he particular auditors he
desired to influence; but that, whether he addressed an unorganized
crowd of people, or a jury, or a bench of judges, or the Senate of the
United States, he ever proved himself an orator of the first class.

His admirers commonly confine themselves to the admirable sagacity with
which he discriminated between the kind of reasoning proper to be
employed when he addressed courts and juries, and the kind of reasoning
which is most effective in a legislative assembly. The lawyer and the
statesman were, in Webster, kept distinct, except so far as he was a
lawyer who had argued before the Supreme Court questions of
constitutional law. An amusing instance of this abnegation of the
lawyer, while incidentally bringing in a lawyer's knowledge of judicial
decisions, occurs in a little episode in his debate with Mr. Calhoun, in
1849, as to the relation of Congress to the Territories. Mr. Calhoun
said that he had been told that the Supreme Court of the United States
had decided, in _one_ case, that the Constitution did not extend to the
Territories, but that he was "incredulous of the fact." "Oh!" replied
Mr. Webster, "I can remove the gentleman's incredulity very easily, for
I can assure him that the same thing has been decided by the United
States courts over and over again for the last thirty years." It will be
observed, however, that Mr. Webster, after communicating this important
item of information, proceeded to discuss the question as if the Supreme
Court had no existence, and bases his argument on the plain terms of the
Constitution, and the plain facts recorded in the history of the
government established by it.

Macaulay, in his lively way, has shown the difficulty of manufacturing
English statesmen out of English lawyers, though, as lawyers, their rank
in the profession may be very high. "Their arguments," he says, "are
intellectual prodigies, abounding with the happiest analogies and the
most refined distinctions. The principles of their arbitrary science
being once admitted, the statute-books and the reports being once
assumed as the foundations of reasoning, these men must be allowed to be
perfect masters of logic. But if a question arises as to the postulates
on which their whole system rests, if they are called upon to vindicate
the fundamental maxims of that system which they have passed their lives
in studying, these very men often talk the language of savages or of
children. Those who ha