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was formed and the northern states had submitted to a recognition of its existence, which they had supposed would be only temporary, in the southern states of the republic. In this way, as Mr. Webster next shows, the territorial strife began. The south at once raised the banner of acquisition, because whatever acquisitions should be made, since the republic is bounded on the north by the territory of a power able to defend it, must come to us on our southern border. For this purpose, the revolution of Texas had been encouraged, and the annexation of that republic had been effected, by the leading instrumentality of the south. For the same purpose, a war with Mexico, a republic patterned after our own, but weak and needy of our encouragement and support, had been injuriously and even clandestinely brought upon us, and in this way immense tracts of the earth had been added to our possessions on the south and west. California, however, had disappointed the plans of those who had been foremost in grasping after it, leaving only New Mexico and Utah, regions incapable of the curse of slavery, as subjects of congressional contention. The house of representatives, happening to have a free-soil majority, threatened to fix the antislavery restriction, nevertheless, on those provinces, careless of the irritable condition of the south, while the senate would not pass the anti-slavery bills of the house, as careless of the determination of the north. Having thus shown how, as here described, the crimination and recrimination of north and south had been revived, the speaker, after explaining his own steady opposition to all the recent measures by which this state of things had been produced, goes into a careful examination of the prominent complaints of each section against the other, in which he finds only one valid and prominent cause, or either side, for complaint. The south had complained, that the north had falsified its constitutional pledges, by setting up an unexpected and unlawful opposition to the slavery of the south; and Mr. Webster, while denying the charge in general,

admits that the northern states had been too negligent in their engagement to return slaves escaping from their masters and taking shelter at the north. He maintained, on the other side, that the south, either wittingly or unwittingly, had disappointed if not deceived the north, in obtaining a constitutional recog nition of slavery in the southern states, with an engagement never to meddle with its existence there, by exhibiting a hostility to it, real or unreal, which had given place to a most unexpected, remarkable and unanimous determination to support it where it is, and where it was, and to extend it as far as possible by grasping at territory adjacent to those states. Other complaints are mentioned and discussed, but these two, both on the same subject and balancing each other, are regarded as the ones calling especially for moderation, and charity, and good faith. Whether sincere or insincere, though no insincerity is charged, the declarations of hostility to slavery by the south, at the time and in the act of framing and adopting the federal constitution, and in the passage of the great anti-slavery ordi nance of 1787, ought now, if the south expected a similar fidel ity to former principles by the north, whatever change of interest may have happened in the slave-holding states, to be honestly and strictly carried out. In like manner, if the north had agreed to return slaves escaping from their masters, however their views and feelings may have altered from that day, they must not now parley, nor tamper with their plighted word. Neither party must expect the other to be faithful, unless it is willing and ready to be itself faithful. Both must consent to abide by the original compact which they had made. By this compact, by this mutual concession, the Union had been formed at first. By the same compact, by the same concessions, and by these only, could the Union be maintained. For one, as a northern man, he was willing to abide by that part of the compact which bound him, and all his northern fellow-citizens, to return the fugitives; and he was thus willing, not only because

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the people in framing the constitution had laid him under an obligation to be willing, but because he expected the south to be equally ready to comply with its own stipulation, and relinquish its claim of extending slavery beyond its present limits, and particularly of sending it into the unsettled territories of the United States.

Such, in substance, is the speech of the 7th of March, 1850; and, if it is not a sound constitutional argument, if it is not conciliatory, patriotic, wise and good, then it is difficult to divine what may have become of the original meaning of these words. It was an argument to both parties, for the sake of the continuance of the republic, to keep good faith and do exactly as they had agreed. It was no surrender of the south to the north, nor of the north to the south. It was a demand, that both south and north, for the sake of peace, for the sake of liberty, for the sake of free institutions, and a possible destiny common to them both, should maintain the Union in pursuance of the same measures by which it had been originally produced.

It cannot be denied, however, that, for this speech, Mr. Webster came near losing his position at the north. The north, it need not be disguised, forgetting the many illustrious services of this great man for a space of more than forty years, by which he had laid the whole country under obligations of gratitude which a score of generations will not be able to repay, and by which he had spread the honor and fame and glory of his native land over the face of the civilized and reading world, seemed at one time to be on the point of committing the folly, to call it by no harsher name, of canceling a life-time of noble and patriotic deeds, by what, at the worst, could be regarded as only one mistake. Some, it is true, accused him of having given this healing counsel, of taking his position as an American, on the broad platform of the constitution, not because, as was undeniably the fact, he had never stood a moment on any narrower foundation, but because he was aspiring to the highest

office under the constitution. The shallowness is the only ele ment that exceeds the uncharitableness of this change. Did not Mr. Webster know that, in taking even his old position at this particular time, he was running the risk of losing the whole north, while the south would never support the man who, in that very congress, had declared that he never could consent to the extension of American slavery one foot beyond the limits it then occupied? Was that great man, whose sagacity and breadth of vision had been the boast and admiration of his countrymen for nearly half a century, all at once so blind as not to see, a moment before the speech, what every scribbler, and paragraphist, and country newspaper critic saw, as with a sunbeam, the moment after it? There is no room for speculation upon this subject. Mr. Webster is fortunate in having so expressed himself before the delivery of the speech, as to leave no doubt upon it. Without trying to seek supporters at the north, and conscious of the hazard he was about to make, he stated to a friend, some time before the 7th of March, "that he had made up his mind to embark alone on what he was aware would prove a stormy sea, because, in that case, should final disaster ensue, there would be but one life lost." He saw his danger certainly; but he saw what seemed to be his duty, also; and that duty he resolved to do, for the sake of his cherished country, without respect to personal considerations.

This one speech, however, has received more attention, comparatively, than ought to have been given to it by those of his opponents, who wish to be looked upon as candid. There are several other speeches, made during the continuance of this great debate, which seem to have been uncharitably or carelessly overlooked. The accusation against Mr. Webster was that, in a crisis of liberty, he yielded too much to slavery. Passing off from the speech of the 7th of March, in which it will be difficult for posterity, it is imagined, to find any un

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constitutional concessions to the slave interest, it may be asked whether, in his other addresses at this time, he did nothing for the cause of freedom. Was it nothing, that he opposed the plausible claim set up by Texas, to the best portions of New Mexico, because Texas wished to convert them to the purposes of slavery? Was it nothing that he advocated, more ably and feelingly than any other senator, the immediate reception of California, when the whole south was arrayed against it on account of her anti-slavery constitution? Was it nothing that he rebuked the whole south, openly and plainly, in the midst of his supposed projects of ambition, for the treatment it was accustomed to extend to free colored persons going to the southern states on lawful business? Was it nothing that he repeated his determination, over and over, never to consent to the extension of slavery on this continent, and repeated it so often that the southern members accused him, as the first step to his new scheme of ambition, of having made this his hobby?

The truth is, however, and it is more apparent as one reads more and more of Mr. Webster's speeches deliv. ered at this time, that he had no hobby, no scheme, no ambition, but the single and unchanged and noble one of being the champion and defender of the Union and the constitution, and of the constitution for the sake of maintaining and perpetuating the integrity of the Union. When all party feeling shall have subsided, and the excitement of that day shall be forgotten, the speech of the 7th of March, and his various speeches of that congress, on the boundaries of Texas, on the public lands and boundaries of California, and on the compromise measures generally, will be re-read and revised by the cooler judgment of posterity, when they will be thought to constitute his best title, the circumstances being all considered, to the respect and affection of his countrymen. His vote for the fugitive slave bill will not then be charged as a proof of political ambition. It will be believed that, though he finally