, than from a statesman
who, ever since he was one-and-twenty, had been a distinguished debater
in the House of Commons."

Now it is plain that neither of these contemptuous judgments applies to
Webster. He was a great lawyer; but as a legislator the precedents of
the lawyer did not control the action or supersede the principles of the
statesman. He was one of the most formidable debaters that ever appeared
in a legislative assembly; and yet those who most resolutely grappled
with him in the duel of debate would be the last to impute to him
inaccuracy of knowledge or shallowness of thought. He carried into the
Senate of the United States a trained mind, disciplined by the sternest
culture of his faculties, disdaining any plaudits which were not the
honest reward of robust reasoning on generalized facts, and
"gravitating" in the direction of truth, whether he hit or missed it. In
his case, at least, there was nothing in his legal experience, or in his
legislative experience, which would have unfitted him for producing a
work on the science of politics. The best speeches in the House of
Commons of Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell appear very weak
indeed, as compared with the Reply to Hayne, or the speech on "The
Constitution not a Compact between Sovereign States," or the speech on
the President's Protest.

In this connection it may be said, when we remember the hot contests
between the two men, that there is something plaintive in Calhoun's
dying testimony to Webster's austere intellectual conscientiousness. Mr.
Venables, who attended the South Carolina statesman in his dying hours,
wrote to Webster: "When your name was mentioned he remarked that 'Mr.
Webster has as high a standard of truth as any statesman I have met in
debate. Convince him, and he cannot reply; he is silenced; he cannot
look truth in the face and oppose it by argument. I think that it can be
readily perceived by his manner when he felt the unanswerable force of a
reply.' He often spoke of you in my presence, and always kindly and most
respectfully." Now it must be considered that, in debate, the minds of
Webster and Calhoun had come into actual contact and collision. Each
really felt the force of the other. An ordinary duel might be ranked
among idle pastimes when compared with the stress and strain and pain of
their encounters in the duel of debate. A sword-cut or pistol-bullet,
maiming the body, was as nothing in comparison with the wounds they