I grant he did not here show magnanimity.  He thought that the presidency should be given to the ablest and most experienced statesman.  He did not appear to see that this proud position is too commanding to be bestowed except for the most exalted services, and such services as attract the common eye, especially in war.  Presidents in so great a country as this reign, like the old feudal kings, by the grace of God.  They are selected by divine Providence, as David was from the sheepfold.  No American, however great his genius, except the successful warrior, can ever hope to climb to this dizzy height, unless personal ambition is lost sight of in public services.  This is wisely ordered, to defeat unscrupulous ambition.  It is only in England that a man can rise to supreme power by force of genius, since he is selected virtually by his peers, and not by the popular voice.  He who leads Parliament is the real king of England for the time, since Parliament is omnipotent.  Had Webster been an Englishman, and as powerful in the House of Commons as he was in Congress at one time, he might have been prime minister.  But he could not be president of the United States, although the presidential power is much inferior to that exercised by an English premier.  It is the dignity of the office, not its power, which constitutes the value of the presidency.  And Webster loved dignity even more than power.

In order to arrive at this coveted office,—­although its duties probably would have been irksome,—­it is possible that he sought to conciliate the South and win the favor of Southern leaders.  But I do not believe he ever sought to win their favor by any abandonment of his former principles, or by any treachery to the cause he had espoused.  Yet it is this of which he has been accused by his enemies,—­many of those enemies his former friends.  The real cause of this estrangement, and of all the accusations against him, was this,—­he did not sympathize with the Abolition party; he was not prepared to embark in a crusade against slavery, the basal institution of the South.  He did not like slavery; but he knew it to be an institution which the Constitution, of which he was the great defender, had accepted,—­accepted as a compromise, in those dark days which tried men’s souls.  Many of the famous statesmen who deliberated in that venerated hall in Philadelphia also disliked and detested slavery; but they could not have had a constitution, they could not have had a united country, unless that institution was acknowledged and guaranteed.  So they accepted it as the lesser evil.  They made a compromise, and the Constitution was signed.  Now, everybody knows that the Abolitionists of the North, about the year 1833, attacked slavery, although it was guaranteed by the Constitution; attacked it, not as an evil merely, but as a sin; attacked it, by virtue of a higher law than constitutional provision.  And as an evil, as a stain on our country, as an insult