f self-distrust, doubting if ever again such
men would adorn the public councils. A close scrutiny into the lives
of either of them would, of course, compel us to deduct something from
his contemporary renown, for they were all, in some degree, at some
periods, diverted from their true path by an ambition beneath an
American statesman, whose true glory alone consists in serving his
country well in that sphere to which his fellow-citizens call him.
From such a scrutiny the fame of neither of those distinguished men
would suffer so much as that of Calhoun. His endowments were not
great, nor of the most valuable kind; and his early education, hasty
and very incomplete, was not continued by maturer study. He read
rather to confirm his impressions than to correct them. It was
impossible that he should ever have been wise, because he refused to
admit his liability to error. Never was mental assurance more
complete, and seldom less warranted by innate or acquired superiority.
If his knowledge of books was slight, his opportunities of observing
men were still more limited, since he passed his whole life in places
as exceptional, perhaps, as any in the world,--Washington and South
Carolina. From the beginning of his public career there was a canker
in the heart of it; for, while his oath, as a member of Congress, to
support the Constitution of the United States, was still fresh upon
his lips, he declared that his attachment to the Union was conditional
and subordinate. He said that the alliance between the Southern
planters and Northern Democrats was a false and calculated compact, to
be broken when the planters could no longer rule by it. While he
resided in Washington, and acted with the Republican party in the
flush of its double triumph, he appeared a respectable character, and
won golden opinions from eminent men in both parties. But when he was
again subjected to the narrowing and perverting influence of a
residence in South Carolina, he shrunk at once to his original
proportions, and became thenceforth, not the servant of his country,
but the special pleader of a class and the representative of a
section. And yet, with that strange judicial blindness which has ever
been the doom of the defenders of wrong, he still hoped to attain the
Presidency. There is scarcely any example of infatuation more
remarkable than this. Here we have, lying before us at this moment,
undeniable proofs, in the form of "campaign lives" and "campai