Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/240

228 this speech, or, at least, two ways of looking at it. One is, to regard it as the work of a statesman seeking to avert Rome great evil from the whole nation. This is the way Mr. Webster would have us look at it, I suppose. His friends tell us it is a statesmanlike speech—very statesmanlike. He himself says. Vera pro gratis —true words in preference to words merely pleasing. Etsi meum ingenium non moneret necessitas cogit—Albeit my own humour should not prompt the counsel, necessity compels it. The necessity so cogent is the attempt to dissolve the Union, in case the Wilmot Proviso should be extended over the new territory. Does any man seriously believe that Mr. Webster really fears a dissolution of this Union undertaken and accomplished on this plea, and by the Southern States? I will not insult the foremost understanding of this continent by supposing he deems it possible. No, we cannot take this view of his conduct.

The other way is to regard it as the work of a politician, seeking something beside the permanent good of a great nation. The lease of the Presidency is to be disposed of for the next four years by a sort of auction. It is in the hands of certain political brokers, who "operate" in presidential and. other political stock. The majority of those brokers are slaveholders or pro-slavery men; they must be conciliated, or they will "not understand the nod" of the candidate—I mean of the man who bids for the lease. All the illustrious men in the national politics have an eye on the transaction, but sometimes the bid has been taken for persons whose chan€e at the sale seemed very poor. General Cass made his bid some time ago. I think his offer is recorded in the famous "Nicholson Letter." He was a Northern man, and bid Non-intervention—the unconstitutionality of any intervention with slavery in the new territory. Mr, Clay made his bid, for old Kentucky "never tires," the same old bid that he has often made—a Compromise. Mr. Calhoun did as he has always done. I will not say he made any bid at all; he was too sick for that, too sick for any thought of the Presidency. Perhaps at this moment the angel of death is dealing with that famed and remarkable man. Nay, he may already have gone where "The servant is free from his master, and the