While I would not enlarge on the subject of Mr. Webster's public services and extraordinary statesmanship already so well known throughout this and other countries, I may briefly refer to one especially eloquent speech of the many made by him to which it was my privilege to listen. After the death of President Harrison, and the accession to office of Vice-President John Tyler, all the members of the Cabinet, except Mr. Webster, resigned. He remained as Secretary of State, for the purpose of bringing to a successful conclusion a perplexing controversy between Great Britain and the United States as to the trial and release of Alexander McLeod, a British subject, then held as a prisoner in the State of New York for participating in an attack on the steamer "Caroline" within the waters of the United States. The British Government avowed the act as authorized, and imperatively demanded McLeod's release. It tasked to the utmost the extraordinary ability of Mr. Webster, as a mutual friend informed me, to find sufficient ground on which to comply with England's demand, and yet maintain the dignity of the Government of the United States, consistently with the relations between the Federal Government and that of the State of New York. The question seemed at one time to threaten the peaceful relations between England and America, of which the public were not aware. Under Mr. Webster's construction of the duty and obligations of our Government, McLeod was surrendered, and soon after Mr. Webster resigned. Having been unjustly criticised by certain political leaders, and his motives impugned for remaining so long in the Cabinet, he at once sought vindication in a speech delivered in Faneuil Hall, defining his position, in which he poured out a torrent of eloquence seldom equalled, and in which he clearly indicated the chagrin that even a great man may feel when he is made the subject of unjust suspicion and criticism. While I have no claim whatever to be regarded as one of the great statesman's associates, I was favored with a very limited and casual acquaintance in the latter part of his life, and an opportunity to know something of his private life and his religious character, through his particular friends, of whom a few were also my personal friends. I may perhaps, therefore, properly speak of unquestionable facts which have, by force of circumstances, come to my knowledge at different times through a period of about forty years, tending to disprove the base rumor and slanders which have found an astonishing currency.