ether odious set of people,
whom one would shun as the worst of bores and canters. But my
conscience, my unhappy conscience respects that hapless class who see
the faults and stains of our social order, and who pray and strive
incessantly to right the wrong; this annoying class of men and women,
though they commonly find the work altogether beyond their faculty, and
their results are, for the present, distressing. They are partial, and
apt to magnify their own. Yes, and the prostrate penitent, also,--he is
not comprehensive, he is not philosophical in those tears and groans.
Yet I feel that under him and his partiality and exclusiveness is the
earth and the sea and all that in them is, and the axis around which the
universe revolves passes through his body where he stands."

It was the defection of Daniel Webster that completed the conversion of
Emerson and turned him from an adherent into a propagandist of
abolition. Not pity for the slave, but indignation at the violation of
the Moral Law by Daniel Webster, was at the bottom of Emerson's anger.
His abolitionism was secondary to his main mission, his main enthusiasm.
It is for this reason that he stands on a plane of intellect where he
might, under other circumstances, have met and defeated Webster. After
the 7th of March, 1850, he recognized in Webster the embodiment of all
that he hated. In his attacks on Webster, Emerson trembles to his inmost
fibre with antagonism. He is savage, destructive, personal, bent on
death.

This exhibition of Emerson as a fighting animal is magnificent, and
explains his life. There is no other instance of his ferocity. No other
nature but Webster's ever so moved him; but it was time to be moved, and
Webster was a man of his size. Had these two great men of New England
been matched in training as they were matched in endowment, and had they
then faced each other in debate, they would not have been found to
differ so greatly in power. Their natures were electrically repellent,
but from which did the greater force radiate? Their education differed
so radically that it is impossible to compare them, but if you translate
the Phi Beta Kappa address into politics, you have something stronger
than Webster,--something that recalls Chatham; and Emerson would have
had this advantage,--that he was not afraid. As it was, he left his
library and took the stump. Mr. Cabot has given us extracts from his
speeches:--

"The tameness is indeed complete;