The fourteenth Congress, to which he had been reelected, Mr. Webster said many years afterward, was the most remarkable for talents of any he had ever seen.  To the leaders of marked ability in the previous Congress, most of whom had been reelected, several others were added.  Mr. Clay returned from Europe to take again an active part.  Mr. Pinkney, the most eminent practising lawyer in the country, recently Attorney-General and Minister to England, whom John Randolph, with characteristic insolence, “believed to be from Maryland,” was there until his appointment to the Russian mission.  Last, but not least, there was John Randolph himself, wildly eccentric and venomously eloquent,—­sometimes witty, always odd and amusing, talking incessantly on everything, so that the reporters gave him up in despair, and with whom Mr. Webster came to a definite understanding before the close of the session.

Mr. Webster did not take his seat until February, being detained at the North by the illness of his daughter Grace.  When he arrived he found Congress at work upon a bank bill possessing the same objectionable features of paper money and large capital as the former schemes which he had helped to overthrow.  He began his attack upon this dangerous plan by considering the evil condition of the currency.  He showed that the currency of the United States was sound because it was gold and silver, in his opinion the only constitutional medium, but that the country was flooded by the irredeemable paper of the state banks.  Congress could not regulate the state banks, but they could force them to specie payments by refusing to receive any notes which were not paid in specie by the bank which issued them.  Passing to the proposed national bank, he reiterated the able arguments which he had made in the previous Congress against the large capital, the power to suspend specie payments, and the stock feature of the bank, which he thought would lead to speculation and control by the state banks.  This last point is the first instance of that financial foresight for which Mr. Webster was so remarkable, and which shows so plainly the soundness of his knowledge in regard to economical matters.  A violent speculation in bank stock did ensue, and the first years of the new institution were troubled, disorderly, and anything but creditable.  The opposition of Mr. Webster and those who thought with him, resulted in the reduction of the capital and the removal of the power to suspend specie payments.  But although shorn of its most obnoxious features, Mr. Webster voted against the bill on its final passage on account of the participation permitted to the government in its management.  He was quite right, but, after the bank was well established, he supported it as Lord Thurlow promised to do in regard to the dissenter’s religion.  Indeed, Mr. Webster ultimately so far lost his original dislike to this bank that he became one of its warmest adherents.  The plan was defective, but the scheme, on the whole, worked better than had been expected.