as because in days of artificial party issues, when vital questions are
dealt with by mere compromise, high office seems to belong of right to
men of less originality. If he was never quite so great as all America
took him to be, it was not for want of brains or of honesty, but because
his consuming passion for the Union at all costs led him into the path of
least apparent risk to it. Twice as Secretary of State (that is,
chiefly, Foreign Minister) he showed himself a statesman, but above all
he was an orator and one of those rare orators who accomplish a definite
task by their oratory. In his style he carried on the tradition of
English Parliamentary speaking, and developed its vices yet further; but
the massive force of argument behind gave him his real power. That power
he devoted to the education of the people in a feeling for the nation and
for its greatness. As an advocate he had appeared in great cases in the
Supreme Court. John Marshall, the Chief Justice from 1801 to 1835,
brought a great legal mind of the higher type to the settlement of
doubtful points in the Constitution, and his statesmanlike judgments did
much both to strengthen the United States Government and to gain public
confidence for it. It was a memorable work, for the power of the Union
Government, under its new Constitution, lay in the grip of the Courts.
The pleading of the young Webster contributed much to this. Later on
Webster, and a school of followers, of whom perhaps we may take "our
Elijah Pogram" to have been one, used ceremonial occasions, on which
Englishmen only suffer the speakers, for the purpose of inculcating their
patriotic doctrine, and Webster at least was doing good. His greatest
speech, upon an occasion to which we shall shortly come, was itself an
event. Lincoln found in it as inspiring a political treatise as many
Englishmen have discovered in the speeches and writings of Burke.

Henry Clay was a slighter but more attractive person. He was apparently
the first American public man whom his countrymen styled "magnetic," but