What is past must stand; what is established must stand; and with the same firmness with which I shall resist every plan to augment the slave representation, or to bring the Constitution into hazard by attempting to extend our dominions, shall I contend to allow existing rights to remain.
This statement underscores Webster's commitment to maintaining existing rights while opposing any expansion of slave representation.
Share
More from Henry Cabot Lodge
To have refused supreme rule, and then to have effected in the spirit and under the forms of free government all and more than the most brilliant of military chiefs could have achieved by absolute power, is a glory which belongs to…
He accomplished this great labor more successfully by honest and lawful methods than if he had taken the path of the strong-handed savior of society, and his work in this field did more for the welfare of his country than all his battles.
One was the conviction that the struggle must be fought out to the bitter end, and must bring either subjugation or complete independence.
Here is again the same note, always so true and clear, that the United States are not colonies but an independent nation.