--but it is held by the great body of mankind
who know or care anything about the subject, and it cannot be changed or
substantially modified, because subsequent events have fixed its place and
worth irrevocably. It is only necessary, therefore, to examine very briefly
the grounds of this adverse judgment, and the pleas put in against it by
Mr. Webster and by his most devoted partisans.

From the sketch which has been given of Mr. Webster's course on the slavery
question, we see that in 1819 and 1820 he denounced in the strongest terms
slavery and every form of slave-trade; that while he fully admitted that
Congress had no power to touch slavery in the States, he asserted that it
was their right and their paramount duty absolutely to stop any further
extension of slave territory. In 1820 he was opposed to any compromise on
this question. Ten years later he stood out to the last, unaffected by
defeat, against the principle of compromise which sacrificed the rights and
the dignity of the general government to the resistance and threatened
secession of a State.

After the reply to Hayne in 1830, Mr. Webster became a standing candidate
for the presidency, or for the Whig nomination to that office. From that
time forth, the sharp denunciation of slavery and traffic in slaves
disappears, although there is no indication that he ever altered his
original opinion on these points; but he never ceased, sometimes mildly,
sometimes in the most vigorous and sweeping manner, to attack and oppose
the extension of slavery to new regions, and the increase of slave
territory. If, then, in the 7th of March speech, he was inconsistent with
his past, such inconsistency must appear, if at all, in his general tone in
regard to slavery, in his views as to the policy of compromise, and in his
attitude toward the extension of slavery, the really crucial question of
the time.

As to the first point, there can be no doubt that there is a vast
difference between the tone of the Plymouth oration and the Boston memorial
toward slavery and the slave-trade, and that of the 7th of March speech in
regard to the same subjects. For many years Mr. Webster had had but little
to say against slavery as a system, but in the 7th of March speech, in
reviewing the history of slavery, he treats the matter in such a very calm
manner, that he not only makes the best case possible for the South, but
his tone is almost apologetic when speaking in their behalf. To the