The World's Best Orations, Vol. 2 of 10

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Excerpt from The World's Best Orations, Vol. 2 of 10: From the Earliest Period to the Present Time On January 19th, 1830, when Mr. Foot's innocent resolution to inquire into the sales of public lands was before the United States Senate, Thomas H. Benton turned several of his stately periods by an attack on Massachusetts, which precipitated one of the greatest parliamentary debates of modern times - that in which Hayne and Webster were pitted against each other on the right of a State to declare null a Federal statute. Benton himself believed in what he called the Virginia idea of Nullification - which, as he defined it, was that an unconstitutional act is null and void, as being against the Constitution, but is to be obeyed while it remains unrepealed and that its repeal is to be effected constitutionally. Though he never succeeded in making this definition part of the creed of any political party, Benton held it himself to the end of his life, and after agreeing with Jackson that Calhoun was guilty of treason, he opposed Fremont, his own son-in-law, for the presidency, and so maintained his consistency to the last. With Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, he stands as one of the most remarkable group of statesmen and orators of modern times. It happened more than once that he was opposed on questions of vital public policy to all three of the others of the great quartet and that he won against them as he did on what was once the burning question of the removal of the Indians beyond the Mississippi. Differing from each other in so many other respects, Webster, Clay, and Calhoun occupied common ground in their dissent from Benton's theory that the better element of the community is apt to give the worst results when it is trusted to govern the rest. This theory was involved in Jefferson's teachings, but it did not come into actual and rude collision with the stately patriotism of the gentlemen of the colonial and revolutionary period until such of them as survived in 1828 saw Jackson with Benton at his back ready to force issues in its behalf as they had never been forced before in any English-speaking country. The shock produced was so profound that, becoming cumulative from year to year, it resulted finally in the great panic and prostration of business under Van Buren. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.