--
Some pandering purchase still!
But the vehm of achieving reason
Is the all-patrician WILL!

II

Lo! where the world is quiet
That heeds not me, nor thee,
I watch while the healing planets
Refreshen the brackish sea;
My vision of hope and progress
Has passed with thin day-light,
And the SAME, in its ancient splendor,
Is new in the blooming night:
Then swathe thy locks with shadows,
And poppied wreaths entwine,
And steep in thy pagan nectar
The nightshade's 'trancing vine:
Yet a voice shall pierce thy stupor,
And thou shalt not forget:
"My locks, which the dews have laden,
With drops of the night are wet....
Take thought for no to-morrow!...
Let the dead bury their dead!..."
What boots it that IMMANUEL hath
Not where to lay His head!

III

Sorrow no more nor glory
Shall toss my even beam.
Rest, rest thy weary balance!
I am dreaming of the dream
Wherein neither pain nor pleasure--
Wherein neither toil nor treasure--
Wherein neither guess nor measure
May be, nor yet may seem,--
A dream of life Ideal,
That knows its own control,--
Whose ends are at the centre,
And whose balance is the whole.

DANIEL WEBSTER

WITH UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS AND SOME EXAMPLES OF HIS PREPARATION FOR PUBLIC SPEAKING

By George F. Hoar

In one respect Daniel Webster is the most striking figure in our history, and one of the few most striking figures in all history. That is, in the impression he made on everybody--that, great as were his achievements, he was himself greater than his greatest achievement.

Franklin, Webster, and Emerson are the three great New Englanders. Each of them was a great public teacher. If Webster did not lack, at least he did not manifest, Franklin's wonderful common-sense, as applied to common things and common life. He had not Emerson's profound spiritual discernment or wonderful poetic instinct. But his intellect seems like a vast quarry. When you have excavated the great rocks at the surface, you know there is an inexhaustible supply left. When he died, the people felt as if the corner-stone of the Capitol had been removed; as if the elephant had died that bore the universe on its back.

Emerson's portraiture of Webster at Bunker Hill is made up of a few strokes. But it reveals the whole secret. Great as were the things that Webster said, profound as was his reasoning, lofty as are the flights of his imagination, stirring as are his appeals to the profoundest passions of his countrymen, there is a constant feeling that Jove is behind these thunderbolts. That is the contrast between him and so many other orators. Even in Choate and Phillips you are admiring the phrase and the elocution, and not the men. In Webster you are thinking of the man, and not the phrases. The best things that he said do not seem to his listener to be superior, and rarely seem to his listener to be equal, to the man who said them. There is plenty of reserve power behind--

... Half his strength he put not forth, but checked
His thunder in mid-volley.

Emerson also said of him, "His strength was like the falling of a planet; his discretion, the return of its due and perfect curve."

Nothing certainly can be more profitable for youth who desire to cultivate the capacity for public speaking for the purpose of addressing juries, legislative bodies, or popular assemblies, than the study of the style, the delivery, and the method of preparation of him whom nearly all his countrymen think the foremost American orator, and whom many of them think the foremost orator who ever spoke the English tongue. Many admirable critics have dealt with these topics.[2]

Mr. Winthrop has told,[3] in his own delightful way, the story of one of Webster's compositions, famous at the time, now almost forgotten.

Mr. Winthrop says also truly of Daniel Webster:

"Daniel Webster, unlike Everett or Choate, was all deliberation, both in matter and manner. I do not believe that it ever occurred to him what gestures he should make, or that he ever remembered what gestures he had made. His words seemed to flow spontaneously and often slowly, whether from his lips or his pen, as from a profound and exhaustless reservoir of thought. Of him it might be, and perhaps often has been, said:

"... Deep on his front engraven
Deliberation sat, and public care."

He says of Webster's eloquence that it was the eloquence of clear, cogent argument, and of occasional deep emotion, expressed in clear, forcible Saxon words--sometimes adorned by most felicitous quotations and sometimes by magnificent and matchless metaphors.

James Parton says:

"He discovered, he says, that the value as well as the force of a sentence depends chiefly upon its meaning, not its language, and that great writing is that in which much is said in a few words, and those words the simplest that will answer the purpose. Having made this notable discovery, he became a great eraser of adjectives, and toiled after simplicity and directness."

