power “like a giant”; and it is almost pathetic to remember that, when Mr. Everett undertook to edit, in 1851, the standard edition of his works, Webster gave directions to expunge all personalities from his speeches, even when those personalities were the just punishment of unprovoked attacks on his integrity as a man.  Readers will look in vain, in this edition of his works, for some of the most pungent passages which originally attracted their attention in the first report of the Defence of the Treaty of Washington.  At the time these directions were given, Webster was himself the object of innumerable personalities, which were the natural, the inevitable results of his speech of the 7th of March, 1850.

It seems to be a law, that the fame of all public men shall be “half disfame.”  We are specially warned to beware of the man of whom all men speak well.  Burke, complimenting his friend Fox for risking every thing, even his “darling popularity,” on the success of the East India Bill, nobly says:  “He is traduced and abused for his supposed motives.  He will remember, that obloquy is a necessary ingredient in all true glory; he will remember, that it was not only in the Roman customs, but it is in the nature of human things, that calumny and abuse are essential parts of triumph.”

It may be said, however, that Webster’s virtue in this general abstinence from personalities is to be offset by the fact that he could throw into a glance of his eye, a contortion of his face, a tone of his voice, or a simple gesture of his hand, more scorn, contempt, and hatred than ordinary debaters could express by the profuse use of all the scurrilous terms in the English language.  Probably many a sentence, which we now read with an even pulse, was, as originally delivered, accompanied by such pointing of the finger, or such flashing of the eye, or such raising of the voice, that the seemingly innocent words were poisoned arrows that festered in the souls of those against whom they were directed, and made deadly enemies of a number of persons whom he seems, in his printed speeches, never to have mentioned without the respect due from one Senator to another.  In his speech in defence of the Treaty of Washington, he had to repel Mr. Ingersoll’s indecent attack on his integrity, and his dreadful retort is described by those who heard it as coming within the rules which condemn cruelty to animals.  But the “noble rage” which prompted him to indulge in such unwonted invective subsided with the occasion that called it forth, and he was careful to have it expunged when the speech was reprinted.  An eminent judge of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, in commending the general dignity and courtesy which characterized Webster’s conduct of a case in a court of law, noted one exception.  “When,” he said, “the opposite counsel had got him into a corner, the way he ‘trampled out’ was something frightful to behold.  The court itself could hardly restrain him in his gigantic efforts to extricate himself from the consequences of a blunder or an oversight.”