the tariff. He
also reported and carried through the house a complete revision of the
criminal law of the United States, being chairman of the judiciary
committee. In 1827 he was selected by the legislature of Massachusetts
to fill a vacancy in the United States senate. In that body he won a
foremost position.

Probably the most eloquent exhibition of oratory, based on logic and
true statesmanship, ever exhibited in the Senate of the United States
was the contest between Mr. Webster, of Massachusetts, and Mr. Hayne,
the silver-tongued orator of South Carolina; the debate transpiring in
1830. The subject of discussion before the senate by these two
intellectual gladiators grew out of a resolution brought forward by
Senator Foot, of Connecticut, just at the close of the previous year
with a view of some arrangement concerning the sales of the public
lands. But this immediate question was soon lost sight of in the
discussion of a great vital principle of constitutional law, namely:
The relative powers of the States and the national government.

Upon this Mr. Benton and Mr. Hayne addressed the Senate, condemning the
policy of the Eastern States as illiberal toward the West. Mr. Webster
replied in vindication of New England, and of the policy of the
Government. It was then that Mr. Hayne made his attack--sudden,
unexpected, and certainly unexampled--upon Mr. Webster personally, upon
Massachusetts and other Northern States politically, and upon the
constitution itself. In respect to the latter, Mr. Hayne taking the
position that it is constitutional to interrupt the administration of
the Constitution itself, in the hands of those who are chosen and sworn
to administer it; by the direct interference in form of law, of the
States, in virtue of their sovereign capacity.

All of these points were handled by Mr. Hayne with that rhetorical
brilliancy, and the power which characterized him as the oratorical
champion of the South on the floor of the Senate, and it is not saying
too much that the speech produced a profound impression. Mr. Hayne's
great effort appeared to be the result of premeditation, concert, and
arrangement.

He selected his own time, and that, too, peculiarly inconvenient to Mr.
Webster, for at that moment the Supreme Court was proceeding in the
hearing of a case of great importance in which he was a leading counsel.
For this reason he requested, through a friend, the postponement of the
debate. Mr. Hayne obj