Part 8

"I know it would be very easy to promote manufactures, at least for a time, but probably for a short time only, if we might act in disregard of other interests. We could cause a sudden transfer of capital and a violent change in the pursuits of men. We could exceedingly benefit some classes by these means. But what then becomes of the interests of others? The power of collecting revenue by duties on imports, and the habit of the government of collecting almost its whole revenue, in that mode, will enable us, without exceeding the bounds of moderation, to give great advantages to those classes of manufactures which we may think most useful to promote at home."

One of his happy retorts upon Mr. Clay was the following:--

"I will be so presumptuous as to take up a challenge which Mr. Speaker has thrown down. He has asked us, in a tone of interrogatory indicative of the feeling of anticipated triumph, to mention any country in which manufactures have flourished without the aid of prohibitory laws.... Sir, I am ready to answer this inquiry.

"There is a country, not undistinguished among the nations, in which the progress of manufactures has been more rapid than in any other, and yet unaided by prohibitions or unnatural restrictions. That country, the happiest which the sun shines on, is our own."

Again, Mr. Clay had made the rash remark that it would cost the nation, as a nation, nothing to convert our ore into iron. Mr. Webster's reply to this seems to us eminently worthy of consideration at the present moment, and at every moment when the tariff is a topic of debate.

"I think," said he, "it would cost us precisely what we can least afford, that is, great labor.... Of manual labor no nation has more than a certain quantity; nor can it be increased at will.... A most important question for every nation, as well as for every individual, to propose to itself, is, how it can best apply that quantity of labor which it is able to perform.... Now, with respect to the quantity of labor, as we all know, different nations are differently circumstanced. Some need, more than anything, work for hands; others require hands for work; and if we ourselves are not absolutely in the latter class, we are still, most fortunately, very near it."

The applicability of these observations to the present condition of affairs in the United States--labor very scarce, and protectionists clamoring to make it scarcer--must be apparent to every reader.

But this was the last of Mr. Webster's efforts in behalf of the freedom of trade. In the spring of 1825, when it devolved upon the House of Representatives to elect a President, the few Federalists remaining in the House became, for a few days, an important body. Mr. Webster had an hereditary love for the house of Adams; and the aged Jefferson himself had personally warned him against Andrew Jackson. Webster it was who, in an interview with Mr. Adams, obtained such assurances as determined the Federalists to give their vote for the New England candidate; and thus terminated the existence of the great party which Hamilton had founded, with which Washington had sympathized, which had ruled the country for twelve years, and maintained a vigorous and useful opposition for a quarter of a century. Daniel Webster was in opposition no longer. He was a defender of the administration of Adams and Clay, supported all their important measures, and voted for, nay, advocated, the Tariff Bill of 1828, which went far beyond that of 1824 in its protective provisions. Taunted with such a remarkable and sudden change of opinion, he said that, New England having been compelled by the act of 1824 to transfer a large part of her capital from commerce to manufactures, he was bound, as her representative, to demand the continuance of the system. Few persons, probably, who heard him give this reason for his conversion, believed it was the true one; and few will ever believe it who shall intimately know the transactions of that winter in Washington. But if it was the true reason, Mr. Webster, in giving it, ruled himself out of the rank of the Great,--who, in every age and land, lead, not follow, their generation. In his speech of 1824 he objects to the protective system on general principles, applicable to every case not clearly exceptional; and the further Congress was disposed to carry an erroneous system, the more was he bound to lift up his voice against it. It seems to us that, when he abandoned the convictions of his own mind and took service under Mr. Clay, he descended (to use the fine simile of the author of "Felix Holt") from the rank of heroes to that of the multitude for whom heroes fight. He was a protectionist, thenceforth, as long as he lived. If he was right in 1824, how wrong he was in 1846! In 1824 he pointed to the high wages of American mechanics as a proof that the protective system was unnecessary; and he might have quoted Adam Smith to show that, in 1770, wages in the Colonies were just as high, compared with wages in Europe, as in 1824. In 1846 he attributed high wages in America to the operation of the protective system. In 1824 free trade was the good, and restriction the evil; in 1846 restriction was the good, and free trade the evil.