Edward Everett, who knew Mr. Webster very intimately, says:

"Perhaps the noblest bursts--the loftiest flights, the last and warmest tints of his discourses of this kind--were the unpremeditated inspiration of the moment of delivery."

I suppose, from all I can gather, that Mr. Webster, with very few exceptions indeed, committed to writing nothing but the heads of his speeches. But they were, nearly all of them, upon subjects constantly in his thoughts. He had undoubtedly matured sentences and phrases which came to his mind in leisure moments, and which came to his memory under the stimulant of great occasions and great audiences, in addressing juries or public assemblies or the Senate, with which he ornamented his discourses, or strengthened his argument. Most of the speeches we have only as they came to us in the imperfect reporting of the time. Some of them, like the oration at Plymouth, he probably revised carefully before they were published. We have his own testimony that this was true of the well-known "morning drum-beat" passage in the speech on the President's Protest.

Still, the testimony is abundant that some of his best passages must have come from an inspiration while he was upon his feet. Mr. Winthrop gives an account of one; Mellen Chamberlain, a most accomplished critic and observer, another. And there are plenty of others floating about. Judge Chamberlain says one thing of him, which I dare say may have been said before and since. It explains Webster's influence over his auditors and over posterity. He says:

"He was perfectly sane, and it may be the most perfectly sane orator who ever spoke English."

* * * * *

I have in my possession a good many of Mr. Webster's manuscripts, including his preparations for speeches, letters from him to intimate friends and from his intimate friends to him, a good many bound volumes of political pamphlets, some of them with the autographs of famous authors, and some of his books. From these I select a few which relate to important and interesting events in his life, or throw some additional light upon his habit and method of preparation for public speaking, adding some explanation and comment.

One of the greatest debates in our parliamentary history, only surpassed in importance in Mr. Webster's public life by the debate with Hayne on Foot's Resolution and the debate on the Compromise measures in March, 1850, is the debate on the Sub-Treasury in the early part of the year 1838. Silas Wright introduced the Sub-Treasury Bill January 16, 1838. January 30, 1838, the bill came on for a second reading, and Mr. Wright made an elaborate speech in its support. The next day Mr. Webster spoke. His speech, which is wholly a reply to Wright, makes no allusion whatever to Mr. Calhoun. It is reported in the fourth volume of his works, page 432. I have before me Mr. Webster's notes of preparation for that speech. They constitute a mere brief, all included on six pages of letter-paper, and mostly consisting of mere catch-words. The first sentence or two, however, indicate the difference between Webster and the supporters of the Sub-Treasury:

"Let the government attend to its own business; and let the people attend to theirs."

"Let the government take care of the currency for its own revenue; for all other purposes, let it leave it to the States and to the people."

"Ominous and disheartening sentences. Yet the whole spirit of the Administration and of this bill."

There is no hint in these notes, except the above, of any of the eloquent and weighty sentences with which the speech abounds.

February 15, 1838, Mr. Calhoun spoke on the Independent Treasury Bill. (See, for this speech, his Works, vol. 3, page 202.) He makes an allusion to one of Mr. Webster's arguments, viz., his claim that the government should furnish paper currency. But the speech contains nothing personal or calculated to excite challenge and reply. March 10, 1838, Calhoun makes a second speech on the same bill (reported, Works, vol. 3, page 244). That speech, also, contains hardly any allusion to Mr. Webster. It is devoted almost wholly to a reply to Clay, between whom and Calhoun a very angry personal altercation had arisen. March 12, 1838, Mr. Webster delivered his second speech on the Sub-Treasury, which is reported in his Works, vol. 4, page 424. It occupies seventy-six pages there. Of this, the last thirty-three are a reply to Mr. Calhoun. Calhoun said in his answer, which was made on the 22d of the same month, that Webster delivered this part of his speech with great vehemence, and evidently considered it the most important portion of his remarks. So much of the speech as is a reply to Mr. Calhoun, however, deals chiefly with a speech made by him at the extra session in September, 1837, and with a letter known as the "Edgefield Letter," written by Mr. Calhoun to his constituents in the vacation. I have Mr. Webster's entire preparation for this speech. It is in Webster's handwriting, and consists of eight heads, all on one page of a sheet of small note-paper, labelled on the back, in Webster's handwriting, "Heads of my speech on the Sub-Treasury," and is as follows:

"No. 1. General state of the country and credit system."

