In 1839 Webster’s friends professed great indignation because the orator had been called a “myrmidon.” The myrmidons, Bryant remarked, were soldiers who fought under Achilles at Troy, and the opprobrium of being called one was much that of being called a hussar or lancer. The wrath of Webster’s defenders seemed to him like Dame Quickly’s: Falstaff: “Go to, you are a woman, go.” Hostess: “Who, I? I defy thee, I was never called so in mine own house before.” But, he added, there was one important difference between Webster and a myrmidon. He had never heard of the high-tariff friends of a myrmidon making up a purse of $65,000 for services well done. Bryant was always master of a grave humor. When another journal assailed him, he wrote: “There is an honest shoemaker living on the Mergellina, at Naples, on the right hand as you go towards Pozzioli, whose little dog comes out every morning and barks at Vesuvius.” Bryant had need of this persuasive tact, for in 1836 the following of the _Evening Post_ consisted chiefly of workmen, who could not buy it, and of the young enthusiasts who polled a city vote of only 2,712 that fall for the Loco-Foco ticket. The policy was not changed. The paper continued to attack special banking incorporations, and in 1838 had the satisfaction of seeing a general State banking law passed. It kept up its fire against the judicial doctrine that trade unions were conspiracies against trade, and saw it rapidly disintegrate and vanish. During 1837 it was able to point to the panic as an exact fulfillment of its predictions. By 1840 it was clear that it had said not a word too much when it attacked the craze for State internal improvements as not only making for political corruption and favoritism between localities, but as leading to financial ruin. Gov. Seward that year declared that New York had been misled into a number of impractical and profitless projects, Gov. Grayson of Maryland called for heavy direct taxes as the only means of averting disgraceful bankruptcy, and Gov. Porter, of Pennsylvania, said that his State had been loaded with a multitude of undertakings that it could neither prosecute, sell, nor abandon. This proved its old contention, said the _Post_, that “the moment we admit that the Legislature may engage in local enterprises, it is beset at once by swarms of schemers.” In 1837 Bryant asked for the repeal of the usury laws, but in this he was not years, but generations, ahead of his time.