The Works of Daniel Webster, Volume 1. Daniel Webster
now seventy-five years old, and that he speaks of his recollections of some eighteen years ago with a freshness which shows how deeply your reasoning impressed itself upon his mind. Keep this in memoriam rei.”
6
1 New Hampshire Reports, p. 113.
7
American Review, Vol. IX. p. 434.
8
“Crescit enim cum amplitudine rerum vis ingenii, nec quisquam claram et inlustrem orationem efficere potest, nisi qui causam parem invenit.” The dialogue
9
Mr. Webster makes the following playful allusion to this circumstance in a speech at a public dinner in Syracuse (New York), in the month of May of the present year:—
10
“It has so happened that all the public services which I have rendered in the world, in my day and generation, have been connected with the general government. I think I ought to make an exception. I was ten days a member of the Massachusetts legislature, and I turned my thoughts to the search for some good object in which I could be useful in that position; and, after much reflection, I introduced a bill which, with the general consent of both houses of the Massachusetts legislature, passed into a law, and is now a law of the State, which enacts that no man in the State shall catch trout in any other manner than in the old way, with an ordinary hook and line.”
The leading ideas in this and the following paragraph may be found in a review of Mr. Webster’s Speeches, in the North American Review, Vol. XLI. p. 241, written by the author of this Memoir.
11
See North American Review, Vol. XVII. p. 414.
12
This case is known as that of Carver’s Lessees against John Jacob Astor, and is reported in 4 Peters, I.
13
Mr. Chambers referred to the case in court just mentioned, in which Mr. Webster was engaged, and in which the argument had already begun.
14
Mr. Hayne subsequently disclaimed having used this word.
15
Reminiscences of Congress.
16
Chancellor Kent’s remarks are given entire in the introduction to Mr. Webster’s Speech at the New York Dinner, Vol. I. p. 194.
17
Mr. Geo. P. A. Healey.
18
North American Review, Vol. XXXI. p. 537.
19
This passage does not appear in the report preserved in the volume containing his Select Speeches.
20
It is not wholly unworthy of remark in this place, as illustrating the dependence on Mr. Webster’s aid which was felt at the White House, that, on the day of his reply to Mr. Calhoun, the President’s carriage was sent to Mr. Webster’s lodgings, as was supposed with a message borne by the President’s private secretary. Happening to be still at the door when Mr. Webster was about to go to the Capitol, it conveyed him to the Senate-chamber.
21
March’s Reminiscences of Congress, pp. 291, 292.
22
Not long after the publication of this speech, the present Lord Overstone, then Mr. S. Jones Lloyd, one of the highest authorities upon financial subjects in England, was examined upon the subject of banks and currency before a committee of the House of Commons. He produced a copy of the speech of Mr. Webster before the committee, and pronounced it one of the ablest and most satisfactory discussions of these subjects which he had seen. In writing afterwards to Mr. Webster, he spoke of him as a master who had instructed him on these subjects.
23
This chapter is republished, with but slight modifications, from the volume of Mr. Webster’s Diplomatic and Official Papers which appeared in 1848, to which it served as the Introduction.
24
Mr. Stevenson.
25
Senate Papers, Twenty-seventh Congress, First Session, No. 33.
26
Younger son of Mr. Webster, who died in Mexico, in 1848, being a major in the regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers.
27
The authorities are given in Story’s Commentaries Vol. III. pp. 675, 676; Conflict of Laws, pp. 520, 522; and in Kent’s Commentaries, Vol. I. pp. 36, 37.
28
The following passage from a letter of Robert Walsh, Esq., to the editors of the National Intelligencer, dated Paris, 28th October, 1842, furnishes confirmation of the remark in the text:—
“The former journal [The Times], of the 18th instant, acknowledges that Mr. Webster ‘has not exaggerated the hardships and evils which the practice of impressment occasioned in the last war.’ It ratifies his ideas of the probable aggravation of them, if the practice should be ever renewed; it would even dispense with press-warrants at home, as adverse to the general principles of British liberty and law: it advises some general measure for the entire abolition of arbitrary impressment both at home and abroad, and it expresses its belief of a very strong probability, that, in the event of a war, no instructions for the impressment of British seamen found in American merchant-vessels will be issued to her Majesty’s cruisers. The Standard chimes with the great oracle, and concludes in this strain: ‘We may infer that, whatever may be the plan hereafter for managing our navy, impressment will never again be resorted to; this is beyond a doubt:
29
Mr. Cushing.