This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1849 Excerpt: ...relations and proportions. The functions of government did not, in his view, lie in the region of speculation or emotion. It was "a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants." The ends of government are, indeed, ever identical, but the means used to attain them are various. The practical statesman must aim ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1849 Excerpt: ...relations and proportions. The functions of government did not, in his view, lie in the region of speculation or emotion. It was "a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants." The ends of government are, indeed, ever identical, but the means used to attain them are various. The practical statesman must aim, not at the best conceivable, but the best attainable good. Thus, Mr, Webster always recognized and accepted the necessities of his position. He did not hope against hope, nor waste his energies in attempting the impossible. Living under a government, in which universal suffrage is the ultimate propelling force, ho received the expressed sense of the people as a fact, and not an hypothesis. Like all men who are long in public life, under popular institutions, he incurred the reproach of inconsistency; a reproach not resting upon any change of principle--for he never changed his principles, --but upon the modification of measures and policy which every enlightened statesman yields to the inevitable march of events and innovations of time. Nor was he less remarkable for the breadth and comprehensiveness of his views. He knew no North, no South, no East, no West. His great mind and patriotic heart embraced the whole land with all its interests and all its claims. He had nothing of partisan narrowness or sectional exclusiveness. His point of sight was high enough to take in all parts of the country, and his heart was large enough and warm enough to love it all, to cling to it, to live for it, or die for it. Nothing is more characteristic of greatness than this capacity of enlarged and generous affections. No public man ever earned more fully the title of a national, an American statesman. No heart ever beat with a higher national spirit ...
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