How admirable also is his exposure of the distinction attempted to be drawn between secession, as a State right to be exercised under the provisions of what was called “the Constitutional Compact,” and revolution.  “Secession,” he says, “as a revolutionary right, is intelligible; as a right to be proclaimed in the midst of civil commotions, and asserted at the head of armies, I can understand it.  But as a practical right, existing under the Constitution, and in conformity with its provisions, it seems to me nothing but a plain absurdity; for it supposes resistance to government, under the authority of government itself; it supposes dismemberment, without violating the principles of union; it supposes opposition to law, without crime, it supposes the total overthrow of government, without revolution.”

After putting some pertinent interrogatories—­which are arguments in themselves—­relating to the inevitable results of secession, he adds, that “every man must see that these are all questions which can arise only after a revolution.  They presuppose the breaking up of the government.  While the Constitution lasts, they are repressed";—­and then, with that felicitous use of the imagination as a handmaid of the understanding, which is the peculiar characteristic of his eloquence, he closes the sentence by saying, that “they spring up to annoy and startle us only from its grave.”  A mere reasoner would have stopped at the word “repressed”; the instantaneous conversion of “questions” into spectres, affrighting and annoying us as they spring up from the grave of the Constitution,—­which is also by implication impersonated,—­is the work of Webster’s ready imagination; and it thoroughly vitalizes the statements which precede it.

A great test of the sincerity of a statesman’s style is his moderation.  Now, if we take the whole body of Mr. Webster’s speeches, whether delivered in the Senate or before popular assemblies, during the period of his opposition to President Jackson’s administration, we may well be surprised at their moderation of tone and statement.  Everybody old enough to recollect the singular virulence of political speech at that period must remember it as disgraceful equally to the national conscience and the national understanding.  The spirit of party, always sufficiently fierce and unreasonable, was then stimulated into a fury resembling madness.  Almost every speaker, Democrat or Whig, was in that state of passion which is represented by the physical sign of “foaming at the mouth.”  Few mouths then opened that did not immediately begin to “foam.”  So many fortunes were suddenly wrecked by President Jackson’s financial policy, and the business of the country was so disastrously disturbed, that, whether the policy was right or wrong, those who assailed and those who defended it seemed to be equally devoid of common intellectual honesty.  “I do well to be angry,” appears to have been the maxim which inspired Democratic and Whig orators alike; and