ot sense enough to settle their disputes in any
other way; and when once they have begun, never stop killing one
another as long as they have money enough "to pay the butchers." So it
appeared in our case. Of all the men who took part in this preliminary
war of words, Daniel Webster was incomparably the ablest. He seemed
charged with a message and a mission to the people of the United
States; and almost everything that he said in his whole life of real
value has reference to that message and that mission. The necessity of
the Union of these States, the nature of the tie that binds them
together, the means by which alone that tie can be kept strong,--this
was what he came charged to impart to us; and when he had fully
delivered this message, he had done his work. His numberless speeches
upon the passing questions of the day,--tariff, Bank, currency,
Sub-treasury, and the rest,--in which the partisan spoke rather than
the man may have had their value at the time, but there is little in
them of durable worth. Those of them which events have not refuted,
time has rendered obsolete. No general principles are established in
them which can be applied to new cases. Indeed, he used often to
assert that there _were_ no general principles in practical
statesmanship, but that the government of nations is, and must be, a
series of expedients. Several times, in his published works, can be
found the assertion, that there is no such thing as a science of
political economy, though he says he had "turned over" all the authors
on that subject from Adam Smith to his own time. It is when he speaks
of the Union and the Constitution, and when he is rousing the
sentiment of nationality, that he utters, not, indeed, eternal truths,
but truths necessary to the existence of the United States, and which
can only become obsolete when the nation is no more.

The whole of his previous life had been an unconscious preparation for
these great debates. It was one of the recollections of his childhood,
that, in his eighth year, he had bought a handkerchief upon which was
printed the Constitution of 1787, which he then read through; and
while he was a farmer's boy at home, the great question of its
acceptance or rejection had been decided. His father's party was the
party for the Constitution, whose only regret concerning it was, that
it was not so much of a constitution as they wished it to be. The
Republicans dwelt upon its defects and dangers; the Fede