Page:Imperialdictiona03eadi Brandeis Vol3b.pdf/583

WEB and laborious clergymen of his day, and became a great favourite in the literary circles of Edinburgh. Dr. Webster possessed an extraordinary power of arithmetical calculation. He was the founder of that invaluable institution, the scheme for annuities to the widows of the Scottish clergy, which was brought into operation in 1744; and the experience of one hundred and twenty years has shown that his elaborate calculations on which the fund was based, were remarkably accurate. The whole labour not only of planning and arranging, but of collecting and distributing the revenues, for many years devolved on the original proposer. Dr. Webster was a stanch whig; and during the rebellion of 1745 he strenuously exerted himself to preserve the loyalty of the Scottish people to the reigning dynasty. He entered with zeal into the proposals for extending religion and civilization throughout the Highlands; was a liberal patron of the charitable and benevolent institutions of Edinburgh; took a deep interest in the schemes for the extension and improvement of the city; and is believed to have drawn the first plan of the new town. In the year 1755 he drew up at the request of President Dundas, for the information of the government, a statistical account of the Scottish people, being the first attempt at a census ever made in Scotland. Dr. Webster's vigorous intellect, popular manners, amiable disposition, knowledge of the world, and genial wit, made him esteemed and beloved by all classes of his fellow-citizens; and his popularity was not diminished by his extraordinary convivial powers, which the social habits of that period often put to the test. He died 25th January, 1784. He left seven children, one of whom, Colonel Webster, fell in the American war. Dr. Webster was the author of several sermons, and of a spirited and impassioned song composed on Miss Erskine, a lady of fortune and family, whom he married after a romantic courtship. Several patriotic lyrics have also been attributed to him.—J. T.  WEBSTER,, the American orator and statesman, was born on the 18th of January, 1782, in the township of Salisbury, New Hampshire. His father, in turn a soldier, a huntsman, and a farmer, had fought with the English against the French in Canada, and against the English in the war of the American revolution; and, when Daniel was born, he was a small farmer on ground which himself had reclaimed from the wilderness. Daniel, the younger of two sons, was taught to read by his mother, a woman proud of and ambitious for her children. In intervals of farm-work, he picked up a little instruction from a migratory village school, and increased it by reading the books in a "social library" extant in Salisbury. To his own surprise his father made generous sacrifices to send him at fifteen, after some further and more elaborate teaching, to Dartmouth college, where he remained four years, studying assiduously, and reading both widely and largely; in winter, moreover, "teaching school" to eke out his allowance. Returning home, he was placed in the office of a lawyer, his father's next door neighbour; and after some changes of occupation, and still more of place, he settled as a lawyer at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where Joseph Story was among his fellow-practitioners. He rose rapidly in his profession, and at first took rather less than more of the interest in politics usually manifested by rising young American lawyers. In 1813, however, he was elected by the federal party to represent his state in congress, where he was placed at once on the committee for foreign affairs, in a time of war the most important committee of all. His maiden speech in the house of representatives was delivered on the 10th of June, 1813, when he moved a series of resolutions on the Berlin and Milan decrees, and it attracted great attention, not so much by its rhetorical power, as by its large amount of historical knowledge and illustration. Webster's war policy was a strenuous advocacy of the formation of a powerful navy. Having been again in 1814 returned as a representative to congress, he removed to Boston in 1816, and, after having powerfully contributed in 1817 to reform the currency system of the states, he retired for a time from political life to devote himself to his profession. It was in arguing points of constitutional law he attained a more than local fame; and in conducting cases where the federal authority came into conflict with state rights, he drew on himself the attention of the Union, while taking rank at the head of his profession in New England. In 1822 he was elected by Boston to congress, and again in 1824 and 1826. His chief congressional speech of this period was delivered in 1824, in support of a resolution recommending