of an impeachment. Prescott was for twenty years judge of probate for the county of Middlesex; and, after a course of generally useful and respectable administration of the duties of that office, he was impeached on charges of having taken illegal fees from persons having business in his court. The charge did not extend to bribery, but only to the taking of fees for official services to which no fee was attached by law, and to the holding of special courts not authorized by statute. The whole prosecution involved only some very paltry sums, received or demanded by the judge doubtless imprudently and indelicately; and the impeachment itself developed a very strong illustration of the public inexpediency of compensating judges by fees instead of by fixed salaries—a practice which was then discontinued in Massachusetts in relation to all judges except the judges of probate, but which has since been totally changed in that Commonwealth, as it has been elsewhere. The case was attended with a good deal of excitement and prejudice, but the unfortunate judge could scarcely be said to have acted corruptly. Mr. Webster felt much compassion for him, especially as the articles exhibited against him were somewhat vague. In a very powerful argument, which is preserved among Mr. Webster's works, he reasoned-with that close and penetrating logic which was so characteristic of him, and which was all that he could bring to bear upon a case whose aspect was bad-that the charges had not been set forth and proved with the reasonable accuracy and certainty which the law and the constitution required. In this respect, the argument will always remain an important source of information concerning the principles of accusation and proof that ought to be followed on the trial of impeachments. Its well-known exordium stands as one of the most impressive specimens of Mr. Webster's forensic eloquence.'

While Mr. Webster was engaged in the diligent practice of his profession, from which his emoluments at this time were very large, he was unexpectedly and strongly solicited in the autumn of 1822, by many leading gentlemen in Boston, to become their Representative in the next Congress. A meeting of delegates from all the wards of the city appointed a committee to wait upon him and urge his acceptance of a nomina

1

tion. One of these gentlemen, on the day after this committee was appointed, entered Mr. Webster's office, and found him reading. "Mr. Webster," said his visitor, "I come to ask you to throw down your law-books and enter the service of the public; for to the public you' belong. I know what sacrifices we demand of you, but we must rely on your patriotism. We cannot take a refusal." A few days afterward, a formal requisition, signed by all the committee, was presented to him, and he had to make a decision on this, as I believe it to have been to him, not very welcome application. It is not improbable that he may have looked forward to a return to public life in some other position than one which he had formerly filled. He had not ceased to take a strong interest in whatever concerned the country or in what was passing abroad; he was conscious of his own great aptitude for political discussions, and he undoubtedly had that within him for which the exercise of his powers in the walks of his profession, however high they lay along the roads to fame, was not a complete satisfaction. But he had two very good reasons for not being entirely pleased with the invitation of his Boston friends. His circumstances were not so independent as he hoped in a few years more of professional labor to make them; and having once served with distinction in the House of Representatives, and voluntarily retired from it, he did not particularly wish, at the age of forty, to return to that body. But he had become an adopted citizen of Massachusetts, where he had been welcomed with the highest respect and consideration, and he did not think that it became him to reject the proposed honor of representing such a city as Boston in the halls of Congress. He accepted the nomination, and was elected that autumn by a very large majority of the votes.

1 The late William Sturgis, Esq., the gentleman referred to, was himself my authority for this anecdote.

2 It has been stated in a previous chapter that Mr. Webster assumed the payment of his father's debts. He would not suffer his father's estate to be de

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clared insolvent, according to the provisions of the New-Hampshire law; and the consequence was, that his father's debts remained a heavy burden upon him, from which he did not free himself until some time after his removal to Boston.

CHAPTER X.

1823-1824.

REËNTERS

CONGRESS- -SPEECH ON THE GREEK REVOLUTION— TARIFF OF 1824-PROPOSED CHANGES IN THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM -THE CASE OF GIBBONS vs. OGDEN-CANDIDACY OF MR. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS-FIRST VISIT TO MARSHFIELD-REËLECTED TO CONGRESS.

