when he took bribes; Napoleon, when he divorced Josephine; Hamilton, when he fought Burr.  The sun itself passes through eclipses, as it gives light to the bodies which revolve around it.  Even David and Peter stumbled.  Because Webster professed to know as much of the interests of the country as the shoemakers of Lynn, and refused to be instructed in his political duties by Garrison and Wendell Phillips, does he deserve eternal reprobation?  Because he opposed the public sentiments of his constituents on one point, when perhaps they were right, is he to be hurled from his lofty pedestal?  Are all his services to be forgotten because he did not lift up his trumpet voice in favor of immediate emancipation?  And even suppose he sought to conciliate the South when the South was preparing for rebellion,—­is peace-making such a dreadful thing?  Go still farther:  suppose he wished to conciliate the South in order to get Southern support for the presidency—­which I grant he wanted, and possibly sought,—­is he to be unforgiven, and his name to be blasted, and he held up to the rising generation as a fallen man?  Does a man fall hopelessly because he stumbles?  Is a man to be dethroned because he is not perfect?  When was Webster’s vote ever bought and sold?  Who ever sat with more dignity in the councils of the nation?  Would he have voted for “back pay”?  Would he have bought a seat in the Senate, even if he had been as rich as a bonanza king?

Consider how few errors Webster really committed in a public career of nearly forty years.  Consider the beneficence and wisdom of the measures which he generally advocated, and which would have been lost but for his eloquence and power.  Consider the greatness and lustre of his congressional career on the whole.  Who has proved a greater benefactor to this nation, on the floor of Congress, than he?  I do not wish to eulogize, still less to whitewash, so great a man, but only to render simple justice to his memory and deeds.  The time has come to lift the veil which for thirty years has concealed his noble political services.  The time has come to cry shame on those boys who mocked a prophet, and said, “Go up, thou bald-head!”—­although no bears were found to devour them.  The time has come for this nation to bury the old slanders of an exciting political warfare, and render thanks for the services performed by the greatest intellectual giant of the past generation,—­services rendered not on the floor of the Senate alone, not in the national legislature for thirty years, but in one of the great offices of State, when he made a treaty with England which saved us from an entangling war.  The Ashburton treaty is the brightest gem in the coronet with which he should be crowned.  It was the proudest day in Webster’s life when Rufus Choate announced to him one evening that the Senate had confirmed the treaty.  It was not when he closed his magnificent argument in behalf of Dartmouth College, not when he addressed the intelligence of New England at Bunker Hill, not when he demolished Governor Hayne, not when he sat on the woolsack with Lord Brougham, not when he was entertained by Louis Philippe, that the proudest emotions swelled in his bosom, but when he learned that he had prevented a war with England,—­for he knew that England and America could not afford to fight; that it would be a fight where gain is loss and glory is shame.