the president to send an agent to revolutionary Greece. At the beginning of 1828 he received a new honour, and was chosen senator for Massachusetts. In January, 1830, he delivered a speech which made a great sensation throughout the Union. The question was nominally one about the sale of state lands, but Webster made it the text for an eloquent oration in defence of federalist views. Its burden was "liberty and union now and for ever, one and inseparable." Cultivating friendly relations with General Jackson, Webster energetically supported his repression of the nullification movement of Calhoun and South Carolina, and his eloquence was only less efficacious than Jackson's practical energy in extinguishing the attempt then made by a single state virtually to secede from the Union. In the recess of 1833 he made a journey to the middle and western states, and the apostle of union was welcomed with enthusiasm. In 1839 he paid a hasty visit to Europe, and received great attention in this country, where he formed an intimacy with the late Lord Ashburton, afterwards useful to both countries. He had been an unsuccessful candidate for the presidency in 1836, when in 1841, on the election of General Harrison, he became secretary of state, retaining the office for two years, during which he adjusted with Lord Ashburton, as English commissioner, the vexed question of Oregon, which at one time threatened to produce a war between Great Britain and America. After two years spent in retirement, he was re-elected to the senate in 1845, and opposed the annexation of Texas and the Mexican war. The hopes which the antislavery party had formed of him were shattered, however, by his famous speech of the 7th of March, 1850, in which he supported the fugitive slave law, and the admission of new slave states into the Union. In the same year he was appointed a second time secretary of state, when Mr. Fillmore became president, after the death of General Taylor, and was in possession of the office when he died at his country residence of Marshfield, some thirty miles from Boston, on the 24th of October, 1852. Webster's guiding principle in politics was the preservation of the Union, for which he was ready to make all sacrifices, and to oppose with all his power Calhoun and the nullifiers on the one hand, and the antislavery party on the other. His views on the currency were remarkably sound, and his speech of 1838, in defence of the right of government to employ convertible paper in its fiscal transactions, was once quoted by Lord Overstone before a select committee of the house of lords as a very able exposition of true currency principles. Webster was twice married, and his private character was irreproachable. In person he was a large man. He was fond of agricultural pursuits, and of out of door sports. By Americans he is considered the greatest of their orators; and although he is occasionally somewhat too impassioned for English taste, he combines, like Mirabeau, vigorous logic and perspicacity with rhetorical glow. His works, including of course his speeches, were published at Boston in 1851. There is also a life of him by the late Theodore Parker, written from the point of view of a sorrowing antislavery admirer.—F. E.  WEBSTER,, the dramatist, wrote for the stage as early as 1601, but the date of his birth, as of his death, and like most of his biography, is unknown. According to his own account, he was "one born free of the Merchant Tailors' Company." He seems to have begun his dramatic career as a coadjutor of Dekker and others. The chief of the plays of which he was the sole author are—"The White Devil," "The Duchess of Malfi," and "Appius and Virginia," printed in 1612, 1623, and 1654 respectively, dates which do not mark the periods of their production on the stage. These are tragedies. The plays which he wrote in alliance with others are of various kinds. "Westward Ho!" and "Northward Ho!" for instance, in which he co-operated with Dekker, are bustling pictures of the English life and manners of his time. As a tragic writer, Webster is distinguished by his power in depicting the horrible. Mr. Hallam says of him, "Webster ought to be ranked, I think, the next below Ford. With less of poetic grace than Shirley, he had incomparably more vigour; with less of nature and simplicity than Heywood, he had a more elevated genius and a bolder pencil. But the deep sorrows and terrors of tragedy were peculiarly his province." Webster's works, with some account of the author, and notes, were edited by Mr. Dyce in 1830. In a second edition of 1857, Mr. Dyce refutes the theory that the John Webster the dramatist is the same person as the John Webster who wrote the Saints' Guide, and the well-known tract, Academiarum Examen. In 1857 also appeared Mr. Hazlitt's edition of Webster's works.—F. E. 