was undergoing a process of deterioration, moral and mental. His
material part gained upon his spiritual. Naturally inclined to
indolence, and having an enormous capacity for physical enjoyment, a
great hunter, fisherman, and farmer, a lover of good wine and good
dinners, a most jovial companion, his physical desires and tastes were
constantly strengthened by being keenly gratified, while his mind was
fed chiefly upon past acquisitions. There is nothing in his later
efforts which shows any intellectual advance, nothing from which we
can infer that he had been browsing in forests before untrodden, or
feeding in pastures new. He once said, at Marshfield, that, if he
could live three lives in one, he would like to devote them all to
study,--one to geology, one to astronomy, and one to classical
literature. But it does not appear that he invigorated and refreshed
the old age of his mind, by doing more than glance over the great
works which treat of these subjects. A new language every ten years,
or a new science vigorously pursued, seems necessary to preserve the
freshness of the understanding, especially when the physical tastes
are superabundantly nourished. He could praise Rufus Choate for
reading a little Latin and Greek every day,--and this was better than
nothing,--but he did not follow his example. There is an aged merchant
in New York, who has kept his mind from growing old by devoting
exactly twenty minutes every day to the reading of some abstruse book,
as far removed from his necessary routine of thought as he could find.
Goethe's advice to every one to read every day a short poem,
recognizes the danger we all incur in taking systematic care of the
body and letting the soul take care of itself. During the last ten
years of Daniel Webster's life, he spent many a thousand dollars upon
his library, and almost ceased to be an intellectual being.
His pecuniary habits demoralized him. It was wrong and mean in him to
accept gifts of money from the people of Boston; it was wrong in them
to submit to his merciless exactions. What need was there that their
Senator should sometimes be a mendicant and sometimes a pauper? If he
chose to maintain baronial state without a baron's income; if he chose
to have two fancy farms of more than a thousand acres each; if he
chose to keep two hundred prize cattle and seven hundred choice sheep
for his pleasure; if he must have about his house lamas, deer, and all
rare fowls; if his flower-garden must be one acre in extent, and his
books worth thirty thousand dollars; if he found it pleasant to keep
two or three yachts and a little fleet of smaller craft; if he could
not refrain from sending money in answer to begging letters, and
pleased himself by giving away to his black man money enough to buy a
very good house; and if he could not avoid adding wings and rooms to
his spacious mansion at Marshfield, and must needs keep open house
there and have a dozen, guests at a time,--why should the solvent and
careful business men of Boston have been taxed, or have taxed
themselves, to pay any part of the expense?
Mr. Lanman, his secretary, gives us this curious and contradictory
account of his pecuniary habits:--
"He made money with ease, and spent it without reflection.
He had accounts with various banks, and men of all parties
were always glad to accommodate him with loans, if he wanted
them. He kept no record of his deposits, unless it were on
slips of paper hidden in his pockets; these matters were
generally left with his secretary. His notes were seldom or
never regularly protested, and when they were, they caused
him an immense deal of mental anxiety. When the writer has
sometimes drawn a check for a couple of thousand dollars, he
has not even looked at it, but packed it away in his
pockets, like so much waste paper. During his long
professional career, he earned money enough to make a dozen
fortunes, but he spent it liberally, and gave it away to the
poor by hundreds and thousands. Begging letters from women
and unfortunate men were received by him almost daily, at
certain periods; and one instance is remembered where, on
six successive days, he sent remittances of fifty and one
hundred dollars to people with whom he was entirely
unacquainted. He was indeed careless, but strictly and
religiously honest, in all his money matters. He knew not
how to be otherwise. The last fee which he ever received for
a single legal argument was $11,000....
"A sanctimonious lady once called upon Mr. Webster, in
Washington, with a long and pitiful story about her
misfortunes and poverty, and asked him for a donation of
money to defray her expenses to her home in a Western city.
