Henry Cabot Lodge - Daniel Webster стр 10.

"Give up your futile projects of invasion. Extinguish the fires that blaze on your inland frontier. Establish perfect safety and defence there by adequate force. Let every man that sleeps on your soil sleep in security. Stop the blood that flows from the veins of unarmed yeomanry and women and children. Give to the living time to bury and lament their dead in the quietness of private sorrow. Having performed this work of beneficence and mercy on your inland border, turn, and look with the eye of justice and compassion on your vast population along the coast. Unclench the iron grasp of your embargo. Take measures for that end before another sun sets. Let it no longer be said that not one ship of force, built by your hands, yet floats upon the ocean. If then the war must be continued, go to the ocean. If you are seriously contending for maritime rights, go to the theatre where alone those rights can be defended. Thither every indication of your fortune points you. There the united wishes and exertions of the nation will go with you. Even our party divisions, acrimonious as they are, cease at the water's edge."

Events soon forced the policy urged by Mr. Webster upon the administration, whose friends carried first a modification of the embargo, and before the close of the session introduced a bill for its total repeal. The difficult task of advocating this measure devolved upon Mr. Calhoun, who sustained his cause more ingeniously than ingenuously. He frankly admitted that restriction was a failure as a war measure, but he defended the repeal on the ground that the condition of affairs in Europe had changed since the restrictive policy was adopted. It had indeed changed since the embargo of 1807, but not since the imposition of that of 1813, which was the one under discussion.

Mr. Calhoun laid himself open to most unmerciful retorts, which was his misfortune, not his fault, for the embargo had been utterly and hopelessly wrong from the beginning. Mr. Webster, however, took full advantage of the opportunity thus presented. His opening congratulations are in his best vein of stately sarcasm, and are admirably put. He followed this up by a new argument of great force, showing the colonial spirit of the restrictive policy. He also dwelt with fresh vigor on the identification with France necessitated by the restrictive laws, a reproach which stung Mr. Calhoun and his followers more than anything else. He then took up the embargo policy and tore it to pieces,no very difficult undertaking, but well performed. The shifty and shifting policy of the government was especially distasteful to Mr. Webster, with his lofty conception of consistent and steady statesmanship, a point which is well brought out in the following passage:

"In a commercial country, nothing can be more objectionable than frequent and violent changes. The concerns of private business do not endure such rude shocks but with extreme inconvenience and great loss. It would seem, however, that there is a class of politicians to whose taste all change is suited, to whom whatever is unnatural seems wise, and all that is violent appears great. The Embargo Act, the Non-Importation Act, and all the crowd of additions and supplements, together with all their garniture of messages, reports, and resolutions, are tumbling undistinguished into one common grave. But yesterday this policy had a thousand friends and supporters; to-day it is fallen and prostrate, and few 'so poor as to do it reverence.' Sir, a government which cannot administer the affairs of a nation without so frequent and such violent alterations in the ordinary occupations and pursuits of private life, has, in my opinion, little claim to the regard of the community."

All this is very characteristic of Mr. Webster's temperament in dealing with public affairs, and is a very good example of his power of dignified reproach and condemnation.

Mr. Calhoun had said at the close of his speech, that the repeal of the restrictive measures should not be allowed to affect the double duties which protected manufactures. Mr. Webster discussed this point at length, defining his own position, which was that of the New England Federalists, who believed in free trade as an abstract principle, and considered protection only as an expedient of which they wanted as little as possible. Mr. Webster set forth these views in his usual effective and lucid manner, but they can be considered more fitly at the period when he dealt with the tariff as a leading issue of the day and of his own public life.

Mr. Webster took no further action of importance at this session, not even participating in the great debate on the loan bill; but, by the manner in which these two speeches were referred to and quoted in Congress for many days after they were delivered, we can perceive the depth of their first impression. I have dwelt upon them at length because they are not in the collected edition of his speeches, where they well deserve a place, and, still more, because they are the first examples of his parliamentary eloquence which show his characteristic qualities and the action of his mind. Mr. Webster was a man of slow growth, not reaching his highest point until he was nearly fifty years of age, but these two speeches mark an advanced stage in his progress. The only fresh point that he made was when he declared that the embargo was colonial in spirit; and this thought proceeded from the vital principle of Mr. Webster's public life, his intense love for nationality and union, which grew with his growth and strengthened with his strength. In other respects, these speeches presented simply the arguments and opinions of his party. They fell upon the ear of Congress and the country with a new and ringing sound because they were stated so finely and with such simplicity. Certainly one of them, and probably both, were delivered without any immediate preparation, but they really had the preparation of years, and were the utterance of thoughts which had been garnered up by long meditation. He wisely confined himself at this time to a subject which had been long before his mind, and upon which he had gathered all the essential points by observation and by a study of the multitude of speeches and essays with which the country had been deluged. These early speeches, like some of the best of his prime, although nominally unprepared, were poured forth from the overflowing resources which had been the fruit of months of reflection, and which had been stored up by an unyielding memory. They had really been in preparation ever since the embargo pamphlet of 1808, and that was one reason for their ripeness and terseness, for their easy flow and condensed force. I have examined with care the debates in that Congress. There were many able and experienced speakers on the floor. Mr. Clay, it is true, took no part, and early in the session went to Europe. But Mr. Calhoun led in debate, and there were many others second only to him. Among all the speeches, however, Mr. Webster's stand out in sharp relief. His utterances were as clear and direct as those of Mr. Calhoun, but they had none of the South Carolinian's dryness. We can best judge of their merit and their effect by comparing them with those of his associates. They were not only forcible, but they were vivid also and full of life, and his words when he was roused fell like the blows of a hammer on an anvil. They lacked the polish and richness of his later efforts, but the force and power of statement and the purity of diction were all there, and men began to realize that one destined to great achievements had entered the field of American politics.

This was very apparent when Mr. Webster came back to Washington for the extra session called in September, 1814. Although he had made previously but two set speeches, and had taken comparatively little part in every-day debate, he was now acknowledged, after his few months of service, to be one of the foremost men in the House, and the strongest leader in his party. He differed somewhat at this time from the prevailing sentiment of the Federalists in New England, for the guiding principle of his life, his love of nationality, overrode all other influences. He discountenanced the measures which led to the Hartford Convention, and he helped to keep New Hampshire out of that movement; but it is an entire mistake to represent him as an independent Federalist at this period. The days of Mr. Webster's independent politics came later, when the Federalists had ceased to exist as a party and when no new ties had been formed. In the winter of 1814 and 1815, although, like many of the moderate Federalists, he disapproved of the separatist movement in New England, on all other party questions he acted consistently with the straitest of the sect. Sensibly enough, he did not consider the convention at Hartford, although he had nothing to do with it, either treasonable or seditious; and yet, much as he disliked its supposed purposes, he did not hesitate, in a speech on the Enlistment Bill, to use them as a threat to deter the administration from war measures. This was a favorite Federalist practice, gloomily to point out at this time the gathering clouds of domestic strife, in order to turn the administration back from war, that poor frightened administration of Mr. Madison, which had for months been clutching frantically at every straw which seemed to promise a chance of peace.