In Ogden v.  Saunders, heard in 1827, Mr. Webster argued that the clause prohibiting state laws impairing the obligation of contracts covered future as well as past contracts.  He defended his position with astonishing ability, but the court very correctly decided against him.  The same qualities which appear in these cases are shown in the others of a like nature, which were conspicuous among the multitude with which he was intrusted.  We find them also in cases involving purely legal questions, such as the Bank of the United States v.  Primrose, and The Providence Railroad Co. v.  The City of Boston, accompanied always with that ready command of learning which an extraordinary memory made easy.  There seemed to be no diminution of Mr. Webster’s great powers in this field as he advanced in years.  In the Rhode Island case and in the Passenger Tax cases, argued when he was sixty-six years old, he rose to the same high plane of clear, impressive, effective reasoning as when he defended his Alma Mater.

Two causes, however, demand more than a passing mention,—­the Girard will case and the Rhode Island case.  The former involved no constitutional points.  The suit was brought to break the will of Stephen Girard, and the question was whether the bequest to found a college could be construed to be a charitable devise.  On this question Mr. Webster had a weak case in point of law, but he readily detected a method by which he could go boldly outside the law, as he had done to a certain degree in the Dartmouth College case, and substitute for argument an eloquent and impassioned appeal to emotion and prejudice.  Girard was a free-thinker, and he provided in his will that no priest or minister of any denomination should be admitted to his college.  Assuming that this excluded all religious teaching, Mr. Webster then laid down the proposition that no bequest or gift could be charitable which excluded Christian teaching.  In other words, he contended that there was no charity except Christian charity, which, the poet assures us, is so rare.  At this day such a theory would hardly be gravely propounded by any one.  But Mr. Webster, on the ground that Girard’s bequest was derogatory to Christianity, pronounced a very fine discourse defending and eulogizing, with much eloquence, the Christian religion.  The speech produced a great effect.  One is inclined to think that it was the cause of the court’s evading the question raised by Mr. Webster, and sustaining the will, a result they were bound to reach in any event, on other grounds.  The speech certainly produced a great sensation, and was much admired, especially by the clergy, who caused it to be printed and widely distributed.  It did not impress lawyers quite so favorably, and we find Judge Story writing to Chancellor Kent that “Webster did his best for the other side, but it seems to me altogether an address to the prejudices of the clergy.”  The subject, in certain ways, had a deep attraction