This is a striking fact about Mr. Madison; but one still more striking occurred after the publication of the speech. His great name and authority had been constantly and confidently appealed to, not only in this debate, by General Hayne, but, on previous occasions, by other favourers of the South Carolina doctrines, until at last it began to be almost feared, that Mr. Madison sustained the positions of the nullifiers. But as he had already shown that the tariff law was quite constitutional, so, now, with no less promptness and power, he came out against the whole doctrine of nullification, and showed that his resolutions of 1798, on which its friends had rested the wild fabric of their argument, as its main pillars, had nothing to do with it; and thus, in conjunction with what had been done in the Senate, brought down the whole temple they had built with such pains and cost, upon the heads of their uncircumcised presumption and extravagance. His letter, indeed, on this subject, is one of the most characteristic efforts of his great wisdom, and one of the most important results of this discussion, since it took from the advocates of nullification all the support of his authority--the _magni nominis umbra_--the shade and shelter of his great name. But to return to Mr. Webster; the general tone of the last half of his speech is uncommonly grave and imposing; but there is one passage in which a lighter accent is assumed. It is that in which he runs out General Hayne's nullifying doctrine into practice, and sets him, as a military man, to execute his own nullifying law. The argument of this passage is the more efficacious, because it is concealed under so much wit and good-humour.