"To begin with nullification," Webster retorted, "with the
avowed intent, nevertheless, not to proceed to secession, dismemberment,
and general revolution, is as if one were to take the plunge of Niagara,
and cry out that he would stop half-way down. In the one case, as in the
other, the rash adventurer must go to the bottom of the dark abyss
below, were it not that the abyss has no discovered bottom."

How admirable also is his exposure of the distinction attempted to be
drawn between secession, as a State right to be exercised under the
provisions of what was called "the Constitutional Compact," and
revolution. "Secession," he says, "as a revolutionary right, is
intelligible; as a right to be proclaimed in the midst of civil
commotions, and asserted at the head of armies, I can understand it. But
as a practical right, existing under the Constitution, and in conformity
with its provisions, it seems to me nothing but a plain absurdity; for
it supposes resistance to government, under the authority of government
itself; it supposes dismemberment, without violating the principles of
union; it supposes opposition to law, without crime, it supposes the
total overthrow of government, without revolution."

After putting some pertinent interrogatories--which are arguments in
themselves--relating to the inevitable results of secession, he adds,
that "every man must see that these are all questions which can arise
only after a revolution. They presuppose the breaking up of the
government. While the Constitution lasts, they are repressed";--and
then, with that felicitous use of the imagination as a handmaid of the
understanding, which is the peculiar characteristic of his eloquence, he
closes the sentence by saying, that "they spring up to annoy and startle
us only from its grave." A mere reasoner would have stopped at the word
"repressed"; the instantaneous conversion of "questions" into spectres,
affrighting and annoying us as they spring up from the grave of the
Constitution,--which is also by implication impersonated,--is the work
of Webster's ready imagination; and it thoroughly vitalizes the
statements which precede it.

A great test of the sincerity of a statesman's style is his moderation.
Now, if we take the whole body of Mr. Webster's speeches, whether
delivered in the Senate or before popular assemblies, during the period
of his opposition to President Jackson's administration, we may well be
surprised at their moder