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pressment has not been struck out from the list of contested questions among nations; and finally, and more than all, whether anything has been done to tarnish the luster of the American name and character?

"Mr. President, my best services, like those of every other good citizen, are due to my country; and I submit them, and their results, in all humility, to her judgment. But standing here, to-day, in the senate of the United States, and speaking in behalf of the administration of which I formed a part, and in behalf of the two houses of congress, who sustained that administration, cordially and effectually, in everything relating to this day's discussion, I am willing to appeal to the public men of the age, whether, in 1842, and in the city of Washington, something was not done for the suppression of crime, for the true exposition of the principles of public law, for the freedom and security of commerce on the ocean, and for the peace of the world?"

To this appeal, the public men of the age, on both sides of the Atlantic, have given almost a unanimous response. They have responded, that the illustrious secretary was entirely jus tified in remaining in the cabinent of Mr. Tyler, so long as that gentleman continued to aid him in achieving the great work for which, and for which alone, he had accepted the high post at the hands of General Harrison. They have responded, that the treaty of Washington, professedly a treaty of mutual concession, is upon the whole the wisest possible settlement of the long-standing and vexed difficulties between two great nations jealous of each other's power, and stubborn in the maintenance of their own rights. They have responded, that the man who negotiated that treaty, in the midst of obstacles which would have disheartened, and did dishearten and defeat, the ablest and most determined of our statesmen, performed a work for his country, and for his age, which no other American, then living, could have performed, or performed so well. They P*

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have responded, in spite of the vigorous and repeated but in significant attacks made upon it, by mere partisan politicians, that the treaty stands far above party, as it is far above assault, a monument of American diplomacy, worthy to be made, as it has been made, a model for the oldest and most experienced nations. They have responded, in a word, that the American who negotiated that instrument, had this been his only work, would have stood, in the judgment of all enlightened men, by the side of the most distinguished and successful diplomatists of ancient and of modern times; and it is probably not too much to say, that the treaty of Washington will hereafter, for generations yet to come, be looked back to as the ablest treaty ever made, in time of peace, between the United States and any other country, and as a particular star in that coronet of fame which is ever to circle the name of Daniel Webster. Immediately after its completion, at all events, it cannot be denied, that that coronet shone brighter than at any previous period of his history. The first public address that he made, after retiring from Mr. Tyler's cabinet-and he retired as soon as he could after the treaty was secured-was quoted in England, in France, and in nearly every part of Europe, as the most reliable statement of the condition and prospects of this country, in a financial point of view, to be met with; and these quotations, which embodied but the opinion of a single individual, of only one citizen of this country, who now held no office, who had no longer a control over public affiairs, who never had had the charge of his country's finances, materially affected the value of American securities in London, in Paris, and in every great commercial city of the continent. At this time of his life, indeed, not only was his word more powerful at home than that of any other American, whether in office or out of office, but it had gone out to other countries, and become the basis of the heaviest pecuniary transactions among nations, and in regions, where the names of some of the presidents of the republic had

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not yet been made familiar. So true it is, that genius is loftier than place, that talents are mightier than position; for at the pe riod now under view, the highest place, without doubt, for power and influence held by any person in this country, when all the great interests of mankind are considered, was that occupied. wherever or whatever he might be, in public or in private life, by Daniel Webster.

CHAPTER XI.

AGAIN SENATOR FROM MASSACHUSETTS.

THE two years which succeeded his retirement from e cab inet of Mr. Tyler, Mr. Webster spent in the peaceful enjoyments of private life; and they must have been the happiest two years he had seen since the halcyon days of his childhood. Revered as a sage in his own country, and possessed of a fame that had gone into every great nation of the globe, he was free from the cares and turmoil of office, and could walk over his lands at Marshfield, thinking his own great thoughts with a freshness. and freedom which he had scarcely ever known before. Returning from his rambles on the farm, he could go into his magnificent library, which was stored with the standard works of the most enlightened ages and countries, and lose himself in other rambles, or engage in those more fixed investigations, which constitute the most agreeable recreation and employment of the mind. To diversify these pursuits, he could go, as he did often go, to the boat-house where he kept his skiffs, and wind his way along the crooked tide-channels, that intersect his possessions, to the beach of the great ocean, where he could enjoy hours of absolute solitude, alone with nature, and give loose rein to his memory, his reason, and his fancy. As expert at fishing as any of the disciples of the great angler, and capable of teaching where Sir Izaak himself was not informed, with Captain Hewitt for helmsman, he would be out upon the streams before the sun had risen, and devote all the cool hours of morning to this amusement; and in these ways, as a needed and long-desired relaxation from the corroding anxieties of pub

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lic station, many of the bright days of the two years of the second vacation of his life were made still brighter, till he was again called to the senate of the United States by a commonwealth, which, while he lived, could not long suffer itself to be otherwise represented.

The two years, however, were not entirely devoted to recre ation. As needy of rest as Mr. Webster knew himself to be, he could not satisfy himself to remain a silent spectator, when he saw a movement in inception, which he looked upon as dan gerous to the peace, if not to the liberties, of the country. It was during the two years of his retirement that the project was revived of annexing Texas to the Union. Texas, having asserted and maintained her independence of Mexico by a brief but bloody revolution, had offered herself to the United States during the kindred administrations of Jackson and of Van Bu ren; and both of these presidents had rejected the overture on the ground, that, if accepted, it would involve us in a war with Mexico. Mr. Tyler, however, eager in some way to win back some portion of the country that had deserted him, thought he could secure the south by accepting what had been twice rejected. But there was not southern strength enough in congress, during his day, to carry the proposed measure, and it therefore remained till the expiration of Mr. Tyler's term, to be made one of the two great issues of the succeeding presidential canvass. Mr. Webster, foreseeing that this would be the case, exerted himself, while at home at Marshfield, to rouse the country against the measure; and his correspondence and conversation were the means of first waking the attention of the public to this new mode of extending the area of slavery. He met with no great success, however, in warning his fellowcitizens against the insidious undertaking. His most confiden tial friends, his warmest admirers, could hardly believe that there was any real danger. His opponents accused him, rather plainly, of playing the demagogne, as he was now out of office.