COMMENDATORY LETTERS.

43

Both before and immediately after going into Mr. Fillmore's cabinet, Mr. Webster received from all parts of the country, in the midst of all the opprobrium and opposition encountered by him, as many tokens of continued confidence, as he had ever received in any equal period of his life. Letters of approval,

from all sections of Men of the first dis

of commendation, of eulogy, came to him the country, but mostly from the north. tinction, and even members of the democratic party, who had never before felt compelled to do him justice, as well as hundreds of his fellow-citizens of New England, and among them his old friends and neighbors of New Hampshire and Massachusets, now wrote to him in terms of praise which caused him to shed tears of gratitude for the kindness and truthfulness manifested toward him. From the Hon. Thomas H. Perkins, the philanthropist of Boston, from the Hon. Isaac Hill, the wellknown democratic governor of New Hampshire, from a large number of citizens of Newburyport, Massachusetts, from an equal or a larger number of the citizens of Medford, of the same state, from R. H. Gardiner, Esq., in behalf of the inhab itants living along the banks of the Kennebec river. from the Rev. Ebenezer Price, who addressed him on the part of Mr. Webster's old neighbors in New Hampshire, from various persons of the first consideration living throughout the middle states, from George Griswold, Esq., who conveyed to him an invitation to visit the city of New York, signed by inore than five thousand of the leading citizens of the great commercial metropolis, as well as from numerous other sources, letters came flying to him, with almost every post for months, bearing to him the most cordial approbation of his course. Never, perhaps, at any moment of his life, did he receive so many and so substantial proofs of the estimation in which he was held by the first men of the republic; and never, it may be, consider ing the abuse falling upon him from other quarters, did he ever rely so serenely on a quiet consciousness of having done his

duty, or with a firmer reliance on the final justice which he be lieved would ultimately be done him, than at the moment when he completed his career as a member of the American congress, and entered upon his duties, which he must have sometimes felt might not be of long continuance, as the first cabinet officer of Mr. Fillmore's administration. The great crisis, indeed, in respect to his reputation, had now passed. The country had had time to judge him, not by his 7th of March speech alone, but by a candid and full perusal of all his speeches, those of 1850, as well as all others relating to the same general subject. The scale of judgment was now turning in his favor; and he found himself, after his first general misunderstanding with his constituents, rapidly rising to his original position with them, with a fair prospect, not now to be disappointed, of reaching an eminence among them as much higher than he would have held, as his sacrifices for the harmony and prosperity of the country had been more than commonly misunderstood and misrepresented by them :

""Tis strange how many unimagined charges

Can swarm upon a man, when once the lid

Of the Pandora box of contumely

Is opened o'er his head."

But, as the immortal dramatist has elsewhere said,

"Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which, like a toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head."

And a poet of milder genius, but of deep experience, has added a concluding sentiment, which, in this case, may be re garded in the light of a prediction:

"Heaven lut tries our virtue by afflictions;
As oft the cloud that wraps the present hour,
Serves but to lighten all our future lays."

BOUNDARIES OF TEXAS.

433

On entering the second time the department of state, Mr. Webster had no great amount of labor to perform in looking up the condition of our relations to other countries. All these relations he understood as well as any other citizen of the country; and his predecessor had left no chronic difficulties, such as the secretary had found in the department when in office under Mr. Tyler, to embarrass him in the discharge of his regular duties. The controversy between New Mexico and Texas, in respect to boundary, which Mr. Webster had urged congress to settle by legislation, was still pending; and he had scarcely taken possession of his department, when his attention was called to a letter from the Hon. P. H. Bell, governor of Texas, to President Taylor, asking information in relation to the nature and limits of the military authority, which, by the advice and direction of General Taylor, had been extended over that part of New Mexico claimed by Texas. Had Mr. Webster's advice as a senator been followed, such a question could not have existed; but, it being now on hand, he addresses himself to it with his customary candor and ability. He takes the ground that the authority set up over New Mexico was mili tary, because that province came into our possession by military conquest; that it would continue, of course, only so long as New Mexico should continue to be without a form of gov ernment authorized by congress; and that, until such a government should be established, the question of boundaries between the province and the state would remain unchanged, so far as anything done or to be done either by Texas or New Mexico could be supposed to affect the subject. The authority now exercised in New Mexico would be maintained; but in relation to the question of boundary, which was a question for congress to decide, the president had no duty and conse quently no concern.

