were doubled, we were told that we should find a mitigation of the weight of taxation in the new aid and succor which would be thus afforded to our own manufacturing labor.  Like arguments were urged, and prevailed, but not by the aid of New England votes, when the tariff was afterwards arranged at the close of the war in 1816.  Finally, after a winter’s deliberation, the act of 1824 received the sanction of both Houses of Congress and settled the policy of the country.  What, then, was New England to do?...  Was she to hold out forever against the course of the government, and see herself losing on one side and yet make no effort to sustain herself on the other?  No, sir.  Nothing was left to New England but to conform herself to the will of others.  Nothing was left to her but to consider that the government had fixed and determined its own policy; and that policy was protection....  I believe, sir, almost every man from New England who voted against the law of 1824 declared that if, notwithstanding his opposition to that law, it should still pass, there would be no alternative but to consider the course and policy of the government as then settled and fixed, and to act accordingly.  The law did pass; and a vast increase of investment in manufacturing establishments was the consequence.”

Opinion in New England changed for good and sufficient business reasons, and Mr. Webster changed with it.  Free trade had commended itself to him as an abstract principle, and he had sustained and defended it as in the interest of commercial New England.  But when the weight of interest in New England shifted from free trade to protection Mr. Webster followed it.  His constituents were by no means unanimous in support of the tariff in 1828, but the majority favored it, and Mr. Webster went with the majority.  At a public dinner given to him in Boston at the close of the session, he explained to the dissentient minority the reasons for his vote, which were very simple.  He thought that good predominated over evil in the bill, and that the majority throughout the whole State of which he was the representative favored the tariff, and therefore he had voted in the affirmative.

Much fault has been found, as has been said, both at the time and since, with Mr. Webster’s change of position on this question.  It has been held up as a monument of inconsistency, and as indicating a total absence of deep conviction.  That Mr. Webster was, in a certain sense, inconsistent is beyond doubt, but consistency is the bugbear of small minds, as well as a mark of strong characters, while its reverse is often the proof of wisdom.  On the other hand, it may be fairly argued that, holding as he did that the whole thing was purely a business question to be decided according to circumstances, his course, in view of the policy adopted by the government, was at bottom perfectly consistent.  As to the want of deep conviction, Mr. Webster’s vote on this question proves nothing.  He believed in