party and the narrow confines of class and corporation advocacy, his colossal intellect expanded to its full proportions in the field of patriotism, luminous with the fires of genius, and commanding the homage not of party but of country.  His magnificent harangues touched Jackson in his deepest-seated and ruling feeling, love of country, and brought forth the response which always came from him when the country was in peril and a defender presented himself.  He threw out the right hand of fellowship, treated Mr. Webster with marked distinction, commended him with public praise, and placed him on the roll of patriots.  And the public mind took the belief that they were to act together in future, and that a cabinet appointment or a high mission would be the reward of his patriotic service.  It was a crisis in the life of Mr. Webster.  He stood in public opposition to Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun.  With Mr. Clay he had a public outbreak in the Senate.  He was cordial with Jackson.  The mass of his party stood by him on the proclamation.  He was at a point from which a new departure might be taken:  one at which he could not stand still; from which there must be either advance or recoil.  It was a case in which will more than intellect was to rule.  He was above Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun in intellect, below them in will:  and he was soon seen cooperating with them (Mr. Clay in the lead) in the great measure condemning President Jackson.”

This is of course the view of a Jacksonian leader, but it is none the less full of keen analysis and comprehension of Mr. Webster, and in some respects embodies very well the conditions of the situation.  Mr. Benton naturally did not see that an alliance with Jackson was utterly impossible for Mr. Webster, whose proper course was therefore much less simple than it appeared to the Senator from Missouri.  There was in reality no common ground possible between Webster and Jackson except defence of the national integrity.  Mr. Webster was a great orator, a splendid advocate, a trained statesman and economist, a remarkable constitutional lawyer, and a man of immense dignity, not headstrong in temper and without peculiar force of will.  Jackson, on the other hand, was a rude soldier, unlettered, intractable, arbitrary, with a violent temper and a most despotic will.  Two men more utterly incompatible it would have been difficult to find, and nothing could have been more wildly fantastic than to suppose an alliance between them, or to imagine that Mr. Webster could ever have done anything but oppose utterly those mad gyrations of personal government which the President called his “policy.”