as
never better illustrated than on this occasion. We know now that in the
negotiations for the repeal of the decrees, the French government tricked
us into war with England by most profligate lying. It was apparent then
that there was something wrong, and that either our government had been
deceived, or had withheld the publication of the repealing decree until war
was declared, so that England might not have a pretext for rescinding the
obnoxious orders. Either horn of the dilemma, therefore, was disagreeable
to the administration, and a disclosure could hardly fail to benefit the
Federalists. Mr. Webster supported his resolutions with a terse and simple
speech of explanation, so far as we can judge from the meagre abstract
which has come down to us. The resolutions, however, were a firebrand, and
lighted up an angry and protracted debate, but the ruling party, as Mr.
Webster probably foresaw, did not dare to vote them down, and they passed
by large majorities. Mr. Webster spoke but once, and then very briefly,
during the progress of the debate, and soon after returned to New
Hampshire. With the exception of these resolutions, he took no active part
whatever in the business of the House beyond voting steadily with his
party, a fact of which we may be sure because he was always on the same
side as that staunch old partisan, Timothy Pickering.

After a summer passed in the performance of his professional duties, Mr.
Webster returned to Washington. He was late in his coming, Congress having
been in session nearly three weeks when he arrived to find that he had been
dropped from the Committee on Foreign Relations. The dominant party
probably discovered that he was a young man of rather too much promise and
too formidable an opponent for such an important post. His resolutions had
been answered at the previous session, after his departure, and the report,
which consisted of a lame explanation of the main point, and an elaborate
defence of the war, had been quietly laid aside. Mr. Webster desired debate
on this subject, and succeeded in carrying a reference of the report to a
committee of the whole, but his opponents prevented its ever coming to
discussion. In the long session which ensued, Mr. Webster again took
comparatively little part in general business, but he spoke oftener than
before. He seems to have been reserving his strength and making sure of his
ground. He defended the Federalists as the true friends of the navy