ΟΝ

N the return of Mr. Webster to Congress in December, 1823, after a retirement of six years, he brought a great access of reputation; for, although he had been so long out of public station, he had not been withdrawn from the public eye; and the opportunities of distinction, which he had foregone by abstinence from political affairs, had been more than compensated by the fame which he had acquired as a lawyer and an orator, and which now filled the country. His course was likely to be watched with great interest by all, with some degree of jealousy by a few. The "Federal" party, with which he had acted during his former service in Congress, was no longer an existing organization; and such had been the effect of Mr. Monroe's administration on former political distinctions, that there could scarcely be said to be any well-defined "Republican" party remaining. But the old party feelings, although much abated, had not entirely worn themselves out, nor had the old names wholly ceased to be used. A person of so much distinction, therefore, as Mr. Webster, who had been regarded as a Federalist, in coming again into Congress, came

among some who were not likely to forget that he had been their political opponent.

Mr. Clay was chosen Speaker. Friendly, although not in timate, personal relations had all along existed between him . and Mr. Webster; but Mr. Clay had been an ardent leader during the war on the side of an Administration, some of whose measures Mr. Webster had felt it to be his duty to oppose. Mr. Clay was now one of five or six candidates for the presidency from among whom a choice was to be made, but he probably did not count upon the support of Mr. Webster. The latter. entertained a sincere respect for Mr. Clay's public character, and regarded him as a liberal and honorable man, not unfriendly in his general feeling; yet he did not anticipate that, in the organization and arrangement of the affairs of the House, Mr. Clay would venture entirely to disregard old lines of distinction, although he supposed that in his own case the Speaker would not be afraid to shake off any party trammels that might have formerly existed. The result was, that, at the sugges tion of a former chairman, Mr. Clay placed Mr. Webster at the head of the Judiciary Committee; an appointment which, under all the circumstances, was the most fit which he could have made, and one that was doubtless made from a sense of its fitness.

In the presidential election that was then approaching, Mr. Webster felt less interest than he did in another subject. He had long been an anxious observer of the heroic struggle which the Greeks had maintained against their Turkish oppressors; he had studied the civil and military aspects of the Greek Revolution with the closest attention: he had become satisfied that the Greeks had character enough to carry them through the contest with success; and he not only felt, in common with the whole people of this country, a warm sympathy in their cause, but he saw, as not many others did, in the principles and policy proclaimed by the allied governments of Europe, and in the general indifference of the statesmen of Europe to the result of this contest, great cause of danger to liberty throughout the world. He determined therefore to do or say something in behalf of the Greeks at an early period of the session.

Before deciding on the step to be taken, he conferred with

Mr. Rufus King, Mr. Clay, and other gentlemen, all of whom approved of what he proposed to do. He also consulted the President; but, as the message, which Mr. Monroe was about to send in to Congress, had taken high ground as to inter- ference by European powers in the affairs of this continent, he was reluctant to have the appearance of interfering in the concerns of the other. This did not weigh much with Mr. Webster, who thought that "we have as much community with the Greeks as with the inhabitants of the Andes and the dwellers on the borders of the Vermilion Sea." The message, however, when it appeared, was found to contain an expression of sympathy for the Greeks, which was closed with something very like an official statement that they were to be regarded as having in fact achieved their independence. "From the facts," said the President, "which have come to our knowledge, there is good cause to believe that their enemy has lost forever all dominion over them; that Greece will become an independent power. That she may attain that rank is the object of our most ardent wishes." "

After the House had been in session a few days, Mr. Webster introduced the following resolution:

"That provision ought to be made by law for defraying the expense incident to the appointment of an agent or commissioner to Greece, whenever the President shall deem it expedient to make such appointment."

After a few explanatory remarks, he desired that the resolution might lie upon the table. It was taken up in Committee of the Whole on the 19th of January. A large and fashionable audience had assembled in the galleries to hear Mr. Webster. It was supposed that he meant to take advantage of the almost universal popular sympathy for the Greeks, and the classical associations of the subject, in order to make a brilliant oration, which would bring him again before the public with renewed éclat. Nothing could have been further from his purpose. The crowds which had come to listen to an anticipated display of rhetoric, or the members who supposed that he contemplated a "move" on the political chess-board, were astonished at the