d
distinguished men of the town, and that he rapidly acquired that general
popularity which, in those days, went with him everywhere. It is also
certain that he at once and without effort assumed the highest position at
the bar as the recognized equal of its most eminent leaders. With an income
increased tenfold and promising still further enlargement, a practice in
which one fee probably surpassed the earnings of three months in New
Hampshire, with an agreeable society about him, popular abroad, happy and
beloved at home, nothing could have been more auspicious than these opening
years of his life in Boston.

The period upon which he then entered, and during which he withdrew from
active public service to devote himself to his profession, was a very
important one in his career. It was a period marked by a rapid intellectual
growth and by the first exhibition of his talents on a large scale. It
embraces, moreover, two events, landmarks in the life of Mr. Webster, which
placed him before the country as one of the first and the most eloquent of
her constitutional lawyers, and as the great master in the art of
occasional oratory. The first of these events was the argument in the
Dartmouth College case; the second was the delivery of the Plymouth
oration.

I do not propose to enter into or discuss the merits or demerits of the
constitutional and legal theories and principles involved in the famous
"college causes," or in any other of the great cases subsequently argued by
Mr. Webster. In a biography of this kind it is sufficient to examine Mr.
Webster's connection with the Dartmouth College case, and endeavor, by a
study of his arguments in that and in certain other hardly less important
causes, to estimate properly the character and quality of his abilities as
a lawyer, both in the ordinary acceptation of the term and in dealing with
constitutional questions.

The complete history of the Dartmouth College case is very curious and
deserves more than a passing notice. Until within three years it is not too
much to say that it was quite unknown, and its condition is but little
better now. In 1879 Mr. John M. Shirley published a volume entitled the
"Dartmouth College Causes," which is a monument of careful study and
thorough research. Most persons would conclude that it was a work of merely
legal interest, appealing to a limited class of professional readers. Even
those into whose hands it chanced to come have probably been