Immediately after the passage of the bank bill, Mr. Calhoun introduced a bill requiring the revenue to be collected in lawful money of the United States.  A sharp debate ensued, and the bill was lost.  Mr. Webster at once offered resolutions requiring all government dues to be paid in coin, in Treasury notes, or in notes of the Bank of the United States.  He supported these resolutions, thus daringly put forward just after the principle they involved had been voted down, in a speech of singular power, clear, convincing, and full of information and illustration.  He elaborated the ideas contained in his previous remarks on the currency, displaying with great force the evils of irredeemable paper, and the absolute necessity of a sound currency based on specie payments.  He won a signal victory by the passage of his resolutions, which brought about resumption, and, after the bank was firmly established, gave us a sound currency and a safe medium of exchange.  This was one of the most conspicuous services ever rendered by Mr. Webster to the business interests and good government of the country, and he deserves the full credit, for he triumphed where Mr. Calhoun had just been defeated.

Mr. Webster took more or less part in all the questions which afterwards arose in the House, especially on the tariff, but his great efforts were those devoted to the bank and the currency.  The only other incident of the session was an invitation to fight a duel sent him by John Randolph.  This was the only challenge ever received by Mr. Webster.  He never could have seemed a very happy subject for such missives, and, moreover, he never indulged in language calculated to provoke them.  Randolph, however, would have challenged anybody or anything, from Henry Clay to a field-mouse, if the fancy happened to strike him.  Mr. Webster’s reply is a model of dignity and veiled contempt.  He refused to admit Randolph’s right to an explanation, alluded to that gentleman’s lack of courtesy in the House, denied his right to call him out, and wound up by saying that he did not feel bound to risk his life at any one’s bidding, but should “always be prepared to repel, in a suitable manner, the aggression of any man who may presume on this refusal.”  One cannot help smiling over this last clause, with its suggestion of personal violence, as the two men rise before the fancy,—­the big, swarthy black-haired son of the northern hills, with his robust common sense, and the sallow, lean, sickly Virginia planter, not many degrees removed mentally from the patients in Bedlam.

In the affairs of the next session of the fourteenth Congress Mr. Webster took scarcely any part.  He voted for Mr. Calhoun’s internal improvement bill, although without entering the debate, and he also voted to pass the bill over Mr. Madison’s veto.  This was sound Hamiltonian Federalism, and in entire consonance with the national sentiments of Mr. Webster.  On the constitutional point, which he is said to have examined with some care, he decided in accordance with the opinions of his party, and with the doctrine of liberal construction, to which he always adhered.