The Oregon question led, however, to an attack upon Mr. Webster which cannot be wholly passed over.  He had, of course, his personal enemies in both parties, and his effective opposition to war with England greatly angered some of the most warlike of the Democrats, and especially Mr. C.J.  Ingersoll of Pennsylvania, a bitter Anglophobist.  Mr. Ingersoll, in February, made a savage attack upon the Ashburton negotiation, the treaty of Washington, and upon Mr. Webster personally, alleging that as Secretary of State he had been guilty of a variety of grave misdemeanors, including a corrupt use of the public money.  Some of these charges, those relating to the payment of McLeod’s counsel by our government, to instructions to the Attorney-General to take charge of McLeod’s defence, and to a threat by Mr. Webster that if McLeod were not released New York would be laid in ashes, were repeated in the Senate by Mr. Dickinson of New York.  Mr. Webster peremptorily called for all the papers relating to the negotiation of 1842, and on the sixth and seventh of April (1846), he made the elaborate speech in defence of the Ashburton treaty, which is included in his collected works.  It is one of the strongest and most virile speeches he ever delivered.  He was profoundly indignant, and he had the completest mastery of his subject.  In fact, he was so deeply angered by the charges made against him, that he departed from his almost invariable practice, and indulged in a severe personal denunciation of Ingersoll and Dickinson.  Although he did not employ personal invective in his oratory, it was a weapon which he was capable of using with most terrible effect, and his blows fell with crushing force upon Ingersoll, who writhed under the strokes.  Through some inferior officers of the State Department Ingersoll got what he considered proofs, and then introduced resolutions calling for an account of all payments from the secret service fund; for communications made by Mr. Webster to Messrs. Adams and Gushing of the Committee on Foreign Affairs; for all papers relating to McLeod, and for the minutes of the committee on Foreign Affairs, to show that Mr. Webster had expressed an opinion adverse to our claim in the Oregon dispute.  Mr. Ingersoll closed his speech by a threat of impeachment as the result and reward of all this evil-doing, and an angry debate followed, in which Mr. Webster was attacked and defended with equal violence.  President Polk replied to the call of the House by saying that he could not feel justified, either morally or legally, in revealing the uses of the secret service fund.  Meantime a similar resolution was defeated in the Senate by a vote of forty-four to one, Mr. Webster remarking that he was glad that the President had refused the request of the House; that he should have been sorry to have seen an important principle violated, and that he was not in the least concerned at being thus left without an explanation; he needed no defence, he said, against such attacks.