tariff as she desired. But the abiding result was, that Webster had set forth the theory upon which the Union was to be preserved, and that the administration, in acting upon that theory, had established an extremely valuable precedent for the next administration that should be called upon to meet a similar crisis.
The alliance between Mr. Webster and President
Jackson extended only to the question of
maintaining the Union. As an advocate of the policy
of a national bank, a protective tariff, and internal
improvements, Mr. Webster's natural place was by
the side of Mr. Clay in the Whig party, which was
now in the process of formation. He was also at
one with both the northern and the southern
sections of the Whig party in opposition to what
Mr. Benton called the “demos krateo” principle,
according to which the president, in order to carry
out the “will of the people,” might feel himself
authorized to override the constitutional limitations
upon his power. This was not precisely what
Mr. Benton meant by his principle, but it was the
way in which it was practically illustrated in
Jackson's war against the bank. In the course of
this struggle Mr. Webster made more than sixty
speeches, remarkable for their wide and accurate
knowledge of finance. His consummate mastery
of statement is nowhere more thoroughly exemplified
than in these speeches. Constitutional questions
were brought up by Mr. Clay's resolutions
censuring the president for the removal of the
deposits, and for dismissing William J. Duane,
secretary of the treasury. In reply to the resolutions,
President Jackson sent to the senate his remarkable
“Protest,” in which he maintained that in the
mere discussion of such resolutions that body transcended
its constitutional prerogatives, and that
the president is the “direct representative of the
American people,” charged with the duty, if need
be, of protecting them against the usurpations of
congress. The Whigs maintained, with much
truth, that this doctrine, if carried out in all its
implications, would push democracy to the point
where it merges in Cæsarism. It was now that
the opposition began to call themselves Whigs, and
tried unsuccessfully to stigmatize the president's
supporters as “Tories.” Mr. Webster's speech on
the president's protest, 7 May, 1834, was one of
great importance, and should be read by every
student of our constitutional history. In another
elaborate speech, 16 Feb., 1885, he tried to show
that under a proper interpretation of the constitution
the power of removal, like the power of
appointment, was vested in the president and senate
conjointly, and that “the decision of congress in
1789, which separated the power of removal from
the power of appointment, was founded on an
erroneous construction of the constitution.” But
subsequent opinion has upheld the decision of 1789,
leaving the speech to serve as an illustration of
the way in which, under the stress of a particular
contest, the Whigs were as ready to strain the
constitution in one direction as the Democrats were
inclined to bend it in another. An instance of the
latter kind was Mr. Benton's expunging resolution,
against which Mr. Webster emphatically protested.
About this time Mr. Webster was entertaining thoughts of retiring, for a while at least, from public life. As he said, in a letter to a friend, he had not for fourteen years had leisure to attend to his private affairs, or to become acquainted by travel with his own country. This period had not, however, been entirely free from professional work. It was seldom that Mr. Webster took part in criminal trials, but in this department of legal practice he showed himself qualified to take rank with the greatest advocates that have ever addressed a jury. His speech for the prosecution, on the trial of the murderers of Capt. Joseph White, at Salem, in August, 1830, has been pronounced superior to the finest speeches of Lord Erskine. In the autumn of 1824, while driving in a chaise with his wife from Sandwich to Boston, he stopped at the beautiful farm of Capt. John Thomas, by the sea-shore at Marshfield. For the next seven years his family passed their summers at this place as guests of Capt. Thomas; and, as the latter was growing old and willing to be eased of the care of the farm, Mr. Webster bought it of him in the autumn of 1831. Capt. Thomas continued to live there until his death, in 1837, as Mr. Webster's guest. For the latter it became the favorite home whither he retired in the intervals of public life. It was a place, he said, where he “could go out every day in the year and see something new.” Mr. Webster was very fond of the sea. He had also a passion for country life, for all the sights and sounds of the farm, for the raising of fine animals, as well as for hunting and fishing. The earlier years of Mr. Webster's residence at Marshfield, and of his service in the U. S. senate, witnessed some serious events in his domestic life. Death removed his wife, 21 Jan., 1828, and his brother Ezekiel, 10 April, 1829. In December, 1829, he married Miss Caroline Le Roy, daughter of a wealthy merchant in New York, immediately after this second marriage came the “Reply to Hayne.” The beginning of a new era in his private life coincided with the beginning of a new era in his career as a statesman. After 1830 Mr. Webster was recognized as one of the greatest powers in the nation, and it seemed natural that the presidency should be offered to such a man. His talents, however, were not those of a party leader, and the circumstances under which the Whig party was formed were not such as to place him at its head. The elements of which that party was made up were incongruous, the bond of union between them consisting chiefly of opposition to President Jackson's policy. In the election of 1836 they had not time in which to become welded together, and after the brief triumph of 1840 they soon fell apart again. In 1836 there was no general agreement upon a candidate. The northern Whigs, or National Republicans, supported by the anti-Masons, nominated Gen. William H. Harrison; the southern or “state-rights” Whigs nominated Hugh L. White; the legislature of Massachusetts nominated Mr. Webster, and he received the electoral vote of that state only. Over such an ill-organized opposition Mr. Van Buren easily triumphed. In March, 1837, on his way from Washington to Boston, Mr. Webster stopped in New York and made a great speech at Niblo's garden, in which he reviewed and criticised the policy of the late administration, with especial reference to its violent treatment of the bank. In the course of the speech he used language that was soon proved prophetic by the financial crisis of that year. In the summer he made a journey through the western states. In the next session of congress his most important speeches were those on the sub-treasury bill. The second of these, delivered 12 March, 1838, contained some memorable remarks on the course of Mr. Calhoun, who had now taken sides with the administration. No passage in all his speeches is more graphic than that in which, with playful sarcasm, he imagines Gen. Jackson as coming from his retirement at the Hermitage, walking into the senate-chamber, and looking across “to the seats on the other side.”
