Yet Mr. Webster stands up before all this array, and says, “Gentlemen, you are beside yourselves. You have eaten ‘of the insane root.’ You would look more in character should you put on the ‘cap and bells.’ In sober sense, in seeing his object clearly and in pursuing it directly, Don Quixote was Doctor Franklin, compared with _you_. The dog in the fable, who dropped his meat to snap at his shadow, is no allegory in your case. I see two classes around me,--wise men and fools; _you_ do not belong to the former. The chancellor, who keeps the king’s idiots, should have custody of you.” Such is a faithful abstract of what Mr. Webster said to southern senators, and, through them, to all the south. Here certainly was a reflection upon the understanding and intelligence of the south, such as never was cast upon them before. But the balm went with the sting. They bore the affront to their judgments, because it was so grateful to their politics and pockets. I think it no injustice to those senators to say, that they would have nearly torn Mr. Webster in pieces for such a collective insult, had it not promised to add, what Mr. Mason called “many hundred fold,” to their individual property, and to secure and perpetuate their political ascendency. To help our conceptions in regard to Mr. Webster’s course on this subject, let us imagine a parallel case,--or, rather, an approximate one, for there can be no parallel. Suppose a contest between the north and the south, on the subject of the tariff, to have been raging for years. The sober blood of the north is heated to the fever point. The newspapers treat of nothing else. Public meetings and private conversations discuss no other theme. Hundreds of delegates wait upon Congress to add, if it be but a feather’s weight, to the scale which holds their interests. Petitions flow in, in thousands and tens of thousands. It is announced that Mr. Calhoun will pour out his great mind on the subject. Expectation is on tiptoe. All eyes, from all sides of the country, are turned towards Washington, as the Moslem’s to Mecca. The senate chamber is packed, and the illustrious senator rises. After an historic sketch of existing difficulties, after reading from the speeches which he made in 1832 and in 1846, he proceeds to say that he withdraws all opposition to a tariff,--to any tariff! He will not offend the delicate nerves of northern manufacturers by further hostility. Were a bill then before him, he would not oppose it. “Take the schedules,” says he, scornfully, to northern senators, “and fill up the blanks from A to Z with what per centages you please. For _ad valorem_ rates, put in minimums and maximums at your pleasure. I will ‘taunt’ you no longer. I am for peace and the glorious Union. I have discovered an irrepealable and irreversible law of nature, which overrules all the devices of men. You cannot make one yard of woollens or cottons in New England. There, water has no gravity, steam