The Sun.
London, England, 1859-01-28 00:00:00

AMERICAN STATESMEN.

DANIEL WEBSTER.
I had many opportunities of subsequently seeing
and knowing Mr. Webster, both in private and
public life ; in his home at Washington, in the
hotel at Boston in which we lived at the same time ;
at my own subsequently, and in the house of his
friends, where he was sometimes pleasant, but
mostly dull, and more than once nearly morose. I
have seen him preside in the Senate pro tempore,
and officiate in the White House as prime minister
(secretary of state) ; I have heard him plead before
the Supreme Court as an advocate; I have listened
to him at great meetings in the open air ; and sat
beside him at public dinners under canvas, and
literally sub tegmine foul. But often as I have heard
him, anxiously as I have listened to him, and will-
ing as I was that his performances should come up
to his reputation, his appearance, and his undoubted
talents, I may truly say, that he never, to my
notion, reached to anything like the height I ex-
pected. In public he was ponderous rather than
powerful. In society he had none of the lightness
of a man of -the world, nor the weight of a man of
genius. Ile declaimed, debated, argued, or con-
versed, according to the occasions. But in all the
frequent times I have enumerated, I never saw him
put his audience at ease with, or transport them
beyond, themselves. Judging him by those displays,
or by comparison with his contemporaries and
countrymen, I should have come to the conclusion
that no man was ever so bepraised beyond his merits.
As to the statesmen, lawyers, and orators of Europe
—O'Connell, Brougham, Peel, Macaulay, Shiel,
Guizot, Thiers, Berryer, he cannot be ranked with
them at all. In elegance of style and diction he
was inferior to Everett ; in fluency and quickness, to
Judge Story; in bold persuasiveness to Clay; in
sententious and antithetical terseness to Cal-
houn ; in fervour and command of language, to
Preston. In his cause before the Supreme Court
(the Massachussets and Rhode Island Boundary
Question) he failed. I cannot, in fine, believe that
I saw Webster in his best days, either as an orator,
a lawyer, or a man of society ; yet the time of my
acquaintanceship with him was the period of the
greatest exertion and greatest triumph. He, in
common with all the leaders of his party in the
year 1839, worked with a zeal never exceeded for
the overthrow of the democrats, and the election of
Harrison to the Presidency. Their success was
complete. The most urgent stimulants existed to
call forth their powers, and particularly in the case
of Webster ; for, independent of the political inte-
rests at stake. the question was considered as one
of social existence to him individually. It was made
no secret, either by his friends or enemies, that his
finances were in a state of serious derangement.
The large sums of money received for professional
services during a long life were all spent ; and it
was notorious that he had for years chiefly subsisted
on contributions from his whig partisans. They
could not dispense with the aid of his talents in ad-
vocating their cause against their Loco-foco adver-
saries. They wanted him in Congress, at the caucus
on the stump. To attend to all the political duty
required of him he was obliged to give up almost
all the profits of his profession as an attorney and
counsellor at law. When his whig friends called
on him to do so, had he replied "Il faut vivre,"
they could not retort, " Nous n'en voyons pas la
necessite ;" for his life was the vital sparks of the
federal cause—his death would have been its down-
fal. Money, therefore, was necessary for his sup-
port, and the party supplied it freely. His con-
nection with Nicholas Biddle and the United States
Bank was not mere whispered insinuation, and
when the explosion of that concern, and the imper-
fect disclosures of Biddle and his associates so much
agitated the public mind, every one awaited, but in
vain, for the explanation of large sums unaccounted
for, either with anticipated exultation or shame, as
the list of the spoilers might or might not have dis-
closed the name of Daniel 'Webster.
His whole career has proved him to have pos-
sessed that ambition which seeks power for the sake
of display, which yields to the supremacy of preju-
dices, and which barters for vain show the solid
independence of the mind. Webster was the son
of a farmer in the state of New Hampshire. A
scrambling education prepared him for the struggles
of life. He first tried his hand as a schoolmaster in
a neighbouring village ; but soon abandoning that
line, the profession of the law, studied at small ex-
pense, threw him on the readiest road to fortune in
the United States. His talent and energy soon be-
came remarkable in the narrow sphere of action of
a country town, which he wisely changed for the
more extended one afforded by the city of Boston.
There he began to practise with a considerable
reputation, and found a fair field with few compe-
titors. He quickly gained the first place in public
favour ; and had he been as prudent as he was suc-
cessful, he must soon have made a handsome for-
tune. But his turn for expense was, to say the
least, as great as his thirst for distinction. He
chose to vie with the wealthy merchants of the city
in entertainments that had no heart in them, and
in an ostentation which gained him abundance of
envy and unpopularity, but neither admirers nor
friends.

