With Mr.
Clay he had a public outbreak in the Senate. He was cordial with
Jackson. The mass of his party stood by him on the proclamation. He
was at a point from which a new departure might be taken: one at
which he could not stand still; from which there must be either
advance or recoil. It was a case in which _will_ more than
_intellect_ was to rule. He was above Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun in
intellect, below them in will: and he was soon seen cooperating
with them (Mr. Clay in the lead) in the great measure condemning
President Jackson."

This is of course the view of a Jacksonian leader, but it is none the less
full of keen analysis and comprehension of Mr. Webster, and in some
respects embodies very well the conditions of the situation. Mr. Benton
naturally did not see that an alliance with Jackson was utterly impossible
for Mr. Webster, whose proper course was therefore much less simple than it
appeared to the Senator from Missouri. There was in reality no common
ground possible between Webster and Jackson except defence of the national
integrity. Mr. Webster was a great orator, a splendid advocate, a trained
statesman and economist, a remarkable constitutional lawyer, and a man of
immense dignity, not headstrong in temper and without peculiar force of
will. Jackson, on the other hand, was a rude soldier, unlettered,
intractable, arbitrary, with a violent temper and a most despotic will. Two
men more utterly incompatible it would have been difficult to find, and
nothing could have been more wildly fantastic than to suppose an alliance
between them, or to imagine that Mr. Webster could ever have done anything
but oppose utterly those mad gyrations of personal government which the
President called his "policy."

Yet at the same time it is perfectly true that just after the passage of
the tariff bill Mr. Webster was at a great crisis in his life. He could not
act with Jackson. That way was shut to him by nature, if by nothing else.
But he could have maintained his position as the independent and unbending
defender of nationality and as the foe of compromise. He might then have
brought Mr. Clay to his side, and remained himself the undisputed head of
the Whig party. The coalition between Clay and Calhoun was a hollow,
ill-omened thing, certain to go violently to pieces, as, in fact, it did,
within a few years, and then Mr. Clay, if he had held out so long, would
have been h