nquire who the
recipient of his bounty might be. The result was debt; then subscriptions
among his friends to pay his debts; then a fresh start and more debts, and
more subscriptions and funds for his benefit, and gifts of money for his
table, and checks or notes for several thousand dollars in token of
admiration of the 7th of March speech.[1] This was, of course, utterly
wrong and demoralizing, but Mr. Webster came, after a time, to look upon
such transactions as natural and proper. In the Ingersoll debate, Mr.
Yancey accused him of being in the pay of the New England manufacturers,
and his biographer has replied to the charge at length. That Mr. Webster
was in the pay of the manufacturers in the sense that they hired him, and
bade him do certain things, is absurd. That he was maintained and supported
in a large degree by New England manufacturers and capitalists cannot be
questioned; but his attitude toward them was not that of servant and
dependent. He seems to have regarded the merchants and bankers of State
Street very much as a feudal baron regarded his peasantry. It was their
privilege and duty to support him, and he repaid them with an occasional
magnificent compliment. The result was that he lived in debt and died
insolvent, and this was not the position which such a man as Daniel Webster
should have occupied.

[Footnote 1: The story of the gift of ten thousand dollars in token of
admiration of the 7th of March speech, referred to by Dr. Von Holst
(_Const. Hist. of the United States_) may be found in a volume entitled,
_In Memoriam, B. Ogle Tayloe_, p. 109, and is as follows: "My opulent and
munificent friend and neighbor Mr. William W. Corcoran," says Mr. Tayloe,
"after the perusal of Webster's celebrated March speech in defence of the
Constitution and of Southern rights, inclosed to Mrs. Webster her husband's
note for ten thousand dollars given him for a loan to that amount. Mr.
Webster met Mr. Corcoran the same evening, at the President's, and thanked
him for the 'princely favor.' Next day he addressed to Mr. Corcoran a
letter of thanks which I read at Mr. Corcoran's request." This version is
substantially correct. The morning of March 8 Mr. Corcoran inclosed with a
letter of congratulation some notes of Mr. Webster's amounting to some six
thousand dollars. Reflecting that this was not a very solid tribute, he
opened his letter and put in a check for a thousand dollars, and sent the
notes and the check to Mr