After the resolution was read Mr. Webster continued: “We have thus heard, sir, what the resolution is which is actually before us for consideration; and it will readily occur to every one that it is almost the only subject about which something has not been said in the speech, running through two days, by which the Senate has been now entertained by the gentleman from South Carolina. Every topic in the wide range of our public affairs, whether past or present, everything, general or local, whether belonging to national politics or party politics, seems to have attracted more or less of the honorable members attention, save only the resolution before the Senate. He has spoken of everything but the public lands; they have escaped his notice. To that subject in all his excursions he has not paid even the cold respect of a passing glance. “When this debate, sir, was to be resumed on Thursday morning, it so happened that it would have been convenient for me to be elsewhere. The honorable member, however, did not incline to put off the discussion to another day. He had a shot, he said, to return, and he wished to discharge it. That shot, which it was kind thus to inform us was coming, that we might stand out of the way, or prepare ourselves to fall before it and die with decency, has now been received. Under all advantages, and with expectation awakened by the tone which preceded it, it has been discharged and has spent its force. It may become me to say no more of its effect than that, if nobody is found, after all, either killed or wounded by it, it is not the first time in the history of human affairs that the vigor and success of the war have not quite come up to the lofty and sounding phrase of the manifesto.” Referring to Col. Hayne’s statement that there was something rankling here (indicating his heart) which he wished to relieve, Mr. Webster said: “In this respect, sir, I have a great advantage over the honorable gentleman. There is nothing _here_, sir, which gives me the slightest uneasiness; neither fear nor anger, nor that which is sometimes more troublesome than either, the consciousness of having been in the wrong.... I must repeat, also, that nothing has been received _here_ which _rankles_ or in any way gives me annoyance. I will not accuse the honorable gentleman of violating the rules of civilized war; I will not say he poisoned his arrows. But whether his shafts were, or were not, dipped in that which would have caused rankling if they had reached, there was not, as it happened, quite strength enough in the bow to bring them to their mark. If he wishes now to gather up these shafts he must look for them elsewhere; they will not be found fixed and quivering in the object at which they were aimed.”