Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/498

Rh 472 WEBSTER were those of Gibbons v. Ogden, in 1824, in. which he overthrew the action of the New York legislature, in granting to Ogdeu, assignee of Fulton and Livingstone, a monopoly of steam navigation in Xew York waters, as an interference with the right of Congress to regulate com merce; Ogden v. Saunders, in 1827, in which he attacked the right of a State to pass bankruptcy laws ; the Girard College case, in 1844, in which he maintained that Chris tianity was an essential part of the common law ; and the case of Luther v. Borden, commonly known as the Rhode Island case, in 1848, in which he laid the foundation for the subsequent definition of the &quot;guarantee clause&quot; of the constitution, and stated the meaning of the &quot; repub lican government&quot; of a State. Like other American lawyers, he made no distinction in his practice between kinds of cases, and was often retained in criminal causes. The most celebrated of these were the trials of Goodridge and Knapp ; in the latter (6 Webster s Works, 53) is the passage on the power of conscience, which has been de claimed by countless American schoolboys. Webster s reputation as an orator began with his address at Plymouth in 1820, on the 200th anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims. It was increased by his address at the laying of the corner-stone of the Bunker Hill monument in 1825, on the 50th anniversary of the battle, and by that which commemorated in 1826 the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the coincident deaths of Jefferson and John Adams. On every great public occasion thereafter, if Webster was obtainable, he was held to be the natural speaker to be chosen. His finest subsequent speeches were made on the completion of the Bunker Hill monument in 1843, and at the laying of the corner-stone of the addition to the Capitol at Wash ington in 1851. In December 1823 Webster returned to Congress as a representative from Massachusetts, and his first speech, in January 1824, in support of a resolution to send a com missioner to Greece, then in insurrection, made him the lirst of Congressional speakers. During his service in the house the tariff of 1824 came up for discussion. Re presenting a commercial district, Webster s speech has always been a source of gratification to American opponents of protection. He repudiated the name of &quot; American system,&quot; claimed by Clay for the system of protection which he was introducing. He cited with cordial approval the expressed belief of English statesmen that English manufactures had prospered in spite of protection, not because of it, and their desire for &quot; unrestricted trade.&quot; He attacked the &quot; old notion &quot; of the balance of trade with such vigour that he felt compelled to apologize &quot; for speaking irreverently of the dead.&quot; He stated the manner in which, under unrestricted trade, the American production in cotton, woollens, and iron had already come to rival that of England, protected for hundreds of years, and the loss jn labour which would come from an attempt, by legal protection, to &quot; support a business that cannot support itself.&quot; The whole speech would be a very striking free-trade argument even at the present day. When the tariff of 1828, which was still more protective, came up for discussion, Webster had ceased to oppose protection ; but his speech does not attempt to argue in favour of it. It states that his people, after giving warning in 1824 that they would consider protection as the policy of the Government, had gone into protected manufactures, and that he now asked that that policy be not reversed to the injury of his constituents. It can hardly escape notice that, in his published Works, Webster has but two subsequent speeches in Congress on the tariff, both defending protection rather as a policy under which industries had been called into bein; than as an advisable policy, if the stage had been clear for the adop tion of a new policy. In 1827 Webster was sent to the senate, in which he remained until his death, with the exception of his service in the cabinet in Tyler s administration. In January 1830 came the crowning event of his political life. A debate on public lands, under a resolution offered by Senator Foot, thence known as &quot;Foot s resolution,&quot; had wandered off into all possible fields. In coarse of it, Hayne, of South Carolina, attacked New England for having pursued a selfish policy as to western lands. Webster replied. During Hayne s answer Webster drew from him the first distinct and public statement of the new doctrine of nullifi cation, of the constitutional right of a State to forbid the execution within its jurisdiction of Acts of Congress which it considered unconstitutional. This had been the product of Calhoun s intellect, which was generally taken to be the sonrce of Hayne s inspiration. Webster s reply is his famous &quot; second speech on Foot s resolution.&quot; He began by a defence of Massachusetts, which has been severely criticized, and is perhaps open to criticism. But if effect is to be taken as a test, it is above criticism. The remainder of the speech was of intense interest, not merely to New England, but to the whole North and West, and to all the progressive elements of the country. He stated the anarchistic doctrine of nullification in its naked ness, extorted from Hayne an unwilling half -admission of the exactness of his statement, and then went on to trample on it with such an exhibition of logic, sarcasm, and elephantine humour as has never been heard in the senate before or since. It is on this speech that Webster s fame was built. Southern men had taken the lead so long that it was a new sensation to the North and West to see a Southern leader completely overmatched by their champion; and &quot;Black Dan Webster,&quot; a popular name, due to his dark complexion, beetling brows, and heavy cast of features, was for twenty years the representative of Northern sentiment as to the nature of the Union. Calhoun took Hayne s place in the senate in 1833, introduced and defended resolutions endorsing the right of nullification, and was still more fully answered by Webster. For the next seventeen years the records of the senate are full of constitutional arguments between the two. Webster s oratory made him an invaluable member of the Whig party, and his addresses at political meetings are so numerous as to defy special mention. A leader so distinguished had a fair right to think of the presidency, but it always remained just beyond his reach. In the general Whig confusion of 1836 he received the fourteen electoral votes of Massachusetts. In 1840 the candidature of Harrison left him no chance. In 1844 Webster s retention of his position under Tyler gave Clay an over whelming advantage with his party. In 1848 the nomina tion of Taylor, which Webster declared to be &quot; one not fit to be made,&quot; was a fatal blow to the prospects of the Massachusetts leader. His final failure to obtain the Whig nomination in 1852 put an end to his political career. When the Whig party came into power in 1841, Webster was appointed secretary of state (foreign affairs), and he retained his post under Tyler, after his colleagues had broken with the new president and resigned. There was good reason for his action. When he entered office war with Great Britain was a probable event of the near future. The M Leod case, in which the State of New York insisted on trying a British subject, with whose trial the Federal Government had no power to interfere, while the British Government had declared that it would consider conviction and execution a casus belli ; the exercise of the right of search by British vessels on the coast of Africa, of which Americans had a deep-seated detestation, quite apart from