infamous principles it behooved the people of the United States to raise their voice.  Mr. Webster sketched the history of Greece, and made a fine appeal to Americans to give an expression of their sympathy to a people struggling for freedom.  He proclaimed, so that all men might hear, the true duty of the United States toward the oppressed of any land, and the responsibility which they held to exert their influence upon the opinions of mankind.  The national destiny of his country in regard to other nations was his theme; to give to the glittering declaration of Canning, that he would “call in the new world to redress the balance of the old,” a deep and real significance was his object.

The speech touched Mr. Clay to the quick.  He supported Mr. Webster’s resolution with all the ardor of his generous nature, and supplemented it by another against the interference of Spain in South America.  A stormy debate followed, vivified by the flings and taunts of John Randolph, but the unwillingness to take action was so great that Mr. Webster did not press his resolution to a vote.  He had at the outset looked for a practical result from his resolution, and had desired the appointment of Mr. Everett as commissioner, a plan in which he had been encouraged by Mr. Calhoun, who had given him to understand that the Executive regarded the Greek mission with favor.  Before he delivered his speech he became aware that Calhoun had misled him, that Mr. Adams, the Secretary of State, considered Everett too much of a partisan, and that the administration was wholly averse to any action in the premises.  This destroyed all hope of a practical result, and made an adverse vote certain.  The only course was to avoid a decision and trust to what he said for an effect on public opinion.  The real purpose of the speech, however, was achieved.  Mr. Webster had exposed and denounced the Holy Alliance as hostile to the liberties of mankind, and had declared the unalterable enmity of the United States to its reactionary doctrines.  The speech was widely read, not only wherever English was spoken, but it was translated into all the languages of Europe, and was circulated throughout South America.  It increased Mr. Webster’s fame at home and laid the foundation of his reputation abroad.  Above all, it stamped him as a statesman of a broad and national cast of mind.

He now settled down to hard and continuous labor at the routine business of the House, and it was not until the end of March that he had occasion to make another elaborate and important speech.  At that time Mr. Clay took up the bill for laying certain protective duties and advocated it strenuously as part of a general and steady policy which he then christened with the name of “the American system.”  Against this bill, known as the tariff of 1824, Mr. Webster made, as Mr. Adams wrote in his diary at the time, “an able and powerful speech,” which can be more properly considered when we come to his change of position on this question a few years later.