h originally attracted their attention in the first
report of the Defence of the Treaty of Washington. At the time these
directions were given, Webster was himself the object of innumerable
personalities, which were the natural, the inevitable results of his
speech of the 7th of March, 1850.

It seems to be a law, that the fame of all public men shall be "half
disfame." We are specially warned to beware of the man of whom all men
speak well. Burke, complimenting his friend Fox for risking every thing,
even his "darling popularity," on the success of the East India Bill,
nobly says: "He is traduced and abused for his supposed motives. He will
remember, that obloquy is a necessary ingredient in all true glory; he
will remember, that it was not only in the Roman customs, but it is in
the nature of human things, that calumny and abuse are essential parts
of triumph."

It may be said, however, that Webster's virtue in this general
abstinence from personalities is to be offset by the fact that he could
throw into a glance of his eye, a contortion of his face, a tone of his
voice, or a simple gesture of his hand, more scorn, contempt, and hatred
than ordinary debaters could express by the profuse use of all the
scurrilous terms in the English language. Probably many a sentence,
which we now read with an even pulse, was, as originally delivered,
accompanied by such pointing of the finger, or such flashing of the eye,
or such raising of the voice, that the seemingly innocent words were
poisoned arrows that festered in the souls of those against whom they
were directed, and made deadly enemies of a number of persons whom he
seems, in his printed speeches, never to have mentioned without the
respect due from one Senator to another. In his speech in defence of the
Treaty of Washington, he had to repel Mr. Ingersoll's indecent attack on
his integrity, and his dreadful retort is described by those who heard
it as coming within the rules which condemn cruelty to animals. But the
"noble rage" which prompted him to indulge in such unwonted invective
subsided with the occasion that called it forth, and he was careful to
have it expunged when the speech was reprinted. An eminent judge of the
Supreme Court of Massachusetts, in commending the general dignity and
courtesy which characterized Webster's conduct of a case in a court of
law, noted one exception. "When," he said, "the opposite counsel had got
him into a corner, the way he 'tramp