Practical wisdom, indeed, was not in this man. He was not formed to guide, but to charm, impress, and rouse mankind. His advocacy of the Greek cause, in 1824, events have shown to be unwise; but his speech on this subject contains some passages so exceedingly fine, noble, and harmonious, that we do not believe they have ever been surpassed in extempore speech by any man but himself. The passage upon Public Opinion, for example, is always read with delight, even by those who can call to mind the greatest number of instances of its apparent untruth.

"The time has been, indeed, when fleets, and armies, and subsidies were the principal reliances, even in the best cause. But, happily for mankind, a great change has taken place in this respect. Moral causes come into consideration in proportion as the progress of knowledge is advanced; and the public opinion of the civilized world is rapidly gaining an ascendency over mere brutal force.... It may be silenced by military power, but it cannot be conquered. It is elastic, irrepressible, and invulnerable to the weapons of ordinary warfare. It is that impassible, unextinguishable enemy of mere violence and arbitrary rule, which, like Milton's angels,

"'Vital in every part,... Cannot, but by annihilating, die.'

"Until this be propitiated or satisfied, it is vain for power to talk either of triumphs or of repose. No matter what fields are desolated, what fortresses surrendered, what armies subdued, or what provinces overrun.... There is an enemy that still exists to check the glory of these triumphs. It follows the conqueror back to the very scene of his ovations; it calls upon him to take notice that Europe, though silent, is yet indignant; it shows him that the sceptre of his victory is a barren sceptre; that it shall confer neither joy nor honor; but shall moulder to dry ashes in his grasp. In the midst of his exultation, it pierces his ear with the cry of injured justice; it denounces against him the indignation of an enlightened and civilized age; it turns to bitterness the cup of his rejoicing, and wounds him with the sting which belongs to the consciousness of having outraged the opinion of mankind."--Works, Vol. III. pp. 77, 78.

Yes: if the conqueror bad the moral feeling which inspired this passage, and if the cry of injured justice could pierce the flattering din of office-seekers surrounding him. But, reading the paragraph as the expression of a hope of what may one day be, how grand and consoling it is! The information given in this fine oration respecting the condition of Greece and the history of her struggle for independence was provided for him by the industry of his friend, Edward Everett.

One of the minor triumphs of Mr. Webster's early Congressional life was his conquest of the heart of John Randolph. In the course of a debate on the sugar tax, in 1816, Mr. Webster had the very common fortune of offending the irascible member from Virginia, and Mr. Randolph, as his custom was, demanded an explanation of the offensive words. Explanation was refused by the member from Massachusetts; whereupon Mr. Randolph demanded "the satisfaction which his insulted feelings required." Mr. Webster's reply to this preposterous demand was everything that it ought to have been. He told Mr. Randolph that he had no right to an explanation, and that the temper and style of the demand were such as to forbid its being conceded as a matter of courtesy. He denied, too, the right of any man to call him to the field for what he might please to consider an insult to his feelings, although he should be "always prepared to repel in a suitable manner the aggression of any man who may presume upon such a refusal." The eccentric Virginian was so much pleased with Mr. Webster's bearing upon this occasion, that he manifested a particular regard for him, and pronounced him a very able man for a Yankee.

