they will cease to exist at all.  Take our shipping, for instance, with foreign ports,—­it is not merely crippled, it is almost annihilated.  Is it desirable to cut off that great arm of national strength?  Shall we march on to our destiny, blind and lame and halt?  What will we do if England and other countries shall find it necessary to protect themselves from impoverishment, and reintroduce duties on bread-stuffs high enough to make the culture of wheat profitable?  Where then will our farmers find a market for their superfluous corn, except to those engaged in industries which we should crush by removing protection?

I maintain that Mr. Webster, in defending our various industries with so much ability, for the benefit of the nation on the whole, rendered very important services, even as Hamilton and Clay did; although the solid South, wishing cheap labor, and engaged exclusively in agriculture, was opposed to him.  The independent South would have established free-trade,—­as Mr. Calhoun advocated, and as any enlightened statesman would advocate, when any interest can stand alone and defy competition, as was the case with the manufactures of Great Britain fifty years ago.  The interests of the South and those of the North, under the institution of slavery, were not identical; indeed, they had been in fierce opposition for more than fifty years.  Mr. Webster was, in his arguments on tariffs and cognate questions, the champion of the North, as Mr. Calhoun was of the South; and this opposition and antagonism gave great force to Webster’s eloquence at this time.  His sentences are short, interrogative, idiomatic.  He is intensely in earnest.  He grapples with sophistries and scatters them to the winds; both reason and passion vivify him.

This was the period of Webster’s greatest popularity, as the defender of Northern industries.  This made him the idol of the merchants and manufacturers of New England.  He made them rich; no wonder they made him presents.  They ought, in gratitude, to have paid his debts over and over again.  What if he did, in straitened circumstances, accept their aid?  They owed to him more than he owed to them; and with all their favor and bounty Webster remained poor.  He was never a rich man, but always an embarrassed man, because he had expensive tastes, like Cicero at Rome and Bacon in England.  This, truly, was not to his credit; it was a flaw in his character; it involved him in debt, created enemies, and injured his reputation.  It may have lessened his independence, and it certainly impaired his dignity.  But there were also patriotic motives which prompted him, and which kept him poor.  Had he devoted his great talents exclusively to the law, he might have been rich; but he gave his time to his country.

His greatest services to his country, however, were as the defender of the Constitution.  Here he soared to the highest rank of political fame.  Here he was a statesman, having in view the interests of the whole country.  He never was what we call a politician.  He never was such a miserable creature as that.  I mean a mere politician, whose calling is the meanest a man can follow, since it seeks only spoils, and is a perpetual deception, incompatible with all dignity and independence, whose only watchword is success.