like an article of useless lumber, under the hammer of the auctioneer. As if the millennium had already commenced, our politicians have beaten their swords into plowshares. They have actually bargained away in the market essential means of national defense, and carried the product to the Treasury. Without loss by accident or by enemies the second commercial nation in the world is reduced to the limitation of being unable to assert the sovereignty of its own seas, or to protect its navigation in sight of its own shores. What war and the waves have sometimes done for others, we have done for ourselves. We have taken the destruction of our marine out of the power of fortune, and richly achieved it by

our own counsels."

This address made a profound impression, voicing as it did the general public feeling in New Hampshire on the subjects of which it treated. It led to an assembly of the people of Rockingham County a few weeks later, called to prepare a memorial to the President protesting against the war. To this convention Mr. Webster was appointed a delegate, and it was he who was selected to draft what has been since known as the "Rockingham Memorial."

One of the most noteworthy passages in this memorial-noteworthy because it is an early

expression of his devotion to the Union-I find quoted by Mr. Curtis, and I shall follow his lead in transferring it to my pages.

"We are, sir, from principle and habit attached to the Union of these States. But our attachment is to the substance, and not to the form. It is to the good which this Union is capable of producing, and not to the evil which is suffered unnaturally to grow out of it. If the time should ever arrive when this Union shall be holden together by nothing but the authority of law; when its incorporating, vital principles shall become extinct; when its principal exercises shall consist in acts of power and authority, not of protection and beneficence; when it shall lose the strong bond which it hath hitherto had in the public affections; and when, consequently, we shall be one, not in interest and mutual regard, but in name and form only-we, sir, shall look on that hour as the closing scene of our country's prosperity.

"We shrink from the separation of the States as an event fraught with incalculable evils, and it is among our strongest objections to the present course of measures that they have, in our opinion, a very dangerous and alarming bearing on such an event. If a separation of the States ever should take place, it will be on some occa

sion when one portion of the country undertakes to control, to regulate and to sacrifice the interest of another; when a small and heated majority in the Government, taking counsel of their passions, and not of their reason, contemptuously disregarding the interests and perhaps stopping the mouths of a large and respectable minority, shall by hasty, rash and ruinious measures, threaten to destroy essential rights, and lay waste the most important interests.

"It shall be our most fervent supplication to Heaven to avert both the event and the occasion; and the Government may be assured that the tie that binds us to the Union will never be broken by us."

Even my young readers will be struck by the judicial calinness, the utter absence of heated partisanship, which mark the extracts I have made, and they will recall the passage well known to every schoolboy-the grand closing passage of the reply to Hayne.

As regards style it will be seen that, though yet a young man, Mr. Webster had made a very marked advance on the Fourth of July address which he delivered while yet a college-student. He was but thirty years old when the memorial was drafted, and in dignified simplicity and elevation of tone it was worthy of his later days.

The young lawyer, whose time had hitherto been employed upon cases of trifling moment in a country town, had been ripening his powers, and expanding into the intellectual proportions of a statesman. It was evident at any rate that his neighbors thought so, for he was nominated as a Representative to the Thirteenth Congress, in due time elected, and, as has already been stated, he first took his seat at a special session called by the President on the 24th of May, 1813.

It was in this Congress that Daniel Webster made the acquaintance of two eminent men, with whose names his own is now most frequently associated-Henry Clay, of Kentucky, and John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina.

CHAPTER XXII.

MR. WEBSTER AS A MEMBER OF CONGRESS.

BEFORE I proceed to speak of Mr. Webster's Congressional career, I will make room for a professional anecdote, which carries with it an excellent lesson for my young readers.

I find it in Harvey's "Reminiscences," already alluded to.

"In the first years of his professional life a blacksmith called on him for advice respecting the title to a small estate bequeathed to him by his father. The terms of the will were peculiar, and the kind of estate transmitted was doubtful. An attempt had been made to annull the will. Mr. Webster examined the case, but was unable to give a definite opinion upon the matter for want of authorities. He looked through the law libraries of Mr. Mason and other legal gentlemen for authorities, but in vain. He ascertained what works he needed for consultation, and ordered them from Boston at an expense of fifty dollars. He spent the leisure hours of some weeks in going through them. He successfully argued