If he had been completed
throughout on the plan on which he was sketched, if he had been as
able to originate as he was powerful to state, if he had possessed
will proportioned to his strength, moral power equal to his moral
feeling, intellect on a par with his genius, and principle worthy of
his intellect, he would have subjugated mankind, and raised his
country to a point from which it would have dropped when the
tyrannizing influence was withdrawn. Every sphere of life has its
peculiar temptations, which there is only one thing that can enable a
man to resist,--a religious, i.e. a disinterested devotion to its
duties. Daniel Webster was one of those who fell before the seductions
of his place. He was not one of those who find in the happiness and
prosperity of their country, and in the esteem of their
fellow-citizens, their own sufficient and abundant reward for serving
her. He pined for something lower, smaller,--something personal and
vulgar. He had no religion,--not the least tincture of it; and he
seemed at last, in his dealings with individuals, to have no
conscience.
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