In further illustration of this peculiar power of Webster, the Speech of the 7th of March, 1850, may be cited, for its delivery is to be ranked with the most important historical events.  For some years it was the object of the extremes of panegyric and the extremes of execration.  But this effort is really the most loosely constructed of all the great productions of Webster’s mind.  In force, compactness, and completeness, in closeness of thought to things, in closeness of imagery to the reasoning it illustrates, and in general intellectual fibre, muscle, and bone, it cannot be compared to such an oration as that on the “First Settlement of New England,” or such a speech as that which had for its theme, “The Constitution not a Compact between Sovereign States”; but, after all deductions have been made, it was still a speech which frowned upon its opponents as a kind of verbal fortress constructed both for the purpose of defence and aggression.  Its fame is due, in a great degree, to its resistance to a storm of assaults, such as had rarely before been concentrated on any speech delivered in either branch of the Congress of the United States.  Indeed, a very large portion of the intellect, the moral sentiment, and the moral passion of the free States was directed against it.  There was not a weapon in the armory of the dialectician or the rhetorician which was not employed with the intent of demolishing it.  Contempt of Webster was vehemently taught as the beginning of political wisdom.  That a speech, thus assailed, should survive the attacks made upon it, appeared to be impossible.  And yet it did survive, and is alive now, while better speeches, or what the present writer thought, at the time, to be more convincing speeches, have not retained individual existence, however deeply they may have influenced that public opinion which, in the end, determines political events.  “I still live,” was Webster’s declaration on his death-bed, when the friends gathered around it imagined he had breathed his last; and the same words might be uttered by the Speech of the 7th of March, could it possess the vocal organ which announces personal existence.  Between the time it was originally delivered and the present year there runs a great and broad stream of blood, shed from the veins of Northern and Southern men alike; the whole political and moral constitution of the country has practically suffered an abrupt change; new problems engage the attention of thoughtful statesmen; much is forgotten which was once considered of the first importance; but the 7th of March Speech, battered as it is by innumerable attacks, is still remembered at least as one which called forth more power than it embodied in itself.  This persistence of life is due to the fact that it was “organized.”