in his hands such a formidable weapon.  The florid rhetoric of the early days is utterly gone, and the thought comes to us in those short and pregnant sentences and in the choice and effective words which were afterwards so typical of the speaker.  The speech itself was a party speech and a presentation of party arguments.  It offered nothing new, but the familiar principles had hardly ever been stated in such a striking and impressive fashion.  Mr. Webster attacked the war policy and the conduct of the war, and advocated defensive warfare, a navy, and the abandonment of the restrictive laws that were ruining our commerce, which had been the main cause of the adoption of the Constitution.  The conclusion of this speech is not far from the level of Mr. Webster’s best work.  It is too long for quotation, but a few sentences will show its quality:—­

“Give up your futile projects of invasion.  Extinguish the fires that blaze on your inland frontier.  Establish perfect safety and defence there by adequate force.  Let every man that sleeps on your soil sleep in security.  Stop the blood that flows from the veins of unarmed yeomanry and women and children.  Give to the living time to bury and lament their dead in the quietness of private sorrow.  Having performed this work of beneficence and mercy on your inland border, turn, and look with the eye of justice and compassion on your vast population along the coast.  Unclench the iron grasp of your embargo.  Take measures for that end before another sun sets....  Let it no longer be said that not one ship of force, built by your hands, yet floats upon the ocean....  If then the war must be continued, go to the ocean.  If you are seriously contending for maritime rights, go to the theatre where alone those rights can be defended.  Thither every indication of your fortune points you.  There the united wishes and exertions of the nation will go with you.  Even our party divisions, acrimonious as they are, cease at the water’s edge.”

Events soon forced the policy urged by Mr. Webster upon the administration, whose friends carried first a modification of the embargo, and before the close of the session introduced a bill for its total repeal.  The difficult task of advocating this measure devolved upon Mr. Calhoun, who sustained his cause more ingeniously than ingenuously.  He frankly admitted that restriction was a failure as a war measure, but he defended the repeal on the ground that the condition of affairs in Europe had changed since the restrictive policy was adopted.  It had indeed changed since the embargo of 1807, but not since the imposition of that of 1813, which was the one under discussion.