The silly embargo measures, making war upon our own citizens instead of our enemies, had deeply injured New England interests. On their heel came the second war with England, into which the government of France had, as Mr. Lodge says, "tricked us ... by most profligate lying."[66] This war paralyzed the production and occupations of Webster's people. A speech made by him July 4, 1812, is "a strong, calm statement of the grounds of opposition to the war."[67] Mr. Lodge quotes and emphasizes a passage as proof that Webster, although a federalist, and the majority of his party in New England were--to use the words of the same author--"prepared to go to the very edge of the narrow legal line which divides constitutional opposition from treasonable resistance,"[68] was then standing by the union with might and main. This quotation, separated from its circumstances and the immediate sequel, strongly supports the contention. The speech being printed, circulated widely among those federalists who were gravitating so strongly towards "treasonable resistance." By reason of it Webster was chosen as a delegate to a convention, held the next month. This man, whom Mr. Lodge would have us believe to be so fixedly counter to the then uppermost revolutionary sentiment of his party, was chosen to be their mouthpiece. He wrote their report--the "Rockingham Memorial" in the form of a letter to President Madison. Mr. Lodge thus contrasts the report and the speech. "In one point the memorial differed curiously from the oration of the month before. The latter pointed to the suffrage as the mode of redress; the former distinctly hinted at and almost threatened secession, even while it deplored a dissolution of the union as a possible result of the administration's policy."[69] Then the biographer most confidently states that in the speech Webster was declaring his own views, but in the other document he was declaring those of members of his party. But the average American will be sure that those familiar with the speech at the time did not strain its counsels as far away from their own as Mr. Lodge does, otherwise they would not have elected him as delegate; and further, he never would have made their report for them unless he had been known to entertain their own sentiments.[70] The popular wave that he had thus mounted carried the draftsman of the "Rockingham Memorial" into congress, where, while British armies were actually treading our soil, he voted against the taxes proposed for national defence. Mr. Lodge does not go the full length of sustaining this conduct.[71] The severe comment of another biographer will be cordially approved by average readers, northern and southern.[72]