candidacy movements had begun in Massachusetts, even among Mr. Webster’s personal friends, as well as elsewhere.  Mr. Webster had just declined a public dinner, but he now decided to meet his friends in Faneuil Hall.  An immense audience gathered to hear him, many of them strongly disapproving his course, but after he had spoken a few moments, he had them completely under control.  He reviewed the negotiation; he discussed fully the differences in the party; he deplored, and he did not hesitate strongly to condemn these quarrels, because by them the fruits of victory were lost, and Whig policy abandoned.  With boldness and dignity he denied the right of the convention to declare a separation from the President, and the implied attempt to coerce himself and others.  “I am, gentlemen, a little hard to coax,” he said, “but as to being driven, that is out of the question.  If I choose to remain in the President’s councils, do these gentlemen mean to say that I cease to be a Massachusetts Whig?  I am quite ready to put that question to the people of Massachusetts.”  He was well aware that he was losing party strength by his action; he knew that behind all these resolutions was the intention to raise his great rival to the presidency; but he did not shrink from avowing his independence and his intention of doing what he believed to be right, and what posterity admits to have been so.  Mr. Webster never appeared to better advantage, and he never made a more manly speech than on this occasion, when, without any bravado, he quietly set the influence and the threats of his party at defiance.

He was not mistaken in thinking that the treaty was not yet in smooth water.  It was again attacked in the Senate, and it had a still more severe ordeal to go through in Parliament.  The opposition, headed by Lord Palmerston, assailed the treaty and Lord Ashburton himself, with the greatest virulence, denouncing the one as a capitulation, and the other as a grossly unfit appointment.  Moreover, the language of the President’s message led England to believe that we claimed that the right of search had been abandoned.  After much correspondence, this misunderstanding drew forth an able letter from Mr. Webster, stating that the right of search had not been included in the treaty, but that the “cruising convention” had rendered the question unimportant.  Finally, all complications were dispersed, and the treaty ratified; and then came an attack from an unexpected quarter.  General Cass—­our minister at Paris—­undertook to protest against the treaty, denounce it, and leave his post on account of it.  This wholly gratuitous assault led to a public correspondence, in which General Cass, on his own confession, was completely overthrown and broken down by the Secretary of State.  This was the last difficulty, and the work was finally accepted and complete.