"No. 2. Our pecuniary condition and question of excess."

"No. 3. Is the measure suited to the condition of the country?"

"No. 4. Is it a just exercise of our powers?"

"No. 5. Mr. C.'s speech, September 19."

"No. 6. Mr. C.'s letter, November 3."

"No. 7. Mr. C.'s speech, February 15."

"No. 8. Identity of commerce."

Besides this, Mr. Webster wrote out the concluding part of the speech in twenty-one pages of a rather small letter-paper, of which I have the last eight, which correspond to about three of the seventy-six pages which the whole speech occupies in the printed report. This part seems to have been corrected again and again. A fac-simile of a part of one of these pages is here given, showing how careful was Mr. Webster's revision and correction. The whole page runs:

"Sir, the spirit of Union is particularly liable to temptation, & seduction, in moments of peace & prosperity. In war, this spirit is strengthened, by a sense of common danger, & by a thousand recollections of ancient efforts, & ancient glory, in a common cause.

"In the calms of a long peace, & the absence of all apparent causes of great alarm, things near gain an ascendancy over things remote. Local interests & feelings overshadow national sentiments. Our attention, our regard, & our attachment, are ever more solicited to what touches us closest, feel less and less the attraction of a distant orb. Such tendencies, we are bound by true patriotism, & by our love of union, to resist."

Mr. Calhoun replied to this speech of Webster, March 22, 1838, in a speech reported in his Works, vol. 3, pages 279-330. Calhoun had both Webster and Clay on his hands in this debate. He certainly bore himself with great courage and ability. The South had no reason to be ashamed of her champion, so far as this was a struggle of pure intellect. When Calhoun got through, Webster instantly rose and answered him in the speech beginning with the famous passage about carrying the war into Africa, reported in Webster's Works, vol. 4, page 500, but not found in the _Globe_. The _Globe_ at that time was a weekly paper, containing very imperfect reports of the daily debates in the Senate. An appendix was published at the end of the session, which had some of the more important speeches written out from the reporters' notes or from other sources, probably under the supervision of their authors. This speech ended the discussion between Calhoun and Webster on this particular measure, although the debates on financial and other questions for several preceding and succeeding years make, in substance, but one long debate between these two famous champions, in which the whole issue between North and South, slavery and freedom, State rights and national powers, was under discussion.

One passage in this speech explains the following note here given in fac-simile, from John Tyler to Mr. Webster, his Secretary of State, written when Jackson broke the silence of the Hermitage:

"On the broad surface of the country, Sir, there is a spot called 'the Hermitage.' In that residence is an occupant very well known, and not a little remarkable both in person and character. Suppose, Sir, the occupant of the Hermitage were now to open that door, enter the Senate, walk forward, and look over the chamber to the seats on the other side. Be not frightened, gentlemen; it is but fancy's sketch. Suppose he should thus come in among us, Sir, and see into whose hands has fallen the chief support of that administration, which was, in so great a degree, appointed by himself, and which he fondly relied on to maintain the principles of his own. If gentlemen were now to see his steady military step, his erect posture, his compressed lips, his firmly knitted brow, and his eye full of fire, I cannot help thinking, Sir, they would all feel somewhat queer. There would be, I imagine, not a little awkward moving and shifting in their seats. They would expect soon to hear the roar of the lion, even if they did not feel his paw."

This speech Mr. Everett declared to be the ablest and most effective of Mr. Webster's speeches on the currency. Lord Overstone, than whom there was never a higher authority upon finance in England, produced a copy of it before a committee of the House of Commons, by whom he was examined, and said it was one of the ablest and most satisfactory discussions of these subjects he had ever seen. He afterward spoke of Mr. Webster as a master who had instructed him upon these matters.

There are notes of a speech on the currency which occupy two pages and three and one-half lines of common letter-paper. The two sentences at the close sum up not only Webster's final conclusion after a life of reflection upon the subject, but, I believe, the final conclusion of the country as to the great doctrine of protection. "The sacrifice made by reducing prices must necessarily fall on labor."

"If price of cotton reduced, at home, may be not abroad. So other articles.

"But labor is fixed down to the place. If you reduce its price, it has no escape. The whole result, then, of reducing cost of production comes merely to this--that the capitalist shall manufacture at a less price, and deduct the loss in price from the labor of his workmen. This is the whole of it.

