other consideration which may be supposed to influence him, excepting a disinterested regard for the public good. And we all think that, under these circumstances, the application should be granted. "It is to be recollected that, at the trial of John Francis Knapp, Mr. Webster was, at the request of the law officers, appointed to aid them, and that there was no objection then made by the prisoner's counsel. And although that appointment strictly was for the then pending trial, yet, if the other trials had followed immediately, the counsel for the government would have had reason to suppose that they were to receive his assistance in those trials, unless good objections should have been made. It is said by the law officers that the preparations for this trial have been made under similar circumstances, and no objection was made to this measure until the jury were empanelled." On the same day on which this decision was pronounced, Mr. Webster wrote to Mr. Justice Story in these words: "SALEM, Wednesday, one o'clock.1 "MY DEAR SIR: J. J. Knapp's trial commenced yesterday. The A. M. yesterday was occupied in empanelling a jury; the P. M. mainly in debating whether the Attorney-General had a right to bring in other counsel; on this question their honors deliberated, and this morning agreed to let me in, I having stated to them that I appeared at the request of the Attorney-General, and had not received, and should not receive, any fee in this case, which, of course, was and is true. This A. M. has been employed in discussing the admissibility of the confessions, and the court holds the point under advisement. I expect they will be ruled out." " . . 2 It is quite evident that the court understood Mr. Webster as denying that he had received or expected any fee in the case then on trial. The application before the court involved no inquiry into the relations in which Mr. Webster had stood in the case of Francis Knapp, who had been tried, convicted, and sentenced three months previously; and Mr. Webster's own report of his language on the trial of Joseph Knapp is, that he had not received, and should not receive, any fee in that case. Judge Story was connected by marriage with Mr. Stephen White, the supposed private prosecutor, and doubtless knew under what circumstances Mr. Webster originally came 1 In the first volume of Mr. Webster's Correspondence, published in 1857, by Mr. Fletcher Webster, the date of this letter is given as of August 11, 1830. This is clearly an error. The context shows that the letter was writ ten on the second day of Joseph Knapp's trial, and this was November 10th. *Correspondence, i., 506. into the case of Francis Knapp, the principal, and that in the case of Joseph Knapp, the accessory, Mr. Webster's statement was strictly true. Moreover, in the case of Francis Knapp, Mr. Webster assisted the Attorney-General at his request, and without any previous fee, or promise of a fee, from any quarter; although I believe it to be true that, after the trial and conviction of Francis Knapp, Mr. Stephen White offered Mr. Webster, and the latter received, pecuniary compensation for his services on the trial of Francis. The circumstances which led to the request for Mr. Webster's services on these trials were entirely unprecedented. Joseph Knapp was the person who instigated the murder. He had two objects to accomplish: one to destroy a will which it was known Captain White had executed, and which gave the greater part of his property to his nephew Stephen; the other, to kill Captain White before the destruction of his will could be known to him. In the event of Captain White's dying intestate, Joseph Knapp supposed, erroneously, that his motherin-law would inherit a moiety of the estate. Through the agency of his brother Frank, he hired Richard Crowninshield to kill the testator, and himself abstracted a will (but not the last will) from a strong-box in the chamber of the deceased, and prepared the house for the entrance of the assassin. The three were, therefore, concerned in a joint conspiracy to compass the death of Captain White, and, after the confession of Joseph, the details of this conspiracy, and the part played in it by each of them, became known to the Attorney-General, who obtained the confession by promising immunity to Joseph, on condition that, when brought into court as a witness for the State, he should testify fully and truly. But, after the suicide of Crowninshield, it became necessary to convict Frank Knapp as a principal in the murder; for, as the law of Massachusetts then stood, no one could be convicted as an accessory until there had been a conviction of some one as principal. But, when it was found that Frank was to be put on trial as a principal, Joseph retracted his engagement with the Attorney-General, and refused to testify. This was done upon the calculation that, as Crowninshield alone had entered the house, the prosecution would not be able to prove that Frank's participation amounted to that of a principal in the murder. He was no nearer to the house, at any time, than a distance of three or four hundred feet; and, although he was in the street at the rear of the house, at some time during the night, and at a position from which he could see when all the lights were extinguished, it was very doubtful if the prosecution could show, by independent testimony, whether he was there before Crowninshield entered, or while the latter was within the house, or