tudious, thoughtful, grave. Whenever he delivered an
elaborate speech the Whigs set Clay, Webster, Ewing, or some other of
their leaders to reply to him."--H.B. Stanton, _Random Recollections_,
p. 39.]

Even when the great opportunity of Marcy's senatorial career was
thrust upon him--the defence of Van Buren at the time of the latter's
rejection as minister to Great Britain--he failed signally. The
controversy growing out of Jackson's cabinet disagreements, ostensibly
because of the treatment of Mrs. Eaton, wife of the Secretary of War,
but really because of Calhoun's hostility to Van Buren, due to the
President's predilections for him as his successor, had made it
evident to Van Buren that an entire reorganisation of the Cabinet
should take place. Accordingly, on April 11, 1831, he opened the way,
by voluntarily and chivalrously resigning. President Jackson soon
after appointed him minister to England, and Van Buren sailed for his
post. But when the question of his confirmation came up, in the
following December, Calhoun and his friends, joined by Webster and
Clay, formed a combination to defeat it. Calhoun's opposition was
simply the enmity of a political rival, but Webster sought to put his
antagonism on a higher level, by calling Van Buren to account for
instructions addressed to the American Minister at London in regard to
our commercial relations with the West Indian, Bahama, and South
American colonies of England.

In 1825 Parliament permitted American vessels to trade with British
colonies, on condition that American ports be opened within a year to
British vessels on the same terms as to American vessels. The Adams
administration, failing to comply with the statute within the year,
set up a counter prohibition, which was in force when Van Buren,
wishing to reopen negotiations, instructed McLane, the American
Minister at London, to say to England that the United States had, as
the friends of the present administration contended at the time, been
wrong in refusing the privileges granted by the act of 1825, but that
our "views have been submitted to the people of the United States, and
the counsels by which your conduct is now directed are the result of
the judgment expressed by the only earthly tribunal to which the late
administration was amenable for its acts." In other words, Van Buren
had introduced party contests in an official dispatch, not brazenly or
offensively, perhaps, but with questionable taste, an