upright opposition was more needed than it was in giving direction to the forces and consistency to the aims of this one. It was a period from which the people of this country can learn many lessons. Rash men, in and out of Congress, there doubtless were, in the opposition, who said and did rash things. Pure and patriotic men there were, connected with the opposition, who committed the mistake of leading movements that were not fully explained; who trusted too implicitly to the excellence of their own motives and the weight of their own virtues, and left that which could be misapprehended or distorted to work injury in the minds of the unsatisfied. But through the whole of that conflict there were men in the Federal party, in both Houses of Congress, who fulfilled the true function of an opposition; who made the limits of opposition so clear, that they incurred no merited obloquy; who were never connected with any occurrence that should cause their judgments as statesmen to be impugned; who spoke firmly, but always temperately; and who never spoke but to save a constitutional principle, or to insure a wiser policy. Of these, Mr. Webster was one of the foremost; on the floor of the lower House he was the first.

He had not lost sight of his resolutions of the last session, which called for information respecting the repeal of the French Decrees. The Secretary of State, Mr. Monroe, had not confined himself to furnishing the facts inquired for, but had entered into an elaborate defence of the war. Without some action upon his answer, the inference would be that it was regarded as conclusive upon the judgment of the House and of the nation. The House had now, with a near approach to unanimity, ordered an inquiry into the causes of the failure of our arms. Mr. Webster deemed it equally important that there should be a discussion of the grounds of the war. "If," he said, "its advocates can show satisfactorily that this war was undertaken on grounds plainly and manifestly just; if they can show that it was necessary and unavoidable; that it is strictly an American war; that it rests solely on American grounds; and that it grew out of a policy just and impartial as it related to the belligerents of Europe-if they ever make all this manifest, the war will change its character. It will then grow as energetic as it now is

feeble. It will then become the cause of the people, and not the cause of a party." He therefore sought and obtained a reference of the secretary's answer to a committee of the whole. This occurred on the 3d of January, 1814. But the discussior was never allowed to take place.

Before many days had elapsed, Mr. Webster felt called upon to speak in terms of indignant rebuke of a project which he and such men as Gaston, Stockton, Hanson, and Cheves regarded as a proposition deliberately to violate the Constitution. The country was filled with rumors of treasonable practices by persons who were said to have given information to the enemy, that had assisted his military movements. The party spirit, that ruled a majority of the House of Representatives, permitted a resolution to be introduced, contemplating the extension of the rules and articles of war, relating to spies, to citizens of the United States. This was tantamount to the establishment of a military jurisdiction for the trial of citizens charged with the offence of treason. Robert Wright, of Maryland, was the member who introduced the resolution, instructing a committee of the whole to inquire into the expediency of so extending the military jurisdiction. Mr. Stockton instantly denounced it as a proposition unfit to be even referred to a committee. Other gentlemen followed him in the same strain, when Mr. Webster arose and delivered a short speech, which is probably very imperfectly preserved, but of which enough remains to vindicate his opposition to the measure. After declaring his readiness to provide additional legal punishments for any description of offences, he proceeded to show that the offences which were alleged to have given occasion for this inquiry constituted the crime of treason, as it stands defined in the Constitution, and that this resolution was one to change the forum for the trial of that offence:

"If illegal intercourse with the enemy existed, he should go as far as any one in applying constitutional remedies to that evil. But this resolution proposes, in effect, to consider whether it is not expedient to try accusations for treason before military instead of civil tribunals. However glaring may be the idea, yet such is in truth the real nature of the proposition. It is to change the forum for the trial of treason. The mover of the resolution and the gentleman from the State of Georgia (Mr. Troup) have not left any doubt on this subject. They have alluded to cases which

they suppose the resolution to embrace, and for which they deem it necessary to provide military punishment. But what is the nature of those cases? Are they not cases of treason? It is said information has been communicated to the enemy, very material to him, respecting the operation of our own forces, by citizens of the United States. Signals are said to have been made for this purpose on the St. Lawrence and elsewhere. Do gentlemen suppose that the act of communicating to the enemy important intelligence, whether by signals or otherwise, whereby he is the better able to defend himself or attack his adversary, is not treason? Certainly, sir, all such offences as gentlemen have mentioned are provided for by law, and adequate penalties annexed to their commission. The simple question before us is, whether we will consider the propriety of taking the power of trying for these offences from the courts of law, where the Constitution has placed it, and confer it on the military. Sir, the proposition strikes me as monstrous. I cannot consent to entertain the consideration of it even for a moment. It goes to destroy the plainest constitutional provisions. If it should prevail, I should not hesitate to pronounce it a most enormous stride of usurpation. Nothing in any government called a free one, even in the worst of times, has exceeded it. I am utterly shocked at the arguments offered in favor of it. When the mover was asked why, in the cases he mentioned, the offenders could not be punished for treasonable practices, I understood him to answer that, on trials for treason in the courts of law, the testimony of two witnesses is required; but, if the trial could be transferred to a military tribunal, the two witnesses could be dispensed with. Are we now gravely to consider a proposition of which this is among the professed objects? The gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Troup) observed that, when persons had been apprehended for offences, they had been rescued by habeas corpus issued by the civil magistrate. And are we to deliberate whether it be not proper for us to prevent the delivery of the citizens of this country from illegal arrests and imprisonment by the interposition of their great constitutional remedy, their writ of habeas corpus? The Constitution contains no provision more valuable; it makes no injunction more direct and imperative than those respecting trials for treason, and the benefit of the habeas corpus. Treason is not left to be defined, even by the highest courts of law. It was foreseen that, in times of commotion, victims might be sacrificed to constructive treason; that doctrine which, in other places and in other times, has shed. so much innocent blood, and which brought Algernon Sydney to the scaffold. The Constitution, therefore, defines treason, and prescribes the mode of proof. But what is there in the worst cases of construction of treason that can be compared, in point of enormity, to the proposition now before us? This is not to give a latitude of construction to the judge; it is to take the cause away from the judge, and carry it to the camp. Instead of indictment, arraignment, and trial, it proposes the summary process of martial law. If the proposition should pass into a law, it takes away the constitutional definition of the offence; it takes

