er he
wrote was in reference to the effect upon the United States. Webster's
patriotism was the best education for a true regard of public affairs in
France. His instinct for unity, his conception of the future of the
United States, his unbounded faith in American ideas, all served to make
him fight any proposal which would complicate the United States with
foreign powers.

His hand is seen in various parts of the paper for the five years during
which he was connected with it. The French Revolution and all the
complications growing out of it were treated with steadfast reference to
the interests of the United States, and blows were dealt unceasingly
upon the democratic party, as the anti-Federalists were beginning to
call themselves. Webster digested the foreign news, wrote articles and
paragraphs, and used the machinery which belonged to a paper of that
day. It is not unlikely that he wrote letters to himself; it is certain
that he wrote a series of essays entitled "The Times," pithy, forcible
homilies and comments, expressed generally in a colloquial form, and
intended, evidently, to be driven home sharply and positively. I give an
extract from one as indicating something of the manner of these
_conciones ad populum_:--

... "Our government is a government of universal toleration. The freedom
of America, its greatest blessing, secures to every citizen the right of
thinking, of speaking, of worshiping and acting as he pleases, provided
he does not violate the laws. The only people in America who have dared
to violate this freedom are the democratical incendiaries, who have
proceeded to threaten violence to tories and aristocrats and federal
republicans; that is, to people not of their party. Every threat of this
kind is an act of tyranny; an attempt to abridge the rights of a
fellow-citizen. If a man is persecuted for his opinions, it is wholly
immaterial whether the persecution springs from one man or from a
society of the people,--when men are disposed to persecute. Power is
always right; weakness always wrong. Power is always insolent and
despotic: whether exercised in throwing its opposers into a bastile;
burning them at the stake; torturing them on a rack; beheading them with
a guillotine; or taking them off, as at the massacre of St. Bartholomew,
at a general sweep. Power is the same in Turkey as in America. When the
will of man is raised above law, it is always tyranny and despotism,
whether it is the will of