when he came out. In order to convict Frank as a principal, it was necessary for the prosecution to convince the jury that he was present in the street at the time of the murder, aiding and abetting the person who dealt the fatal blow. To produce this conviction, Mr. Webster put forth all his strength, and it was all needed. No one of less ability in the handling of evidence could have suc ceeded in satisfying the jury that Frank Knapp was present at the murder for the purpose of rendering aid, if necessary. Mr. Webster's argument rested mainly on two positions: first, that there was a conspiracy to murder the deceased, and that Frank Knapp was one of the conspirators; second, that, as a conspirator, he was present in the street, by agreement, to countenance and aid the perpetrator. This would make him a principal. The force of Mr. Webster's argument convinced the jury that Frank was, in this sense, present at the murder.' But the fact was otherwise; and if Joseph Knapp had not refused to testify, and had told the whole truth, neither of them would have suffered for the murder. It would then have appeared that, at the time Crowninshield started to commit the murder, he told Frank to go home and go to bed; that Frank did so; but that he afterward rose, from anxiety to know what had been done, went toward Captain White's house, and met Crowninshield, after the murder had been committed. If Frank had not been convicted as principal, Joseph could not have been convicted as accessory. On the trial of Joseph Knapp, as accessory before the fact, Mr. Webster's task was of an entirely different nature. Having refused to testify on the trial of his brother, Joseph had forfeited his right to the immunity promised to him by the Attorney-General, and was, therefore, rightfully put upon trial him 1 Mr. Webster's address to the jury is contained in his Works, vi., 41–105. self. But he could not be convicted without the use of the confession which he had made under the promise of favor. Mr. Webster had to satisfy the court that the confession was admissible, although made under these circumstances. He argued that, as against himself, the prisoner's confession was admissible, because made freely and voluntarily; for, having obtained the Attorney-General's promise of immunity before he made the confession, he had no motive falsely to accuse himself, although he might have a motive falsely to accuse his accomplices. The court permitted the confession to go to the jury. Mr. Webster then had to convince the jury that the confession was credible. The prisoner was convicted. as a Nothing was more remarkable in Mr. Webster than the manner in which he kept distinct, in his own person, the characters of the statesman and the lawyer. A stranger, hearing him in the forum, would not have imagined him to be any thing but a lawyer; one who should have heard him in the Senate would rarely have suspected that he was one of the very first lawyers of his time and country. It was always observed of him, by his contemporaries of the bar, that he brought into the forum neither the habits of mind, the modes of reasoning, nor the kinds of eloquence, which belong to the discussions of statesmen; nor did he carry into the Senate the peculiarities of reasoning and analysis and proof which are alone effective in judicial tribunals. In the latter, his great renown public man no doubt helped to fasten the attention of judges and jurymen, and sometimes aided the ascendancy which his intellect enabled him to obtain over the intellects of those he addressed. But Mr. Webster was generally encountered at the bar by men who were able to overcome any influence of this kind, by rendering it necessary for him to exert all his powers in the mode which the forensic habit demands, and which is peculiar to the discussions in courts of justice. His ability to do so was never affected by the habits acquired in legislative bodies. On the trials of which I have here given an account, he produced convictions of the prisoners because of this power to discharge the functions of a lawyer, as if he were never any thing but a lawyer. CHAPTER XVII. 1830-1831. MR. WEBSTER'S POPULARITY-CHARACTER OF GENERAL JACKSONMR. CLAY'S CLAIMS ΤΟ THE PRESIDENCY-ANTI-MASONRY DINNER TO MR. WEBSTER IN NEW YORK-GIVES UP A JOURNEY WE E are now arrived at the period in Mr. Webster's life when he began to be considered, by a part of the people of the North and the West, and by many in the South who were politically opposed to the reëlection of General Jackson, the most suitable person to be brought forward as a candidate for the presidency. Aside from the public questions which were about to separate the people of the United States into two parties, many of the best minds in the country had come to place their hopes for the success and perpetuity of its institutions upon the power and the willingness of the nation to call to the chief magistracy a statesman whose extraordinary civil services, whose intellect, whose broad national politics, and whose moderation and elevation of character, pointed him out as the most fit person in the Union to be intrusted with the executive office. It is quite unnecessary for me to insist that this was not an undue partiality. We have to deal with facts; and it is one of the facts which constitute Mr. Webster's justification for allowing himself to be drawn into that long candidacy, in respect to which he was destined to be always unsuccessful, that |