He listened with all the patience he could manage, expressed
his surprise that she should have called upon him for money,
simply because he was an officer of the government, and
that, too, when she was a total stranger to him, reprimanded
her in very plain language for her improper conduct, and
_handed her a note of fifty dollars_.
* * * * *
"He had called upon the cashier of the bank where he kept an
account, for the purpose of getting a draft discounted, when
that gentleman expressed some surprise, and casually
inquired why he wanted so much money? 'To spend; to buy
bread and meat,' replied Mr. Webster, a little annoyed at
this speech.
"'But,' returned the cashier, 'you already have upon deposit
in the bank no less than three thousand dollars, and I was
only wondering why you wanted so much money,'
"This was indeed the truth, but Mr. Webster had forgotten
it."
Mr. Lanman's assertion that Mr. Webster, with all this recklessness,
was religiously honest, must have excited a grim smile upon the
countenances of such of his Boston readers as had had his name upon
their books. No man can be honest long who is careless in his
expenditures.
It is evident from his letters, if we did not know it from other
sources of information, that his carelessness with regard to the
balancing of his books grew upon him as he advanced in life, and kept
pace with the general deterioration of his character. In 1824, before
lie had been degraded by the acceptance of pecuniary aid, and when he
was still a solvent person, one of his nephews asked him for a loan.
He replied:
"If you think you can do anything useful with a thousand
dollars, you may have that sum in the spring, or sooner, if
need be, on the following conditions:--1. You must give a
note for it with reasonable security. 2. The interest must
be payable annually, and must be paid at the day without
fail. And so long as this continues to be done, the money
not to be called for--the principal--under six months'
notice. I am thus explicit with you, because you wish me to
be so; and because also, having a little money, and but a
little, I am resolved on keeping it."
This is sufficiently business-like. He _had_ a little money
then,--enough, as he intimates, for the economical maintenance of his
family. During the land fever of 1835 and 1836, he lost so seriously
by speculations in Western land, that he was saved from bankruptcy
only by the aid of that mystical but efficient body whom he styled his
"friends"; and from that time to the end of his life he was seldom at
his ease. He earned immense occasional fees,---two of twenty-five
thousand dollars each; he received frequent gifts of money, as well as
a regular stipend from an invested capital; but he expended so
profusely, that he was sometimes at a loss for a hundred dollars to
pay his hay-makers; and he died forty thousand dollars in debt.
The adulation of which he was the victim at almost every hour of his
existence injured and deceived him. He was continually informed that
he was the greatest of living men,--the "godlike Daniel"; and when he
escaped even into the interior of his home, he found there persons who
sincerely believed that making such speeches as his was the greatest
of all possible human achievements. All men whose talents are of the
kind which enable their possessor to give intense pleasure to great
multitudes are liable to this misfortune; and especially in a new and
busy country, little removed from the colonial state, where
intellectual eminence is rare, and the number of persons who can enjoy
it is exceedingly great. We are growing out of this provincial
propensity to abandon ourselves to admiration of the pleasure-giving
talents. The time is at hand, we trust, when we shall not be struck
with wonder because a man can make a vigorous speech, or write a good
novel, or play Hamlet decently, and when we shall be able to enjoy the
talent without adoring the man. The talent is one thing, and the man
another; the talent may be immense, and the man little; the speech
powerful and wise, the speaker weak and foolish. Daniel Webster came
at last to loathe this ceaseless incense, but it was when his heart
was set upon homage of another kind, which he was destined never to
enjoy.
Another powerful cause of his deterioration was the strange, strong,
always increasing desire he had to be President. Any intelligent
politician, outside of the circle of his own "friends," could have
told him, and proved to him, that he had little more chance of being
elected President than the most insignificant man in the Whig party.
