Southern Whigs should have done so little for Mr. Webster after he had done and sacrificed so much to advance and defend their interests. But the South was practical. In the 7th of March speech they had got from Mr. Webster all they could expect or desire. It was quite possible, in fact it was highly probable, that, once in the presidency, he could not be controlled or guided by the slave-power or by any other sectional influence. Mr. Fillmore, inferior in every way to Mr. Webster in intellect, in force, in reputation, would give them a mild, safe administration and be easily influenced by the South. Mr. Webster had served his turn, and the men whose cause he had advocated and whose interests he had protected cast him aside. [Footnote 1: Mr. Curtis says a "great majority continued to divide their votes between Mr. Fillmore and Mr. Webster." The highest number reached by the combined Webster and Fillmore votes, on any one ballot, was 162, three more than was received on the last ballot by General Scott, who, Mr. Curtis correctly says, obtained only a "few votes more than the necessary majority."] The loss of the nomination was a bitter disappointment to Mr. Webster. It was the fashion in certain quarters to declare that it killed him, but this was manifestly absurd. The most that can be said in this respect was, that the excitement and depression caused by his defeat preyed upon his mind and thereby facilitated the inroads of disease, while it added to the clouds which darkened round him in those last days. But his course of action after the convention cannot be passed over without comment. He refused to give his adhesion to General Scott's nomination, and he advised his friends to vote for Mr. Pierce, because the Whigs were divided, while the Democrats were unanimously determined to resist all attempts to renew the slavery agitation. This course was absolutely indefensible. If the Whig party was so divided on the slavery question that Mr. Webster could not support their nominee, then he had no business to seek a nomination at their hands, for they were as much divided before the convention as afterwards. He chose to come before that convention, knowing perfectly well the divisions of the party, and that the nomination might fall to General Scott. He saw fit to play the game, and was in honor bound to abide by the rules. He had no right to say "it is heads I win, and tails you lose." If he had been nominated he would have indignantly and justly denounced a refusal on the part of General Scott and his friends to support him. It is the merest sophistry to say that Mr. Webster was too great a man to be bound by party usages, and that he owed it to himself to rise above them, and refuse his support to a poor nomination and to a wrangling party. If Mr. Webster could no longer act with the Whigs, then his name had no business in that convention at Baltimore, for the conditions were the same before its meeting as afterward.