personal as well as political, I was apprehensive that his observations, if they were made public, however true and just, might in the then feverish state of the public mind give countenance to the representations of his enemies. His reply was: "No, my friend, I have great respect for your judgment, but you do not understand these gentlemen as well as I do. They are quite honest, and wish to do what is right, but are prevented from doing it by precisely the considerations to which I alluded. They will not be offended, because they know I am their friend, and act only for the public good, and you will see that they will show a different disposition upon the subject"--and they did so. My apprehensions were more on account of what I feared he might say, from the excited manner in which he spoke, than on account of what he did actually say; and this was but one of numerous instances in which I observed a similar contradiction between his apparent undue excitement and his real coolness and self-possession in which, I may say with truth, he was seldom if ever wanting. It was to the class of Jackson's supporters which I have described, men of Mr. Daniel's school, that Webster made his most powerful appeal; to alarm and influence them his powers were exerted to their utmost point. To do this with any chance of success a perversion of the Veto Message was indispensable. We have seen that he was obliged to admit that the President had a right, under the Constitution, to do all that he proposed by the veto. He had sworn to protect the Constitution as the chief executive officer of the government; and when an act was offered for his approval which he honestly believed was contrary to that instrument, he had the right--not the power only but the right also--to withhold his assent. This Mr. Webster admitted in so many words, and President Jackson did not by the message propose to do any thing more. And yet Webster denounced him as a ruthless tyrant, who was violating the Constitution, and uprooting the foundations of society. Look at some of his fierce denunciations: "He asserts a right of individual judgment on constitutional questions, which is totally inconsistent with any proper administration of the Government, or any regular execution of the laws. Social disorder, entire uncertainty in regard to individual rights and individual duties, the cessation of legal authority, confusion, the dissolution of free government,--all these are inevitable consequences of the principles adopted by the message, whenever they shall be carried to their full extent.... That which is now claimed for the President is, in truth, nothing less, and nothing else than the old dispensing power asserted by the Kings of England in the worst of times--the very climax, indeed, of all the preposterous pretensions of the Tudor and the Stuart races.