And the marvel is, that he himself should not have known it,--he who
knew why, precisely why, every candidate had been nominated, from
Madison to General Taylor. In the teeth of all the facts, he still
cherished the amazing delusion that the Presidency of the United
States, like the Premiership of England, is the natural and just
reward of long and able public service. The Presidency, on the
contrary, is not merely an accident, but it is an accident of the last
moment. It is a game too difficult for mortal faculties to play,
because some of the conditions of success are as uncertain as the
winds, and as ungovernable. If dexterous playing could have availed,
Douglas would have carried off the stakes, for he had an audacious and
a mathematical mind; while the winning man in 1856 was a heavy player,
devoid of skill, whose decisive advantage was that he had been out of
the game for four years. Mr. Seward, too, was within an ace of
winning, when an old quarrel between two New York editors swept his
cards from the table.
No: the President of the United States is not prime minister, but
chief magistrate, and he is subject to that law of nature which places
at the head of regular governments more or less respectable Nobodies.
In Europe this law of nature works through the hereditary principle,
and in America through universal suffrage. In all probability, we
shall usually elect a person of the non-committal species,--one who
will have lived fifty or sixty years in the world without having
formed an offensive conviction or uttered a striking word,--one who
will have conducted his life as those popular periodicals are
conducted, in which there are "no allusions to politics or religion."
And may not this be part of the exquisite economy of nature, which
ever strives to get into each place the smallest man that can fill it?
How miserably out of place would be a man of active, originating,
disinterested spirit, at the head of a strictly limited,
constitutional government, such as ours is in time of peace, in which
the best President is he who does the least? Imagine a live man thrust
out over the bows of a ship, and compelled to stand as figure-head,
lashed by the waves and winds during a four years' voyage, and
expected to be pleased with his situation because he is gilt!
Daniel Webster so passionately desired the place, that he could never
see how far he was from the possibility of getting it. He was not such
timber as either Southern fire-eaters or Northern wire-pullers had any
use for; and a melancholy sight it was, this man, once so stately,
paying court to every passing Southerner, and personally begging
delegates to vote for him. He was not made for that. An elephant does
sometimes stand upon his head and play a barrel-organ, but every one
who sees the sorry sight sees also that it was not the design of
Nature that elephants should do such things.
A Marshfield elm may be for half a century in decay without exhibiting
much outward change; and when, in some tempestuous night, half its
bulk is torn away, the neighborhood notes with surprise that what
seemed solid wood is dry and crumbling pith. During the last fifteen
years of Daniel Webster's life, his wonderfully imposing form and his
immense reputation concealed from the public the decay of his powers
and the degeneration of his morals. At least, few said what perhaps
many felt, that "he was not the man he had been." People went away
from one of his ponderous and empty speeches disappointed, but not ill
pleased to boast that they too had "heard Daniel Webster speak," and
feeling very sure that he could be eloquent, though he had not been.
We heard one of the last of his out-of-door speeches. It was near
Philadelphia, in 1844, when he was "stumping the State" for Henry
Clay, and when our youthful feelings were warmly with the object of
his speech. What a disappointment! How poor and pompous and pointless
it seemed! Nor could we resist the impression that he was playing a
part, nor help saying to ourselves, as we turned to leave the scene,
"This man is not sincere in this: he is a humbug." And when, some
years later, we saw him present himself before a large audience in a
state not far removed from intoxication, and mumble incoherence for
ten minutes, and when, in the course of the evening, we saw him make a
great show of approval whenever the clergy were complimented, the
impression was renewed that the man had expended his sincerity, and
that nothing was real to him any more except wine and office. And even
then such were the might and majesty of his presence, that he seemed
to fill and satisfy the people by merely sitting there in an
arm-chair, like Jupiter, in a spacious yellow waistcoat with two
bottles of Madeira under it.
All this gradual, unseen deterioration of mind and character was
revealed to the country on the 7th of March, 1850. What a downfall was
there! That shameful speech reads worse in 1867 than it did in 1850,
and still exerts perverting power over timid and unformed minds. It
was the very time for him to have broken finally with the
"irreconcilable" faction, who, after having made President Tyler
_snub_ Daniel Webster from his dearly loved office of Secretary of
State, had consummated the scheme which gave us Texas at the cost of
war with Mexico, and California as one of the incidents of peace.
