Webster replied in his most famous speech, and as an orator certainly got the better of his opponent, although Hayne’s defense of his own position was masterly. Even Calhoun himself, who, as he was serving his second term as Vice President, could not join in the debate, would hardly have presented his own views more clearly. Whether Webster eclipsed Hayne as a political reasoner, is a point on which the North and the South have never been in perfect agreement. Webster denied Hayne’s postulate that the Union rested on a compact, and affirmed that the Constitution had established a general government with powers sufficient to enforce its rights even against the component states. [Illustration: DANIEL WEBSTER’S CARRIAGE.] =356. The Theoretical and the Historical View.=—Few will now deny that Webster was right as a theoretical publicist, for a constitution which admitted the right of secession or of nullification would have framed a farcical government. But whether he was right from the point of view of the constitutional lawyer or of the historical annalist is quite a different matter. There were nationalists from the beginning, but it seems probable that most men in 1789 believed that the Constitution was a compact between the states. By 1830 the North, and much of the West, had been nationalized and had more or less forgotten or abandoned the compact theory. But the South, less changed, adhered to it, especially as on it a minority party could base a constitutional resistance to an obnoxious policy like the tariff. Hence it seems fair to conclude that Webster was right as a publicist, partly unsound as a lawyer and annalist; but that the future was with him, the past with Hayne. That the past was with Hayne is partly at least confirmed by the general historical fact that minority parties, needing all the support they can get, make a careful study of precedents and have every interest in not making mistakes in their procedure. Parties of progress, on the other hand, are rarely careful about their reasoning from precedents. It is to be noted further that much of the political strength the Southerners still possessed lay in the fact that they were on the defensive and could obstruct legislation by strictly construing the Constitution. THE TARIFF AND NULLIFICATION.