You have not yet felt the evil in its full extent. It is mostly in prospect, and you are watching its approach. While you are endeavoring to guard against it, strive to prevent its future recurrence. As you would hunt down, with hound and horn, the wolf who is making nightly havoc of your flocks and herds, pursue and keep down those who would make havoc in your business and property by experiments on our currency. Although the country has bowed beneath the pressure, I do not fear that it will be broken down and prostrated in the dust. Depress them as it may, the energy and industry of the people will enable them to rise again. We have for a long time carried a load of bad government on our shoulders, and we are still able to bear up under it. But I do not see that, for that reason, we should be willing and eager to carry it. I do not see why it should prevent us from wishing to lessen it as much as possible, if not to throw it off altogether, when we know that we can get along so much easier and faster without it. While we are exerting ourselves with renewed industry and economy to recover from its blighting effects, while we plough the land and plough the sea, let us hasten the return of things to their proper state, by such political measures as will best accomplish the desired end. Let us inform our public servants of our wishes, and pursue such a course as will compel them to obey us. In conclusion, my fellow-citizens, I return you my thanks for the patience and attention with which you have listened to me, and pray the beneficent Giver of all good, that he may keep you under the shadow of his wing, and continue to bless you with peace and prosperity. INTRODUCTORY NOTE. On the return of Mr. Webster from the session in which he had particularly signalized himself by the delivery of his masterly speeches on the sub-treasury bill, and in reply to Mr. Calhoun (contained in a subsequent volume of this collection), a large number of his fellow-citizens of Boston could not be restrained from manifesting their sense of his extraordinary efforts, in exhibiting the true character of the odious subtreasury project, and in procuring its ultimate rejection by Congress. He was accordingly invited to meet them at a public dinner, on the 24th of July, 1838. More than fifteen hundred persons attended it, every ticket having been eagerly taken as soon as issued. Every portion of the Hall, floor and galleries, was filled. The Governor of the Commonwealth (Hon. Edward Everett) presided at the table, and the spirit of the occasion and of the company may be gathered from the following remarks with which he introduced Mr. Webster to the assembly: "And now, fellow-citizens," said he, "I rise to discharge the most pleasing part of my duty, which I fear you will think I have too long postponed; the duty which devolves on me, as the organ of your feelings toward our distinguished guest, the senior Senator of the Commonwealth. And yet, fellow-citizens, I appeal to you, that I have approached this duty through the succession of ideas which most naturally conducts our minds and hearts to the grateful topic. I have proposed to you, Our country and its prosperity. Who among the great men, his contemporaries, has more widely surveyed and comprehended the various interests of all its parts? I have proposed, The Union of the States. What public man is there living, whose political course has been more steadily consecrated to its perpetuity? I have proposed to you, The Constitution. And who of our statesmen, from the time of its framers, has more profoundly investigated, more clearly expounded, more powerfully vindicated and sustained it? But these topics I may pass over. They are matters which have been long familiar to you; they need not any comment from me. "The events of the last year, and of the last session of Congress, and the present state of the country, invite our attention more particularly to |