The former involved no constitutional
points. The suit was brought to break the will of Stephen Girard, and the
question was whether the bequest to found a college could be construed to
be a charitable devise. On this question Mr. Webster had a weak case in
point of law, but he readily detected a method by which he could go boldly
outside the law, as he had done to a certain degree in the Dartmouth
College case, and substitute for argument an eloquent and impassioned
appeal to emotion and prejudice. Girard was a free-thinker, and he provided
in his will that no priest or minister of any denomination should be
admitted to his college. Assuming that this excluded all religious
teaching, Mr. Webster then laid down the proposition that no bequest or
gift could be charitable which excluded Christian teaching. In other words,
he contended that there was no charity except Christian charity, which, the
poet assures us, is so rare. At this day such a theory would hardly be
gravely propounded by any one. But Mr. Webster, on the ground that Girard's
bequest was derogatory to Christianity, pronounced a very fine discourse
defending and eulogizing, with much eloquence, the Christian religion.
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