course, and I did not care what was to be the consequence. And, Gentlemen,
allow me to say here to-day, that if the fate of John Rogers had stared me
in the face, if I had seen the stake, if I had heard the fagots already
crackling, by the blessing of Almighty God I would have gone on and
discharged the duty which I thought my country called upon me to perform."

Does this seem the language of one who had abandoned his post and was
merely "bidding for the Presidency"?

The address of Hon. Rufus Choate, before the students of Dartmouth
College, commemorative of Daniel Webster, has a remark on this subject so
just that I cannot refrain from quoting it. He says: "Until the accuser
who charges Mr. Webster with having 'sinned against his conscience' will
assert that the conscience of a public man may not, must not, be
instructed by profound knowledge of the vast subject-matter with which
public life is conversant, and will assert that he is certain that the
consummate science of our great statesman was _felt by himself to
prescribe to his morality_ another conduct than that which he adopted,
and that he thus consciously outraged that 'sense of duty which pursues us
ever,'--is he not inexcusable, whoever he is, that so judges another?"

At the meeting held in Faneuil Hall, Oct. 27, 1852, commemorative of Mr.
Webster's life and work, Mr. Edward Everett said: "Whoever, in after time,
shall write the history of the United States for the last forty years will
write the life of Daniel Webster; and whoever writes the life of Daniel
Webster as it ought to be written will write the history of the Union from
the time he took a leading part in its concerns." Mr. Choate, at a meeting
of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, Oct. 25, 1852, said: "Happier than
the younger Pliny, happier than Cicero, he has found his historian,
unsolicited, in his lifetime, and his countrymen have him all by heart."