made up of concessions to the Southern and slave-holding interest.  That Henry Clay should have originated and advocated this scheme was perfectly natural.  However wrong or mistaken, this had been his steady and unbroken policy from the outset, as the best method of preserving the Union and advancing the cause of nationality.  Mr. Clay was consistent and sincere, and, however much he may have erred in his general theory, he never swerved from it.  But with Mr. Webster the case was totally different.  He had opposed the principle of compromise from the beginning, and in 1833, when concession was more reasonable than in 1850, he had offered the most strenuous and unbending resistance.  Now he advocated a compromise which was in reality little less than a complete surrender on the part of the North.  On the general question of compromise he was, of course, grossly inconsistent, and the history of the time, as it appears in the cold light of the present day, shows plainly that, while he was brave and true and wise in 1833, in 1850 he was not only inconsistent, but that he erred deeply in policy and statesmanship.  It has also been urged in behalf of Mr. Webster that he went no farther than the Republicans in 1860 in the way of concession, and that as in 1860 so in 1850, anything was permissible which served to gain time.  In the first place, the tu quoque argument proves nothing and has no weight.  In the second place, the situations in 1850 and in 1860 were very different.

There were at the former period, in reference to slavery, four parties in the country—­the Democrats, the Free-Soilers, the Abolitionists, and the Whigs.  The three first had fixed and widely-varying opinions; the last was trying to live without opinions, and soon died.  The pro-slavery Democrats were logical and practical; the Abolitionists were equally logical but thoroughly impracticable and unconstitutional, avowed nullifiers and secessionists; the Free-Soilers were illogical, constitutional, and perfectly practical.  As Republicans, the Free-Soilers proved the correctness and good sense of their position by bringing the great majority of the Northern people to their support.  But at the same time their position was a difficult one, for while they were an anti-slavery party and had set on foot constitutional opposition to the extension of slavery, their fidelity to the Constitution compelled them to admit the legality of the Fugitive Slave Law and of slavery in the States.  They aimed, of course, first to check the extension of slavery and then to efface it by gradual restriction and full compensation to slave-holders.  When they had carried the country in 1860, they found themselves face to face with a breaking Union and an impending war.  That many of them were seriously frightened, and, to avoid war and dissolution, would have made great concessions, cannot be questioned; but their controlling motive was to hold things together by any means, no matter how desperate, until they could get possession of