templates. On this subject he received the concurrence of Chancellor Kent, expressed in the following letter:

[FROM CHANCELLOR KENT.]

"NEW YORK, April 21, 1832.

"DEAR SIR: I have perused the report you made to the Senate, and sent me, on the apportionment of representatives. Its clear and severe logical reasoning has struck me forcibly. I am not a mathematician, and not well versed in the application of divisors. I have looked at the Constitution and your argument again and again, and I see nothing unconstitutional, but great justice and reason in your amendment, and the principle on which it is founded, that Congress are bound to apportion among the States according to numbers as near as may be. Perfect equality is impracticable, and the allowance of a representative to fractions exceeding a moiety of the ratio would seem to me to make the best approximation; and that the results and irregularities in the bill, as it came from the other House, were unjust and intolerable. So it strikes me; and I see no infraction of any rule in the Constitution, but a conformity to its spirit and equity (which is equality), in the amendment.

"Hon. D. Webster.

"JAS. KENT.

"Be so good as to send me one copy out of the five thousand copies of Mr. Clay's land papers."

In the course of this year Mr. Webster became the owner of the estate at Marshfield, which I have already said was the place of his summer residence after 1824. As Captain Thomas approached the age of seventy, the care of his farm became irksome to him. His means were not large, and it was thought best for his children that he should sell this property. Mr. Webster purchased it in the autumn of 1831, but the deed was not taken until April, 1832. Nor would Mr. Webster then consent that Captain Thomas should leave the house. The old gentleman continued, in fact, to live there until his death, which occurred on the 27th of July, 1837, at the age of seventythree. While he lived, Mr. Webster continually spoke of the affairs of the farm as if it were still the property of its former owner; saying, "Captain Thomas has this," or Captain Thomas is going to do that," while it was Mr. Webster who ordered, and Mr. Webster who paid; for the fees of the great lawyer went lavishly into extensive plantations, noble barns,

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and many other improvements. But the family of Captain Thomas did not continue to reside there as the result of any bargain. It was simply Mr. Webster's wish that they should remain. "Captain Thomas and Mrs. Thomas," he used to say, "are a part of Marshfield, and it can never be the same without them." Hereafter we shall see this feeling extending itself to their children.

CHAPTER XIX.

1832-1833.

NULLIFICATION-CONDUCT OF SOUTH CAROLINA-SPEECH AT WOR

CESTER IN OCTOBER, 1832-REELECTION OF GENERAL JACKSON—
MR. CALHOUN'S POSITION-THE PRESIDENT'S PROCLAMATION—
MR. CLAY'S COMPROMISE BILL-THE FORCE BILL-MR. WEB-
STER'S VIEWS OF THE PROPER COURSE TO BE PURSUED--

DEBATE WITH MR. CALHOUN ON THE NATURE OF THE GOV-
ERNMENT-PRESIDENT JACKSON'S VISIT ΤΟ NEW ENGLAND-
MR. WEBSTER'S VISIT ΤΟ THE WEST
SENSE OF MR. WEBSTER'S SERVICES-CORRESPONDENCE.

TR.

GENERAL JACKSON'S

R. WEBSTER was well advised, when, at the dinner given to him in New York, in March, 1831, he intimated that the crisis of nullification was not wholly passed by. Congress met in December, 1831, and adjourned in March, 1832, without surrendering the policy of protection, and without renouncing the constitutional power to lay duties of discrimination for the purpose of fostering American manufactures. Notwithstanding the general acceptance of the views maintained by Mr. Webster in the debate of 1830, concerning the nature of the Constitution, many of the statesmen, and a majority of the people of South Carolina, adhered with unshaken pertinacity to the conviction that a State can constitutionally and rightfully arrest the operation of an act of Congress within her own limits, when she believes that it transcends the powers of Congress. Events were now to bring this doctrine to the test of an actual collision; and, according as that collision should be met by the

General Government, the Constitution would be freed in all future time from further hazards to its authority, or the necessary assertion of that authority might have to be undertaken at some future period amid the perils and sufferings of civil war. What part Mr. Webster acted in this emergency, what were his opinions respecting the steps that ought to be taken, and the attitude in which the Government ought to be left in reference to this whole subject, must now be explained.

In November, 1832, a State convention assembled at Columbia, in South Carolina, and adopted an ordinance declaring the revenue laws of the United States to be null and void within the limits of that State; and making it the duty of the Legislature to pass such State laws as would be necessary to carry the ordinance in question into effect from and after the 1st of February, 1833. The Legislature assembled on the 27th of November, and the Governor laid before them the ordinance of the convention, now become "a part of the fundamental law of South Carolina." In his message, he said that "the die has been at last cast, and South Carolina has at length appealed to her ulterior sovereignty as a member of this confederacy, and has planted herself on her reserved rights. The rightful exercise of this power is not a question which we shall any longer argue. It is sufficient that she has willed it, and that the act is done; nor is its strict compatibility with our constitutional obligation to all laws passed by the General Government, within the authorized grants of power, to be drawn in question, when this interposition is exerted in a case in which the compact has been palpably, deliberately, and dangerously violated. That it brings up a conjuncture of deep and momentous interest is neither to be concealed nor denied. This crisis presents a class of duties which is referable to yourselves. You have been commanded by the people, in their highest sovereignty, to take care that, within the limits of this State, their will shall be obeyed. . . . The measure of legislation which you have to employ at this crisis is the precise amount of such enactments as may be necessary to render it utterly impossible to collect, within our limits, the duties imposed by the protective tariffs thus nullified." He proceeds: "That you shall arm every citizen with a civil process, by which he may claim, if he

pleases, a restitution of his goods, seized under the existing imposts, on his giving security to abide the issue of a suit at law; and, at the same time, define what shall constitute treason against the State, and, by a bill of pains and penalties, compel obedience, and punish disobedience to your own laws, are points too obvious to require any discussion. In one word, you must survey the whole ground. You must look to and provide for all possible contingencies. In your own limits, your own courts of judicature must not only be supreme, but you must look to the ultimate issue of any conflict of jurisdiction and power between them and the courts of the United States."

In prompt compliance with this and other recommendations in the Governor's message, the Legislature passed acts providing for the replevin of goods that might be seized under the revenue laws of the United States; inflicting heavy punishments upon any persons who might undertake to execute those laws; and raising military forces to resist the collection of the revenue of the United States, and to repel any efforts of the General Government to coerce the State into a submission to their execution. On the 20th of December the Governor issued his proclamation, giving notice that he was ready to accept the services of volunteers for this purpose. Thus the whole revenue system of the United States was obstructed, and apparently overthrown, in South Carolina; so that, if these measures were left without being defeated and suppressed, foreign merchandise, of any description, could be introduced into the ports of that State without the payment of any duties whatever. No period was assigned for the operation of this state of things. Nothing was left for the United States by this State legislation but unconditional submission. In an address, however, issued by the Convention of South Carolina to the people of the United States, they said: "Having now presented, for the consideration of the Federal Government, and our confederate States, the fixed and final determination of this State in relation to the protecting system, it remains for us to submit a plan of taxation in which we would be willing to acquiesce, in a spirit of liberal concession, provided we are met in due time and in a becoming spirit, by the States interested in the protection of manufactures."

Mr. Webster had to perform a very delicate duty, before the