=_307._= DEBATE BETWEEN WEBSTER AND HAYNE.

...  Webster, Clay, Calhoun—­the triumvirate to which, it is to be feared, we shall long have to look back as to our last, were still living; and as Augusta Moray gazed on the dark, melancholy eyes of the first, shadowed by that wonderful brow, or looked into the face of the second, where if prescient thought sometimes rose as a flitting cloud, it was chased away before the glow of the warm heart and the quick kindling fancy, or turned to the sharp angular lines and firmly compressed lips that marked the iron strength of the third, she felt that she stood in the midst of her dream fulfilment.  The session was one of peculiar interest.  Great questions agitated the public mind, and were treated greatly.  Two great parties, springing from the very foundations of our civil polity, strove for supremacy in our legislative halls.  The one, looking into the depths of our colonial history, took its stand on the unquestionable truth, that each state of the Union was sovereign over herself, from which was drawn the corollary, that she was as free to leave as she had been to enter the Union.  The other contended that the present constitution of these United States defined the boundary of the powers of each state, as well as of the great whole into which they had been voluntarily fused; that to look behind that, was such a resort to first principles or natural rights, as is involved in revolution, and must be decided as revolution ever is, by the relative strength of the ruling and the revolting forces.

On neither side was there any trickery, any bullying, any flimsy display of rhetorical power.  All was grand as the subject for which they contended, solemn as the doom to which they seemed, approaching.  In the chief magistrate of that time all saw the unflinching executor of the nation’s will—­a man whose words were the sure prefigurements of his deeds.  Their verdict must be carefully weighed, for it would be surely executed.  In stern silence each sat to hear, to deliberate, to judge.  The sharp logic and fiery vehemence of Hayne called up no angry flash, roused no personal vindictiveness; and the deep tones of Webster found as ready an entrance to southern as to northern hearts, while in those powerful, words which seemed the fit weapons of a nation’s champion, his mighty mind swept away all that opposed it, save that principle which lay imbedded in the very deepest stratum of the life of his opponents, and which could not be torn away from them till feeling and life were extinct.

It was in the capital, and in the presence of these great men, that Augusta liked best to find herself.  We are afraid she did not always listen when men of more ordinary power occupied the floor,—­the gallery was an excellent dreaming place at such times.

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=_Catharine Anne Warfield,[70] 1817-._=

From “The Romance of Beauseincourt.”