On the 30th of September, 1850, the Chevalier J. G. Hülse mann, chargé d'affaires of his majesty, the emperor of Austria,

addressed an official note to the secretary of state of the United States, remonstrating, in the name of his government, against the mission of Mr. Dudley Mann, who, at the time of the Hungarian revolution, had been despatched by the American president to proceed to Austria for the purpose of obtaining and remitting to Washington authentic and reliable information, from time to time, in relation to that interesting struggle. Mr. Mann had been so prudent in his movements, while residing and traveling in Austria, that the first intelligence of his having been there at all was received by the imperial government from a message of the American president to his congress. This fact alone should have been sufficient proof, even to Austria, as it must have been to all other governments, that nothing injurious had been done to the authority of the emperor in his dominions; but the object of that mission, the seeking of information with a view to an early recognition of Hungarian independence, especially when honestly avowed by Mr. Fillmore, roused the ire of the imperial Francis Joseph, who, like a youthful Hotspur as he was, demanded an immediate acknowledgment, on our part, with something like a guaranty of better behavior for the future. Not only was the topic of the note of the chargé ridiculous, but the style of it was almost silly; and the whole demand, both as to matter and manner, only excited the risibilities of Mr. Webster.

His answer has been ascribed, at least in the gossip of the day, to Mr, Everett; the newspapers, in fact, have published a claim as set up by that gentleman to the authorship of this performance; but, if there is not a plain mistake somewhere, there is certainly no sufficient proof of any such paternity, or of any just claim to it; while the fact of its having been for four years universally ascribed to Mr. Webster, and even lauded by Mr. Everett as one of Mr. Webster's most happy efforts, leaves no great reason to doubt upon this subject. Were it even true, that Mr. Webster was ill at the time the letter to Mr. Hülse

REPLY TO HULSEMANN.

435

mann was composed; that Mr. Everett may have been em ployed by Mr. Webster to write out a draft of it; and that that draft, in Mr. Everett's own hand, is still extant-all this would do but little toward confirming the authorship to Mr. Everett. Let it be granted, indeed, that the American secre tary, sick at home, availed himself of the help of his distinguished friend; that he talked over the subject, as he was certainly able and would scarcely fail to do, item by item, with him; and that those items, thus matured, were then actually written down by him, to be afterwards revised and corrected, as is known to be the fact, by Mr. Webster. If all this ser.

vice, and a great deal more, would transfer authorship from the original mind to an assistant, however distinguished that assistant might be himself for talents, the world would at once have to make out a new list of authors, which would dispossess the greatest geniuses of all times of the titles by which they have held their fame. Shakspeare, by such a canon, would cease to be Shakspeare; and, by the same rule, Paradise Lost would be set down as written, not by Milton, but by Milton's daughters. But there is no room even for such a supposition, nor for such an argument. "The correspondence with the Austrian chargé d'affaires," says Mr. Everett, in his brief but summary biography of Mr. Webster, "is the worthy comple ment, after an interval of a quarter of a century, to the profound discussion of international politics contained in the speech of January, 1824, on the revolution of Greece, and that of 1826, on the congress of Panama." This is Mr. Everett's eulogium on the letter; and he certainly could have uttered no higher one, as he well knew, than to compare it with either of the two illustrious speeches, which, for everything constituting masterpieces, have been but seldom equaled even by Mr. Webster; nor is it at all supposable, that such a citizen as Edward Everett, hitherto so disingenuous in all his conduct, at least so praised for every noble trait of character, would stoop so low

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