its all its
author's intellectual gifts in the highest perfection. Mr. Hayne had
touched on every conceivable subject of political importance, including
slavery, which, however covered up, was really at the bottom of every
Southern movement, and was certain sooner or later to come to the surface.
All these various topics Mr. Webster took up, one after another, displaying
a most remarkable strength of grasp and ease of treatment. He dealt with
them all effectively and yet in just proportion. Throughout there are
bursts of eloquence skilfully mingled with statement and argument, so that
the listeners were never wearied by a strained and continuous rhetorical
display; and yet, while the attention was closely held by the even flow of
lucid reasoning, the emotions and passions were from time to time deeply
aroused and strongly excited. In many passages of direct retort Mr. Webster
used an irony which he employed always in a perfectly characteristic way.
He had a strong natural sense of humor, but he never made fun or descended
to trivial efforts to excite laughter against his opponent. He was not a
witty man or a maker of epigrams. But he was a master in the use of a cold,
dignified sarcasm, which at times, and in this instance particularly, he
used freely and mercilessly. Beneath the measured sentences there is a
lurking smile which saves them from being merely savage and cutting
attacks, and yet brings home a keen sense of the absurdity of the
opponent's position. The weapon resembled more the sword of Richard than
the scimetar of Saladin, but it was none the less a keen and trenchant
blade. There is probably no better instance of Mr. Webster's power of
sarcasm than the famous passage in which he replied to Hayne's taunt about
the "murdered coalition," which was said to have existed between Adams and
Calhoun. In a totally different vein is the passage about Massachusetts,
perhaps in its way as good an example as we have of Webster's power of
appealing to the higher and more tender feelings of human nature. The
thought is simple and even obvious, and the expression unadorned, and yet
what he said had that subtle quality which stirred and still stirs the
heart of every man born on the soil of the old Puritan Commonwealth.

The speech as a whole has all the qualities which made Mr. Webster a great
orator, and the same traits run through his other speeches. An analysis of
the reply to Hayne, therefore, gives us all the condition