grievances of the South he devotes more than five pages of his speech, to
those of the North less than two. As to the infamy of making the national
capital a great slave-mart, he has nothing to say--although it was a matter
which figured as one of the elements in Mr. Clay's scheme.

But what most shocked the North in this connection were his utterances in
regard to the Fugitive Slave Law. There can be no doubt that under the
Constitution the South had a perfect right to claim the extradition of
fugitive slaves. The legal argument in support of that right was excellent,
but the Northern people could not feel that it was necessary for Daniel
Webster to make it. The Fugitive Slave Law was in absolute conflict with
the awakened conscience and moral sentiment of the North. To strengthen
that law, and urge its enforcement, was a sure way to make the resistance
to it still more violent and intolerant. Constitutions and laws will
prevail over much, and allegiance to them is a high duty, but when they
come into conflict with a deep-rooted moral sentiment, and with the
principles of liberty and humanity, they must be modified, or else they
will be broken to pieces. That this should have been the case in 1850 was
no doubt to be regretted, but it was none the less a fact. To insist upon
the constitutional duty of returning fugitive slaves, to upbraid the North
with their opposition, and to urge upon them and upon the country the
strict enforcement of the extradition law, was certain to embitter and
intensify the opposition to it. The statesmanlike course was to recognize
the ground of Northern resistance, to show the South that a too violent
insistence upon their constitutional rights would be fatal, and to endeavor
to obtain such concessions as would allay excited feelings. Mr. Webster's
strong argument in favor of the Fugitive Slave Law pleased the South, of
course; but it irritated and angered the North. It promoted the very
struggle which it proposed to allay, for it admitted the existence of only
one side to the question. The consciences of men cannot be coerced; and
when Mr. Webster undertook to do it he dashed himself against the rocks.
People did not stop to distinguish between a legal argument and a defence
of the merits of catching runaway slaves. To refer to the original law of
1793 was idle. Public opinion had changed in half a century; and what had
seemed reasonable at the close of the eighteenth century was monstrous in