California was not down in their programme; and now, while claiming
the right to make four slave States out of Texas, they refused to
admit California to freedom. _Then_ was it that Daniel Webster of
Massachusetts rose in the Senate of the United States and said in
substance this: These fine Southern brethren of ours have now stolen
all the land there is to steal. Let us, therefore, put no obstacle in
the way of their peaceable enjoyment of the plunder.
And the spirit of the speech was worse even than its doctrine. He went
down upon the knees of his soul, and paid base homage to his own and
his country's irreconcilable foes. Who knew better than Daniel Webster
that John C. Calhoun and his followers had first created and then
systematically fomented the hostile feeling which then existed between
the North and the South? How those men must have chuckled among
themselves when they witnessed the willing degradation of the man who
should have arraigned them before the country as the conscious enemies
of its peace! How was it that no one laughed outright at such billing
and cooing as this?
* * * * *
_Mr. Webster_.--"An honorable member [Calhoun], whose health does not
allow him to be here to-day--"
_A Senator_,--"He is here."
_Mr. Webster_.--"I am very happy to hear that he is; may he long be
here, and in the enjoyment of health to serve his country!"
And this:--
_Mr. Webster_.--"The honorable member did not disguise his conduct or
his motives."
_Mr. Calhoun_.--"Never, never."
_Mr. Webster_.--"What he means he is very apt to say."
_Mr. Calhoun_.--"Always, always."
_Mr. Webster_.--"And I honor him for it."
And this:--
_Mr. Webster_.--
"I see an honorable member of this body [Mason of Virginia]
paying me the honor of listening to my remarks; he brings to
my mind, Sir, freshly and vividly, what I learned of his
great ancestor, so much distinguished in his day and
generation, so worthy to be succeeded by so worthy a
grandson."
And this:--
_Mr. Webster_.--
"An honorable member from Louisiana addressed us the other
day on this subject. I suppose there is not a more amiable
and worthy gentleman in this chamber, nor a gentleman who
would be more slow to give offence to anybody, and he did
not mean in his remarks to give offence. But what did he
say? Why, Sir, he took pains to run a contrast between the
slaves of the South and the laboring people of the North,
giving the preference in all points of condition and comfort
and happiness to the slaves."
In the course of this speech there is one most palpable contradiction.
In the beginning of it, the orator mentioned the change of feeling and
opinion that had occurred as to the institution of slavery,--"the
North growing much more warm and strong against slavery, and the South
growing much more warm and strong in its support." "Once," he said,
"the most eminent men, and nearly all the conspicuous politicians of
the South, held the same sentiments,--that slavery was an evil, a
blight, a scourge, and a curse"; but now it is "a cherished
institution in that quarter; no evil, no scourge, but a great
religious, social, and moral blessing." He then asked how this change
of opinion had been brought about, and thus answered the question: "I
suppose, sir, this is owing to the rapid growth and sudden extension
of the COTTON plantations in the South." And to make the statement
more emphatic, he caused the word _cotton_ to be printed in capitals
in the authorized edition of his works. But later in the speech, when
he came to add his ponderous condemnation to the odium in which the
handful of Abolitionists were held,--the _élite_ of the nation from
Franklin's day to this,--then he attributed this remarkable change to
_their_ zealous efforts to awaken the nobler conscience of the
country. After giving his own version of their proceedings, he said:
"Well, what was the result? The bonds of the slaves were
bound more firmly than before, their rivets were more
strongly fastened. Public opinion, which in Virginia had
begun to be exhibited against slavery, and was opening out
for the discussion of the question, drew back and shut
itself up in its castle."
But all would not do. He bent the knee in vain. Vain too were his
personal efforts, his Southern tour, his Astor House wooings,--the
politicians would have none of him; and he had the cutting
mortification of seeing himself set aside for a Winfield Scott.