"I am for protecting labor. I am for enabling it to clothe itself well, feed itself well, and educate itself. I am desirous of giving to labor here, in its competition with capital, advantages which it does not possess elsewhere.

"Every man, who contemplates reduction, must survey the condition of other countries, with which we have great intercourse."

Mr. Webster went to Washington to attend the session of December, 1832, under the burden of a great responsibility. He had borne his share in the great debate in which he established the authority of the Union against the doctrine of nullification in a manner which had won for him the undying regard of the vast majority of his countrymen. President Jackson had done his part in asserting his determination to uphold the Constitution at all hazards and against all enemies. In all that, the President and Mr. Webster were in thorough accord. But he had no sympathy with President Jackson's desire to overthrow the banking system, to provide simply instrumentalities for the government to transact its business, leaving the business of the country to look out for itself. On the other hand, a considerable portion of his own party, led by Mr. Clay, desired to compromise with nullification, and so to modify the tariff as to leave South Carolina a substantial victory, and save her pride from being compelled to submission to the superior strength of the government. With this element Mr. Webster had no sympathy. Again, Jackson claimed to be the direct representative of the people, desired to extend the power of the executive and to circumscribe the legislative power, especially that of the Senate. In resisting that encroachment Webster and Calhoun were in complete accord. So Mr. Webster could have no permanent alliance or co-operation either with Jackson, Calhoun, or Clay.

Mr. Webster prepared for himself the following statement of the principles which were to govern his own course in this great emergency. Some of its language is found in his speech in the Senate of February 8, 1833. But with that exception, it has never, I believe, been made public until now. It is the chart which governed his course in that part of his public life of far greatest public importance, and the part of his public conduct on which his own fame must rest:

"PRINCIPLES.

"1. To sustain the administration, in executing the laws; to
support all measures, necessary to supply defects in the
existing system; & to counteract the proceedings of South
Carolina; to limit all their measures, & all this support, to
the fair purpose of executing the laws, with moderation &
temperance, but with inflexible firmness;--to share this
responsibility with the Administration, frankly & fairly,
without expressing any want of confidence, & without mingling
other topics, with the consideration of these measures.

"2. Not to give up, or compromise, the _principle of
protection_; nor to give any pledges, personal or public, for
its abandonment at any time hereafter.

"3. To bring down the revenue to the just wants of the Govt.:
but this not to extend so far as to prevent Congress from
making, for a limited time, a distribution of the proceeds of
the sales of the public lands among the States, if Congress
shall see fit to make such distribution: nor so far as to
prevent appropriations to such objects of Internal improvement,
as Congress may think deserving of national aid.

"4. To revise the Act of last session, with close scrutiny, &
entire candor; & to reduce duties, in all cases, where such
reduction can, with any fairness, be asked, & with any safety,
granted; having just regard, to the necessities of the Country
in time of war, to the faith plighted by existing & previous
laws to the reasonable protection of capital, & especially to
the security of the interests of _labor & wages_.

"5. If Congress shall not, before the end of the next session
of Congress, pass a law for the distribution of the proceeds of
the public lands, among the States, those proceeds to be
regarded as so much general revenue, applicable to the ordinary
purposes of Government; & the duties on imports to be so much
farther reduced as may, by this means, become necessary.

"6. Provision to be made to direct the framing of proper issues
in law, feigned or real, with a view to submit to the judgment
of the Supreme Court of the U. S. the question, whether
Congress possesses the Constitution to lay & collect duties on
articles imported, for the avowed and only purpose of
protecting & encouraging domestic products & manufactures.

"7. If the land bill shall pass, then some measure to be
adopted to limit, practically, grants by Congress to objects of
Internal Improvement, to such as in their nature transcend the
powers & duties of separate States.

"8. A Comee. of the Senate to sit in the recess to take into
consideration the law of the last session (according to Art.
4),--to make a detailed Report, the first day of next session;
accompanied by such a bill, as they may recommend, for the
purpose of adjusting the Revenue to the necessities of
Government.

"NOTE.--My idea would be, that this Comee. should meet in
Boston, Oct. 1, & prosecute its inquiries, in Boston,
Providence, N. Y., Philadelphia & Pittsburg, if thought
necessary.

"The Comee. to consist of one N. E. member

one from Middle States,
one from N. W. States,
one from S. W. States,
one from Southern States."

