1827, the English Government should open the colonial trade to us without discriminating duties on their part, the President might issue a proclamation opening the trade on equal terms on our part. But it overlooked the effect of our former legislation, which, in the event of an adherence by Great Britain to her present system of exclusion, would, after the 31st of December, open our ports to vessels coming from her colonies without any discriminating duties. In the House an amendment was offered, providing that, if no arrangement should take place by treaty before the 31st of December, nor any Act of Parliament, or Order in Council, should meet our offers of reciprocity embraced in this bill, our former laws excluding British vessels from the colonies should be revived, and put in force. Mr. Webster deemed it his duty to have this amendment adopted, and adhered to by the House, preferring the defeat of the bill to its passage without the amendment. But, in order to effect this, it was necessary for him to enter upon an elaborate explanation of a matter that was very imperfectly understood. He succeeded in causing the adoption of the amendment, and in subsequently leading the House to adhere to it; in consequence of which the bill was lost, and a great blunder was prevented.

At this time, of so much activity in public business, while giving his attention to many subjects not within the ordinary range of a lawyer's studies, and supplying, by the fulness of his knowledge, the deficiencies of others, Mr. Webster, it must be remembered, was engaged in a very large practice in the Supreme Court of the United States, and, when not in Washington, was constantly employed in his profession elsewhere. He had also been for several years the leading counsel for the prosecution of claims under the Florida Treaty of 1819, for indemnification on account of the spoliations committed by Spanish cruisers on American commerce in 1788-'89. The commissioners appointed to adjudicate these claims sat at Washington at various times from 1821 to 1826. Not only was the investigation long protracted, but the business was extremely intricate, and the labor required for it was proportionably great. Mr. Webster had a very large number of the claims committed to his hands, and, when the awards were

finally made and paid, his fees amounted to about seventy thousand dollars.

In the winter of 1826 his engagements in the Supreme Court of the United States were unusually heavy. It appears that, among the regularly reported cases of this term, he argued fifteen; in which number are not included the arguments made on motions.

As this was the period when the transfer of Mr. Webster from the House of Representatives to the Senate began to be considered, some idea should be formed by the reader of the personal sacrifices he was called upon to make by that change of his position. Indeed, by being in public life at all, and, for that reason alone, he failed to do what he might easily have done, that is, to earn the largest professional income of his time in the United States. So long as he continued in the House of Representatives, he could still discharge his public duties, sustain by far the heaviest burden that rested upon the shoulders of any one member of that House during Mr. Adams's administration, and yet maintain a remunerating practice in the Supreme Court, and in the special tribunals that from time to time sat in Washington. But events were approaching which were to render his position in the Senate one that would make still greater inroads upon his professional income.

CHAPTER XIV.

1827-1828.

ELECTED TO THE SENATE OF THE UNITED

STATES-ILLNESS AND DEATH OF MRS. WEBSTER AT NEW YORK-HER FUNERAL IN BOSTON-RETURN OF MR. WEBSTER TO WASHINGTON-VISITED BY MR. TICKNOR AND MR. PRESCOTT-SPEECH FOR THE REVOLUTIONARY OFFICERS SPEECH ON THE TARIFF-PUBLIC DINNER IN BOSTON-THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION-PROSECUTES FOR A LIBEL-ADDRESS BEFORE THE BOSTON MECHANICS' ASSOCIATION.

THE

HE relation of Mr. Webster to the administration of Mr. John Quincy Adams did not, as we have seen, commence as the relation of a partisan. At the time of Mr. Adams's election, by the House of Representatives, parties had not yet formed themselves into a distinct division; but the "era of good feeling," which had prevailed under Mr. Monroe, was cer tain to be followed by divisions among the public men of the country, that would lead to the formation of defined parties, animated by a spirit of hostility the more rancorous, because the opposition was to be made up from previously discordant elements, and fragments of former parties, for the purpose of elevating to the presidency a distinguished military chieftain, who had been one of the defeated candidates at the late election. Mr. Webster desired to postpone the evil day of such parties as long as possible. His general views respecting the principles on which the administration of the Federal Government should be conducted had never been those of the extreme

Federalists, although he had formerly acted with the Federal party; and, satisfied with the impartial spirit of Mr. Adams, and believing that his administration would be conducted without personal objects, he desired to prolong, if possible, the state of things that had existed under his predecessor. But, as the "scattered elements" began to arrange themselves into a decided opposition, Mr. Webster was drawn more and more into a kind of representative relation to the Administration, in the House, because he stood beyond all comparison the foremost man in that body, and because he was the most important and efficient friend that the administration possessed in Congress. His great talents, learning, and experience made the administration the strongest side of the House in point of ability, as it was numerically the largest. In the Senate, the weight of ability, and perhaps of numbers, was already on the side of the opposition. Certainly, there was no one friendly to the Administration, who could be regarded as filling a position in the Senate corresponding to that of Mr. Webster in the House, at the termination of the first session of the Nineteenth Congress, in the spring of 1826.

There soon occurred, however, in the failing health of Mr. Mills, one of the Senators from Massachusetts, a necessity for considering the question whether Mr. Webster should not be transferred to the Senate. The period, therefore, which we are now approaching, is undoubtedly to be regarded as a turningpoint in his life; for, whatever may have hitherto been his inclination or his power to withdraw from all public station, his entrance into the Senate must be considered as having fixed for the remainder of his days, and fortunately or unfortunately for his personal happiness and welfare, his position as a statesman who belonged to the country, and for whom, henceforth, private life was to be a matter of intervals and episodes. We may speculate, with varying conjectures and conflicting feelings, on what might have been the course of his existence if he had never entered upon the new career that was awaiting him in the Senate. But the real clew to his life was correctly expressed by one of his friends, the Hon. William Tudor, at this time United States consul at Lima: "I have, in fact, long apprehended," writes Mr. Tudor, " that the business of law and

politics, and a leading station in both, will abstract you entirely from the more amiable interests of private life, and make you a huge Colossus, the wonder of contemporaries, and admiration of posterity. But however I may lament such a result, it is in vain to resist destiny. Some achieve greatness;' and Mrs. Webster and I and I. P. D., and others, who would have liked to have possessed you ourselves, must be content to be chilled in the increasing shadows you cast. Be it so."'

6

This complaint, a little querulous, perhaps, on account of long silence toward an old friend, shows how well that friend understood the case of one whose great powers were the real arbiters of his fate.

Still we shall find that, in proportion as the public life became more and more exacting, the private life became more and more full; that its enjoyments were the more keenly coveted and relished; that its pursuits and interests became extremely various, and that those who stood in "the shadows" really basked in the sunshine, whenever the world and the world's cares could be shut out. We must, in fact, look to the requirements of a great nature which no public ambition could satisfy, and no fame could fill, for the key to a life of a totally different character, which led him to the large and pecuniarily unprofitable interests of agriculture, to the exercise of a free hospitality, to the delights of the fowler's gun and the angler's rod, to the society of those who were neither of the great, the distinguished, nor the ambitious, and to the converse and the solace of humble friends, who served him with their homely virtues, amused him by their native originality, and loved him with a love unselfish and unalloyed. When we follow him to the places where his private life was passed, we shall see how much it took to occupy and to gratify such a nature, and we shall find the explanation, if not the excuse, for the fact that, with almost unparalleled opportunities for amassing a great fortune by his profession, he died poor.

When Mr. Webster left Boston to attend the session of Congress, which commenced in December, 1826, it was feared that Mr. Mills was in a very precarious condition of health, and

1 Letter from William Tudor, dated at Lima, November 15, 1827, complain

ing that Mr. Webster had not written to him in four years.