THE AMERICAN UNION. DANIEL WEBSTER.

I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the Union, to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. Nor could I regard him as a safe counsellor in the affairs of this government whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not how the Union may v be best preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it shall be broken up and destroyed. While the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that, in my day at least, that curtain may not rise! God grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies behind! When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may they not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood. Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced; its arms and trophies streaming in all their original luster, not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star obscured; bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as “What is all this worth?” nor those other words of delusion and folly, of “Liberty first, and Union afterwards”; but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, and blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment dear to every true American heart—“Liberty AND Union—now and forever—one and inseparable!”