All that made him estimable as a
public man is contained in it,--the sentiment of nationality, and a
clear sense of the only means by which the United States can remain a
nation; namely, strict fidelity to the Constitution as interpreted by
the authority itself creates, and modified in the way itself appoints.
We have never read the production of a youth which was more prophetic
of the man than this. It was young New England that spoke through him
on that occasion; and in all the best part of his life he never
touched a strain which New England had not inspired, or could not
reach.
His success at college giving him ascendency at home, he employed it
for the benefit of his brother in a manner which few sons would have
dared, and no son ought to attempt. His father, now advanced in years,
infirm, "an old man before his time" through hardship and toil, much
in debt, depending chiefly upon his salary of four hundred dollars a
year as Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, and heavily taxed to
maintain Daniel in college, had seen all his other sons married and
settled except Ezekiel, upon whom he leaned as the staff of his
declining years, and the main dependence of his wife and two maiden
daughters.
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