away the prescribed mode of proof; it takes away the trial by jury; it takes away the civil tribunal and establishes the military. On a resolution of this sort, I cannot believe the House will consent to deliberate."

Mr. Wright's resolution was referred, by the small majority of eleven votes, and was made the order of the day for the ensuing Friday. But, after what had occurred, no one ventured to bring it up in Committee of the Whole, and it was never acted upon further.'

A little later, when a bill to encourage enlistments into the army, by giving very high bounties, was before the House, Mr. Webster delivered a speech on the whole subject of the war, which was of an exceedingly elevated and commanding tone.'

The first attempt at the conquest of Canada had failed. Still, the invasion of Canada appeared to be an essential object with the Administration and a majority of its supporters in Congress; for an amendment offered to the bill, to restrict the employment of the troops to be enlisted to the defence of our own territory and frontiers, was rejected by a decisive vote. Mr. Webster had, therefore, to address himself to what he deemed an erroneous policy in the conduct of the war, as well as to speak incidentally on its general merits. These two topics were inseparably connected, because the known differences of opinion respecting the original expediency of the war, and its avowed objects, pointed to the necessity for a change in the

I observe with pain the name of Mr. Calhoun among those who voted for a reference of this resolution. In any other than a time of high party excitement, he could not have been persuaded to give that vote, for he was devotedly attached to the principles of constitutional liberty. Mr. Clay was in the chair. As there was a clear majority for the resolution, he was not called upon to vote, and did not. Among the stories told at that time and repeated in this debate, it was said that Judge Ford, living somewhere near the St. Lawrence, had, when General Wilkinson's army was descending that river, hoisted a light in his upper story, which gave the British information, and that Wilkinson's army was soon fired upon from the Canada shore. Such tales found a ready credence with some of the Administration members, while others probably voted for the res

olution in order to terrify the opponents of the war. The character of Judge Ford was vouched for by several of the most prominent members of the House. He was formerly of New Jersey, and was now a person of eminence in the region where he lived, and had written and spoken a great deal against the war. Perhaps the light which he "hoisted in his upper story was metaphorical.

2 Speech on the Encouragement of Enlistments, January 14, 1814. The speech is very well reported in the Annals of Congress. (Thirteenth Congress, vol. i., pp. 940 et seq.) It was not a prepared speech, but this report was corrected by Mr. Webster. He had no intention of speaking until nine o'clock that morning, and he addressed the House at two. (Correspondence, i., p. 239; letter to his brother Ezekiel Web ster.)

policy which had hitherto governed its prosecution. Of the large circumspection with which a question of war should be approached by the Government of this Union, Mr. Webster spoke in terms that can never lose their importance while that Government remains what it is:

"We are told that our opposition has divided the Government and divided the country. Remember, sir, the state of the Government and of the country when war was declared. Did not difference of opinion then exist? Do we not know that this House was divided? Do we not know that the other House was still more divided? Does not every man, to whom the public documents were accessible, know, that in that House one single vote, if given otherwise than it was, would have rejected the act declaring war, and adopted a different course of measures? A parental, guardian government would have regarded that state of things. It would have weighed such considerations; it would have inquired coolly and dispassionately into the state of public opinion in the States of this confederacy; it would have looked especially to those States most concerned in the professed objects of the war, and whose interests were to be most deeply affected by it. Such a government, knowing that its strength consisted in the union of opinion among the people, would have taken no step of such importance without that union; nor would it have mistaken mere party feeling for national sentiment.

"That occasion, sir, called for a liberal view of things. Not only the degree of union in the sentiments of the people, but the nature and structure of the Government; the general habits and pursuits of the community; the probable consequences of the war, immediate and remote, on our civil institutions; the effect of a vast military patronage; the variety of important local interests and objects-these were considerations essentially belonging to the subject. It was not enough that Government could make out its cause of war on paper, and get the better of England in the argument. This was requisite, but not all that was requisite. The question of war or peace, in a country like this, is not to be compressed into the compass that would fit a small litigation. Incapable, in its nature, of being decided upon technical rules, it is unfit to be discussed in the manner which usually appertains to the forensic habit. It should be regarded as a great question, not only of right, but also of prudence and expediency. Reasons of a general nature, considerations which go back to the origin of our institutions, and other considerations which look forward to our hopeful progress in future times, all belong, in their just proportions and gradations, to a question, in the determination of which the happiness of the present and of future generations may be so much concerned. I have heard no satisfactory vindication of the war on grounds like these. They appear not to have suited the temper of that time. Utterly astonished at the declaration of war, I have been surprised at nothing since. Unless all