In one of his political papers Webster sketches the average American of his time: "He makes a variety of utensils,--rough, indeed, but such as will answer his purpose; he is a husbandman in summer and a mechanic in winter; he travels about the country; he converses with a variety of professions; he reads public papers; he has access to a parish library, and thus becomes acquainted with history and politics, and every man in New England is a theologian." I have already intimated that Webster dissipated his strength, and it is only fair to state the facts in the light of the conditions under which he lived. In the unorganized and fluent state of society there was little room for a specialist; or, to change the phrase for a more exact one, there was too much room. Every educated man was called upon to occupy himself with a great variety of tasks. The demand made by the republican experiment was very great. People had practiced local self-government under monarchical supervision for a long time; now they were bound to extend the sphere of their political activity, and in the adjustment of the new machinery there was abundant opportunity for all the ingenuity and wit of the educated class to exercise itself. Then there was a great impetus given by politics to the democratizing of the nation, and, in the rapid social changes of the day, the educated class found itself well shaken up with the mechanic. The terms which Webster employs of the average American may easily be applied to all classes. Nice distinctions of rank and occupation could not easily be maintained in a country where there was vastly more land than could be tilled, where enterprise of every kind was limited only by lack of labor, and where every citizen had his hand on the wheels of government. In a conventional way Webster would be classed amongst the educated men of the country: he had received his diploma at one of the chief colleges; his occupations were intellectual; his profession was the liberal one of the law. Yet in a more real way he was a farmer's son, and though he ceased early from manual labor his mental affiliations were with the plain people rather than with the intellectual ones. He seized all subjects by their practical side, and his instinct was to apply the rough-and-ready rules of common sense to all questions, whether of politics, theology, or philology. Such men as Belknap and Hazard looked with disdain upon him; they felt rather than said that Webster was not one of them. So, when living in Hartford, Webster was not identified with the circle of Hartford wits. His mind was not subtle or graceful; he had not the faculty of creating, nor, so far as I can discover, of appreciating literature; but he had an uncommonly active manufacturing mind, and in his intellectual workshop he made, as he said of his average American, "a variety of utensils,--rough, indeed, but such as will answer his purpose."