t-gardeners instead of great
proprietors. The landlords of Great Britain may yet demand protection
for themselves, and, as they control Parliament, they will look out for
themselves by enacting measures of protection, unless they are
intimidated by the people who demand cheap bread, or unless they submit
to revolution. It is eternal equity and wisdom that the weak should be
protected. There may be industries strong enough now to dispense with
protection; but unless they are assisted when they are feeble, they will
cease to exist at all. Take our shipping, for instance, with foreign
ports,--it is not merely crippled, it is almost annihilated. Is it
desirable to cut off that great arm of national strength? Shall we march
on to our destiny, blind and lame and halt? What will we do if England
and other countries shall find it necessary to protect themselves from
impoverishment, and reintroduce duties on bread-stuffs high enough to
make the culture of wheat profitable? Where then will our farmers find a
market for their superfluous corn, except to those engaged in industries
which we should crush by removing protection?

I maintain that Mr. Webster, in defending our various industries with so
much ability, for the benefit of the nation on the whole, rendered very
important services, even as Hamilton and Clay did; although the solid
South, wishing cheap labor, and engaged exclusively in agriculture, was
opposed to him. The independent South would have established
free-trade,--as Mr. Calhoun advocated, and as any enlightened statesman
would advocate, when any interest can stand alone and defy competition,
as was the case with the manufactures of Great Britain fifty years ago.
The interests of the South and those of the North, under the institution
of slavery, were not identical; indeed, they had been in fierce
opposition for more than fifty years. Mr. Webster was, in his arguments
on tariffs and cognate questions, the champion of the North, as Mr.
Calhoun was of the South; and this opposition and antagonism gave great
force to Webster's eloquence at this time. His sentences are short,
interrogative, idiomatic. He is intensely in earnest. He grapples with
sophistries and scatters them to the winds; both reason and passion
vivify him.

This was the period of Webster's greatest popularity, as the defender
of Northern industries. This made him the idol of the merchants and
manufacturers of New England. He made them rich; no wonde