HENRY CLAY
Was unquestionably the individual of all those
met with in the United States who approached the
nearest to the character of " greatness —the epithet
so lavishly and so ludricously applied to public men
in that country. He stood out far before the rest,
in an attitude of independent talent, and also of
easy consciousness of superiority. His manner
charmed and subdued all corners. He evidently,
,
knew his power and relied on it, without the ne-
cessity of forcing his claims to distinction. There
was no assumption of dignity, no haughtiness, no
effort. He did not speak a word, nor look one
look, for effect. The ordinary manoeuvring of
eminent men, to gain a position and to maintain it,
was foreign to his habits of thought or action.
These seemed to move in spontaneous unison.
Decision of mind was stamped on every phrase
he uttered. Careless, yet commanding and con-
trolling, he neither took you by storm, nor
conquered you by sap. He always gained you,
as if by magic. You subsided, as it were, into
the sphere of his attraction, like Goethe's fisherman
sinking into the water-nymph's embrace—the flood
received and closed over you without a ripple, and
you were lulled into almost unconscious subjection.
The power of Henry Clay in thus gaining tho at-
tachment of others was perhaps without a parallel ;
and it was assuredly owing to nothing artificial.
Nor was it the consequence of those external gifts
of nature whose influence appeals to the eye
rather than the understanding or the heart.
Clay was ill-favoured, in the usual acceptation of the
terms. His features were common place, and by no
means prepossessing. His mouth was unusually
wide and straight cut across his face. His upper
lip was long, His bald, high forehead, scanty hair
combed down at sides and back, and eyes light
coloured and of no very marked expression, formed
a combination singular, but possessing no element
of personal beauty. He was tall and thin; not
actually graceful in his movements ; but they be-
trayed, in his rather slovenly bearing, a self-satisfied
composure, which had a nameless fascination for
observers who prefer nature to constraint.
Clay's manners were not highly polished. His
voice was pleasing, his accent not too deeply tinc-
tured with the western burr, and it was quite free
from the nasal twang of Yankeeism. But he could
not be mistaken for anything but an American,
born, bred, and fashioned in the very heart of the
country, of which he was in person and character a
most striking illustration. He was, in fact, the best
embodiment of the national type. Physically brave,
morally resotute, of mighty talent, and generous
heart, he stood foremost in the phalanx of American
worthies, took the first place by right, and kept it
by courage. The inelegant pursuits of his early life,
as " the mill boy of the Slashers" (his familiar sobri-
quet), the druggist's assistant, the lawyer's clerk, and
the west coun attorney, formed a rough foundation
for his celebration; and he was of a n ature too proudly
simple to place it on layers of forced and inharmoni-
ous refinement. He was neither vulgarised by
youthful pursuits, nor spoiled by. the. conceits of
civilisation. His mind was too original to take its
impressions from externalandm.signs.h He was instinc-
tively well-bred,
wlllinth have formed for him-
self a code of conduct,
ieouwsocuolndvhea'rsvaetisocnorwn cads
a manual of etiquette. His cop
free from all conventional trick. He talked without
guile. He was straightforward and plain-spoken.
You knew the man and his opinions at once. In
carrying out his objects discretion never ran. into
overstrained reserve ; and the greatest purposes of
his private or political life were followed with a
candid energy, which inspired confidence even
wh:m it failed to bring conviction.
In Clay's whole career everything was large and
noble. No reptile littleness could live in the atmos-
phere lie created. The mean subterfuges of public
affairs were foreign to his manly method. In debate,
in council, even in his very despotism, as the driver
rather than the leader of his party, there was some-
thing that defied obstruction—all arrogant simpli-
city, that embodied, as it were, the first principles
of political science in all their primitive force.
Washington commanded reverence ; Franklin in-
spired respect ; Jefferson, Webster, Calhoun ex-
torted wonder, but Henry Clay, take him for all in
all, was the noblest specimen of a purely American
statesman. Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, were
but revolted colonists, with minds formed on the
institutions of England. Webster and Cal-
houn were republicans born and bred. So was Clay,
like those of his two great rivals. But as he was
far
their superior in life, he has not left his like—
not even his likeness behind him.—" Civilised
America." By Thomas Colley Grattan.