Upon this point let us read the statement of Mr. Webster himself, as given to his tried friend, Mr. Harvey. In reference to the remark that he had made no preparation for the Hayne speech, he said: “That was not quite so. If it was meant that I took notes and studied with a view to a reply, that was not true; but that I was thoroughly conversant with the subject of debate, from having made preparation for a totally different purpose than that speech, is true. The preparation for my reply to Hayne was made upon the occasion of Mr. Foote’s resolution to sell the public lands. Some years before that, Mr. McKinley, a senator from Alabama, introduced a resolution into the Senate, proposing to cede the public domains to the States in which they were situated. It struck me at that time as being so unfair and improper that I immediately prepared an argument to resist it. My argument embraced the whole history of the public lands, and the government’s action in regard to them. Then there was another question involved in the Hayne debate. It was as to the right and practice of petition. Mr. Calhoun had denied the right of petition on the subject of slavery. In other words, he claimed that, if the petition was for some subject which the Senate had no right to grant, then there was no right of petition. If the Senate had no such right, then the petitioners had no right to come there. Calhoun’s doctrine seemed to be accepted, and I made preparation to answer his proposition. It so happened that the debate did not take place, because the matter never was pressed. I had my notes tucked away in a pigeon-hole, and when Hayne made that attack upon me and upon New England I was already posted, and only had to take down my notes and refresh my memory. In other words, if he had tried to make a speech to fit my notes he could not have hit it better. No man is inspired with the occasion; I never was.” Mr. Webster was too great a man to wish for praise which he did not deserve. That is for men of inferior ability, who are glad to have it believed that their most elaborate utterances are “thrown off upon the spur of the moment.” Indeed he does not claim enough when he disclaims being inspired by the occasion. His encomium upon New England, his glowing peroration, were fused and put into enduring form under the pressure of strong emotion, which may well be termed inspiration. Yet it was always his habit to ascribe his great efforts to hard labor rather than to genius, and he remarked to a young clergyman on one occasion, who had questioned him in regard to some of his speeches, “Young man, there is no such thing as extemporaneous acquisition.”