It is very unpleasant to think that the great sentences of the Reply to Hayne, which the country knows by heart, were never delivered by Mr. Webster in the Senate chamber as we have them. Yet so it is. The speech was taken down in short-hand by Joseph Gales, one of the editors of the _National Intelligencer_, and one of the best stenographic reporters of that day. He was requested by Mr. Webster beforehand to report his speech, which he did. He wrote out his short-hand report at length. That report was submitted to Mr. Webster, and he, with it in his possession, wrote out in his own hand a revised version of the speech. Mr. Everett says, in the Life prefixed to his edition of Mr. Webster's Works, that Mr. Webster had Gales's report but a part of a day. But it is absolutely impossible that Mr. Everett is correct, although the statement was published in Mr. Webster's lifetime. The short-hand notes, and the speech as written out from them by Gales, and the speech in Mr. Webster's handwriting, are now all in the possession of the Boston City Library. They were purchased of Mrs. Gales, widow of Joseph Gales, for the sum of $575 by Robert C. Winthrop, acting in behalf of himself and twenty-two other subscribers who gave $25 each for the purpose. Mr. Webster wrote out the whole of it, although about a third of his manuscript is missing, not, however, the most important or the best known portion. The draught itself shows traces of revision and reconsideration by Mr. Webster in the matter of the structure of some important sentences. He changes Gales's report a great deal, and then in revision makes corrections again and again of his own draught. We give the famous passage about Massachusetts, and the noble peroration, as they are reported by the accurate short-hand writer, doubtless literally as they were spoken, and the passages as finally composed by Mr. Webster and now familiar to the world. The sentences actually spoken well account for the great impression made upon the auditors. They are such as Webster would have been likely to utter on a great occasion and great theme. But we do not like to think that any word or syllable among those that have stirred our hearts from our earliest boyhood did not, in fact, come from the inspired lips of the great patriot and orator. The emotion is like that felt when a lover of Milton sees the manuscript of Comus or Lycidas in the library at Cambridge, and learns that any other than the fit word and perfect phrase could ever have occurred to the poet to express his thought. The exquisite beauty of the verse still abides. But the sense that it was an inspiration is gone.

It is said that when Milo in his exile read Cicero's speech in his defence, he exclaimed, "O Cicero, hadst thou spoken thus, Milo would not be now eating figs at Marseilles." We cannot say that of the Reply to Hayne. Its grandeur is there as it came unpremeditated and fresh from heart and brain. But it is a little unpleasant to think that the phrases that all Americans know by heart differ so much from those which commanded the applause of the listening Senate on that great day which settled in the tribunal of reason the fate of the Republic.

_The Passage about Massachusetts as Actually Spoken_

"Sir, I shall be led on this occasion into no eulogium on Massachusetts. I shall paint no portraiture of her merits, original, ancient or modern. Yet, sir, I cannot but remember that Boston _was_ the cradle of liberty, that in Massachusetts (the parent of this accursed policy so eternally narrow to the West), etc., etc., etc. I cannot forget that Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill _are_ in Massachusetts, and that in men and means and money she _did_ contribute more than any other State to carry on the Revolutionary war. There was not a State in the Union whose soil was not wetted with Massachusetts blood in the Revolutionary war, and it is to be remembered that of the army to which Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown a majority consisted of New England troops. It is painful to me to recur to these recollections even for the purpose of self-defence, and even to that end, sir, I will not extol the intelligence, the character and the virtue of the people of New England. I leave the theme to itself, here and everywhere, now and forever."

_As Written Out by Mr. Webster and Printed_

"Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts. She needs none. There she is. Behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history; the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain forever. The bones of her sons, falling in the great struggle for Independence, now lie mingled with the soil of every State from New England to Georgia; and there they will lie forever. And Sir, where American Liberty raised its first voice, and where its youth was nurtured and sustained, there it still lives, in the strength of its manhood and full of its original spirit. If discord and disunion shall wound it, if party strife and blind ambition shall hawk at and tear it, if folly and madness, if uneasiness under salutary and necessary restraint, shall succeed in separating it from that Union, by which alone its existence is made sure, it will stand, in the end, by the side of that cradle in which its infancy was rocked; it will stretch forth its arm with whatever of vigor it may still retain over the friends who gather round it; and it will fall at last, if fall it must, amidst the proudest monuments of its own glory, and on the very spot of its origin."

_Peroration as Actually Spoken_