Clay’s action was courageous. Bryant wrote that he could not refuse admiration for his boldness in grappling thus frankly with a subject so full of difficulties, and that his statesmanlike directness contrasted refreshingly with the timidity of the Administration. But he called the Compromise a blanket poultice, to heal five wounds at once, when the common sense method was to dress each sore separately; and he opposed any effort to coax the free States into abandonment of a single principle. Besides Bryant’s and Bigelow’s editorials, the _Evening Post_ published a 5,000 word argument by William Jay, son of John Jay, and called upon its readers to sign petitions. It specifically objected to the provision that Utah and New Mexico should be organized without any restriction against slavery, for this meant an abandonment of the Wilmot Proviso, which it had always supported. Some Northern advocates of the Compromise argued that the region was not adapted to plantations and that slavery would not be transferred thither anyway; but this view the _Post_ derided, quoting Southern members of Congress to the contrary. It was equally opposed to the Fugitive Slave Act. When Calhoun argued that the South was being “suffocated,” it showed that the occupied land in the slave States was about 280 million acres, and the unoccupied land about 395 million, while the whole area of the free States was only about 291 million acres. Webster’s Seventh of March speech in behalf of the Compromise aroused savage indignation among his Boston admirers, but it did not surprise the _Evening Post_. The Washington correspondent wrote of the stir of satisfaction among the listening Southern Senators, of the gleam of exultation that played over the quizzical visage of Foote of Virginia. But Bryant had expected Webster’s volte-face: It was as natural to suppose that he would do this, as that he would abandon, in the manner he has done, the doctrines of free trade, once maintained by him in their fullest extent, and, taking the money of the Eastern mill-owners, enrol himself as the champion of protection for the rest of his life.... Mr. Webster stands before the public as a man who has deserted the cause which he lately defended, deserted it under circumstances which force upon him the imputation of a sordid motive, deserted it when his apostasy was desired by the Administration, and immediately after an office had been conferred upon his son, to say nothing of what has been done by the Administration for his other relatives. It is but little more than two years since he declared himself the firmest of friends to the Wilmot Proviso, professing himself its original and invariable champion, and claiming its principles as Whig doctrine.