hat phrase is,
"superb propriety." Throughout his despatches, he always seems to feel
that he impersonates his country; and the gravity and weight of his
style are as admirable as its simplicity and majestic ease. "Daniel
Webster, his mark," is indelibly stamped on them all. When the Treaty of
Washington was criticised by the Whigs in the English Parliament,
Macaulay specially noticed the difference in the style of the two
negotiators. Lord Ashburton, he said, had compromised the honor of his
country by "the humble, caressing, wheedling tone" of his letters, a
tone which contrasted strangely with "the firm, resolute, vigilant, and
unyielding manner" of the American Secretary of State. It is to be
noticed that no other opponent of Sir Robert Peel's administration, not
even Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell, struck at the essential
weakness of Lord Ashburton's despatches with the force and sagacity
which characterized Macaulay's assault on the treaty. Indeed, a
rhetorician and critic less skilful than Macaulay can easily detect that
"America" is represented fully in Webster's despatches, while
"Britannia" has a very amiable, but not very forcible, representative in
Lord Ashburton. Had Palmerston been the British plenipotentiary, we can
easily imagine how different would have been the task imposed on
Webster. As the American Secretary was generally in the right in every
position he assumed, he would probably have triumphed even over
Palmerston; but the letters of the "pluckiest" of English statesmen
would, we may be sure, have never been criticised in the House of
Commons as "humble, wheedling, and caressing."

In addition, however, to his legal arguments, his senatorial speeches,
and his state papers, Webster is to be considered as the greatest orator
our country has produced in his addresses before miscellaneous
assemblages of the people. In saying this we do not confine the remark
to such noble orations as those on the "First Settlement of New
England," "The Bunker Hill Monument," and "Adams and Jefferson," but
extend it so as to include speeches before great masses of people who
could be hardly distinguished from a mob, and who were under no
restraint but that imposed by their own self-respect and their respect
for the orator. On these occasions he was uniformly successful. It is
impossible to detect, in any reports of these popular addresses, that he
ever stooped to employ a style of speech or mode of argument com