It was during these years that Daniel Webster became dear, beyond all other men of his time, to the people of New England. Removing to Boston in 1816, and remaining out of Congress for some years, he won the first place at the New England bar, and a place equal to the foremost at the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States. Not one of his legal arguments has been exactly reported, and some of the most important of them we possess merely in outline; but in such reports as we have, the weight and clearness of his mind are abundantly apparent. In almost every argument of his, there can be found digressions which relieve the strained attention of the bench, and please the unlearned hearer; and he had a happy way of suddenly crystallizing his argument into one luminous phrase, which often seemed to prove his case by merely stating it. Thus, in the Dartmouth College case, he made a rare display of learning (furnished him by associate counsel, he tells us); but his argument is concentrated in two of his simplest sentences:--1. The endowment of a college is private property; 2. The charter of a college is that which constitutes its endowment private property. The Supreme Court accepted these two propositions, and thus secured to every college in the country its right to its endowment. This seems too simple for argument, but it cost a prodigious and powerfully contested lawsuit to reduce the question to this simplicity; and it was Webster's large, calm, and discriminating glance which detected these two fundamental truths in the mountain mass of testimony, argument, and judicial decision. In arguing the great steamboat case, too, he displayed the same qualities of mind. New York having granted to Livingston and Fulton the exclusive right to navigate her waters by steamboats, certain citizens of New Jersey objected, and, after a fierce struggle upon the waters themselves, transferred the contest to the Supreme Court. Mr. Webster said: "The commerce of the United States, under the Constitution of 1787, is a unit," and "what we call the waters of the State of New York are, for the purposes of navigation and commerce, the waters of the United States"; therefore no State can grant exclusive privileges. The Supreme Court affirmed this to be the true doctrine, and thenceforth Captain Cornelius Vanderbilt ran his steamboat without feeling it necessary, on approaching New York, to station a lady at the helm and to hide himself in the hold. Along with this concentrating power, Mr. Webster possessed, as every school-boy knows, a fine talent for amplification and narrative. His narration of the murder of Captain White was almost enough of itself to hang a man.

But it was not his substantial services to his country which drew upon him the eyes of all New England, and made him dear to every son of the Pilgrims. In 1820, the Pilgrim Society of Plymouth celebrated the anniversary of the landing of their forefathers in America. At the dinner of the Society, that day, every man found beside his plate five kernels of corn, to remind him of the time when that was the daily allowance of the settlers, and it devolved upon Daniel Webster to show how worthy they were of better fare. His address on this anniversary is but an amplification of his Junior Fourth-of-July oration of 1800; but what an amplification! It differed from that youthful essay as the first flights of a young eagle, from branch to branch upon its native tree, differ from the sweep of his wings when he takes a continent in his flight, and swings from mountain range to mountain range. We are aware that eulogy is, of all the kinds of composition, the easiest to execute in a tolerable manner. What Mr. Everett calls "patriotic eloquence" should usually be left to persons who are in the gushing time of life; for when men address men, they should say something, clear up something, help forward something, accomplish something. It is not becoming in a full-grown man to utter melodious wind. Nevertheless, it can be truly said of this splendid and irresistible oration, that it carries that kind of composition as far as we can ever expect to see it carried, even in this its native land. What a triumphant joy it must have been to an audience, accustomed for three or four generations to regard preaching as the noblest work of man, keenly susceptible to all the excellences of uttered speech, and who now heard their plain old fathers and grandfathers praised in such massive and magnificent English! Nor can it be said that this speech says nothing. In 1820 it was still part of the industry of New England to fabricate certain articles required by slave-traders in their hellish business; and there were still descendants of the Pilgrims who were actually engaged in the traffic.

"If there be," exclaimed the orator,

"within the extent of our knowledge or influence any participation in this traffic, let us pledge ourselves here, upon the rock of Plymouth, to extirpate and destroy it. It is not fit that the land of the Pilgrims should bear the shame longer. I hear the sound of the hammer, I see the smoke of the furnaces where manacles and fetters are still forged for human limbs. I see the visages of those who by stealth and at midnight labor in this work of hell, foul and dark, as may become the artificers of such instruments of misery and torture. Let that spot be purified, or let it cease to be of New England."--Works, Vol. I. pp. 45, 46.

And he proceeds, in language still more energetic, to call upon his countrymen to purge their land of this iniquity. This oration, widely circulated through the press, gave the orator universal celebrity in the Northern States, and was one of the many causes which secured his continuance in the national councils.

Such was his popularity in Boston, that, in 1824, he was re-elected to Congress by 4,990 votes out of 5,000; and such was his celebrity in his profession, that his annual retainers from banks, insurance companies, and mercantile firms yielded an income that would have satisfied most lawyers even of great eminence.

