Two causes, however, demand more than a passing mention,--the Girard will case and the Rhode Island case. The former involved no constitutional points. The suit was brought to break the will of Stephen Girard, and the question was whether the bequest to found a college could be construed to be a charitable devise. On this question Mr. Webster had a weak case in point of law, but he readily detected a method by which he could go boldly outside the law, as he had done to a certain degree in the Dartmouth College case, and substitute for argument an eloquent and impassioned appeal to emotion and prejudice. Girard was a free-thinker, and he provided in his will that no priest or minister of any denomination should be admitted to his college. Assuming that this excluded all religious teaching, Mr. Webster then laid down the proposition that no bequest or gift could be charitable which excluded Christian teaching. In other words, he contended that there was no charity except Christian charity, which, the poet assures us, is so rare. At this day such a theory would hardly be gravely propounded by any one. But Mr. Webster, on the ground that Girard's bequest was derogatory to Christianity, pronounced a very fine discourse defending and eulogizing, with much eloquence, the Christian religion. The speech produced a great effect. One is inclined to think that it was the cause of the court's evading the question raised by Mr. Webster, and sustaining the will, a result they were bound to reach in any event, on other grounds. The speech certainly produced a great sensation, and was much admired, especially by the clergy, who caused it to be printed and widely distributed. It did not impress lawyers quite so favorably, and we find Judge Story writing to Chancellor Kent that "Webster did his best for the other side, but it seems to me altogether an address to the prejudices of the clergy." The subject, in certain ways, had a deep attraction for Mr. Webster. His imagination was excited by the splendid history of the Church, and his conservatism was deeply stirred by a system which, whether in the guise of the Romish hierarchy, as the Church of England, or in the form of powerful dissenting sects, was, as a whole, imposing by its age, its influence, and its moral grandeur. Moreover, it was one of the great established bulwarks of well-ordered and civilized society. All this appealed strongly to Mr. Webster, and he made the most of his opportunity and of his shrewdly-chosen ground. Yet the speech on the Girard will is not one of his best efforts. It has not the subdued but intense fire which glowed so splendidly in his great speeches in the Senate. It lacked the stately pathos which came always when Mr. Webster was deeply moved. It was delivered in 1844, and was slightly tinged with the pompousness which manifested itself in his late years, and especially on religious topics. No man has a right to question the religious sincerity of another, unless upon