Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 13.pdf/552

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Webster as an Orator. a mountain stream, and who in brilliancy of imagination easily outranks all other Ameri can orators. The only Englishmen who

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not a nurse of political eloquence. It im poses rigid artificial limits and, to the extent that it requires orators to be the expounders

DANIEL WEBSTER.

stand in a class with Webster are Fox and Burke. In comparing him with them it must be borne in mind that his most important speeches were made in construing the terms of a written constitution which, however beneficial it may be to individual liberty, is

of written political scriptures rather than of broad national principles, it hampers the freedom of the mind. Rogers said that he never heard anything equal to Fox's speeches in reply, and Burke, with generous enthusiasm, called him the