ts and
Hamiltonians, bank men, tariff men, internal-improvement men. Then was
afforded to the country the curious spectacle of Federalists opposing
the measures which had been among the rallying-cries of their party
for twenty years. It was not in Daniel Webster's nature to be a
leader; it was morally impossible for him to disengage himself from
party ties. This exquisite and consummate artist in oratory, who could
give such weighty and brilliant expression to the feelings of his
hearers and the doctrines of his party, had less originating power,
whether of intellect or of will, than any other man of equal eminence
that ever lived. He adhered to the fag end of the old party, until it
was absorbed, unavoidably, with scarcely an effort of its own, in
Adams and Clay. From 1815 to 1825 he was in opposition, and in
opposition to old Federalism revived; and, consequently, we believe
that posterity will decide that his speeches of this period are the
only ones relating to details of policy which have the slightest
permanent value. In fact, his position in Congress, as a member of a
very small band of Federalists who had no hope of regaining power, was
the next thing to being independent, and he made an excellent use of
his advantage.

That Bank of the United States, for example, of which, in 1832, he was
the ablest defender, and for a renewal of which he strove for ten
years, he voted _against_ in 1816; and for reasons which neither he
nor any other man ever refuted. His speeches criticising the various
bank schemes of 1815 and 1816 were serviceable to the public, and made
the bank, as finally established, less harmful than it might have
been.

So of the tariff. On this subject, too, he always followed,--never
led. So long as there was a Federal party, he, as a member of it,
opposed Mr. Clay's protective, or (as Mr. Clay delighted to term it)
"American system." When, in 1825, the few Federalists in the House
voted for Mr. Adams, and were merged in the "conservative wing" of the
Republican party, which became, in time, the Whig party, then, and
from that time forward to the end of his life, he was a protectionist.
His anti-protection speech of 1824 is wholly in the modern spirit, and
takes precisely the ground since taken by Ricardo, John Stuart Mill,
and others of the new school. It is so excellent a statement of the
true policy of the United States with regard to protection, that we
have often wondered it has been allowed