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KF 14 247

HARVARD
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1843,
BY TAPPAN And Dennet,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts.

PREFACE.

SINCE the publication of the second volume of Mr. WEBSTER'S "SPEECHES," his Congressional career has been brought to a close. Having been invited by the lamented HARRISON to take a place in his Cabinet, Mr. Webster resigned his seat in the Senate of the United States, in February, 1841, and, on the 6th of March following, entered on the duties of the Department of State. The ability and success with which he has conducted the foreign affairs of the country, in this new sphere of public service, need no remark The Treaty between the United States and Great Britain, negotiated by him and Lord Ashburton, has been too recently proclaimed to require to be recalled to any body's remembrance. Ratified, on our side of the ocean, by four fifths of the Senate, without distinction of party, it has been hailed by the whole People as an honorable and highly advantageous settlement of controversies by which the Peace of the Nation had long been endangered. It is the purpose of the Publishers, at a future day, to collect into a volume the State Papers of Mr. Webster on the subject of this Treaty, and on other subjects which he may have been called on to treat in the station which he now occupies. In the mean time, they have thought that they should render an acceptable service to the Public by completing the series of Mr. Webster's "SPEECHES," delivered in the Senate and before the People, previously to his entering upon Exec utive office. With this view, the present volume has been prepared. In submitting it to the Country, the Publishers avail themselves of the opportunity to connect in a permanent form with Mr. Webster's Works, the following just vindication of his political course and character from charges which the wantonness of party warfare has too often arrayed against him :

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