"7. If the land bill shall pass, then some measure to be adopted to limit, practically, grants by Congress to objects of Internal Improvement, to such as in their nature transcend the powers & duties of separate States.
"8. A Comee. of the Senate to sit in the recess to take into consideration the law of the last session (according to Art. 4),--to make a detailed Report, the first day of next session; accompanied by such a bill, as they may recommend, for the purpose of adjusting the Revenue to the necessities of Government.
"NOTE.--My idea would be, that this Comee. should meet in Boston, Oct. 1, & prosecute its inquiries, in Boston, Providence, N. Y., Philadelphia & Pittsburg, if thought necessary.
"The Comee. to consist of one N. E. member
one from Middle States, one from N. W. States, one from S. W. States, one from Southern States."
It is very unpleasant to think that the great sentences of the Reply to Hayne, which the country knows by heart, were never delivered by Mr. Webster in the Senate chamber as we have them. Yet so it is. The speech was taken down in short-hand by Joseph Gales, one of the editors of the _National Intelligencer_, and one of the best stenographic reporters of that day. He was requested by Mr. Webster beforehand to report his speech, which he did. He wrote out his short-hand report at length. That report was submitted to Mr. Webster, and he, with it in his possession, wrote out in his own hand a revised version of the speech. Mr. Everett says, in the Life prefixed to his edition of Mr. Webster's Works, that Mr. Webster had Gales's report but a part of a day. But it is absolutely impossible that Mr. Everett is correct, although the statement was published in Mr. Webster's lifetime. The short-hand notes, and the speech as written out from them by Gales, and the speech in Mr. Webster's handwriting, are now all in the possession of the Boston City Library. They were purchased of Mrs. Gales, widow of Joseph Gales, for the sum of $575 by Robert C. Winthrop, acting in behalf of himself and twenty-two other subscribers who gave $25 each for the purpose. Mr. Webster wrote out the whole of it, although about a third of his manuscript is missing, not, however, the most important or the best known portion. The draught itself shows traces of revision and reconsideration by Mr. Webster in the matter of the structure of some important sentences. He changes Gales's report a great deal, and then in revision makes corrections again and again of his own draught. We give the famous passage about Massachusetts, and the noble peroration, as they are reported by the accurate short-hand writer, doubtless literally as they were spoken, and the passages as finally composed by Mr. Webster and now familiar to the world. The sentences actually spoken well account for the great impression made upon the auditors. They are such as Webster would have been likely to utter on a great occasion and great theme. But we do not like to think that any word or syllable among those that have stirred our hearts from our earliest boyhood did not, in fact, come from the inspired lips of the great patriot and orator. The emotion is like that felt when a lover of Milton sees the manuscript of Comus or Lycidas in the library at Cambridge, and learns that any other than the fit word and perfect phrase could ever have occurred to the poet to express his thought. The exquisite beauty of the verse still abides. But the sense that it was an inspiration is gone.