as the “Rockingham Memorial,” was a careful argument against the war, and a vigorous and able presentation of the Federalist views.  It was addressed to the President, whom it treated with respectful severity.  With much skill it turned Mr. Madison’s own arguments against himself, and appealed to public opinion by its clear and convincing reasoning.  In one point the memorial differed curiously from the oration of a month before.  The latter pointed to the suffrage as the mode of redress; the former distinctly hinted at and almost threatened secession even while it deplored a dissolution of the Union as a possible result of the administration’s policy.  In the one case Mr. Webster was expressing his own views, in the other he was giving utterance to the opinions of the members of his party among whom he stood.  This little incident shows the susceptibility to outside influences which formed such an odd trait in the character of a man so imperious by nature.  When acting alone, he spoke his own opinions.  When in a situation where public opinion was concentrated against him, he submitted to modifications of his views with a curious and indolent indifference.

The immediate result to Mr. Webster of the ability and tact which he displayed at the Rockingham Convention was his election to the thirteenth Congress, where he took his seat in May, 1813.  There were then many able men in the House.  Mr. Clay was Speaker, and on the floor were John C. Calhoun, Langdon Cheves and William Lowndes of South Carolina, Forsyth and Troup of Georgia, Ingersoll of Pennsylvania, Grundy of Tennessee, and McLean of Ohio, all conspicuous in the young nationalist war party.  Macon and Eppes were representatives of the old Jeffersonian Republicans, while the Federalists were strong in the possession of such leaders as Pickering of Massachusetts, Pitkin of Connecticut, Grosvenor and Benson of New York, Hanson of Maryland, and William Gaston of North Carolina.  It was a House in which any one might have been glad to win distinction.  That Mr. Webster was considered, at the outset, to be a man of great promise is shown by the fact that he was placed on the Committee on Foreign Relations, of which Mr. Calhoun was the head, and which, in the war time, was the most important committee of the House.

Mr. Webster’s first act was a characteristic one.  Early in June he introduced a set of resolutions calling upon the President for information as to the time and mode in which the repeal of the French decrees had been communicated to our government.  His unerring sagacity in singling out the weak point in his enemy’s armor and in choosing his own keenest weapon, was never better illustrated than on this occasion.  We know now that in the negotiations for the repeal of the decrees, the French government tricked us into war with England by most profligate lying.  It was apparent then that there was something wrong, and that either our government had been deceived,