s not the slightest trace of the arts of the demagogue; and in this
fact we may find the reason why even the "roughs," who are present in
every mass meeting, always treated him with respect. Perhaps it would
not be out of place to remark here, that, in his Speech of the 7th of
March, he missed a grand opportunity to vindicate Northern labor, in the
reference he made to a foolish tirade of a Senator from Louisiana, who
"took pains to run a contrast between the slaves of the South and the
laboring people of the North, giving the preference, in all points of
condition, of comfort, and happiness, to the slaves of the South."
Webster made a complete reply to this aspersion on Northern labor; but,
as his purpose was to conciliate, he did not blast the libeller by
quoting the most eminent example that could be named demonstrating the
falsehood of the slave-holding Senator's assertion. Without deviating
from the conciliatory attitude he had assumed, one could easily imagine
him as lifting his large frame to its full height, flashing from his
rebuking eyes a glance of scorn at the "amiable Senator," and simply
saying, "_I_ belong to the class which the Senator from Louisiana
stigmatizes as more degraded than the slaves of the South." There was
not at the time any Senator from the South, except Mr. Calhoun, that the
most prejudiced Southern man would have thought of comparing with
Webster in respect to intellectual eminence; and, if Webster had then
and there placed himself squarely on his position as the son of a
Northern laborer, we should have been spared all the rhetoric about
Northern "mud-sills," with which the Senate was afterwards afflicted.
Webster was our man of men; and it would seem that he should have
crushed such talk at the outset, by proudly assuming that Northern labor
was embodied and impersonated in him,--that HE had sprung from its
ranks, and was proud of his ancestry.

An ingenious and powerful, but paradoxical thinker, once told me that I
was mistaken in calling Jonathan Edwards and Daniel Webster great
reasoners. "They were bad reasoners," he added, "but great poets."
Without questioning the right of the author of "An Enquiry into the
Modern Prevailing Notion of that Freedom of the Will, which is supposed
to be Essential to Moral Agency," to be ranked among the most eminent of
modern logicians, I could still understand why he was classed among
poets; for whether Edwards paints the torments of hell or the bli