Those were not the times of five-thousand-dollar fees. As late as 1819, as we see in Mr. Webster's books, he gave "advice" in important cases for twenty dollars; his regular retaining fee was fifty dollars; his "annual retainer," one hundred dollars; his whole charge for conducting a cause rarely exceeded five hundred dollars; and the income of a whole year averaged about twenty thousand dollars. Twenty years later, he has gained a larger sum than that by the trial of a single cause; but in 1820 such an income was immense, and probably not exceeded by that of any other American lawyer. Most lawyers in the United States, he once said, "live well, work hard, and die poor"; and this is particularly likely to be the case with lawyers who spend six months of the year in Congress.

Northern members of Congress, from the foundation of the government, have usually gratified their ambition only by the sacrifice of their interests. The Congress of the United States, modelled upon the Parliament of Great Britain, finds in the North no suitable class of men who can afford to be absent from their affairs half the year. We should naturally choose to be represented in Washington by men distinguished in their several spheres; but in the North, almost all such persons are so involved in business that they cannot accept a seat in Congress, except at the peril of their fortune; and this inconvenience is aggravated by the habits that prevail at the seat of government. In the case of a lawyer like Daniel Webster, who has a large practice in the Supreme Court, the difficulty is diminished, because he can usually attend the court without seriously neglecting his duties in Congress,--usually, but not always. There was one year in the Congressional life of Mr. Webster when he was kept out of the Supreme Court for four months by the high duty that devolved upon him of refuting Calhoun's nullification subtilties; but even in that year, his professional income was more than seven thousand dollars; and he ought by that time, after thirty years of most successful practice, to have been independent of his profession. He was not, however; and never would have been, if he had practised a century. Those habits of profusion, that reckless disregard of pecuniary considerations, of which we noticed indications in his early days, seemed to be part of his moral constitution. He never appeared to know how much money he had, nor how much he owed; and, what was worse, he never appeared to care. He was a profuse giver and a careless payer. It was far easier for him to send a hundred-dollar note in reply to a begging letter, than it was to discharge a long-standing account; and when he had wasted his resources in extravagant and demoralizing gifts, he deemed it a sufficient answer to a presented bill to ask his creditor how a man could pay money who had none.

It is not true, therefore, that the frequent embarrassments of his later years were due to the loss of practice by his attendance in Congress; because, in the years when his professional gains were smallest, his income was large enough for the wants of any reasonable man. Nevertheless, we cannot deny that when, in 1827, by his acceptance of a seat in the Senate, he gave himself permanently to public life, he made a sacrifice of his pecuniary interests which, for a man of such vast requirements and uncalculating habits, was very great.

But his reward was also very great. On that elevated theatre he soon found an opportunity for the display of his talents, which, while it honored and served his country, rendered him the foremost man in that part of it where such talents as his could be appreciated.

All wars of which we have any knowledge have consisted of two parts: first, a war of words; secondly, the conflict of arms. The war of words which issued in the late Rebellion began, in 1828, by the publication of Mr. Calhoun's first paper upon Nullification, called the South Carolina Exposition; and it ended in April, 1861, when President Lincoln issued his call for seventy-five thousand troops, which excited so much merriment at Montgomery. This was a period of thirty-three years, during which every person in the United States who could use either tongue or pen joined in the strife of words, and contributed his share either toward hastening or postponing the final appeal to the sword. Men fight with one another, says Dr. Franklin, because they have not sense enough to settle their disputes in any other way; and when once they have begun, never stop killing one another as long as they have money enough "to pay the butchers." So it appeared in our case. Of all the men who took part in this preliminary war of words, Daniel Webster was incomparably the ablest. He seemed charged with a message and a mission to the people of the United States; and almost everything that he said in his whole life of real value has reference to that message and that mission. The necessity of the Union of these States, the nature of the tie that binds them together, the means by which alone that tie can be kept strong,--this was what he came charged to impart to us; and when he had fully delivered this message, he had done his work. His numberless speeches upon the passing questions of the day,--tariff, Bank, currency, Sub-treasury, and the rest,--in which the partisan spoke rather than the man may have had their value at the time, but there is little in them of durable worth. Those of them which events have not refuted, time has rendered obsolete. No general principles are established in them which can be applied to new cases. Indeed, he used often to assert that there were no general principles in practical statesmanship, but that the government of nations is, and must be, a series of expedients. Several times, in his published works, can be found the assertion, that there is no such thing as a science of political economy, though he says he had "turned over" all the authors on that subject from Adam Smith to his own time. It is when he speaks of the Union and the Constitution, and when he is rousing the sentiment of nationality, that he utters, not, indeed, eternal truths, but truths necessary to the existence of the United States, and which can only become obsolete when the nation is no more.

