he previous
administration, and had said that the party in power would not support the
pretensions of its predecessors. Such language was, of course, at variance
with all traditions, was wholly improper, and was mean and contemptible in
dealing with a foreign nation. In 1831 Mr. Van Buren was nominated as
Minister to England, and came up for confirmation in the Senate some time
after he had actually departed on his mission. Mr. Webster opposed the
confirmation in an eloquent speech full of just pride in his country and of
vigorous indignation against the slight which Mr. Van Buren had put upon
her by his instructions to Mr. McLane. He pronounced a splendid "rebuke
upon the first instance in which an American minister had been sent abroad
as the representative of his party and not as the representative of his
country." The opposition was successful, and Mr. Van Buren's nomination
was rejected. It is no doubt true that the rejection was a political
mistake, and that, as was commonly said at the time, it created sympathy
for Mr. Van Buren and insured his succession to the presidency. Yet no one
would now think as well of Mr. Webster if, to avoid awakening popular
sympathy and party enthusiasm in behalf of Mr. Van Buren, he had silently
voted for that gentleman's confirmation. To do so was to approve the
despicable tone adopted in the instructions to McLane. As a patriotic
American, above all as a man of intense national feelings, Mr. Webster
could not have done otherwise than resist with all the force of his
eloquence the confirmation of a man who had made such an undignified and
unworthy exhibition of partisanship. Politically he may have been wrong,
but morally he was wholly right, and his rebuke stands in our history as a
reproach which Mr. Van Buren's subsequent success can neither mitigate nor
impair.

There was another measure, however, which had a far different effect from
those which tended to build up the opposition to Jackson and his followers.
A movement was begun by Mr. Clay looking to a revision and reduction of the
tariff, which finally resulted in a bill reducing duties on many articles
to a revenue standard, and leaving those on cotton and woollen goods and
iron unchanged. In the debates which occurred during the passage of this
bill Mr. Webster took but little part, but they caused a furious outbreak
on the part of the South Carolinians led by Hayne, and ended in the
confirmation of the protective policy. W