Now it is our duty, while we live on the earth, to cherish this sentiment, to make it prevail over the whole country, even if that country should spread over the whole continent.  It is our duty to carry English principles—­I mean, sir [said Mr. Webster turning to Sir Henry Bulwer], Anglo-Saxon American principles, over the whole continent—­the great principles of Magna Charta, of the English revolution, and especially of the American Revolution, and of the English language.  Our children will hear Shakespeare and Milton recited on the shores of the Pacific.  Nay, before that, American ideas, which are essentially and originally English ideas, will penetrate the Mexican—­the Spanish mind; and Mexicans and Spaniards will thank God that they have been brought to know something of civil liberty, of the trial by jury, and of security for personal rights.

As for the rest, let us take courage.  The day-spring from on high has visited us; the country has been called back, to conscience and to duty.  There is no longer imminent danger of dissolution in these United States. [Loud and repeated cheers.] We shall live, and not die.  We shall live as united Americans; and those who have supposed that they could sever us, that they could rend one American heart from another, and that speculation and hypothesis, that secession and metaphysics, could tear us asunder, will find themselves dreadfully mistaken. [Cheers.]

Let the mind of the sober American people remain sober.  Let it not inflame itself.  Let it do justice to all.  And the truest course, and the surest course, to disappoint those who meditate disunion, is just to leave them to themselves, and see what they can make of it.  No, gentlemen; the time for meditated secession is past.  Americans, North and South, will be hereafter more and more united.  There is a sternness and severity in the public mind lately aroused.  I believe that, North and South, there has been, in the last year, a renovation of public sentiment, an animated revival of the spirit of Union, and, more than all, of attachment to the Constitution, regarding it as indispensably necessary; and if we would preserve our nationality, it is indispensable that the spirit of devotion should be still more largely increased.  And who doubts it?  If we give up that Constitution, what are we?  You are a Manhattan man; I am a Boston man.  Another is a Connecticut, and another a Rhode Island man.  Is it not a great deal better, standing hand to hand, and clasping hands, that we should remain as we have been for sixty years—­citizens of the same country, members of the same Government, united all—­united now and united forever?  That we shall be, gentlemen.  There have been difficulties, contentions, controversies—­angry controversies; but I tell you that, in my judgment,—­

                        “those opposed eyes,
  Which, like the meteors of a troubled heaven,
  All of one nature, of one substance bred,
  Did lately meet in th’ intestine shock,
  Shall now, in mutual well-beseeming ranks,
  March all one way.”