principle; not a blind, headlong, generalizing, uncalculating operation.
Simplicity undoubtedly, is a great beauty in acts of legislation, as
well as in the works of art; but in both it must be a simplicity
resulting from congruity of parts and adaptation to the end designed;
not a rude generalization, which either leaves the particular object
unaccomplished, or, in accomplishing it, accomplishes a dozen others
also, which were not desired. It is a simplicity wrought out by
knowledge and skill; not the rough product of an undistinguishing,
sweeping general principle."

An ingenuous reader, who has not learned from his historical studies
that men generally act, not from arguments addressed to their
understandings, but from vehement appeals which rouse their passions to
defend their seeming interests, cannot comprehend why Webster's
arguments against Nullification and Secession, which were apparently
unanswerable, and which were certainly unanswered either by Hayne or
Calhoun, should not have settled the question in debate between the
North and the South. Such a reader, after patiently following all the
turns and twists of the logic, all the processes of the reasoning
employed on both sides of the intellectual contest, would naturally
conclude that the party defeated in the conflict would gracefully
acknowledge the fact of its defeat; and, as human beings, gifted with
the faculty of reason, would cheerfully admit the demonstrated results
of its exercise. He would find it difficult to comprehend why the men
who were overcome in a fair gladiatorial strife in the open arena of
debate, with brain pitted against brain, and manhood against manhood,
should resort to the rough logic of "blood and iron," when the nobler
kind of logic, that which is developed in the struggle of mind with
mind, had failed to accomplish the purposes which their hearts and
wills, independent of their understandings, were bent on accomplishing.