government is founded on property, so clearly that it could not be
misconceived by any honest mind, and could only be perverted from its
plain democratic meaning by the ingenious malignity of such minds as are
deliberately dishonest, and consider lying as justifiable when lying
will serve a party purpose. It is probable that Webster would have been
President of the United States had it not been for one short sentence in
this oration,--"Government is founded on property." It was of no use for
his political friends to prove that he founded on this general
proposition the most democratic views as to the distribution of
property, and advised the enactment of laws calculated to frustrate the
accumulation of large fortunes in a few hands. There were the words,
words horrible to the democratic imagination, and Webster was proclaimed
an aristocrat, and an enemy to the common people. But the delay in the
publication of the oration may also be supposed to have been due to his
desire to prune all its grand passages of eloquence of every epithet and
image which should not be rigorously exact as expressions of his genuine
sentiments and principles. It is probable that the Plymouth oration, as
we possess it in print, is a better oration, in respect to composition,
than that which was heard by the applauding crowd before which it was
originally delivered. It is certain that the largeness, the grandeur,
the weight of Webster's whole nature, were first made manifest to the
intelligent portion of his countrymen by this noble commemorative
address.

Yet it is also certain that he was not himself altogether satisfied with
this oration; and his dissatisfaction with some succeeding popular
speeches, memorable in the annals of American eloquence, was expressed
privately to his friends in the most emphatic terms. On the day he
completed his magnificent Bunker Hill oration, delivered on the 17th of
June, 1825, he wrote to Mr. George Ticknor: "I did the deed this