The whole of his previous life had been an unconscious preparation for these great debates. It was one of the recollections of his childhood, that, in his eighth year, he had bought a handkerchief upon which was printed the Constitution of 1787, which he then read through; and while he was a farmer's boy at home, the great question of its acceptance or rejection had been decided. His father's party was the party for the Constitution, whose only regret concerning it was, that it was not so much of a constitution as they wished it to be. The Republicans dwelt upon its defects and dangers; the Federalists, upon its advantages and beauties: so that all that this receptive lad heard of it at his father's fireside was of its value and necessity. We see in his youthful orations that nothing in the history of the continent struck his imagination so powerfully as the spectacle of thirty-eight gentlemen meeting in a quiet city, and peacefully settling the terms of a national union between thirteen sovereign States, most of which gave up, voluntarily, what the sword alone was once supposed capable of extorting. In all his orations on days of national festivity or mourning, we observe that his weightiest eulogy falls upon those who were conspicuous in this great business. Because Hamilton aided in it, he revered his memory; because Madison was its best interpreter, he venerated his name and deferred absolutely to his judgment. It was clear to his mind that the President can only dismiss an officer of the government as he appoints him, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate; but he would not permit himself to think so against Mr. Madison's decision. His own triumphs at the bar--those upon which he plumed himself---were all such as resulted from his lonely broodings over, and patient study of, the Constitution of his country. A native of one of the smallest of the States, to which the Union was an unmixed benefit and called for no sacrifice of pride, he grew up into nationality without having to pass through any probation of States' rights scruples. Indeed, it was as natural for a man of his calibre to be a national man as it is for his own Monadnock to be three thousand feet above the level of the sea.

The South Carolina Exposition of 1828 appeared to fall still-born from the press. Neither General Jackson nor any of his nearest friends seem to have been so much as aware of its existence; certainly they attached no importance to it. Colonel Benton assures us, that to him the Hayne debate, so far as it related to constitutional questions, seemed a mere oratorical display, without adequate cause or object; and we know that General Jackson, intimately allied with the Hayne family and strongly attached to Colonel Hayne himself, wished him success in the debate, and heard with regret that Mr. Webster was "demolishing" him. Far, indeed, was any one from supposing that a movement had been set on foot which was to end only with the total destruction of the "interest" sought to be protected by it. Far was any one from foreseeing that so poor and slight a thing as the Exposition was the beginning of forty years of strife. It is evident from the Banquo passage of Mr. Webster's principal speech, when, looking at Vice-President Calhoun, he reminded that ambitious man that, in joining the coalition which made Jackson President, he had only given Van Buren a push toward the Presidency,--"No son of theirs succeeding,"--it is evident, we say, from this passage, and from other covert allusions, that he understood the game of Nullification from the beginning, so far as its objects were personal. But there is no reason for supposing that he attached importance to it before that memorable afternoon in December, 1830, when he strolled from the Supreme Court into the Senate-chamber, and chanced to hear Colonel Hayne reviling New England, and repeating the doctrines of the South Carolina Exposition.

Every one knows the story of this first triumph of the United States over its enemies. Daniel Webster, as Mr. Everett records, appeared to be the only person in Washington who was entirely at his ease; and he was so remarkably unconcerned, that Mr. Everett feared he was not aware of the expectations of the public, and the urgent necessity of his exerting all his powers. Another friend mentions, that on the day before the delivery of the principal speech the orator lay down as usual, after dinner, upon a sofa, and soon was heard laughing to himself. Being asked what he was laughing at, he said he had just thought of a way to turn Colonel Hayne's quotation about Banquo's ghost against himself, and he was going to get up and make a note of it. This he did, and then resumed his nap.