Let us not, however, forget that on this occasion, though Daniel
Webster appeared for the first time in his life as a leader, he was in
reality still only a follower,--a follower, not of the public opinion
of the North, but of the wishes of its capitalists. And probably many
thousands of well-meaning men, not versed in the mysteries of
politics, were secretly pleased to find themselves provided with an
excuse for yielding once more to a faction, who had over us the
immense advantage of having made up their minds to carry their point
or fight. If his was the shame of this speech, ours was the guilt. He
faithfully represented the portion of his constituents whose wine he
drank, who helped him out with his notes, and who kept his atmosphere
hazy with incense; and he faithfully represented, also, that larger
number who wait till the wolf is at their door before arming against
him, instead of meeting him afar off in the outskirts of the wood. Let
us own it: the North yearned for peace in 1850,--peace at almost any
price.
One of the most intimate of Mr. Webster's friends said, in a public
address:
"It is true that he desired the highest political position
in the country,--that he thought he had fairly earned a
claim to that position. And I solemnly believe that because
that claim was denied his days were shortened."
No enemy of the great orator ever uttered anything so severe against
him as this, and we are inclined to think it an error. It was probably
the strength of his desire for the Presidency that shortened his life,
not the mere disappointment. When President Fillmore offered him the
post of Secretary of State, in 1850, it appears to have been his
preference, much as he loved office, to decline it. He longed for his
beautiful Marshfield, on the shore of the ocean, his herds of noble
cattle, his broad, productive fields, his yachts, his fishing, his
rambles in the forests planted by his own hand, his homely chats with
neighbors and beloved dependents. "Oh!" said he, "if I could have my
own will, never, never would I leave Marshfield again!" But his
"friends," interested and disinterested, told him it was a shorter
step from the office of Secretary of State to that of President than
from the Senate-chamber. He yielded, as he always did, and spent a
long, hot summer in Washington, to the sore detriment of his health.
And again, in 1852, after he had failed to receive the nomination for
the Presidency, he was offered the place of Minister to England. His
"friends" again advised against his acceptance. His letter to the
President, declining the offer, presents him in a sorry light indeed.
"I have made up my mind to think no more about the. English
mission. My principal reason is, that I think it would be
regarded as a descent I have been accustomed to give
instructions to ministers abroad, and not to receive them."
Accustomed! Yes: for two years! It is probable enough that his
acceptance of office, and his adherence to it, hastened his death.
Four months after the words were written which we have just quoted, he
was no more.
His last days were such as his best friends could have wished them to
be,--calm, dignified, affectionate, worthy of his lineage. His burial,
too, was singularly becoming, impressive, and touching. We have been
exceedingly struck with the account of it given by Mr. George S.
Hillard, in his truly elegant and eloquent eulogy upon Mr. Webster,
delivered in Faneuil Hall. In his last will, executed a few days
before his death, Mr. Webster requested that he might be buried
"without the least show or ostentation, but in a manner respectful to
my neighbors, whose kindness has contributed so much to the happiness
of me and mine." His wishes were obeyed; and he was buried more as the
son of plain, brave Captain Ebenezer Webster, than as Secretary of
State. "No coffin," said Mr. Hillard,
"concealed that majestic frame. In the open air, clad as
when alive, he lay extended in seeming sleep, with no touch
of disfeature upon his brow,--as noble an image of reposing
strength as ever was seen upon earth. Around him was the
landscape that he had loved, and above him was nothing but
the dome of the covering heavens. The sunshine fell upon the
dead man's face, and the breeze blew over it. A lover of
Nature, he seemed to be gathered into her maternal arms, and
to lie like a child upon a mother's lap. We felt, as we
looked upon him, that death had never stricken down, at one
blow, a greater sum of life. And whose heart did not swell
when, from the honored and distinguished men there gathered
together, six plain Marshfield farmers were called forth to
carry the head of their neighbor to the grave. Slowly and
sadly the vast multitude followed, in mourning silence, and
he was laid down to rest among dear and kindred dust."