that if Mr. Webster “had to go over the work of the last few weeks he would have been for the compromise, which commands the approbation of a great majority.”  Whether Mr. Webster repented his opposition to the compromise no one can say, but the change of opinion in New England, the general assent of the Whig party, and the dazzling temptations of presidential candidacy prevailed with him.  He fell in behind Mr. Clay, and remained there in a party sense and as a party man for the rest of his life.

The terrible prize of the presidency was indeed again before his eyes.  Mr. Clay’s overthrow at the previous election had removed him, for the time being at least, from the list of candidates, and thus freed Mr. Webster from his most dangerous rival.  In the summer of 1833 Mr. Webster made a tour through the Western States, and was received everywhere with enthusiasm, and hailed as the great expounder and defender of the Constitution.  The following winter he stood forward as the preeminent champion of the Bank against the President.  Everything seemed to point to him as the natural candidate of the opposition.  The Legislature of Massachusetts nominated him for the presidency, and he himself deeply desired the office, for the fever now burned strongly within him.  But the movement came to nothing.  The anti-masonic schism still distracted the opposition.  The Kentucky leaders were jealous of Mr. Webster, and thought him “no such man” as their idol Henry Clay.  They admitted his greatness and his high traits of character, but they thought his ambition mixed with too much self-love.  Governor Letcher wrote to Mr. Crittenden in 1836 that Clay was more elevated, disinterested and patriotic than Webster, and that the verdict of the country had had a good effect on the latter.  Despite the interest and enthusiasm which Mr. Webster aroused in the West, he had no real hold upon that section or upon the masses of the people and the Western Whigs turned to Harrison.  There was no hope in 1836 for Mr. Webster, or, for that matter, for his party either.  He received the electoral vote of faithful Massachusetts, and that was all.  As it was then, so it had been at the previous election, and so it was to continue to be at the end of every presidential term.  There never was a moment when Mr. Webster had any real prospect of attaining to the presidency.  Unfortunately he never could realize this.  He would have been more than human, perhaps, if he had done so.  The tempting bait hung always before his eyes.  The prize seemed to be always just coming within his reach, and was really never near it.  But the longing had entered his soul.  He could not rid himself of the idea of this final culmination to his success; and it warped his feelings and actions, injured his career, and embittered his last years.