made. Where men may speak out, they demand it where the bayonet is at
their throats, they pray for it." And yet again: "If the true spark of
religious and civil liberty be kindled, it will burn. Human agency
cannot extinguish it. Like the earth's central fire, it may be smothered
for a time; the ocean may overwhelm it; mountains may press it down; but
its inherent and unconquerable force will heave both the ocean and the
land, and at some time or other, in some place or other, the volcano
will break out, and flame up to heaven." It would be difficult to find
in any European literature a similar embodiment of an elemental
sentiment of humanity, in an image which is as elemental as the
sentiment to which it gives vivid expression.

And then with what majesty, with what energy, and with what simplicity,
can he denounce a political transaction which, had it not attracted his
ire, would hardly have survived in the memory of his countrymen! Thus,
in his Protest against Mr. Benton's Expunging Resolution, speaking for
himself and his Senatorial colleague, he says: "We rescue our own names,
character, and honor from all participation in this matter; and,
whatever the wayward character of the times, the headlong and plunging
spirit of party devotion, or the fear or the love of power, may have
been able to bring about elsewhere, we desire to thank God that they
have not, as yet, overcome the love of liberty, fidelity to true
republican principles, and a sacred regard for the Constitution in that
State whose soil was drenched to a mire by the first and best blood of
the Revolution." Perhaps the peculiar power of Webster in condemning a
measure by a felicitous epithet, such as that he employs in describing
"the _plunging_ spirit of party devotion," was never more happily
exercised. In that word "plunging," he intended to condense all his
horror and hatred of a transaction which he supposed calculated to throw
the true principles of constitutional government into a bottomless abyss