the statements of
Burke. Thus, in presenting a memorial to Congress, signed by many
prominent men of business, against President Jackson's system of
finance, he saw at once that the Democrats would denounce it as another
manifesto of the "moneyed aristocracy." Accordingly Webster introduced
the paper to the attention of the Senate, with the preliminary remark:
"The memorialists are not unaware, that, if rights are attacked,
attempts will be made to render odious those whose rights are violated.
Power always seeks such subjects on which to try its experiments." It is
difficult to resist the impression that Webster must have been indebted
to Burke for this maxim. Again, we are deluded into the belief that we
must be reading Burke, when Webster refers to the _minimum_ principle as
the right one to be followed in imposing duties on certain manufactures.
"It lays the impost," he says, "exactly where it will do good, and
leaves the rest free. It is an intelligent, discerning, discriminating
principle; not a blind, headlong, generalizing, uncalculating operation.
Simplicity undoubtedly, is a great beauty in acts of legislation, as
well as in the works of art; but in both it must be a simplicity
resulting from congruity of parts and adaptation to the end designed;
not a rude generalization, which either leaves the particular object
unaccomplished, or, in accomplishing it, accomplishes a dozen others
also, which were not desired. It is a simplicity wrought out by
knowledge and skill; not the rough product of an undistinguishing,
sweeping general principle."

An ingenuous reader, who has not learned from his historical studies
that men generally act, not from arguments addressed to their
understandings, but from vehement appeals which rouse their passions to
defend their seeming interests, cannot comprehend why Webster's
arguments against Nullification and Secession, which were apparently
unanswerable, and which were certainly unanswered either by Hayne or
Calhoun, should not have settled the question in debate between the
North and the South. Such a reader, after patiently following all the
turns and twists of the logic, all the processes of the reasoning
employed on both sides of the intellectual contest, would naturally
conclude that the party defeated in the conflict would gracefully
acknowledge the fact of its defeat; and, as human beings, gifted with
the faculty of reason, would cheerfully admit the demonstrated results
o