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.
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